FAIR AND BALANCED HEADLINE WRITING

One of the Daily Telegraph featured stories today (as at 22.42) was headlined:

RBS 'could quit an independent Scotland'

The under heading in large type read:

Royal Bank of Scotland's chairman has suggested the lender could consider moving from its Edinburgh headquarters if Scottish independence brought "extra difficulties".

The story actually is:

Asked whether the bank would look at where it is domiciled if Scotland voted for independence in 2014, he (Sir Philip Hampton) said: "The overriding requirement is to serve our customers and through that to produce the best value we can for shareholders. We have no intention or plan to relocate from Scotland."

He continued: "We are very happy and Scotland is a very effective place at the moment to do business.

"If, as a result of a vote for independence, we found extra difficulties or cost pressures or whatever arising from that, then we would have to think about alternatives.

"But we don't expect at the moment, we don't identify any clear rationale for making major domicile changes."

In short RBS could quit and independent Scotland (we can't quite see why the heading had quotes). At the same time the USA and Canada could become one country or Japan could kick out its emperor or Burma could declare war on Peru or Tris could be the next Prince of Monaco.

Each of these is possible; but none of them is likely. (Except the last one, which I am waiting to hear about any day!) 

The good old Daily Telegraph. Tabloid journalism with multi syllabic words.

IDLE THOUGHTS ...

"British Gas would do better to focus more on being energy experts not experts in making a quick buck at the expense of the British people. We get gigantic gas and electric bills, they get gigantic profits, this has got to stop. We urgently need the Government to intervene and impose a levy on the big six energy firms to help people with their bills, coupled with an independent public inquiry into energy just like we've had for banking and the media." Gavin Hayes, General Secretary, Compass.  He's not really wrong, is he?


Mr Cameron has said Britain will find another £51m for aid to refugees fleeing from Somalia to Kenya and Ethiopia. Clearly he has become a great expert on Somalia (which is a relief as he seems to be expert at nothing else), because he is claiming that Somalia is 'within reach" of a new political process. Unlike some, I have no problem with us being generous to those who have it far harder than we can even begin to understand, but I wish the government were a little more understanding of the plight of some Britons. The trouble is that the world's press isn't showing any interest when we are talking about some of the welfare reforms. As for his analysis of the Somali situation? Any takers?

Oh dear, oh dear. Another of Cameron's close aids, Emma Harrison, has had to resign from her Tzar post, as her company, A4e, is being investigated for "systematically" defrauding the government (yes, the same government she was advising about family). And only a few weeks ago she happily boasted that she was "in and out" of Downing Street. Only 'out' now I'd think Emma sweetie. Pity. That seat in the HoL was only weeks away.

In yet more embarrassment for Cameron, the Royal College of Paediatricians and Health Care, one of the Royal Colleges that was in favour of his privatisation plans for the NHS in England, and as a result was invited to the "nodding heads" summit at Downing Street this week, has changed its mind partly as a result of that very summit. Cameron apparently made it clear to the attendees (all his buddies), that he will push ahead with the changes regardless of the opposition. The college's chairman, Professor Terence Stephenson, has explained that this is impracticable. For the changes to work, the government must take the clinicians along with them. That's not Cameron's style though. Another example of bully boy Flashman tactics when he thought he was among friends.

"Put a young person into college for a month's learning, unpaid – and it's hailed as a good thing. Put a young person into a supermarket for a month's learning, unpaid – and it's slammed as slave labour." So says Cameron. But you see, Mr Cameron, there is a difference. In a college there is a real chance they will learn something; whereas in Tesco's they will provide the company with cheap labour so that they can make more profit by not employing someone. Simples! And as Tesco are now offering paid placements in the same way as they were previously offering unpaid placements, I think we can call it "job done". Cameron says he is sick of the anti-business culture. I say, who the hell cares what he's sick of?

The Royal Bank has lost a fearsome £2 billion this year. It's staff are getting almost half of that (785 million) in bonuses. On the same day, the English have announced that there will be a pay freeze in council wages, for the third year running. Now, I can understand that there's no money for pay rises for council staff, but when your wage has been frozen for three years and inflation has been running at 3-6% according to official figures, then you have got seriously poorer in that time. Imagine then, if you will, that a company, almost entirely owned by the tax payer, which made £2 billion of a loss, is paying out getting on for a billion in bonuses, never mind the pay rises... well!!!! Add that to an international sporting competition costing £25 billion going down in the middle of the summer, and I'd say you were begging for BIG trouble.

Talking of Olympics, have you seen the stamps? There is just no way on Earth I will pay whatever it is to put an advertisement for this festival of wealth on my letters. I trust Scottish stamps will continue to be available for the duration.

ROYAL BANK JOB LOSSES : IS THIS THE START OF A MISERABLE WINTER?

Royal Bank of Scotland has just announced that in a further move to reduce costs another 3,500 jobs will go across the UK. Of course as the bank is 80+% owned by you and me, saving money would seem to be a good thing. Surely the leaner and meaner the bank can look to potential buyers of the shares, the sooner the British government can get rid of theirs and get back to do what it is supposed to be doing.

The jobs it seems are to go across ‘back office’ functions in the business services division. I suppose that is fair enough as there is so much less business to service, thanks to the banks themselves. It will mean the closure of 12 of its business services centres across the UK and put a further 3 under review for closure.

The job cuts, which will involve between 12 and 15 centres across the UK, and which will start next year and run on till the end of 2012, come on top of the same division's 9,000 job cuts announced last year. Additionally RBS is to close half its Churchill and Direct Line offices with further 2000 job losses and another 600 job cuts at head office in Edinburgh.

Some of the jobs lost in the UK will be relocated to China, India and the United States. Fortunately it is reported that there will be some work, and staff transferred to RBS’s offices in Greenock and Edinburgh.

This scale of job loss, described as a horror story by the Unite union, is I fear just the start of a winter of horror stories; job losses, home repossessions and general all round misery, as prices increase and some benefits are cut. Inflation for the poorest is already at a far higher level than the Treasury suggests, with expected increases in the prices of many staples because of the foul summer weather across the world, and a small VAT rise on other necessities. Let us hope that the power companies can keep their prices low, or that if not, this government will do what the French government does, and limit their ability to raise prices beyond inflation.

It is difficult to know whether the leaks of complete carnage across the Civil Service are designed to make us fear the worst, and the October statement by Mr Osborne will be greeted with sighs of relief all round....or if it is all too true and too horrible, designed to get to grips with the idiotic financial fiasco left by Labour.

The fear is that the UK along with the US is headed for a second recession. The US economy to which Scotland sells around 10% of its total exports certainly looks shaky and the European countries, which make up the bulk of Scotland’s exports (around 66%) are not long out of recession.
We cannot expect the private sector to be able to pull us out of this mess.

I just hope that Mr Osborne is as clever as his publicity tells us he is. There is a very great deal riding on his supposed talents.

HBOS & RBS are not Scottish Banks: End of!

Steve Bargeton lambasts Enterprise Minister, Jim Mather in today’s political diary in the Dundee Courier for making a remark during a debate on the banking industry.

In response to a comment by Jim Purvis the Lib Dems finance spokesman at Holyrood that Scotland ought to shoulder its fair share of the blame for the banking crisis given that two of the biggest disasters were Scottish based banks. Jim said “Having read about six books on the subject and not seen that hypothesis being put forward by anyone, I am fascinated to know what basis the member has for coming up with that assertion”.

Steve quite rightly points out that both the banks in question are based in Scotland and have the word Scotland in their name. But it is there as far as I can see that their Scottishness ends.

The two in question are doubtless HBOS and the Royal Bank of Scotland.

HBOS will be HALIFAX Bank of Scotland and as far as I am aware Halifax is not in Scotland. Also as I remember that the Halifax was considerably bigger than the Bank of Scotland when the two merged.

The other one will be the Royal Bank of Scotland which if memory serves me rightly included the much larger Nat West. And that was most certainly not a Scottish bank. Clearly they kept what they thought was the better name because it had “royal” in it.

So sorry Steve on this one you are wrong and Jim Mather is right. I find it incredible that the Lib Dems are pedalling that sort of tripe in the Scottish Parliament. Let’s get it through all our heads once and for all those two banks were not Scottish and their disastrous policies were not a result of Scottish mismanagement.

THE BLACK HOLE OF GOGARBURN

Gogarburn: Head office of RBS

I listened to an interview with the chief executive of RBS, on the Today Programme the other day, as a further £25 billion of our tax pounds was deposited in it.

It was literally unbelievable. I was pinching myself to make sure I wasn’t still dreaming. The need for the bonuses was an absolute, according to Mr Hester, despite that fact that they are being paid by our taxes; taxes of people who earn a tiny fraction of what the bonus is, to people who are effectively civil servants and not very good ones at that. “We have to pay competitive bonuses or they will go elsewhere “, he whined, over and over.

There was no question of negotiation; no humility about the fact that we are paying bonuses to executives of a bank which has lost so much money, and continues to lose so much money that most ordinary people can't begin to comprehend the figures. They mean nothing to us.

It was Alice in Wonderland stuff from a bank that made the biggest loss in history. “We have to keep our good people.”

WHAT BLOODY GOOD PEOPLE? I was shouting at the radio. The ones that lost so much money that no one in the world knows how much it will come to in the end? Those good people?

At the same time I read about the reduction in the Scottish block grant of around £3 billion over three years. The cutting of expenditure in Scotland, is a tiny fraction of the money being poured into RBS, and, along with a downward spiral of unemployment, more poverty, and more unemployment, it will cause untold grief to some of the most vulnerable people in Scotland.

Old people's care doesn't just employ carers, it cares for old people. Old people will have to be kept in hospital, and take up beds sick people might have used. Free school meals don't just employ dinner ladies; they may be the only meals that some poor hungry kids get.

Reduced price prescriptions have meant that more people, handed a script with 3 or 4 medicines on, may not have had to choose which ones they can afford.

Untold misery will come from these decisions.

But we can't have bankers going without their Porches, can we? Apparently not.

I wonder if this reduction in spending isn't some sort of punishment to the Scottish people for voting SNP and for continuing to think that they are doing a good job.

Is this Brown's way of saying ... this is what you get if you don't vote Labour?

In the amount of money that they are chucking at banks, three billion is such a tiny sum that no one would notice it. But we should have known. It was a mistake to humiliate Gordon Brown, and now we must pay.