The Strange Case of Cressida Dick

The Winsor report into Sadiq Khan's hounding of Cressida Dick leads us to a very odd place, where Dick reportedly found Khan "intimidating".

WTF?   There's many a nastier beast in the world of top-end criminality than Mayor Khan, unprincipled little opportunist that he is.  What we need in our Metropolitan Police Commissioners is someone who can look absolutely any mortal man squarely in the eye, unblinking, and read his fortune for him.  Stick it up your arse, Mr Mayor. 

Before I am accused of sexism (or being a neocon shill, or whatever it is our sub-marxist trolls like to say), let us immediately add that in my varied career I have met several women quite capable of facing down the Khans of this world.  Yes, bullies exist and yes, the Fred Goodwins, the Maxwells and the Bernie Madoffs make ground too easily in a world where most people back off from confrontation at the narrowing of a glowering eyebrow.  

But it shouldn't be too much to ask that the top police job spec includes backbone.  Moral fibre.  Character.

ND

Lambasting Liverpool

Dawn and I had a fair amount in common ... a shared South Welsh/Irish heritage via peri-urban council estates; swearing; and a deep love for Liverpool ... Whenever we met up in Liverpool, you could see Dawn revel in its doolally joie de vivre, its Irishness, its Catholicism, and the simple fact that it’s a place where being a socialist doesn’t make you a weirdo.

Maybe that recent endorsement goes some way towards explaining one or two other current news items concerning Liverpool ... 

Liverpool has been stripped of its coveted world heritage status after Unesco blamed years of development for an “irreversible loss” to the historic value of its Victorian docks. The UN’s heritage body concluded at a meeting in China on Wednesday that the “outstanding universal value” of Liverpool’s waterfront had been destroyed by new buildings. The decision is a humiliating blow for the city and gives Liverpool the ignominious distinction of being only the third place to lose the status in nearly 50 years. 

And this:

“Nothing less than a full reset of the Labour Party in Liverpool is needed.” [The report] recommends that Labour nationally takes over candidate selection processes in Liverpool until June 2026, and that it immediately fast-tracks outstanding complaints in the Liverpool City region, completing them within six months. The panel led by former government minister David Hanson says it received evidence identifying a “toxic culture” within the Labour group on the council and “dysfunctional governance running throughout the organisation”. Looking at local party meetings, the internal investigation was “told of a toxic atmosphere in some meetings, not welcoming to members, where often members especially women were targeted for bullying or abuse”. The panel was “presented with evidence of a history of antisemitism that already has led to expulsions and suspensions”

Scouse takeaway:  mmm...

Such a pleasant place!  (And we haven't yet wheeled in David Olusoga to tell us about the slave trade.)   Personally, I'm extremely partial to Beatles music which goes a long way to redeeming other shortcomings: but (strange factoid) Liverpool is, I think, the largest city in western Europe where I've never done any business.  I do have friends there, though.  And scouse is, errrr, a remarkable foodstuff ...

Yet I imagine there are C@W readers with more positive things to say about the place ... so do please let us know!  

"Did you tell me once Father Jack had a trial for Liverpool?"   "No, Dougal, he was on trial, in Liverpool ..."

ND

Bullying is rubbish in any work place - Friday View

I have worked in quite a few organisations, big and small. One thing that has always led me to leave is a horrid, bullying boss. I have had my fair share of them and luckily, my fair share of inspirational bosses who really helped me to learn and kick on. 

In some ways, the bas bosses, who I generally experienced earlier on in my career taught me the most. They taught me that fear works in terms of driving short-term performance and can lead them to their own promotions. Long-term, it does nothing for the organisation or the people in it. Bullying and picking on individuals might push you to avoid being the target, but no one is happy and less value is created. 

Interestingly, the worst bully bosses I have ever had are all female. Maybe it is fluke or random error, but certainly just as there is an alpha-male type of boss who is a nightmare to work for, there are plenty of women whose own insecurity is taken out on those below them. 

I learned much more from the political and bullying bosses - it taught me how I did not want to be when it was my turn later in my career - not taking credit for things I had not doe, not randomly hauling people over the coals because I was having a bad day, not coming up with petty ideas just to trip people over, not getting angry over presenteeism and not trying to turn the team on one another - all great lessons. 

Not to say the good bosses did not help, making time to speak to people in your team, encouraging them and trusting them even when you know they will make mistakes. To me the companies that do this best always end up succeeding the most in the long-term, even if the bullying ones can do better in a hit and run type market. Personally, I certainly know which ones I would rather work for. 

So, Farewell Mr Speaker ...

With apologies to Victor Hugo, Herbert Kretzmer and the entire case of Les Mis ...

Speaker of the House, preening little prick,
Has us almost hankering for Gorbals Mick
Cocky little Berc, nasty piece of work,
Turns a shade of purple as he goes berserk 
Shouting out his 'Order! Order!'
Making us endure his spouse
God knows how we’ve lasted, suffering this bastard in the House!

Bullying the staff, quite beyond the pale
Running up expenses on a monstrous scale
Quick to take affront, pompous little runt
Napoleonic complex and a lifelong chump
Always had his list of favourites –
Neutrality is up the creek
Sycophancy’s best so - grovel if you want to speak!

Cut a little slack, cut a little dash
Can’t control his missus when she’s on the lash
Cunning little brain, thinks he knows a bit
“Champion of Parliament” and lifelong shit
“Keeper of the constitution”-
Trying now to make us laugh?
Worst of all the Speakers, that’ll be his epitaph!

ND

UnSporting Direct

I once worked for Sports Direct. But by accident. I was a senior manager in another clothing company that had got into trouble. Mr Ashley knew the owners and made them an ungenerous deal that they eventually accepted. 
He took over the chain. Took the leases of the best ones that were then made into Sports Direct stores, and there was deal where the rest went back to the original owners. 
But he kept the branded labels. Which is what he really wanted all along. All in all, a good bit of business on his part. 

The SD team thought very, very little of us. They were dismissive of everything. From warehousing to distribution to employment. And, mostly, with good cause. Because whatever else Sports Direct may be, it is a slick operation. Very organised. Very focused. Very well run.
They had turnaround times half of ours. Superior inventory systems and logistics. They had and have plenty of resources and plenty of cash. According to the board of the company I worked for Mike Ashley was one of the nicest guys you could ever meet. And they said that about him in a very genuine way. They liked him.

I only worked with them for about a year. And mostly indirectly. Just helping out with the transfers of sites and stocks etc. But, in my opinion, I'd say they were the lousiest company I've ever worked for. 
Not because they were ungenerous. My company was ungenerous.  Not because they were tough, which they were. Most retail companies are tough. But because they were a nasty company.
An unpleasant bunch. Coming from the top was a terrible attitude of my way/high way.
All the time about all things. And with that winners arrogance too A slightly bullying undercurrent. Something that often occurs if the top tier is of an uncompromising, do it or you're out attitude. No compassion. No compromise. No choice.
 I suspected, that this came from the tier of management just below the leader. The people who report to the boss. And know what he likes to hear and doesn't like to hear. What he wants done and what he doesn't want to occur. And those people translated the wishes that eventually caused the rather ugly attitude to workers that is being discussed in the media now.

I would not be in the least surprised if Ashley genuinely didn't know of much of what has been revealed. Its a common occurrence in a company with a powerful boss. A dictatorship mentality eventually forms. The power below the throne fears rivals and needs to keep itself popular and secure. The best way is to hit targets, lower costs, increase profits and eliminate problems.

There was a report about Tesco{might not have been them, but I think it was. let's say it was}  a long while back. It emerged that the night shelf stacking staff were not permitted to talk to each other. Just a 10 minute break to have a coffee and a pee. 
This shocked Tesco, who, despite their 1990's greedy-grabby reputation, are generally well thought of by their employees. It was just a manager misunderstanding and seeking to improve performance. Other managers had heard about the results and copied the idea. And it spread. It was never Tesco policy that people be silent. And they ended it as soon as they were aware.

Sports Direct is a bit of a bogey company at the moment.  Zero hour contracts mainly the reason. SD have announced they will end them for their directly employed people and put them on a 12 hour contract. That's 18,000 workers off of zero hour contracts.

Still sounds bad. But it is a big change. A lot more rights with a part-time contract. Especially holiday pay. And, these people are working what amounts to full time anyway. The contract is zero. The actual hours are more like 30 to 40. Some 70% of all UK zero hour contact workers surveyed said they had as many hours as they wanted. Only 16% wanted more. And among those 16% will be a high percentage who the employer feels aren't up to it. So they are standby workers. With their phone numbers locked away in the Break Glass In Emergency cabinet.
Even the Unite rep on the TV, as he complained about working there never knowing how many hours a week he could plan for, said he had been there for three years, working 40 hours a week!
Zero hour contracts are a mechanism to get around the very onerous costs of employment, especially hiring and firing and redundancy. Zero hours followed the minimum wage legislation as the Government was well aware.

It isn't Sport's Direct fault they had tens of thousands of workers on these contracts. It is the fault of government. The government, Tory and Labour, should long, long ago have insisted that zero hour contracts were unlawful. Or could only exist short term. Or the rights were the same as employed.
Instead, they did very little indeed. 
Mr Ashley did well to control himself at the select committee. he must have been very tempted when asked if he thought zero hours were appalling, to reply it was not up to him to comment on the government's employment laws. and when question what was he going to do about it, he might have replied "what are YOU going to do about it?"
Sports Direct must have worked out they will probably benefit from having a more secure contracts system. Costs go up. but so does loyalty. Its far easier to retain people on a contract, even for 4 hours, than it is on a zero.

However, it IS the fault of Sports Direct that they let other aspects of their employment become so bad. 
It is the fault of SD that they never felt the need to address their employment practices properly until a critical situation, minimum wage not being paid, occurred. And it occurred through error, not malice. Management are salaried and are expected to stay behind and work late or deal with a problem. Sometimes they simply expected their wage employees to do the same.

Sports direct is a very big firm and will manage these changes well. it will probably in the long run, be strengthened by them. The unwelcome glare of the media spotlight will make it a little more worker friendly in the future.

And, it is well worth pointing out, that the original company that I worked for, a much nicer company to work for, which was taken over by Sports Direct, and then split off  from them again, went bankrupt.
It was bought out of administration by the original owners, and flailed about for another few years before going bust a final time and disappearing forever with the loss of 1,000 jobs.

Many of those 1,000 odd workers would have preferred their same job on a zero hour contact, to redundancy on a guaranteed 40 hour one.

Patten: Goodbye and Good Riddance

I used to have a fair regard for Chris Patten.  In the '80s, when I was quite active in politics, he seemed a very necessary antibody in the Conservative physiognomy, a brave and intelligent voice at the court of the increasingly irrational post-1987 Thatcher.  In the 90's as 'Fatty Pang', he conducted the withdrawal from Hong Kong (an operation which I know something about) in a sensible and subtle manner, playing a weak hand very cleverly with - so far as can be judged today - lasting all-round benefits.

But for a good few years now, I have become utterly sick of the man.  On a trivial (but telling) level his pompous, arch conduct of the Oxford Chancellorship, replete with smug, sophistic speeches and complacency, (and endless, shameless book-promotions) make him a very worthy successor to the equally stomach-turning Roy Jenkins.  I never really followed his career at the EC, but no doubt someone will enlighten us; and intuitively it seems unlikely he covered himself with any glory there either.

But it is his conduct at the head of the BBC that makes this more than a matter of personal taste.  How someone of any judgement or rectitude whatever can have allowed that bunch of wasters to award themselves hundreds of meaningless jobs at surreal salaries, whilst outrageously pursuing an illegitimate, self-appointed, partisan political mission, is beyond me.  

Manifestly, as more and more evidence piles up of misconduct of many kinds at the BBC, the man at the top should have been busying himself with a purposeful cleansing of the grotesquely luxurious stables.    But none of that: he has instead taken every opportunity to defend these baleful and monstrous developments in his repulsive, arrogant, bullying manner across the committee table, not even scrupling to issue softly-spoken threats to his inquisitors.

I wish heart by-pass surgery on no-one.  At the same time, I could wish he hadn't taken the triple judgement by-pass a decade or more ago.

ND

Huhne: Ad Hominem, Ad Feminam

In polite society of all political and intellectual shades, it is jolly bad form to argue ad hominem - playing the man not the ball, don't you know.  And exceptional men are, well, exceptional and to be treasured for it - so why shouldn't we expect them to be a bit unusual in their extra-mural dealings as well ? 

So, for example, these chaps writing in the Inde reckons that Chris Huhne's services to climate change handsomely outweigh his misdemeanours.

"Lest we forget: Huhne saved the international climate change negotiating process virtually single-handed at Cancun in Dec 2010

"Huhne ought in the end to be remembered for his public achievements rather than private sins. Exceptionally bright, he took a strong first from Oxford. He was then an acclaimed Business Editor of The Independent, a brilliant entrepreneur in the City, a brave and principled MEP, a diligent and popular MP, and universally recognised as one of the most effective ministers in government ...I still feel an overwhelming sympathy for this brilliant man ... Adulterers JFK, Martin Luther King, Gandhi – went on to score great victories for humanity ... Our public life has lost a distinguished servant"

Actually, our public life has lost a very determined and aggressive liar, bully, and all-round reprobate; so let's reverse the logic and give a moment's thought to what that might tell us about his 'public achievements'.  Yep, that's ad hominem for you, but an eminently logical thought-process to boot.  Why shouldn't we wonder whether his aggressive lying, bullying and general immorality were deployed more widely than towards his nearest and dearest?  Might he have been lying about one or two other matters ..? 

And to supplement the a priori reasoning, let me chuck in an empirical observation.  The only person I have known personally who sought to offload speeding points to wifey (and had the gall to obtain written legal advice before doing so) was a man who, upon his unexpected demise, was found to have been in possession of multiple mistresses and a large quantity of embezzled cash.

Y'see, coincidences are there to be considered carefully.  Now, let's go back to that list of achievements ...

ND 

Nightmare on Threadneedle Street

A prediction. Since the LIBOR scandal merged into the money-laundering scandals merged into various mis-selling scandals it becomes increasingly clear that the compliance function in many a bank has become deeply, hopelessly compromised. 

(We know how this happens: bullying bastards like Fred or Bob or Jim or big-swinging Dick make it quite clear they don’t wish to hear from risk-managers or financial controllers or auditors or compliance officers because They Are All Nay-Sayers, bent on disrupting the pure flow of commercial genius and the rich personal rewards it deserves. Said controllers generally know what is going on; but they are only human, and fairly well paid to find creative ways of turning the blind eye – indeed, sometimes even joining in with the great game of fleecing everyone in reach.)

Now: here’s the prediction. In the absence of an effective compliance framework, quotidian rule-bending for financial gain must inevitably sometimes have merged seamlessly into serious, purposeful, creative crime. I predict that some really substantial outright thefts and frauds by bankers will be revealed in the coming months. 

I don’t mean big losses racked up by ‘rogue traders’, or lazy haircuts inflicted on pension-funds, or laundering the shady revenues of Mr Unscrupulopoulos – all of which are bad and costly enough. No, I mean naked billion-dollar thefts. By bankers. Like what Andy Fastow did in Enron – but magnified in proportion to the vastly greater means a bent banker has at his disposal when Compliance has become accustomed to looking the other way. 

The shocking thing is that in the UK, for the last 5 years (another Balls-Brownite innovation) the ill-informed and under-resourced Inspector Knacker has officially stepped back from involvement in cases of fraud by banking staff, whose employers are generally able to avoid criminal investigations provided they compensate customers in full.   Not good enough.

Watch, and shoot. Watch, and shoot. 

ND

I'm Mandy. Lie, Me ?

How edifying to hear the fragrant Lord Mandelson strenuously asserting that bullying isn't tolerated, full stop.

Back in the '90's I worked in an office in No.4 Millbank, where the MSM have their Westminster studios, and NuLab had a pied-à-terre. One day in the corridor I saw Mandy berating a small group of young-ish folk, whom I took to be either Party functionaries or junior broadcasting hacks. He was assuring them, quietly but in the most menacing terms, that if whatever-it-was were to reoccur, he would personally ensure they never worked in London again.

Perhaps this was not bullying, but merely a statement of fact. It did seem to be having a profound, not to say diuretic effect. There isn't a political journo in the land who couldn't tell similar tales.

But things have moved on and today Mandy is a different person. How times have changed, eh ?

ND

Workplace Bullying: How to handle it

Watching the Government decide today to go for Mrs pratt, the head of an Anti-Bullying Charity is pretty gruesome. The left as ever live up to their lofty ideals only when it suits them. I can't imagine how splenetic their froth would be were a Tory team slagging off a belvoed and unarmed third sector worker.

Anyhow, time will tell if 10 downing street have pulled the pin on the greande or succeeded in distracting from Andrew Rawnsley's unchallenged allegations.

From my perspective I have personal experience of being bullied at work, working int he City for large organisations it is hardly a rarity I assume. One thing I have learned though is to stand up to it. In the past 3 years I have twice had bosses who tried to bully and lie their way to get me out. Neither was successful. With one I was forced to go to external counsel when the company took his side. That had the nice effect of making everyeone have a little re-think about te facts and in the end the whole situation was resolved most amicably. When I was younger I don't think I would have had the stamina or confidence to take such a course, but it proved the right one.

Having to stand against a huige organisation and its management make me recall just how stressful a time that was. I hope Mrs Pratt can continue to stand up for what she has said against the Government bullying, it is the only way in the end; you can't win by running away as firstly the bullies chase you down and secondly your own confidence is so knocked that it will be hard to come back phsycologically.

I do wish our Government would desist from media witch-hunting in packs, but with 24 news and social media, I don't think this is ever going to change back now.