It’s the way you sell ’em

It’s the way you sell ’em: some readers may recall my remarking that Duckers, 6 The Turl, Oxford and shoemakers to the gentry is closing. Well, I mentioned this to my father who then disclosed that the BBC are coming to interview him on this momentous event. I recalled sitting alone in the front of the shop perhaps fifty years ago and hearing from the back a rich rural voice declare “It doesn’t matter what the customer says – he is always wrong.” Whereupon the owner of the voice came in from the back and asked me what I would like. I was too young to resent being legged.

However, slightly more archly, my father was sat at the front perhaps sixty years ago and remarking that he thought that the price requested for the shoes in question was too steep. The salesman said “Where do you get your suits made?” My father replied “Castells” (a well known Oxford tailor). “Then,” said the salesman, “you can afford our shoes.”

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Mitie (LON:MTO) shot up on Monday on the announcement of Ruby McGregor-Smith’s departure in favour of Phil Bentley (the petrol retailer’s favourite customer if the typical investor’s inducement of panic).


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Redcentric (LON:RCN) warned on profits on Monday and only fell 15%. But the £20m write off is huge and not merely does that stretch the balance sheet even further it makes one wonder whether this company survives (there are grotesque negative tangible assets in attendance). RCN is still capitalised at around £80m. This is a clear short sell above 50p.

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I was chatting late last week to a chum who coordinates those of a Conservative disposition in the Strasbourg parliament and he assures me that all this talk about 30,000 civil servants to negotiate withdrawal from the EU is pure baloney.

On the same subject, the British ambassador to the EU, one Sir Ivan Rogers, is this morning disclosed to have commented that withdrawal will take another ten years. It was long ago remarked that an ambassador is a good man sent abroad to lie on behalf of his country. So I suppose the explanation that must be here offered by Rogers’s apologists is that Rogers’s country is the EU and that Rogers therefore has not been sent abroad. I trust this is clear.