Archive for February, 2010

IS CAMERON KEEGAN IN DISGUISE?

Friday, February 26th, 2010

Regular readers of this blog will be aware that for some considerable time I have been predicting a comfortable victory for the Conservative Party at the next General Election. Not a landslide, as some polling evidence has suggested in recent times, but a win with a decent majority of between 30-40 seats.

This week I spent Wednesday in Westminster, meeting and bumping into a number of MP’s, Ministers and Lords. I arrived just as Prime Ministers Questions had finished, and by all accounts Gordon Brown had won the day. The Conservative members looked a bit glum.

In the country, it may not matter much who wins the weekly knock about between the party Leaders, but to the ‘troops’ it matters – a lot.

Despite Brown taking a bit of a media pounding this week, particularly on the issue of bullying, about which more later, his persona has seemingly improved significantly. He looks and sounds confident, and from the beaten man of 2009 he appears to have transformed into a confident politician who has a chance.

By contrast, Team Cameron appears to be going through a bit of a wobble, and just at the wrong time. It’s a bit like Newcastle United in the Premiership under Kevin Keegan. Runaway leaders until the business end of the season, he and his team lost the plot, having a go at that big bully Ferguson in the process.

The safe and sane money is still on a Tory win in a few weeks time. But even the most ardent of Conservative supporters will know that, rather unexpectedly, they have got a fight on their hands.

On the subject of bullying, I have to say, what a load of tosh. As the Editor of Insider Magazine, Michael Taylor, commented to me at a dinner in Manchester on Tuesday, have people not watched ‘The Thick of It’ on TV. If you haven’t, by the way, you should.

Westminster is not a place for feint hearts. Politics is a rough and tough profession, and you should know that when you sign up for a career in it. The Westminster village and, I imagine number ten, are the most unforgiving of working environments. I found the opposition party’s response to the ‘Brown is a Bully’ allegations rather hypocritical, and that seems to be the mood among those who I have spoken to. And as for the woman from the charity…what a Pratt!

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THE BEAUTIFUL GAME NOT RECESSION PROOF

Friday, February 12th, 2010

Last year Downtown hosted two events that looked at the business of football. Two of our speakers, Insolvency Practitioner Dave Acland of Begbies Traynor and football finance expert Professor Tom Cannon from Liverpool University told us that sooner rather than later a Premier League club would go bust.

Throughout this season, there have been an alarming number of revelations about the state of the finances at some of our football clubs. This week, Premiership Portsmouth and Championship side Cardiff City are facing winding up orders. Down the divisions, and things have got so bad for poor old Chester City that they have been unable to pay for either the policing of their matches, nor their players wages.

Arguably the biggest football club on the planet, Manchester United, is in debt to the tune of £700million, whilst their fiercest North West rivals Liverpool are desperately worried about the implications failure to qualify for the Champions League next season will have on their balance sheet.

Surely the Jerusalem that is the Premier League, the most watched football competition in the world, should not have its members facing such difficulties, recession or no recession. With the riches drawn from TV money alone, the financial mess that football is in was wholly avoidable. So, what’s gone wrong?

From the outside looking in, it seems to me that a significant amount of football’s ‘new money’ has been squandered on player’s wages and agents fees. The weekly salaries of Premier League footballers is obscene, and even an average player can command £40,000 plus per week. Without any form of pay restraint, football clubs will continue to offer these ridiculous incentives, striving for the holy grail of success, and being encouraged to do so by its own supporters. Despite the trail of destruction from Leeds through to Pompey, fans will still demand that their club offers its star player the extra £25,000 per week he is demanding because, quite frankly, we are daft.

We are outraged by the fact that an MP claims 58 pence expenses for a Kit Kat, but we are more that happy to see the skipper of our football team earn more in a week than the Prime Minister does in a year.

Its madness and it is a madness that may finally be coming to a stop. Because, the time has come for football clubs to actually start to act like businesses.

The tax man has being doing deals with the football industry for years, allowing delayed payments, staged payments, the sort of arrangements that many ‘ordinary’ businesses have only benefitted from as a ‘special’ HMRC offer during the past twelve months or so.

But now UK PLC has a mountain of debt, and football clubs are no longer immune. It is the HMRC that will be the downfall of a number of football clubs, and they are likely to be even more aggressive in their approach post the General Election.   

It would be extremely sad to see the demise of a Portsmouth or a West Ham, but if it helps return sanity to the game, begins to get clubs looking at nurturing and investing in local talent once again, then maybe it will be worth it.

Of course clubs like Manchester United and Liverpool will be okay, come what may. They are world wide brands and fire proof. To suggest that either could go bust is like suggesting that a financial institution like, say Lehmans’, could go down the tubes… 

FOOTBALL FINANCE EXPERT PROF. TOM CANNON IS A GUEST ON FRANK’S RADIO PROGRAMME ‘CITY TALKS BUSINESS’ ON SUNDAY MORNING, CITY TALK 105.9FM AT 7A.M. RPEATED AT 8 P.M. SUNDAY EVENING.

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TORIES TO SEE SENSE ON RDA’S FUTURE?

Thursday, February 4th, 2010

The future of the North West Regional Development Agency has been the subject of much debate as we approach the General Election, with likely winners the Conservative Party proposing the abolition of the strategic economic development organisation.

I have expressed the view previously that such a move would be of great detriment to the North West economy, and to the region’s business community. To transfer power and responsibility of economic development and business support to local authorities would be folly as, outside of Manchester; few local council’s have the capacity, nor the confidence of the private sector, to deliver strategic policy.

In Liverpool, Preston and Lancaster the North West Development Agency has a track record of positive intervention in a range of projects, ensuring the engagement of private sector partners, and cutting through the political wrangling that so often gets in the way of common sense and progress.

That the Conservative Party is beginning to have a re-think on its opposition to RDA’s, particularly here in the North West will be of no surprise to those who have been in meetings with Shadow Ministers since the turn of the year. Most recently Shadow Treasury Minister Philip Hammond was in the region and was told in no uncertain terms that the NWDA and Business Link are seen as forces for good in this part of the world. The business view of local government, on the other hand, was far from complimentary.

That Labour have now waded into the row this week, with Business Minister Ian Lucas criticising the Tories for their stance on RDA’s, suggests that the government are onto the fact that the private sector is becoming increasingly concerned about the prospect of abolition.

Ken Clarke has now said that his party is revising its policy over RDA’s and nothing is guaranteed. The news of the death of the NWDA may have been greatly exaggerated.

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