Peter Troy

Blogger,Publicist

but not a Golfer

The Peter Troy -The Publicist Ltd Golf team (Captain Chris Williamson second from the left) at the Hartlepool and District Hospice Tornament recently. http://www.the-publicist.co.uk/

Photo. Mike Gibb

Oh Dear Me!

The US bank bailout has been rejected. Wall Street has nose dived.

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'No' vote crushes DowDow falls as much as 730 points as the House rejects the $700 billion bank bailout plan. more . Now what?

Bailout plan rejected - supporters scramble House leaders trade partisan words after historic financial rescue goes down in defeat.

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In the meantime according to Deutsche Welle, the German government has been injecting "billions of euros" into troubled commercial property lender Hypo Real Estate (HRE). This, we are told, is the first German blue-chip company to seek a bailout in the global financial crisis.

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The German Finance Ministry in Berlin is reported to have said it had provided HRE guarantees for an emergency credit line totalling €35 billion (about £25 billion), although there are no plans to nationalise the bank. A spokesman for the finance ministry said the commitment was needed so that [other] banks could bail out HRE.In different times, this might have made front-page news but such is the torrent of financial news that it is hardly surprising that it has been given less than star treatment by the bulk of the UK media.

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To be fair, The Times has picked it up, together with the news of Glitnir, "the struggling Icelandic bank". This was partially nationalised today as the Icelandic Government bought a 75 percent stake in it for €600 million (£478 million) "to ensure broader market stability".The Icelandic bank move was not unexpected but problems with HRE were not widely signalled.

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The Times has Bundesbank, and financial regulator, BaFin, confirming that they were involved in the efforts to bail out HRE, and has their spokesman saying: "The Bundesbank and BaFin now assume that Hypo Real Estate Group is secure."On the other hand, Kiri Vijayarajah, an analyst at Citigroup, counters: "Hypo Real Estate also has other problems. It has exceptionally high leverage, which may no longer be viable. Also, we believe it is likely to experience losses on real estate loans, causing more damage to earnings and capital."When blue-chip German banks start feeling the strain, it is time to wonder where it is all going to end.

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The BBC website today helpfully publishes the full text of the government statement on the nationalisation of the Bradford & Bingley bank and the sale of parts of the business to Spanish banking giant Santander.

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The current status of the deal is confirmed by Reuters which reports the EU commission saying it had been in touch with British authorities over a rescue plan, "and expected them to notify the EU executive of state aid in the course of Monday".The agency cites Jonathan Todd, spokesman for EU competition commissioner Neelie Kroes, who states: "We've been in very close touch with the UK authorities throughout the weekend ... Our understanding is that the UK authorities will notify rescue aid to us today."

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A similar process is in hand with the rescue of the Fortis Bank. The Forbes agency, relying on a Reuters feed, is reporting that EU competition commissioner Neelie Kroes have been consulted on the Fortis rescue and had been "close touch with the Belgian government all weekend.

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As Tony Blair once said: ''it can only get better''.

The Sunday Quote

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''We should claim, in the name of tolerance the right not to tolerate the intolerant''

Karl Popper (1902-94) Austrian born British philosopher, The Open Society and its Enemies (1945).
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EU Denial

.....................................................The British political classes including commentators and lobbyists are in denial, determined to ignore a reality and carry on as if it was "business as usual". They all still behave as if London is still the centre of government of the UK ; is not.

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It is point that the edtor of this dear Blog has made many times particularly when he was a very active person (which he may well be again) in that large small business organisation the Federation of Small Businesees.

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The dynamic of this EU denial is actually quite subtle - absolute refusal to come to grips with the reality, acknowledgement of which would then require an acceptance that the UK government had in many policy areas become a marginal backwater of very little importance.

Intrestingly what is happening at what used to be central government level happened many years ago in local government in the UK shortly after the 1973 local government reorganisation. Unappreciated by many, this reorganisation was accompanied by a major "reform" of local government management, heralded by the 1972 Baines Report, a yellowing copy of which still resides on my bookshelf.

The key element of this was the creation of super-departments with chief executives who acquired a huge tranche of delegated powers, making a vast number of decisions that were hitherto reserved for councillors, to be discussed and debated in committees and full council. At a stroke, the bulk of local government shifted from political control to managerial governance. Councillors became, on many issues, largely redundant and council meetings were stripped of their true meaning.
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The response of the councillors was interesting. Instead of dealing with the deadly dull but vitally important issues of council management, they devoted more and more time to party political bickering, with heated debates about political issues which often had no relevance at all to council business. Council meetings became theatre – hugely entertaining at first, if for no other reason than for their novelty value. Soon enough though, the novelty palled as we realised that so much of this was empty posturing.

The politicians were left to bicker amongst themselves, largely ignored by the electorate who knew instinctively that their mouthings were devoid of meaning.

The equivalent of their Baines Report for national government was the Treaty of Rome and the subsequent treaties, which gradually stripped them of many of their powers and turned political government of the UK into managerial governance, centred on Brussels.The transition is not yet complete, as there are some policy areas which do remain as "competences" – in the modern jargon – of the London government, but most of the power has gone elsewhere.

A graphic illustration of this comes with yesterday's Environment Council in Brussels, which has produced a 26-page communiqué, stuffed with detail, agreeing initiatives of enormous importance to our daily lives, many with multi-billion price tags and timetables for implementation stretching into decades. It is well worth having a look at the document, just to appreciate the vast range of issues it covers.

Some of this was elaborated upon by environment commissioner, Stravros Dimas, in a speech yesterday to a conference in Brussels. Yet, despite the importance of the issues covered, such was the dullness and the lack of any personality recognisable to the British public, that the only media coverage I can find was in the official Chinese press agency Xinhuanet, and that was only a partial account.

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On the eve of the Conservative Party conference, the British political Journalists are far too busy to care. They are preparing themselves for the theatre, analysing and dissecting the personalities and readying themselves to write yards of extruded verbal material on their speeches.

If one were to ask any one of them to identify the person in the photograph above, many of them would not have a clue. Yet, Stavros Dimas, as environment commissioner, is probably one of the most powerful politicians in Europe (and thus Britain) using powers delegated to him by the Single European Act in 1984 when, with the approval of Margaret Thatcher, "evironment" became an exclusive European Community competence. Few though, have ever heard of him. Fewer still would recognise him.

That fact though is so hideously uncomfortable and unpalatable that there will be no mention of it at all at the Conservative Party conference next week; such is the nature of British Political Subjects these days.

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The Last Straw

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The Daily Mail today chooses to devote its front page to a warning by the National Grid that electricity supplies will be tight this winter, with the real possibility of power cuts.The story, in typical Mail style, is luridly written, but there is a germ of truth in what it says.
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What is especially remarkable of the Mail story (online edition), is the number of comments – 243 at the time of writing. That is unusually large and can be taken as indicative of widespread public interest.After the economy, there can be no doubt that this is the most important issue in the book and, if the current economic crisis is resolved – at least temporarily – there is every reason to suppose that energy will leap to number one, especially if we do start seeing power cuts. In any event, even if the economy does go belly up, the lights going out could be the last straw.

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Raised Voices Needed!

This week those of us that follow politics will watch as Government ministers and their followers at the Labour Party Conference try as hard as they can to convince us that ''it can (yet again) only get better''.

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The British Labour party like the world banking system has gone belly up and can survive only if it is rescued by outsiders with new methods and ideas. While key Labour party figures are publicly declaring loyalty to Gordon Brown they are behind his back still managing to undermine him.

Against this background Labour party politicians and delegates will be implored to 'Keep Trade Local' by the Federation of Small Businesses, (FSB) the UK's largest member based business organisation. Whilst the FSB's campaign against the growing threat of corporatism is aired to the good bad and ugly of British politics the far bigger threat to small businesses is the recent ripple effect of the so called credit crunch on the economic engine room of the British economy, small and medium sized businesses.

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John Wright the former Trade Unionist (NALGO) and now National Chairman of the FSB would be best advised to use his Labour Party membership to great effect in the next few days - when he enjoys the new Labour's beer and sandwiches - since his members are about to never have it so bad.

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If being more taxed an any time in modern history or more regulated than ever before has not been bad enough then the consequences of grossly incompetent bankers which will mean a serious lack of cheep business credit (or any credit at all in many cases) is about to provided the biggest threat to non-corporate business Britain (and the 'western' world) in living memory.

The message from the representitives of small businesses should not be so much ''keep trade local'' as for the government to truly understand the basic needs of trade which is less official interference, less support agencies and less taxation. But of course our true government is the European Union not the Labour Party. Perhaps small businesses need to raise their voice (not least so it can be heared in Brussels) since they will mostly soon be fighting for their very survival.

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Ryder Cup - Hijacked

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The Ryder The Ryder Cup tournament, the 37th event in Louisville, Kentucky, is supposed to be the ultimate expression of the "European" ideal, having been hijacked (like so nany other events and indeed organistaions) by the European Union which is taking every opportunity to display its hated emblem the ring of barbed wire, whoops sorry stars!

.As Dr North explained the background to this last year, the EU – and the huge publicity budget devoted to promoting their "European identity" – the idea hasn't really taken off. Certainly, the very British fans pictured above do not seem to have got the message, thank goodness.

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The Cost of The Credit (and Green-con) Crunch

Taxpayers in Britain face up to 5p in the pound in extra taxes because of the credit crunch created by the banks, leading economists have warned," says The Sunday Times, bemoaning in its leader that, "It's the ordinary folk who carry the can."

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Indeed they do - particularly small businesses - and it was ever thus but, while the paper is rightly getting excited about this latest raid on our wallets, another one is around the corner which will cost us, potentially, even more.

That being the EU's emission trading scheme (ETS) which, with other levies and taxes, is set to add anything up to £15 billion a year to all our bills (no one knows precisely how much – so this is a conservative estimate) – also, by some strange coincidence, equivalent to 5p in the pound in extra taxes, and that is likely to be only a start.

.Worst still, this "tax" is regressive, which means those on lower incomes are hit proportionately harder than the wealthy.Amazingly, the political classes in Britain seem to be totally unaware of what awaits us. This is perhaps indicated by a post in Conservative Home today which "reveals" the exclusive news that a senior frontbencher has told the site that, "as part of an ongoing review of economic policy, higher green taxation is very unlikely to feature in the next Conservative manifesto."

.So "can politicians be that ignorant?" Can they be so ignorant that they are apparently so heedless of what it to come that they can make statements as utterly facile and meaningless as appears on the Conservative Home site.

Well yes es they can! – which makes Booker's column today a timely corrective.In his piece, he picks up the connection between Lehman Brothers and the climate change industry, and between the company and those two great climate change evangelists, al Gore and James Hanson. What drives this development is the growing realisation by European governments – and the EU commission – that the emissions reductions targets they have set themselves for 2020 and beyond are unachievable without massive damage to the economies of developed nations and, in particular, the need to force electricity generators to shut down their plants, leaving their customers cold and in the dark.

That Bankers Lehman Brothers – and before them Enron – were so keen on this scheme tells you all you need to know. It comes from the same stable as the securitisation packages of sub-prime mortgages, a financial empire built on foundations of sand.Many people warned of the dangers of the "credit crunch", but some of those who are popping up now are exposed to accusations of being wise after the event.

Yet, in the "green-con boom", the wiz-kids are preparing the ground for another financial bubble – a "climate change crunch" if you like - the consequences of which will be just as damaging as the present crisis. As The Sunday Times so rightly observes, "It's the ordinary folk who carry the can." Christopher Booker, (Booker's column today) as he is so often, is being wise before the event.

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The Sunday Quote

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''Bank failures are caused by depositors who don't deposit enough money to cover losses due to mismanagement ''

Dan Quale 44th US Vice President (1989-93).
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A Very British Brigadier

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The life, military career and example of an eminent Jersey soldier has been commemorated by the presentation of a trophy, to be awarded annually to the ‘best senior cadet’ at Jersey’s public school (founded 1852), Victoria College.

Brigadier Terence (‘Terry’) Troy CBE, who died on 1 December 2007 at the age of 85, had not only a very distinguished army career, but also the capacity if inspiring great loyalty among those whom he met or who served under him both as an army officer and during his active retirement in Jersey.

The trophy was presented by his nephew, Peter Anthony Troy, to Calum Forrest, sixth-former at Victoria College and Chief Warrant Officer in the RAF section of the Combined Cadet Force. After leaving Victoria College he is going to Bath University to read biology, and hopes later to join the RAF.

The CCF is the successor of the Officers Training Corps, in which the young Terence Troy served as a schoolboy in the late 1930s, before escaping from Jersey in 1940, just before the Occupation, to enlist in the British Army.

Brigadier Troy was commissioned shortly afterwards in the 15th Punjab Regiment, Indian Army; he fought in the Arakan Campaign, the Battle of Kohima, and later took part in the advance through Burma to Rangoon, including the battles of the crossing of the Irrawaddy and Pegu Yoma.

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Above right, Terry Troy at 15 (front row on the left) in 1938 in the OTC.

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He was selected by the Commander of the XIV Army, the then General William Slim, to be an aide-de-camp, and in 1946 at the age of 24 became the youngest Brigade Major in either the British or Indian Armies.
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In 1947 he transferred to the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, and became the Commanding Officer of the First Battalion. Staff appointments followed, and he was promoted to Brigadier in 1973. Upon retirement in 1977, he returned to Jersey, where he became President of the Jersey branch of the Royal British Legion.

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During the Battle of Kohima he experienced the atrocious conditions imposed by heavy casualties, monsoon rain, mud and entanglements of barbed wire. On one occasion as he bivouacked overnight in a small crevice, and was awoken by the discomfort of an obstruction underneath him. He shone a torch, and realised it was the body of a dead British soldier on top of which he had been sleeping.

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In his retirement years, he regularly recited the Kohima Epitaph at Remembrance Services at Jersey’s Cenotaph: ‘When you go home, tell them of us and say, for their tomorrow, we gave our today’.

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Left, The Brigadier in October 1999. (Photo PT)

Peter Troy presented the trophy at the Victoria College annual prize giving ceremony on Monday 8 September, in the school’s historic Great Hall, in the presence of the Island’s Bailiff, Sir Philip Bailhache, the Earl of Jersey, school governors, head master, senior boys and parents.

He said later: ‘The family of my late uncle were very keen for there to be a living memorial to him – and his own character meant that a park bench would have been a very inappropriate choice!

‘This award is in keeping with his own eminent military career. As a youth he was a member of the Victoria College Officer Cadet Corps, the forerunner of the present Combined Cadet Force, and I am sure he would have approved of this trophy. As a family, we hope that competing for it will provide inspiration for young people to train to serve Queen and Country in the Armed Services.’

Mr Troy, who lives in the North-East of England, commissioned the shield, which is of silver mounted on Brazilian wood. It was designed by Diane Ellis, who knew the Brigadier for 20 years and bears the crests of Jersey, Victoria College, and the Combined Cadet Force.

His company (Peter Troy The Publicist Ltd) is also arranging the publication of the late Brigadier Troy’s autobiography, which has a preface written by Jersey’s Lieutenant-Governor, Lieutenant-General Andrew Ridgeway CB, CBE

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The Brigadier TM Troy CBE Trophy - Commisioned by Peter Troy, Designed by Diane Ellis, manufactured by Clockworks (Hartlepool) under instructions from Advocate Brian Troy (Royal Court of Jersey) the Executor of the Brigadier's Estate. (Photo Mike Gibb)

Above, Peter Troy addresses the Victoria College Combined Cadet Unit - 5 September 2008 on the life and times of Brigadier Troy aided by extensive notes from the Brigadier's Brother (Peter's Father Kevin Troy - also late of Victoria College)

A tribute to the Brigadier - Advocate Brian Troy (Executor to the Brigadier's Estate) with Peter Troy place a wreath of Jersey Lilies on the Grave of Terry and Patrica (died 1979) Troy, saluted by Calum Forrest, Chief Warrent Officer CCU Victoria College Jersey.

We did it bloody properly

On the morning of Terry Troy's death Brian Troy and I opened a file we found amongst my Uncle's personal papers marked '' Funeral Arrangements and other instructions''. The extensive document concluded: ''I do not expect that all my wishes will be complied with but please do it bloody properly''. I truly believe we complied with all of my Late Uncle's wishes and indeed we did it properly.

Peter Troy, Sedgefield,County Durham.

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All photos (unless otherwise stated) photo reportage, Jersey. 01534 858751.

Big Business Hijack Greenie Agenda

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It was the great economist and philosopher Adam Smith who wrote:

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People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.

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Now, they do not even bother to hide their intentions – they just cite "climate change" and lobby the government so that they can "compete for the lucrative business" made possible by its measures.

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Such is clearly the motivation of the Corporate Leaders Group on Climate Change which, under the aegis of the Prince of Wales's "Business and the Environment Programme", have written a letter to the prime minister and the leaders of the opposition parties calling for "the cross-party effort that is essential to deliver a low climate risk economy."

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What, in effect, they are asking for is a suspension of the political (i.e., democratic) process, their stated aim being to encourage "a new cross-party political consensus" on the scale and speed of change required, and a constructive political debate on how their "lucrative business" can be delivered.

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The companies signing the letter are Anglian Water Group, B&Q, BAA, Centrica, E.on, F&C Management, Faber Maunsell, John Lewis, Johnson Matthey, Lloyds TSB, Reckitt Benckiser Group, Shell, Standard Chartered Bank, Sun Micro-systems, Tesco, Thames Water, Unilever and Vodaphone.

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Most of these, in one way or another, stand to gain financially from implementation of climate change measures, some more directly than others. The energy companies Shell, Centrica and E.on in particular stand to make money from the ETS and the allied emission mitigation measures.Companies like Faber Maunsell, a "multi-disciplinary, award-winning consultancy specialising in the planning, design and engineering of buildings, transport systems and environmental services" also stands to make a packet out of climate change mitigation contracts. Johnson Matthey, which just happens to produce components for fuel cells, is also nicely placed to grab some of the "lucrative business".

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The multi-billion international investment company, F&C Management is also a very interesting example of self-interest in action. It has actively lobbied the US congress for "cap and trade" and is keen to follow in the footsteps of al Gore and make a tidy fortune out of carbon trading.The same "lucrative business" opportunity awaits Lloyds TSB and the Standard Chartered Bank, the latter gleefully talking up the prospects for the carbon trading market.The Anglian Water Group is heavily involved in renewable energy, as indeed is Thames Water, which is already the largest generator of renewable energy within the M25 and is very keen on developing electricity generation from sewage sludge.

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B&Q stands to gain considerably from increased retail sales of insulating materials and energy saving devices, as do – to a certain extent – Tesco and John Lewis.For these two latter companies, their involvement also – in their own eyes – confers a PR bonus. Being seen to be "environmentally conscious" is good for business. That probably explains the presence of BAA - anxious to demonstrate its corporate responsibility - the involvement of Vodafone (although the latter also sees product development opportunities as well) and of the Reckitt Benckiser Group.PR is certainly one of the motivations of Sun Micro-systems. However, Vinod Khosla, co-founder of the company is pumping millions into developing biofuels using "synthetic biology".

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Unilever is also heavily into biofuels and is actively promoting second generation biofuel.Thus, although this initiative is presented as business expressing "concern" about climate change, the letter to the prime minister is nothing more or less than a naked expression of pork-barrel politics.

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Ironically, Greenpeace is accusing some of those involved of "hypocrisy of a previously unknown magnitude". In so doing, however, it misses the point, the greenie agenda has been hijacked by big business, who see in the raft of climate change controls huge money-making potential.

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The letter to prime minister is just another example of that dynamic, where the players have recognised the scam for what it is, an opportunity to plunder the private purse.

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Adam Smith must be turning in his grave.

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Sunday Quote

Oh! what a snug little Island, A right little, tight little Island!
(The Snug Little Island)
Thomas Dibdin
English songwriter, 1771-1841

Cutting Their Own Throats

It is not encouraging to read in last weeks newspapers that the ratchet of big State involvement in every imaginable nook and cranny of people's lives is quietly working on those things that national Governments have yet to invade.

The British Government certainly qualifies (as we are fond of saying and small business people are aware) as big, invasive, over-regulating, cumbersome, and combined with the EU's obsession with the contents of our waste bins casting its dark shadow over British Government Policy additional taxation is now inevitable. There are we are told plans afoot to tax disposable items such as nappies and razor blades as luxury goods in order to reduce the amount of waste sent to landfill sites. This is one of the options set out in a 200-page report commissioned by DEFRA aimed at halving the amount of waste produced on average by each person from 800 to 400lbs a year. Another possible option is the much rehearsed idea of a new rubbish bin tax, based on the amount of waste produced.

All this in the same week as The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimate of the social cost of greenhouse gas emissions indicates that British taxpayers pay £19.6 billion a year more than is necessary, even the British Government's own estimate shows that we the hapless taxpayer are paying £7.9 billion too much in so called ''green taxes''.

The "disposables tax", which seems to be the government's main new tactic to cajole and increasingly unwilling population into conformity with yet more EU rules. The idea is to impose punitive taxes similar to those imposed on alcohol and tobacco on basic domestic items that cannot be re-used or recycled. Products targeted include what a recent DEFRA report calls "the usual suspects", such as disposable nappies and plastic carrier bags. However, it also suggests taxes could be applied to other disposable goods, such as paper plates, plastic cutlery, disposable barbecues and even disposable razors, increasing their costs five-fold at a time of already alarming prices on the high street.

Instead of addressing the complex but technically solvable problem of how to lower the ever increasing price of groceries in our shops and encouraging us to be responsible our government appears to be totally bogged down by the task of taxing us all even more.

Whilst the idea of a nation weaned on modern hygienic disposable razors, reverting to the old fashioned and dangerous cut-throat razors is an amusing one, the idea of another tax on already over taxed nation most certainly is not.

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Already, there is considerable resentment at the government's enthusiasm for so-called "green" taxes (in reality an excuse to extract more money) and additional taxes and duties on a wide range of essential purchases are not going to be popular either with the men of this country or I might add the HSE (Health & Safety Executive). The thought of standing in front of the bathroom mirror using my newly sharpened razor, a knock at the bathroom door, man in suit with clipboard – Sir, have you completed your Risk Assessment Form for this procedure? Is indeed one to savour.

Our 'brave new Labour' (Brown version) government might have something in common with the men they seek to force into using non-disposable blades for shaving – they will all be cutting their own throats.

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