Religious views, which adherents regard as eternal and certain, can change markedly in a few weeks. For instance, the former Bishop of Rochester, Michael Nazir-Ali, opined a day or two ago that he thinks Priti Patel’s Rwanda as a staging post for handling asylum seekers is a good idea. This is in contrast with Archbishop Welby’s view that such processing is ungodly. Needless to add, vast sums on the Rwandan approach have been written off. And of course we are still spending £2bn p.a. on the entire escapade of hotels etc.. It’s only taxpayers’ money.
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Glencore (GLEN) have been fined for paying USD180m as a penalty for bribery dished out by GLEN in the Congo (a.k.a. DRC) over some ten years. As anyone remotely familiar with the Congo knows, if one fails to offer bribes it is completely impossible to do any business at all. Indeed, as it happens, I know an individual who had to finance production of copper in the Congo since the mine managers in question had stolen all the working capital of the mine. That was just the beginning of problems since the lorries used to get the copper ingots to the coast for shipping were regularly plundered by yet further of the local crooks. The copper may have been bought cheaply at the factory gate but there were other expenses shortly to follow.
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Audit fees are rocketing by around 20% to 50% since the risks undertaken by auditors in the face of crooked directors and regulatory fines are getting higher and higher.
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The start-up bank, Starling, advanced bounceback loans (whose repayment was guaranteed by HMG) with insufficient enquiry into the credit rating of the borrowers. The default rate is now around 33%. But this is only taxpayers’ money and therefore doesn’t count.
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The planning permission policy of BANANAS is apparently in force. It stands for build absolutely nothing anywhere near anyone. And given that we are importing 500,000 people a year the pressure on residential property prices can readily be imagined.
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Finally, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have been awarded the Robert Kennedy prize for their work on racism and mental health. The Duke says he is humbled by this award. If I were he I would not be since it is a fair bet that the prize was funded as part of the forthcoming promotion programme for the Sussexian slagging off of the Royal Family.