What follows is merely an allegation – I certainly do not hold evidence in its support. However, I am told that during the run up to the flotation of Sports Direct the CEO assembled the main suppliers in a casino at the top of St James’s and bunged each one of them a fistful of wad. When the first reports of trade emerged the shares advanced sharply since the suppliers thus persuaded had subsidised sales to The Mashley. Thereafter there were bills to be settled and the share price retreated precipitately. This did not matter in a sense because The Mashley is the best retailer in the UK and he dully hoovered up the detritus and made yet another fortune on the way back up.
Exactly the same initiative was practised at Wickes about thirty years ago. Only this time the profits did not subsequently emerge and nor did Wickes as a trading entity. One might have thought that reviving the Wickes name was not the brightest idea but exactly that has been attempted. Further it seems (I here repeat what I heard on the BBC’s You and Yours on Monday morning) the customer review section has been doctored by Wickes. Well, I never!
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Lord (Peter) Hennessy featured on Sunday’s Desert Island Discs. He is very clever and on learning, when a Times journalist, that Harold Wilson had set out to stop his getting scoops from his Civil Service contacts felt inhibited. But, thankfully, his boss at The Times forced him to realise that this was because Wilson feared the emergence of Hennessy’s authentic stories and that therefore he should press on.
Hennessy asserted that there is no such thing as a British Constitution or anything like. This is probably just as well given that wise government demands infinite flexibility – such as Sue Gray recusing herself from the absurd Partygate enquiry then attended to by her as she conversed with Starmer with a view to supporting the Labour Party. Any fool could have seen the sense of that but, had she relied upon the Ministerial Code, there is no section covering that state of affairs.
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Capital Metals (CMET), a Sri Lankan operation, today report a deal with some Chinese chaps. I hope they know what they are doing. The fact is that the Chinese are financing feckless deal after feckless deal. The Chinese will require to be paid and have the military means of enforcing payment.