Dec 10 2009
The CEO of UK PLC hits out
Dear Shareholder,
I am writing to set the record straight. The Finance Director of your company made some comments yesterday which have been grossly misrepresented by the press and media this morning, so I felt I needed to reassure you.
Contrary to some accounts, we have no intention of reining in our very successful spend and borrow strategy. Indeed,the centre piece of yesterday’s presentation to shareholders was to show we have the confidence to recommend spending more and borrowing more in the next couple of years than our previous ambitious plans proposed.
Knowing how much many of you value the shareholder perks that come from borrowing so much money, we will be uprating our elderly shareholder concessions, and will be offering more free school lunches for younger shareholders.
It seems to have escaped general attention that earlier this week I was able to announce that we will be underwriting a full £280,000 million of bank debts recently acquired with our large commercial banking subsidiary. We did own these already, but I wanted to make sure our commitment to pay the losses was absolutely watertight. You will be especially pleased to know that this gives us £170,000 million exposure to exotic loans and projects outside our country. Shareholders may end up owning some of the flats and other facilities in the luxury Dubai developments which have been much frequented by their favourite footballers. Some have suggested we should buy these on the cheap from the Creditor’s representatives, so the Board had somewhere warm to go to relax after all their hard work borrowing so much money. I have decided to defer any such decision until after the Board re-elections at the forthcoming AGM.
We are now well into record breaking territory when it comes to borrowing. We aim to borrow more in the two years 2009-11 than the total company debt we inherited when taking the Group over just 12 years ago. Some of our competitors say this is not sustainable. How little they know. We own our own Central Bank subsidiary and have instructed it to print as much money as it takes to make sure we can cover the borrowing at low interest rates this year. It’s been working like a dream. Next year we intend to instruct the commercial banks to lend more to the government, so it should be just fine. Just to make sure, we of course own large shareholdings in two of the biggest.
We have also been criticised for the failure of the comapny to grow the turnover in recent months. Some say our competitors worldwide are now all growing their turnover. We say, why do you need to worry about growing turnover and revenue, when you can borrow more. We are a little surprised that all that borrowing is not leading to some turnover growth, but we are undaunted. If at first your strategy does not succeed, do it again. If your rivals are doing it differently and it is working for them, it does not prove you are wrong.
Which brings me to our competitors, Conco. They are now a caricature of themselves. They want to cut our deficit and our borrowing. You couldn’t make it up. They will have to learn to love our enormous debt mountain as we do. We take the wanting out of waiting, and put the printing into borrowing.
All I want for Christmas is a new bank portfolio to play with.
The Chief Executive.
25 Responses to “The CEO of UK PLC hits out”
John Redwood has been the Member of Parliament for Wokingham since 1987. First attending Kent College, Canterbury, he graduated from Magdalen College...
….. and I know if world financiers are foolish and shortsighted enough not to lend us sufficient funds in 2010/11 you our customers, man, woman and child will be totally happy to send us a cheque for £3000 just to tide us over until the next year when we may have another rights issue, you never know your luck.
John,
Blair, Brown and their acolytes have been criminal in their total mismanagement of the economy. As for society at large, they accept responsibility for nothing. Yesterday’s PBR was a farce. A disgrace. Brown would rather pursue a policy of slash and burn than take the action required. Once again the country suffers the economic madness of Labour. Some things just never change. The Third Way? Sure, they’ve found a Third Way to destroy our economy. Let’s have an election next week.
Thank you for the update, but I have a few questions.
There is talk on the grapevine that all shareholders will soon recieve their own personalised printing press in lieu of dividend payments.
Can you please confirm when it may be alright for me to start to use such equipment.
Will there be any limit on how many IOU’s I can print.
Will I have to keep a record of any IOU’s I print.
Will UK PLC require any sort of commission against the IOU’s I print.
Will anyone actually require me to pay for my IOU’s with your official ones.
Can I choose my own design of such notes, because with due respect, I find the official ones rather boring, and of rather low value.
Thank you in anticipation.
Dear CEO,
I hadn’t noticed that there was a centrepiece in yesterday’s statement. Thank you for pointing it out to me. I was under the misguided impression that virtually the whole performance was a rehash of what we have already learned to anticipate – more waste, gifts that are so small as to be invisible, and the comedy concept that your plans for 2010 and beyond are based on good information.
When you refer to the success of your policies to date, could you please be more specific and state which company it is that has benefited? I don’t recognise the successful company to which you refer – it certainly doesn’t appear to be the one I have shares in.
For example, you refer to shareholder perks. I don’t qualify for any of these – apparently I have too many limbs, am too well educated and speak the wrong language (English) to be considered. However, you have increased the payment that you will be taking from the Direct Debit facility that you demanded I set up. It’s a shame that, as you control the terms and conditions of share ownership, you have not provided the normal courtesy of repaying money that has been taken in error. Let’s face it; you do make rather a lot of mistakes.
I would also like to observe that while you are proud of breaking records for borrowing and spending, the companies that tend to survive the longest are the unremarkable ones. Any company that specialises in something high-profile attracts others who will line up to knock them down. This sort of grandstanding always seems to encourage the competition to try and muscle in on the action. Perhaps if you stopped trying to break records and learnt how to run a small, unobtrusive and safe company, your tenure would be less likely to explode around you.
Finally, might I suggest that if you would like another bank portfolio to
crippleimprove, you might consider splitting some of the many you already hold into pieces. By this method, you can have both more toys, and a wider range to play with.Yours in despair
Mick Anderson
Peversely I am praying for the bond market to come to the rescue of the UK and force an election very soon. It’s a very sad day when a citizen prays for the destruction of our national financial reputation as the only way to precipitate an election that might just bring us a government determined to act with fiscal responsibility. Surely even Brown could not survive a Gilt buyers strike? Could he?
Michael Taylor Reply:
December 10th, 2009 at 11:54 am
What do you think Quantitative Easing is about?
Stuart Fairney Reply:
December 10th, 2009 at 12:19 pm
He’s just leave the presses running, blame international bankers and keep the whole wobbly edifice up for a few more months.
Lola Reply:
December 10th, 2009 at 3:16 pm
I do not think even Brown could get away with that, as long as Osborne and the Tories (just thought – that sounds like a dubious 90’s pop group) get properly on his case and manage also to duff up the biased BBC.
Brian Tomkinson Reply:
December 10th, 2009 at 12:48 pm
Lola
I was thinking the same thing.
The whole thing was a nonsense of subterfuge, deceit, overt electoral bribery, manifest incompetence, blame-shifting and complacent delusion given that the hole is now so deep.
However, one forecast in particular struck me as hopelessly optimistic, Darling reckoned inflation to peak at 3% before dropping back. Given the amount of counterfeit Mugabenomics, sorry QE, the government has been engaged in, is this really a credible figure? I just can’t see any other path but inflation in (potentially high) double figures.
Irony will be lost on a certain Scottish fool.
Seeing as we are bankrupt whose job is it to oversee foreclosure? A bank will be involved, of course!
The only good news is that maybe, just maybe, this will be the tipping point that converts the frankly amazing number of people who still say they will vote Labour. Now even they are getting hit in the pockets – I assume (perhaps unfairly) that they are mainly public “servants” – perhaps the blind loyalty to this group of (people-ed) and incompetents will finally cease. It might also persuade Dave and George to forget their bloody focus groups and say what they really think – and what they will do when the get into power. They are supposed to be the OPPOSITION – why don’t they appose? Why do they constantly go along with things that they think are “populist”? 50% tax rates – attacks on banks etc etc etc.
C’mon guys get a grip!
alan jutson Reply:
December 10th, 2009 at 4:07 pm
John Williams
The tipping point is miles away yet.
Many people on Benefits will still vote Labour because they think that Labour are the traditional Party for the low paid, and those on Benefits. No matter what you say, no matter what Labour do, they will still vote for them.
The Tories like it or not, are still traditionally regarded by many as the Party of the wealthy. Again no matter what you say or what the Tories do, some of their supporters will still vote for them.
It will take generations to change this view. Brown knows this and is playing the game for all its worth by handing out taxpayers money to more and more people, making them almost totally reliant on the State, even if they work. Thats what Tax Credits are all about. It brings more and more people under State Financial control.
The problem the Tories have, is that those who are trying to look after themselves (and I do not mean the wealthy) are steadily falling by the wayside, because DC is not convincing them that he is going to support them with a policy which will stop the rot and the Government grabbing their money, bit by bit, drip by drip, and eventually destroying their aspirations, and all they are working for.
In short there does not now seem to be much between Labour and the Tories from many traditional Conservative supporters point of view.
The only ones who seem to want to tell some of the truth, are those smaller Party’s (not the Liberal Democrats) who know they will never get into power under the current system, and so will never have to make the big decisions.
In my view, until the Tories get a REAL PATRIOTIC STATESMAN as a Party leader, I fear we will drift further, and further, and we will live in a steadily declining Nation.
Perhaps DC will surprise us if he gets in (if he gets in), but his team (JR excepted) need to up their game in a massive way, because at the moment, they are failing to come across in any meaningful way.
with a literal and a spelling mistake in that last post it’s a good thing I didn’t say anything about education!
Caught you on Sky News last night with that union fellow. He was more interested in those crappy “Welsh Jibs” than the state of the country… notice you were too much of a gentleman to him ask who had ate all the pies…!!! (words of abuse).
Bazman Reply:
December 10th, 2009 at 6:47 pm
I think that union fellow, RMT leader Bob Crow’s main point was austerity for who? Certainly not for the people who caused this mess and the politicians that went along with the fantasy. A good point he made was that less than fifty percent of the population earn more than twenty thousand a year, many earn much less. £5.80 is the national minimum wage. Do you get that? I think not. You can be sure the other fifty percent are not all hand wringing tax dodging toffs and nouveau stinking riche along with their bleating middle class apologists who are now ‘Reduced!’ to two holidays a year now. The life of a bum… Train drivers earn decent money not because of the generosity of any government and their ‘private’ agents, but to the likes of Crow.
Ave’ nothing an be ‘appy with it? It’s pretty obvious who has ate all the pies and it is not the ones who are expected to do the dieting.
“The time has come,” the Walrus said,
“To talk of many things:
Of shoes–and ships–and sealing-wax–
Of cabbages–and kings–
And why the sea is boiling hot–
And whether pigs have wings.”
John,
Sorry, I ca’t find any amusement in this anymore. Perhaps I am just too much of a pessimist but I see the ruination of this country’s economy staring us in the face and no one is prepared or able to prevent it. I am increasingly convinced that external forces will have to intervene to sort out this crisis.
Your policy of hiding the true impact of printing money is still going well. Telling the masses you are doing it to “stimulate the economy” is pure genius, they have no idea their savings are being secretly taxed to pay for the bankers!
Keep up the good work and print more, we can dilute those savings away and turn it into more Govt spending without the savers ever seeing a penny leave their account!!!
Mr King is doing is honest best to support you and make you look good!
JR: “I am writing to set the record straight. ”
Would you consider a similar report from the CEO of Greece plc and or perhaps Latvia plc too?
I realize that UK plc shareholders, or in the modern parlance ’stakeholders’ may not be quite as interested in the state of these organisations, but I think it may have some bearing on our circumstances since not so long ago we heard some, I won’t mentions the shadow secretary of state for business, innovation and skills here, suggesting that the UK plc should once again (sub) merge itself with Greece and Latvia plc within the protective embrace of Franco-Germany Plc.
Any thoughts on the condition of the Euro bloc plc at the moment?
APL: “Any thoughts on the condition of the Euro bloc plc at the moment?”
It may be worthwhile to compare these afore said plcs with Norway Plc, too.
As a manager in a small subsidiary of your Company, I am still experiencing problems in recruitment of staff at the minimum wage. Yesterday I interviewed a mature candidate on “Jobseeker’s” allowance, which in this person’s case seems a euphemism for sitting at home, waiting for e-mails to arrive for jobs within a 1 mile radius. We are less than a mile from her home and this seemed the perfect job for her. Part-time 20 hours/week. Today I received a call from the candidate asking whether we would pay her at the beginning of the week, like your Company does, i.e. BEFORE she starts work (or in your Company’s case, non-work). After 7 days of advertising with the Jobcentre I still have very light clean assembly work to do for export orders and no suitable takers. I just thought you should know that your Company is competing with its subsidiaries.
Argentina, Turkey, Greece, Rhodesia.
But it can never happen here.
Because we’re worth it!
“We did own these already, but I wanted to make sure our commitment to pay the losses was absolutely watertight.” (JR)
That made me laugh!
As chairman of @UK PLC a subsidiary of the main UK PLC.
I would like to point out that along with some University subsidiaries, we have created a solution to some of the parent companies problems.
This is an automated system to analyse spend and identify opportunities for savings. The London division of one of the larger subsidiaries the NHS has used this to analyse its spend, (which is 25% of NHS spend).
The results show that there are opportunities for all UK PLC subsidiaries to make savings, and we are happy to guarantee that the savings will be larger than the cost of the analysis.
In addition having identified the significant savings, we have the systems to ensure that they are realised.
We hope that the Board, will help us to spread the message to the other subsidiaries.
Ronald Duncan
Chairman
@UK PLC
@UK PLC is a registered trademark of @UK PLC