The Grumpy Old Blog

So the publicly-owned (i.e. bailed-out by the Government during the banking crisis of 2008) Royal Bank of Scotland announces its 7th successive annual loss, this time one of £3.5billion, for 2014, as near as makes no difference now a total loss of £50billion over the seven years. Yet the bank is still to pay out bonuses from a pool of £421m, which, hey, big deal, is some 21% smaller than it was in 2013. So despite 7 years of losses on a scale that you and I can’t really com prehend, it continues to hang on to its HR-orientated pathetic statement of ‘bonuses and salaries to attract the best’. Any fool can take a huge salary and enormous bonus for helping to sustain a 7th successive annual loss that’s the equivalent total of the combined GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of Afghanistan, the Bahamas, Cyprus, Greenland, Iceland and Malta. Yet no one does anything about continually rewarding total and abject failure.

Some of the financial moralists have come out with guns blazing, baying for Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne's head. "The dip of 0.7% is all his fault." "He's good on work experience but nothing else". "Sack him." "Worst double-dip for 50 years" Etc etc. Oh shut up the lot of you, you bunch of moaning, overpaid, under-talented, hypocritical wastes of space. Granted, he might preside over the most expensive fuel in Europe -  but it hasn't escaped my notice that the previous incumbents did nothing much about that themselves, did they? So come off it guys! It's not just his fault. What exactly do you want the poor man to do? It's the dishonest bankers and financially suited low lives who have got us into this particular mess. Fixing LIBOR. Gambling with our money. Offering mortgages to those who could ill afford them. Sucking millions out of us with their flatulent pay and bonuses to reward their incompetence ...

It's really quite amazing. You head off to the shops at 9.00am. The newsagent has been open for 3 hours. The baker has been open for 2 hours, as has the local supermarket. But the banks. Well, they're not open yet! 9.30pm is their awakening time. If you're lucky, or if they're not "undertaking staff training" - this is their terminology for finding new ways of holding the public to ransom or fiddling with public money while the PC programme burns. So you try the hole in the wall, but there's no cash available. Then when you do finally get into the bank just before lunch, despite there being eight 'tills', only three are open. And the queue of people you now have the luck to head (this will be the only success you will have with your bank this year) extends around the block.  Banks are completely fabulous. Whatever the situation here, the problems in the Japanese banking system are getting worse.  With thanks to the Sunday Times of l...

“In a recession, do you spend more or cut back on your advertising budget?” That’s the question that is spat out every time the economy dives, and not just by vested-interest parties whose billings are down. In analysing recessionary periods, it is a fact that companies cutting their advertising budgets have performed far worse than those who maintained or increased theirs. And yes, there is the element of negativity in the media inhibiting demand and causing doubt in business confidence. But that hasn’t worried some brands – they keep over-hyping their often over-priced and ‘wanted rather than needed’ goods, habitually to the extent of having people queuing six-deep on the High Street to purchase something that is 40% more expensive in the United States. It may sound unlikely, but according to city analysts James Capel, companies which had maintained or increased their advertising budgets during the 1974/75 recession enjoyed higher levels of sales - 27 per cent over two years ...