CITY CURRY LOVERS EMPTY THEIR POCKETS FOR UK WAR VETERANS
NOSHING down on a good curry is one of the best ways to relieve City stress (just ask chancellor Alistair Darling, who famously thrashed out the details of his mammoth £500bn bank bailout plan over an Indian takeaway back in October).
So it should come as no surprise that Lord Mayor Ian Luder decided to carry on the City’s yearly tradition of holding a charity Big Curry lunch yesterday, as hundreds packed the Guildhall to raise an estimated £100,000 for the Army Benevolent Fund (ABF).
“I love a good curry, but the Lady Mayoress isn’t keen, so I’m grabbing my chance while I can,” joked Luder.
“But really, it’s all about the cause. We’re raising money for the ABF’s current operations fund, which supports the welfare of British troops and their families.”
The Lord Mayor was keen to put his money where his mouth is, too – bidding a fair few bob on one of the auction lots, a D-day battlefield tour for two, though he lost out to a £1,500 offer from a mystery bidder.
Readers can also get in on the act by bidding for football goodies in CityA.M.’s own ABF auction (see page 13). Signed Chelsea shirt, anyone?
SIXES AND SEVENS
Speaking of the Guildhall, here’s an interesting snippet of Square Mile trivia readers might not have heard.
From the rafters of the impressive hall hang the flags of the City’s many livery companies, in a strict order of precedence set in stone for centuries – for all the companies, that is, apart from the Worshipful Company of Merchant Taylors and the Worshipful Company of Skinners, which have fought over sixth and seventh place since the 1500s.
Ever since, the two have exchanged places each year at Easter, giving rise to the phrase “at sixes and sevens”.
TIPP-EX TOUCH
Take a good look at the picture above, because it might be the first and only time you see such sloppiness on the part of the world’s most highbrow investment bank.
US blog Business Insider has posted a copy of Goldman Sachs’ agreement to take on billions of dollars in TARP money – which shows a figure of $25bn scribbled out and replaced with $10bn. Really, we know times are tough, but would it have been that hard to start afresh? Or failing that, at least invest in some Tipp-Ex?
SLOGAN WAR
Talk about milking something for all it’s worth.
Some enterprising chap has decided to sell off T-shirts on Ebay with a choice of slogans: “I’m claiming this as my second T-shirt”, or “House of greedy b******s”, piggybacking off the recent MP expenses scandal.
Of course, you might argue that £15 is a lot of money to shell out for a plain T-shirt with an ironed on logo. Though if your heart is set on it, I suppose you could always send the bill to Westminster.
DUVET D-DAY
An email lands in The Capitalist’s inbox, heralding the advent of a new political party, which is being launched today, on National Work from Home Day (no coincidence, I’ll have you know).
Yep, the first thing the party in question – oneDrum, headed up by entrepreneur Jasper Westaway – will do is to lobby for at least one work from home day per month for all office workers.
“Further info about the party and its principles are detailed in the press release below,” Westaway’s flunkey informs me. “Hopefully enough to convince you that he’s not a nutter!”
I read on. “The party is founded on the principal that collaboration is broken in today’s society, which is manifested in our frustrations with one another, our government, the economy and our day-to-day working lives,” puffs the release. “The oneDrum party believes in the wisdom of many in finding innovative and pragmatic solutions to real world problems…”
Sounds like an awful lot of hot air to gain an extra couple of hours in bed, doesn’t it?
DAILY PLODDER
The brains at accountancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers have come up with a case study that might prove rather unsettling for bankers all over the City.
The firm decided to compare the “Tortoises” of London – someone working in the middle ranks of the civil service in a steady job with a safe final salary pension – with the “Hares” – those riding out the economic cycles in banks or insurance firms, who enjoy a fatter pay packet each month but lower job security and a precarious private pension.
Assuming rather a few variants remain stable (we won’t go into the tedious detail), it turns out that a retired Tortoise would be around £16,000 a year better off in retirement, and would also have accumulated around 30 per cent more non-pension wealth by age 80 than the Hare, to pass on to his offspring.
Luckily, the model doesn’t apply to Sir Fred Goodwin-style millionaire high-flyers, but more to the “middle-ranking plodders” of the world.