RBS - stop rocking the boat

I love the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, and listen to it every weekday.  But this morning's (23rd February) episode had me shouting at the radio.  Michael Fallon, MP, member of the Treasury Select Committee, and James Barty, of the Policy Exchange, were interviewed by Evan Davis following the Royal Bank of Scotland results announcement - a £700 million loss in 2011 compared with about half of that in 2010.  In the context, that's not actually too bad a set of results.

Evan Davis asked Michael Fallon questions with the drift that we need to change track - sell, hold, or do something else:
(a) the Government should dispose of its RBS shares now and 'cut its losses'
(b) "why do we need to get our money back, we know we've lost the money"
(c) if not then clearly investing in banks is good, and we should buy a couple more
(d) if share price is going to go up why don't we buy more shares
(e) or maybe we should break RBS up into smaller businesses or mutualise

James Barty thought it would be a good idea to give away the shares but with a clawback for the Government when selling.  This would remove the Government overhang of 83% of the shares, and reduce political interference in the bank's management, but it's never been tried in this country.  [Given the known track record of public sector information systems, it could even be a struggle to identify eligible reciipients in a reliable way].

Here's a link to BBC iPlayer - the segment starts at 07:52 (1hr 52mins 15sec into the recording). 

Harm is already being done to the financial sector in this country, with the media fanning the flames of an anti-business culture. The Government is damaging the valuations of banks by imposing stricter banking regulations far faster than competing countries.

The drift of the interview was disappointing, and the questions badly thought out.   It's really unhelpful to the aim of recouping the full public stake in RBS, for the BBC to probe for ways to destroy the value of assets that we're seeking to sell. Stephen Hester has charted a course - stop rocking the boat.

Absolute joy - a week's holiday

I thoroughly enjoyed my week's holiday, though it was busy from finishing work on Friday night until going back ten days later. Two trips (one overnight) to my late father's house to continue with the preparations to put it on the market and to meet an estate agent, three full length Rugby matches refereed, together with about two dozen 7s matches over four days at the National Schools Sevens, nine items sold on Ebay, a curry evening with Ruth's colleagues from the maths department, a pretty exciting Grand Prix and a trip to Broadcasting House to watch the recording of The Now Show for BBC Radio 4.

Almost all of these were an absolute joy. Even the house clearing effort progressed well, and apart from poor weather and lots of mud on the Thursday, the Sevens were great; talent, speed, skills and some really close,exciting games, and the chance to referee some fantastic teams.

The event in the Radio Theatre at Broadcasting House was fascinating too, not least for the contrasts with a TV recording. Last autumn, we saw BBC2's Mock The Week at Television Centre. The studio was completely rammed with lights and cameras - over 100 gantries above our heads, and I may have counted ten cameras used during the show, each with its own cameraman. We were in our seats for a full three hours to produce a sub 30 minute programme, plus a few segments for the Christmas show. This was in the end exhausting and I'm sure that the cast struggled to raise many laughs after the two hour mark.

The Now Show seemed much lighter on its feet, though maybe more of it was scripted. Just a microphone each (one set lower for John Holmes), and we were out within 90 minutes - less than an hour's recording, and could easily have taken more.

The Radio Theatre is worth a closer look. Art deco, with bas relief sculptures round the sides at floor level - the floor has clearly been raised by some six feet. Wikipedia says that the sculptures are by Gilbert Bayes, though much else around the building is by Eric Gill. Sadly there is no mention, let alone photographs, of this work in the National Archives article, which however does show his work at Lords Cricket Ground, amongst others.