Tag Archives: Management

If Kwarteng is still working for Odey Asset Management, big questions need answering

Kwasi Kwarteng: who is he really working for?

The big question on the social media this morning refers to Chancellor Kwasi ‘Queasy’ Kwarteng and any jobs he may have on the side.

Private Eye revealed that Kwarteng had a second job, pocketing £20,000 per month working for his old employer Odey Asset Management, back in 2011:

Now questions are being asked about whether he is still taking money from Crispin Odey who, This Writer understands, made a huge amount of money from the crash Kwarteng engineered with his ‘fiscal event’ last month.

Apparently the Eye has mentioned it again:

But I’ve seen no evidence of it online.

The connection is still concerning and we need clarity. Doesn’t Parliament have a watchdog for these details?

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Rees-Mogg firm sold shares in Russian bank. Did it have insider knowledge?

Jacob Rees-Mogg: He doesn’t have a moustache to twirl villainously, so he had to adjust his glasses instead.

Isn’t this interesting? (And by “interesting” I mean deeply questionable and disturbing.)

Jacob Rees-Mogg is a partner in a company – Somerset Capital Management – that was criticised for investing £60 million in Russia’s biggest bank, Sberbank, after he called on then-UK prime minister Theresa May to impose tougher economic sanctions against Russia in the wake of the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal, back in 2018.

Sberbank had been under European Union sanctions since the Russian invasion of the Crimea in 2014.

But the investment seemed a good one at the time. In March 2018 its London-listed shares were understood to be worth four times what they had been worth in May 2015.

But then, 23 days ago – as the Russia-Ukraine crisis started to gain heat – Rees-Mogg’s firm sold its last shares in the bank, netting £44.5 million:

Rees-Mogg himself is not involved in SCM investment decisions – but he does receive money that the company earns from its investments.

And he has been criticised for maintaining shares in the bank while being involved in UK government policy decisions about Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin.

The fact that he was involved in these debates makes the company’s decision to divest itself of these shares… questionable, if not downright suspicious.

The value of the bank’s shares, we’re told, has halved since SCM sold what it had.

It might all have been above-board. Rees-Mogg may have had nothing to do with the decision to sell.

But we will never know. And that’s what makes this suspicious.

There is a clear conflict of interest that has gone undeclared, unremarked, and ignored.

As part of the most corrupt UK government in living memory – if not in history – we all think he’s entirely capable of passing on information from policy meetings for the purpose of his own enrichment.

And that undermines trust in the UK government and its decisions – as a whole. We cannot safely assume that our leaders’ choices are made solely in the national interest because we have reason to believe that they are acting for themselves.

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Grenfell residents who raised safety fears before fire were bullied, inquiry hears

After the fire: Grenfell Tower.

Lawyers for victims of the Grenfell Tower fire have told the inquiry into the disaster that residents were “bullied” and “stigmatised” for raising safety concerns.

Michael Mansfield QC, representing a group of survivors and the bereaved, said Kensington and Chelsea Borough Council regarded the 24-storey block in North Kensington as an “eyesore which required cosmetic surgery to make it more palatable to its elegant and wealthy neighbours”.

So it provided a refurbishment between 2012 and 2016 that was only a “superficial facelift while neglecting underlying deficiencies”.

The council, along with the body that ran Grenfell Tower and oversaw the refurbishment, the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (TMO), ran a complaints system for residents that was “outdated, cumbersome, not simple and was used to shut them off, lock them out essentially”, said Mr Mansfield.

He said the council and TMO had a “culture of indifference”.

Edward Daffarn, a member of the Grenfell Action Group, wrote a series of blog posts about safety issues in the building and raised concerns with the council – such as a fire door with a broken closing mechanism.

This was pointed out in 2015 and the door still wasn’t working on the night of the fire in 2017, allowing smoke into a central area on one floor where two people died.

The inquiry heard the council described Mr Daffarn’s blog posts as “scaremongering”.

Another lawyer, Stephanie Barwise QC, read an email from council worker Laura Johnson, sent during the building’s refurbishment, saying that a councillor would not want to attend a public meeting of people “moaning about minor issues”.

In fact residents had correctly identified issues such as gas pipes in hallways, problems with fire doors, power surges, a failed ventilation system and access for fire engines.

London Fire Brigade warned in the months before the fire that cladding could be dangerous. The inquiry heard the council simply forwarded the letter from the fire brigade to the TMO, saying: “FYI.”

James Ageros, lawyer for the TMO, said: “The TMO does not accept that it ever adopted a dismissive attitude toward residents or indeed toward their complaints and concerns.”

He said the inquiry should consider whether the TMO could have been expected to see through the “deceptions” of cladding manufacturers about the safety of their products.

Hundreds of other building owners and management organisations had not been able to “untangle this subterfuge”, he said.

In its submissions, the council apologised for its failings in monitoring the TMO and said “the council could have, and should have, done more to stop it happening”.

It’s a big buck-passing exercise, isn’t it?

The council apologises and says it should have monitored the TMO; the TMO doesn’t apologise and says it could not have been expected to see through “deceptions” by the manufacturers of the cladding.

My opinion? Residents are right to blame them all. The council, at least, has admitted a failing. The TMO should have recognised any false claims by the cladding manufacturers; that’s part of its reason for existing and the council should have realised this wasn’t happening.

And residents were ignored – until they died.

And now, residents at other blocks with similar cladding are being penalised for living in places where the landlord made the wrong decision because the Tory government is ignoring their concerns.

History repeats itself. The UK is run by people who want to take your money and do nothing in return – especially people in government.

We can vote them out – for example at the local elections in May.

But that rarely seems to happen. Why?

Source: Grenfell residents ‘bullied’ for raising safety fears before fire – BBC News

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Looking after their chums: Jacob Rees-Mogg’s business partner gets senior trade role

Rees-Mogg: one of his business chums just landed a job in the government, for no very good reason.

Isn’t it strange how Tories say they hate socialism – but practise it all the time, albeit limited to just themselves and their chums.

We’ve got seriously straitened times coming, and the Tory response has been to hand billions of pounds, that was intended to cope with Coronavirus, to their friends under false pretences.

And those chums to whom they couldn’t hand over massive gobbets of public cash got public jobs instead – like this one:

Abusiness partner of Jacob Rees-Mogg, who is also a former vice-chair of the Conservative Party, has been appointed to a senior role at the Department for International Trade.

International Trade Secretary Liz Truss announced that Dominic Johnson, CEO of Somerset Capital Management, will be joining the DIT non-executive board, and will chair the Audit and Risk Assurance Committee.

It seems this Johnson’s qualification for the job is knowing Jacob Rees-Mogg.

Can you imagine the fuss they would make if anybody else adopted these corrupt practices?

Source: Chumocracy: Jacob Rees-Mogg’s Business Partner Appointed to Senior Trade Role – Byline Times

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Grenfell housing boss finally quits – more than six months after the fire

Monument: The charred shell of Grenfell Tower [Image from the Evening Standard].

He took his time – and we can all see why, can’t we?

It’s a lot of work, helping the police investigation and public inquiry…

The housing boss responsible for running Grenfell Tower has finally stepped down more than six months after the tragedy.

Robert Black, former chief executive of the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation, quit just before New Year despite being under intense pressure to go since the fire.

Although he stepped aside from the top job in August he had remained on the company’s books on his full salary of around £150,000 a year.

The body said he had spent the intervening months concentrating on helping the police investigation and public inquiry into the fire.

Source: Grenfell housing boss quits more than six months after tragedy

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