Martin Vander Weyer

The British trade union movement needs to get a grip on itself. The British trade union movement needs to get a grip on itself. These days, the public associates the brotherhood of organised labour chiefly with the bizarre antics of the highly politicised Unite union, with its warring and tweeting joint general secretaries and its out-of-control airline cabin crew branch hellbent on destroying their own livelihoods by driving BA to bankruptcy in a dispute over travel perks. Yet at a time when jobs are at the top of the political agenda — the impending loss of them in the public sector, the urgent need to generate more of them, with higher skills, especially for young people, in the private sector — the workforce needs an articulate voice.

Martin Vander Weyer's Any Other Business ‘Why do we care what the markets think?’ asked the comedian Jeremy Hardy on Radio 4’s News Quiz last Friday. Whingeing leftie though he may be, Hardy had a point. ‘The markets’ were identified by spokesmen of all three political parties as the invisible presence at their secret post-election negotiating tables. A solution would have to be found ‘before markets open on Monday’ — and when it wasn’t, markets would still have to be reassured ‘very soon’.

Martin Vander Weyer's Any Other Business The downside of globalisation is contagion. That was the lesson of the Icelandic ash that damaged the livelihoods of Kenyan rose-growers, and it’s the lesson of this week’s Greek bailout. The deal that will see Greece’s euro partners stump up E80 billion, plus E30 billion from the IMF, touches millions of people who have never given a thought to the parlous state of Greek public finances. Crude oil blipped up on ‘buoyant sentiment’ while the Mexican peso looked perky, reflecting a view that riskier assets might be back in fashion.

Martin Vander Weyer's Any Other Business There’s a distinct whiff of unfinished business about the current assault on Goldman Sachs, which stands accused of fraud by the US Securities & Exchange Commission and of ‘moral bankruptcy’ by Gordon Brown — you know, that Scottish bloke who sometimes stands on platforms quite close to Nick Clegg. When the leading Wall Street investment bank was dubbed last year ‘a giant vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity’ by Rolling Stone columnist Matt Taibbi, the phrase resonated around the global blogosphere: everyone knew exactly what he meant.

Martin Vander Weyer's Any Other Business Bored by the election already? If you want to avoid it completely, I suggest a three-week holiday in scenic Bishkek, capital of Kyrgyzstan, where the national dish is boiled horse, the national pastime is bride-kidnapping, and they still change governments the old-fashioned way, with a little help from their friends in the Kremlin. But if you merely dislike watching our own politicians sniping at each other on television, and yearn for a form of debate that addresses real-life issues, I recommend signing on to help your local candidate, of whichever party you prefer, in door-to-door campaigning.

Martin Vander Weyer's Any Other Business Bob Diamond, the generously remunerated American president of Barclays, has been put through his paces so often in this column that we really ought to give him his own treadmill in the Any Other Business penthouse gym. But I make no apology for mentioning him again — and this time, instead of making him my comedy stooge, I’m going to stand up for him. He came under attack last week from both George Osborne (‘It really beggars belief that two years after we all bailed them out, we get the Barclays bank chief paying himself £63 million’) and Lord Mandelson (‘If you look at Bob Diamond, who took £63 million in pay — that to me is the unacceptable face of banking. He hasn’t earned that money...

Martin Vander Weyer's Any Other Business Who’s the Manchurian candidate? That’s what I want to know. Even Tony Woodley, the hatchet-chinned joint general secretary of the Unite union, who has pursued a decade-long mission to cripple the competitiveness of the British airline industry, must realise that the timing of the BA cabin-crew strike is catastrophic for Labour’s election prospects. And if dear old Bob Crow, the railwaymen’s leader and the last Leninist in British public life, wades in to bring the trains to a halt for Easter — the week before the election is likely to be called — it will be game over for Gordon before he’s even had time to pin a Unite-funded rosette to his lapel.

Martin Vander Weyer's Any Other Business And so to VAT — an opening that I realise sounds about as enticing as a job ad for a shorthand typist in the Prime Minister’s office. Frankly, I doubt even Bob Monkhouse had a decent gag about VAT in his repertoire. But like many things that are not funny — Jonathan Ross hosting the Bafta awards, for example — tax on consumption is an inescapable fact of modern life. So, having ducked the topic last week in favour of high-class name- dropping, I’ll do my best this week, prompted by a Conservative statement that ‘We have absolutely no plans to increase VAT’. That means you may be pretty sure they have: in modern politics, ‘absolutely no plans...

Martin Vander Weyer's Any Other Business I was sorry to hear Gillian Tett, the FT’s fragrant financial commentator, calling the eurozone’s southern members ‘pigs’ last week. In sunnier times, Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain were referred to collectively as ‘Club Med’, but lately the acronym of their initial letters has come into common usage, with connotations obviously intended to be negative. It’s true that Greece and Portugal in particular are deep in the porker-manure, with the bond markets repricing their debt (Greek government bonds currently yield more than double those of Germany) in a way that suggests they may soon be unable to finance their spiralling deficits at all.

Martin Vander Weyer's Any Other Business When I first met the former Bank of England governor Gordon Richardson, at a bankers’ jamboree in Japan, I remember thinking that he was smaller than I had imagined. So I was not surprised to read Sir Win Bischoff — long ago Richardson’s junior at Schroders and now chairman of Lloyds Banking Group — making a similar observation in David Kynaston’s great history of the City: ‘I think his personality was such that he seemed to be quite tall but he wasn’t. Very elegant; very imposing. A God.’ Lord Richardson died last week, aged 94, and Bischoff must be one of the few bankers working today who knew him at the height of his powers.