“The job of a professionally conducted internal enquiry is to unearth a great mass of no evidence.”
So said Sir Humphrey Appleby, fictional permanent secretary in Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn’s Westminster satire Yes Minister, who sagely added that such reviews tend to take 18 months before revealing “a certain number of anomalies which have now been rectified”.
All of which might be a cynic’s take on Mike Ashley’s offer in December to personally review working conditions at Sports Direct, after recurrent criticisms and his company getting caught paying his warehouse workers less than the legal minimum.
Ashley has since been hauled in front of MPs to answer questions on this topic, when his enigmatic replies led to him being accused of sounding “like a government minister”. Still, the billionaire even improved on Sir Humphrey’s advice by explaining his review would “never” be completed – and hinted that he might need at least another three months just to answer one question about whether it is fair to sack workers who receive six black marks for offences such as a “period of reported sickness” and “excessive/long toilet breaks”.
Anyway, investors will get a chance to see if they can extract some detail from the company this week when it reports results. Developing. Probably.
Odds on for hubris at the bookies
The world is suddenly full of uncertainties, but one safe bet for this week will be that the UK’s bookmaking groups will attempt to gain themselves reams of free publicity by quoting odds on the next prime minister.
They will succeed in this endeavour, despite a track record that suggests their predictive powers are on a par with 1980s weathermen, economists and newspaper columnists – only with even less self-reflection.
Recent calamities have failed to cow the betting exchange Betfair from pushing out odds on the next PM, along with the brag: “In political circles, this has made [our] exchange a useful predictive tool … often with greater certainty than polls.”
Really? Betfair was even more wrong than the opinion pollsters on the EU referendum – while at last year’s general election it predicted there was a 92% chance of a hung parliament (48 hours before polling day).
Then, spokesman James Midmer mused: “With formal SNP agreements now seemingly ruled out, Nick Clegg looks set to play kingmaker again.”
The bookies now make Theresa May an odds-on favourite for No 10. She must be furious with them.
RBS chief set to get it in the ear
Say what you like about Royal Bank of Scotland boss Ross McEwan – honestly, fill your boots – but he doesn’t tend to duck those tricky moments when he might take a good kicking.
The Kiwi banker has put himself through the ordeal of Nick Ferrari’s LBC radio show (appearing on it, not listening to it) several times and he’s set to rock up at the studio once again this week to take calls from LBC listeners.
This may not be the greatest piece of scheduling for McEwan, what with RBS shares being the hardest-hit of the big banks since the Brexit vote and the bank’s market capitalisation wallowing at levels not seen since those dark days at the beginning of 2009.
All of which means that the shares need to almost treble to reach the 502p at which taxpayers will break even on their 73% stake – a landmark now seemingly so distant that it could be further away than Boris Johnson’s next civil conversation with Michael Gove.
Still, the weak performance of the shares has not had much effect on McEwan and his pals. The chief exec banked a £3.8m pay package last year – as the group lost £2bn – and 121 of his fellow RBS employees received more than €1m (£790,000). There are also likely to be more fines and restructuring costs this year. Plenty to talk about on the radio, then.
