The Unlikely Accountant

 

I was really humbled to be invited to be a guest on Victoria Mortimer's excellent podcast The Unlikely Accountant. In a very crowded market it really stood out as being authentic, warm, informative and it really piques my curiosity every time a new episode drops. I hope this half-hour chat comes across as OK. We explore some interesting issues around authenticity in business, the old chestnut about the values and attributes of certain professions, debate, but also about mental health, social media and the importance of being nice. 

Why everyone's wrong about Arlene Foster and the DUP

Back in 2012 I took a finance conference to Belfast. It wasn't unusual to get some warm words from a local politician, but in Northern Ireland we were greeted with enormous appreciation from devolved government, notably by Business and Investment Minister Arlene Foster, as she was then, First Minister of Northern Ireland and supporter of the minority Conservative government as she is now.What struck me more than anything in the couple of years that I regularly hopped over to work in Belfast was the powerful desire to be seen as a "normal" part of the United Kingdom, somewhere that business is done, where visitors are made welcome and that peace was permanent.

The last issue they're going to raise as part of a UK settlement is gay marriage and abortion. That wasn't on the table when they negotiated with Gordon Brown's team in 2010 and it isn't now. I don't doubt for a minute that the infrastructure spending in Northern Ireland will form part of the long promised 'peace dividend', and that concessions will be made to many of the campaigns that politicians on all sides in Stormont have made over the last twenty years. These include a competitive corporation tax regime with the Republic and further inward investment incentives.

At the heart of this hostile assault on the DUP is a depressing characterisation of the people of Northern Ireland. That they are the other. That there is more that divides us, than unites us, if you want to put it like that.

Jenny McCartney in CapX makes these points very well.  "The level of vitriol has been disturbing even to those of us from Northern Ireland who are both wary of the DUP’s social conservatism and familiar with its flaws: the Paisleyite inheritance, the party’s dwindling rump of religious fundamentalists and creationists, the energetic self-interest and intermittent financial scandals. But the ecstasies of liberal piety and fury in the British press at any potential deal with the DUP – the sort of deal that Labour sought in 2010 – have gone beyond normal political criticism and plunged into outright hypocrisy and untruths. It was as if – hemmed in by correctness on all sides – many, mainly English, pundits were finally relishing the unleashing of fire on people they could feel really pious about hating."

The greatest misgiving I have about Arlene Foster was her poor handling of the botched biomass scheme, or "cash for ash". But she has stuck it out. The price of failure is a high one in Northern Ireland, so too is the value of unity around a project for peaceful co-existence, compromise and forgiveness, as Stephen Bush acknowledges, here: "The election result, in which the DUP took the lion’s share of Westminster seats in Northern Ireland, is part of that. But so too are the series of canny moves made by Foster in the aftermath of her March disappointment. By attending Martin McGuinness’s funeral and striking a more consensual note on some issues, she has helped shed some of the blame for the collapse of power-sharing, and proven herself to be a tricky negotiator."

I'll leave the last word to Jenny McCartney again, who goes on to say: "Foster is, in fact, a member of the Church of Ireland who happily drinks alcohol and only joined the DUP in 2004. She spent the day before the election in Messines, Belgium with the outgoing Taoiseach Enda Kenny, commemorating a WWI battle in which unionist and Irish nationalist soldiers fought side by side. When necessary, she has attended local events alongside the Sinn Fein MLA Sean Lynch, a former close comrade of the late IRA man Seamus McElwain, whom Foster believes attempted to murder her policeman father and succeeded in wounding him. How many armchair pundits have had to negotiate such a complex past and present?"

POSTSCRIPT: Here is a brilliant, concise, but detailed examination of the deal by Ciaran McGonagle, that summarises the very clever negotiation by Arlene Foster on this. It's on politics.co.uk.

Writing my first novel - the how, the why and the when

Each generation has an era defining time. The summer of love of 1968, the Arab Spring, the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Ours wasn't a summer of love though, more an autumn of fear. 

In 2008 it felt like the world was truly turning upside down. I can remember vividly the day when my savings account in a bank in Iceland was wiped out. How friends saw their businesses turn to dust. When our advertisers pulled plugs on everything.

I sat and watched it from the editor's chair, hearing stories of real drama, real fear and that feeling that this was a seismic, epoch changing time. This was our time and my novel, out now, is my attempt to tell this amazing tale.

I've always wanted to write creatively. Journalism is great, but sometimes news journalism doesn't give you that sense of perspective. As time went on and my job was more managerial, I had fewer and fewer outlets for that long form, investigative, exploratory story telling of human struggle. The kind of thing Michael Lewis is the absolute master at. And the kind of thing that if we managed to do three of them a year we'd enter them for awards, creating the illusion we do this all the time. 

But I also quite like comedy writing, but have never done anything about it, despite having always knocked out the funnies page. Way back when I was a student at the University of Manchester I used to contribute stories to the Mancunion diary page at the back - often about Derek Draper, if I remember rightly. Wherever I worked, I always fell into the "back page" role rather well. I also developed fictitious characters to tell truths: Arty Tosh, Corporate Raider and Lucretia De Bitch.

In the course of my time I also wrote a column called Roger Cashman. He was a grotesque caricature of a greedy and sexist Cheshire businessman. He became a minor sensation on Twitter, even finding a nemesis in his wife, Doris, which was absolutely nothing to do with me. 

For a while I kept it a secret that it was me. The chairman of the board highlighted it as his favourite part of the magazine and I had to come clean. We'd even get occasional letters of complaint, but more questions as to whether he was for real. My reply was always that he may or may not be real, but that everything he said was true. 

But Roger Cashman is dead. He disappeared over the edge of his boat off Puerto Banus in 2011, only for someone to try and scam his Twitter account for personal gain in 2013. He is dead. Long live Roger. Another truth about business, cowardice and crime.

And so it is with my first novel - 40 by 40. The premise is simple. Here's our guy, rich, bored, on the brink of greatness and huge wealth in order to stave off a mid-life crisis. Setting himself up for a life of reality TV stardom, more easy money, sex on the side and of course the dalliance with football club ownership. You know that moment in Goodfellas, at the end of act two, when Ray Liotta's character has it nailed: "We were wise guys, Goodfellas, we had it all." Well, that's my central character of Roger at the start.

WARNING. Roger Cashmore is appalling. A monster. From the first words - "You can't go wrong with sick white children" - the calculating cynicism of charitable giving writ large - to his dismissal of his wife's concerns, his self-centred avarice, lack of loyalty and the essential split personality - wanting to be taken seriously by those he fears most. All of it makes him hard to love. But I hope you will end up rooting for him, hoping for a redemption of some kind, even if he doesn't get what he wants. 

I know I did so with Jordan Belfort in Wolf of Wall Street, Steven Stelfox in Kill Your Friends and John Self in Money.

The jeopardy is the real world. This is 2008, we know what's going to happen in April when the tax rate changes. In September when Lehman Brothers crashes. In October when the UK government has to bail out RBS. And when Man United win the Champions League Final in Moscow in May, or when Manchester City get taken over by Arabs in September. That much we know, but where were you? How did those real events make you feel? Oh, and who do you think was behind Panacea in Alderley Edge getting burnt down?

I also wanted to weave in real people, real situations I witnessed - MIPIM, a conference where Jon Moulton spelled it out, a decadent birthday party I went to as the world crumbled. No real person in the book has words put in their mouth that they didn't say, or is placed in a situation that misrepresents them. They are as part of the physical backdrop as San Carlo Restaurant in Manchester, the Europa Hotel in Belfast and the Alderley Bar and Grill.

The one exception I ought to clarify is Simon Binns. Part of Manchester's business scene at the time was a spiky newspaper called Crains. To airbrush that from the picture of the year would be dishonest, much as I despised it at the time. With Simon's help I actually wrote a scene with him in it, having lunch and interviewing the main character. Although Roger is phenomenally rude about Simon, I think I know him well enough to know he'd take the confected affront at his nosiness and contrary opinions as a compliment. It was certainly intended as one.

The book isn't just a ramble through the archives either. I spent a bit of time talking to people who dealt with builders, helicopter leases, TV companies, banks, lawyers, phone hackers and football club owners. Explaining how quite complex financial instruments worked, but also how criminal gangs sometimes operated. I couldn't resist weaving in a reference to the Learning Journey I did to California.

In the credits I do thank the following fine folk for helping me with the research: Nick Carter, Alec Craig, Andy Shaw, Steve Hoyles and Eliza Manningham-Buller, the former head of MI5. But there are many many more.

There will be inevitable speculation about who the characters are based on. None of them are a direct lift. None. Some are just inventions, some are amalgams of at least two or three people. An acquisitive Indian food conglomerate called Chunky's doesn't leave much to the imagination. But it's a work of fiction - a way of telling a truth through invention.

I would say it's one of the most incredibly exhilarating and challenging things I've ever done. But then I said that about being part of an MBO, setting up a new business and standing as a parliamentary candidate. It's all true.

I'm now working on the follow up. It's called We're All In It Together, set in 2010, and Roger is standing for parliament in a challenging seat. Not that I'd know anything about that.

If you fancy coming to the launch on Friday, click below and reserve your personalised copy.

A city break in Belfast with the family

The kids were thrilled when I told them we were going away on a plane for the half term break. There was a certain disappointment when they learned it was to Belfast. The birthplace of the Titanic still carries the baggage of the recent past, even with pre-teen kids. But having hopped over there on business myself I am positively evangelical about the place and was itching to show them around a city I have got to know quite well and grown rather fond of.

The Titanic Belfast visitor attraction is brilliant. It is one of the best of its kind I have seen. It manages to span a huge range of touching points that the Titanic opens - starting with the history of the city itself, to the empire, trade, maritime engineering right through to emigration and social class when the exhibits got to the maiden voyage.

In the city centre we enjoyed Linen Hall Library and the City Hall and compared how it is so similar to Stockport Town Hall! We looked around the new Victoria Square centre, which was very pleasant.  It was fascinating how Halloween is so enthusiastically supported, probably as the Guy Fawkes celebration of the next week - with all its burning parliaments and Catholics is a little too raw.

The open top bus tour in the rain wasn't such a hit. It gave the kids a perspective on the city, but the sights of armoured cars, peace walls and derelict buildings were hard to take in as we were rather rushed from one place to the next. As one of them commented as we wound our way up the Shankill Road - "it's like Brinnington with murals".

I think seeing this important part of British history is educative. I want Northern Ireland to be normal and happy. All the lovely people I've met over there want to embrace a new future away from the turmoil and madness of the past. But breaking with that past, but still appreciating its impact on people's heritage is important. We took a bus ride out to a sweet emporium in the Castlereagh Road area of East Belfast. Next to the bus stop home was a mural we had been led to believe had been phased out and replaced with George Best and CS Lewis tributes. Not so.

We left with a sense that we'd had a good old look around and were still left with a few more things we could have done. But Belfast is a city with a lot of energy and the Titantic may have been a tragedy 100 years ago, it's an opportunity now.

Quality politicians need real power and influence

Arlene Foster opens the Titanic Belfast, saying "we did it"

Who would be a local councillor? It's a serious question. I've mulled over the central matter in hand on many occasions. I was talking it over with two good friends recently, one is a Labour councillor who has come to it in her forties and is doing very well - partly because she has been experienced in education and local issues in Manchester. The other is a former councillor who doesn't see the point these days and has access to power through a very successful lobbying organisation he leads.

We have a situation in Marple South where a dismal councillor of retirement age is seeking re-election, candidates are here. For many reasons she should call it a day - but she's hanging on. Maybe it's because she's retired that she can supplement her other income with the £25,000 or so she picks up in expenses and allowances. Her opponents include a young man from the Conservative Party- who is at the start of a journey where he hopes to make a difference and represent the people through public service. The incumbent has already dismissed him as "faceless" which is a disgraceful piece of dog dirt Lib Dem politics. Personally, I hope he does well, and uses the energy of his youth and his freedom from wider family responsibilities to get stuck in. Who else would have a go? Professionals in their 30s and 40s with families can't afford to - I'm sure many who have genuinely weighed it up and just don't see elected public service as an option.

This isn't to argue for larger salaries - but it does pose a problem. Maybe there are too many councillors? Maybe there is too much local government? And what structure would work that would aid the one cause I have consistently banged on about all my life - devolution, power and autonomy for the North.

Taking this a step further, I was considering this as I watched the minister for enterprise and tourism in Northern Ireland, Arlene Foster, speaking at a conference I ran recently. She presides over her portfolios with great skill and I was impressed that she is a politician of some stature. Without even getting into the traditions and wings of Ulster Unionism that she comes from, you have to bear in mind that as a qualified lawyer she has other opportunities in her life. I'd estimate that if she were to have moved to England, could well be a Cameroonian Conservative and would easily be ministerial material.

Now, her electorate is only 1.5 million, yet her impact and capacity to improve and enhance the lives of people in Northern Ireland is immense, she makes that point here. Contrast that with the most powerful political jobs in the North of England. Liverpool city council were blessed to have Mike Storey as a capable leader. Beyond that? History suggests it was thin fare. Beyond Sir Richard Leese in Manchester? There is a massive quality gap. There are, I am led to believe, a number of emerging councillors, of which my friend is one, but it all requires a disproportionate investment of time and brainpower to make sure the bins are collected and the schools don't employ psychopaths. I kind of sympathise with the Nicholas Ridley view of local government, to be honest. If you know what it is, fine, if you don't, that's fine too, but you should read your political history more.

Which brings me to the issue of city and borough Mayors. Who would get the job if Manchester has an elected mayor? Probably someone from the local Labour machine, like current leader Sir Richard Leese, just as Joe Anderson is a shoe in for Liverpool mayor. It's a joke and a waste of time. But a city region Mayor, covering the 10 boroughs, with accounatbility to the people, power over the executive that is running skills, education, inward investment, health policy, transport and an airport - that's a job worth having. Just as London's Mayoral contest has attracted two heavyweights like Boris Johnson and Ken Livingstone, so too could a city region with a large budget, genuine autonomy over key issues and, nakedly, proper influence.

There might be a Mancunian Arlene Foster out there, we can but hope - but we can also create the structures to attract such talent to public life. Otherwise we just get lumbered with yet more like Shan Alexander.

Belfast's Titanic Year

The latest trip to Belfast saw the city in a sunny splendour. I do hope the sun shines on the city for the opening of the new Titanic Belfast. We were lucky enough to get a tour around the new shiny visitor attraction and see the ballroom, the splendid entrance as well as the view from the very top. It's a very well appointed facility and has already sold thousands of tickets.

The timing for the opening is perfect, but what happens when the hype dies down, by it's very definition the centenary of the launch of the ship from Harland & Wolff is a singularly significant time and place. Once the hype for the ship dies down, in a year or so, I reckon, the centre will need a new focus, more varied arts and culture, but for now, Belfast is positively basking.

Book reviews - two faces of Northern Ireland

Two books, one presenting an utterly hopeless view of a city gripped by collective madness and hatred and the other offering a glimpse of a better future. The double door and room metaphor providing this reader with too complex a metaphor.

Journalist Kevin Myers is not a sympathetic chronicler; neither does he seek your approval for his motives. Nevertheless, his selfish and needy character flaws lays bare an honest "as I saw it" account of 1970s Belfast with few concessions to the usual prejudices. He can also be quite funny at times. 

It makes the achievements of Jonathan Powell all the greater. As Tony Blair's right hand man he spent an enormous amount of time trying to solve the seemingly insoluble problem of the smallest part of the United Kingdom. This detailed diary of the protracted peace talks leaves you with massive amounts of respect for Blair and for a number of key players in Northern Irish politics. All the while there is the sense that Gerry Adams, Martin McGuiness, David Trimble and Ian Paisley wanted peace but had to bring the wilder warriors amongst their people with them. To do so needed patience from the British government side and a number of brave acts of faith in the goodwill of all sides.

Both books are a valuable contribution to understand divisions in society - but also for how they can be overcome. 

Mad in Belfast, Made in Belfast

Given I've been over to Belfast so much this year, I've taken a keener interest than average in the history and heritage of this unique city.

Last night I finally finished Kevin Myers' mesmerising account of his decade there in the 1970s. It is a horrific and, at times, unsettling tale. He doesn't hold much back from outing his own personal demons and weaknesses, which rather separates it from a straightforward historical account. That is hard work on the reader at first, but once you accept him, it makes for an honest and heartfelt recording of a city gripped by a particularly savage collective madness.

What I've experienced has been all of the good stuff about Belfast - the eager and rather emboldened sense that this place will succeed against all the odds. I look around at people I meet with a real feeling of awe. There is a real appetite for normality and a better life - I mean, there is everywhere, but in Belfast it is particularly acute. You can feel it this week as they have embraced the arrival of the MTV Awards.

Coincidentally, this morning, with much of this on my mind, I read Jay Rayner's review of Made in Belfast, a restaurant I've been to and enjoyed. There's nothing factually wrong with the piece by a writer I'm proud to call my favourite food critic in the British press; he wasn't patronising or snooty about the food, nor was he mean about the city in the way some critics love to be. Jay is also upholstered like a proper restaurant critic, which made this place just right for him. But I was disappointed with his review because I very much enjoyed the food in Made in Belfast and was happy with the choices I made when I went with a large party. In fact, we all were. That's the luck of the draw on these occasions. I also enjoyed the ambience and informality of the place, as Jay Rayner did. It's just that he wasn't too taken with the menu and the rather forensic account of each dish - or the need to list the produce. I think that's forgivable, especially as the character of the place is rather given away in the name. I do however bow to his far better knowledge of food and think it's such a shame his Tandoori wings weren't crispy and that the food was "relentless".

But, here's the thing. It's Jay Rayner's first review in Belfast, I hope it won't be his last. But there's a real passage for any city towards acceptance and normality - and one of those albeit very minor staging posts on that long road is a rotten review of one of a city's restaurants by a disgruntled critic from a national newspaper and, as importantly, the debate about its merits that follows.