Sep 30 2009
Letter from the CEO of UK PLC
Dear Shareholder,
I thought you would be pleased to know we are having a great sales conference this week. On Monday our new Communications Director warmed up the audience brilliantly, whilst yesterday I got them to their feet with spontaneous applause even before I’d finished.
Some of the market research still looks poor, but we don’t believe a word of it. We just keep buying the research to help keep up the spending and the borrowing in accordance with our recovery strategy. The Sales force loved some of the new spending ideas we launched. Who said we’d run out of ways to spend your money, or even worse run out of uses for all the borrowings? It’s true some of the things we’d proposed before, but this time with the printing presses running there’s no reason why we shouldn’t just spend it to get them. So if it’s home care, cancer care, tougher policing or a new car you are wanting, we’ll put it on the UK’s flexible friend, the borrowing requirement. That’ll do nicely Sir. No there’s no need to pay a thing this side of the Election.
As I pointed out to the Sales force, who were a bit down before I explained it all, this extra spending will help us trounce our main competitors. They keep going round telling people they have to pay for things they order, and telling them that one day they have to repay the borrowings. That’s madness in my book. It won’t catch on. The whole point of what we are doing is to suspend those boring old rules about paying your way and paying back your debts. We intend to liberate the whole country from the balance sheet approach. That shows a lack of imagination and heart. We intend to take the waiting out of wanting, and the paying out of ordering. The printing machines are working well, and the Bank of England, our money subsidiary, is running a lovely line in bloated balance sheets and seems happy. I know we had to blame the bankers for doing that in the private sector, but that was just to clear the way for us to expand our market share. We even managed to buy up some of the banks, you may remember, in pursuit of our growth plans.
I can’t see how we can lose. I think a once popular newspaper has got it wrong today. Our media outlets will continue with upbeat messages. If by any chance we did lose won’t it be great to be proved right, as Conco comes along and starts cancelling all those spending plans we have been putting on the never never, or putting in forward years when we haven’t a clue how to afford them. Surely the country will see through that Conco approach of trying to offer things they can afford, and will see how much better it is to declare it’s Christmas and print the money for Santa to do the business.
I’ve also promised a new way to chose the Board in elections, which should ensure we do even better than before. Poor old Conco, having to face that. It worked well with the European board appointments, where we ensured Conco never got the full number of Directors they would have received under the old system.
I hope you saw the wonderful pictures of my friend the CEO of Americo trying to associate himself with my charisma. I was happy to share a bit of my stardust with him, as saving the world can otherwise be a lonely task. He was especially keen to hold my wife’s hand. She calls me her hero.
Yours in anger at the unreasonable prudence of Conco
CEO
16 Responses to “Letter from the CEO of UK PLC”
John Redwood has been the Member of Parliament for Wokingham since 1987. First attending Kent College, Canterbury, he graduated from Magdalen College...
Oh by the way, next years sales conference will be in never never land if we get elected for a fourth time.
Managing Director to SalesForce:
How many times do I have to tell you, there are some sales just not worth winning! Sometimes it’s better just to walk away. I KNOW that goes against the grain but we just don’t want to win sales that are more trouble than they’re worth. If a sale isn’t going to work, just don’t do it…..
Er, hang on a minute, that’s what I say to my sales force. The message may not quite have got through to Gordon Brown……
Well put.
All they needed on the platform to cap the whole effect off was a couple of mirrors and some smoke…. if the latter hadn’t been banned.
APL Reply:
September 30th, 2009 at 9:18 am
Mick Anderson: “..needed on the platform to cap the whole effect off ..”
Did anyone else notice the prominent Union flag. I watched Jon Snow interview another media talking head, with the Union flag billowing in the background. The not so subliminial message was, Labour is the patriotic party.
What was it Dr. Johnson was reputed to have said?
Mike Stallard Reply:
October 1st, 2009 at 4:54 am
AND what aboutall this about unmarried Mums? It comes straight from the BNP according to Guido Fawkes. No doubt the flag has been pinched too!
Public-Sector Shareholder to Managing Director:
What we would really like is for you to guarantee our cushy jobs, ever-rising wages and fat lucrative pensions.
Surely there are some wealthy private-sector shareholders that can have their stock revised at a more significant rate, so that their wealth can be redistributed to make this possible?
When you have access to everybody’s money, sir, the right thing to do is to give the lion’s share to us.
If you can do this you will continue to have our support. Need I remind you what turkeys dont vote for, sir?
Public Sector Shareholder
TO: CEO UKplc
FROM: Redwoodian Capital Investors Inc.
Dear Sir, we represent a significant shareholding in UKplc and we have some concerns over UKplc’s present financial strategy. I attach a recent note to our investors, where we point out that UKplc may be embarking on an erroneous policy, of continuing to monetise its own debt via its wholly owned subsidiary, the BoE.
We appreciate that your current marketing strategy is to blame the “Banksters” for not lending out the QE cash; and, they did make some horrendous mistakes in their quest for yield when you held interest rates too low. But, as you will see from the attached, it is necessary for your commercial banks division, to hold QE cash on interest bearing deposit at the BoE, to balance out the large losses on “toxic” assets that remain on their balance sheets.
We pointed out in a previous letter that your commercial bank division would have to file for bankruptcy were it not for these BoE QE cash deposits. Most of these toxic assets remain unsaleable and are having there “book value” gradually reduced as these banks desperately try to attract new capital by fair means or foul to balance the balance sheet away from QE cash and insolvency.
Additionally, you appear to be waiting for the M4 monetary indicator – a BoE invention rarely used elsewhere – to expand and signal that QE has been a success. Meanwhile you are continuing to loosen your monetary policy – more QE – and increasing the BoE balance sheet without limit.
We would respectfully request that you cease further QE and raise interest rates by 50 basis points as soon as.
http://www.alliancebernstein.com/CmsObjectABD/PDF/EconomicPerspectives/EPEU_090911_DW.pdf
Dear CEO,
Many people expected this year’s sales conference in Brighton to be a lively affair as it will be your last one before the general meeting next year. They are now expressing disappointment at not only the way you have conducted yourself at the meeting but throughout the last twelve years of service to the company. It just goes to show that you really can’t please everyone. More importantly, they missed the objective of this year’s shindig. You have correctly registered that the morale of your sales team has dropped to a dangerously low level and, even worse, you have been seriously haemorrhaging numbers and funds. In fact it is reported that your holding company Labour is at great risk of becoming insolvent. Something with which you are very familiar and indeed have actively propagated in UK PLC. Unfortunately, the Labour holding company doesn’t have the same recourse to a money subsidiary capable of printing more money to see you through as in UK PLC. Your task therefore was to restore confidence amongst your own team and your shrinking band of donors to avoid the humiliation of being asked to step aside before the general meeting. Once again you chose to use the services of your charming wife as your “warm-up” act and at the same time to provide a headline for those pesky newspapers. (Incidentally, is she on the payroll or do you cover her fees with your expenses?)
The immediate response from the floor was encouraging but I have detected before that your presentations induce initial support but that quickly fades when people have considered the contents more fully. With this in mind I expect that there will be further talk of a likely successor and rumours about your health by the end of this week. Worse still, your main competitor is holding a sales conference itself next week but unlike you their attention will be focused on the shareholders of UK PLC, as they seem to have plenty of funds and their morale seems to be quite high.
This may sound a depressing scenario after all your hard work trying to run this country into the ground. There is a brighter side though. Just look at the vast fortune your predecessor is making for himself and his family now he has shaken off the shackles of public office. I understand that your dear wife (where would you be without her?) has been labouring valiantly to ensure that you have the same sorts of opportunities when we decide to let you go.
Yours, in anticipation that you will not have many more reports to issue
One of millions of indebted shareholders
Dear CEO
I trust you suitably reprimanded Ed Balls at the weekend for his silly talk about cutting £2 billion from the Education budget without affecting front line services. Judging by his speech today, he has now realised that you are continuing with the growth/debt strategy you have outlined. At this stage in the growth of the company, we can’t afford our staff to be off message.
Regards
One might argue that a takeover bid for UK Plc might be something of a poison chalice. Still forewarned etc.!
Letter from the CEO of UK PLC.
Has my wife been telling you stories?
What can she mean by “messy” ?
I wear my suit at all times , with a fresh shirt everyday of course.
Messy?
Ah, the balance sheets!
Mr. Redwood,
It is good to know that when you lose your seat next Spring to George Davidson Esq. you will be able to continue your career as a satirist with Private Eye or some online equvalent.
I don’t think that there will be an opening for you at the BBC after recent postings but don’t give up you have a distinct flair for lacing the truth with humour!
…..And don’t forget to tell the people that we think that our opponents are rubbish. That should give them a good enough reason to keep on buying our rubbish.
Doorman to CEO: Excuse me Sir, but this man in a bowler hat says he has to see you. Its about something called a Court Order, and some people I’ve never heard of called creditors? Oh, and he wants to take away the furniture, he says we ignored the other ones, so we will have to let have have what he wants. I think you ought to know that a lot of other men in overall’s are taking away the files and computers as well. By the way, he says you can tell the Deputy he will have to hand over his nice new Patek Phillipe watch.
After 12 years in his strange, distant tower, the CEO of UK PLC is finally going to tackle things like anticocial behaviour and the banking system. Funny how a little thing like an impending general election can focus one’s mind…
Do you know the awful thing?
This is how the Labour party actually think! (See Labour List).