BBC Blog Network

Listed below are comments made by roryharrison between Wednesday, 18th February 2009 and Thursday, 24th September 2009.

• «Newer
• Older»

• What's in Cadbury's wrapper? 12:58pm on 24 Sep 2009 One simple point that has not been made so far, including by Robert, is that US domicled companies with large US market share tend to cut overseas operations (e.g. UK) first when "rationalising" or "gaining the synergies of the merger". The last place to feel cuts / change is the home operations.
  
  This is just human nature. The executive team (and their spouses) have to live with consequences of cuts in their home operations (day to day, at the school gate, at the golf/yachting/tennis club). They don't have to with the overseas operations, whatever the business logic.
• Lloyds: Mind the GAPS 6:27pm on 18 Sep 2009 #25 Ask the banks' boards to sign personal guarantees for the money - that may concentrate their minds!
  
  Afraid not, even they don't earn enough to make it meaningful. This is the primary reason why regulation has to be much much tighter. Moral Hazard has disappeared completely as there is no sensible individual consequence for failure possible in Financial Services. Even if they end up bankrupt the state will look after them, even if they are jailed for fraud the state will look after them.
  
  Much much worse for the residents of sink estates that can't get credit. They fall into the clutches of loan sharks and them end up getting beaten up because they can't pay exorbitant interest rates.
  
  Sometimes I think Muslims have the right idea (I'm a white British Christian) charging interest is a sin.
  
  
• Can non-execs cure banks' madness and badness? 08:04am on 16 Jul 2009 Robert
  
  You miss the key point here which is clearly that non-execs can't do the full job of governance. It needs a completely external view as well of both the individual and systemic risk. This is supposed to be the tripartite arrangement i.e. one of the FSA, Bank of England or the Treasury (or whisper it quietly the European Central Bank) should have see this and blocked it.
  
  Barclays clearly got away with this one and so it's board must also be considered suspect.
• Sugar and Hornby: why they're hired 7:37pm on 07 Jun 2009 Andy Hornby was very much liked by his staff at HBOS, his problem, in common with many senior managers at the banks now in trouble is that he is a retailer and not a banker. I believe that he tried to reign back the over-reliance on borrowed capital and some of the dodgy property and business lending but by this stage Peter Cummings was already out of control and untouchable (from what I hear).
  
  It would have taken a career banker of serious weight to have dealt with it, even if the City had been prepared to accept the downturn in profits and provision for bad debts, which would have been unlikely in 2006.
  
  My guess is that he will be a raging success at Boots and probably develop a career in retail turnaround for private equity owners.
  
  There are better targets than Andy Hornby for the public's ire e.g. Cummings, Crosby and Fred Goodwin
• Smith thought she'd be cleared 2:14pm on 30 Mar 2009 Its very simple (as was described in one of the nationals last week)
  
  Reduce the number of MPs and Lords and either
  
  a) pay them a sensible salary for working full time as politicians
  
  b) continue pay them £60K + genuine expenses for part-time work
  
  I'd vote for b) so that they all stay somewhat in the real world provided it is a "real" job i.e. they can't work for their party, hold more than one political office or in the news media.
  
  I think it would also help if parliament didn't meet in the most expensive city in the UK.
• A Chile reception 7:51pm on 27 Mar 2009 Chile's post war history is very interesting and surprisingly relevant to all this. President Allende (who was ousted by Pinochet) asked Stafford Beer to set up a system to manage the economy in real time (in 1973/4) and it looked like he was going to be successful. This was too close to a successful planned / socialist economy for Henry Kissinger who engineering the Pinochet coup.
  
  The point is that Beer's viable systems model VSM which was the theoretical basis for the project is worth a second (third and fourth!) look in the light of the current mess that unregulated free market capitalism has created. BBC rules mean I can't ram the point home but Google/Amazon "Viable Systems Model" to find out more.
  
  The main beauty of it is that the science is unarguable and if you apply it to modern society it is not only still relevant it accurately explains why things went wrong. (For those in the know my assessment is a failure in Systems 2 (FSA/Treasury/BoE) and System 4 (no proper scenario analysis)
  
  Any politicos out there; I urge you read (and take the time to understand) the books!
• A Chile reception 7:35pm on 27 Mar 2009 I think we could learn a lot from the so called emerging economies
• Trident debate reopens 1:20pm on 17 Mar 2009 What can't he see the light about other pet projects e.g. ID Cards, IT in Health which cost a fortune and have an extremely dubious business case!
• The Prime Ministers 10:00am on 24 Feb 2009 So why is "The Prime Ministers" not available on iPlayer?
  
  I had a call while the programme was on and now I find I have to wait until 10:45pm on Sunday to listen to it.
  
  You are employed by the BBC aren't you? (rather than by a nameless production company)
• A brief escape 12:34pm on 18 Feb 2009 #47 thinkb4
  
  LOL........but of course France/Germany are planning to become one state when the European Constitution activates.
  
  A cynic would say that the Irish are in the best place (only ones likely) to get bailed out by the ECB in order to secure a "yes" vote on the Lisbon Treaty

• «Newer
• Older»

BBC.co.uk