‘Sir’ Philip Green announces he is “saddened and disappointed” by the collapse of BHS. Of course he is. So saddened and disappointed that he is laughing his way to the bank. He’s worth over £3 billion. Why would he give a toss about 11,000 largely lowly paid staff who are now headed for the Jobcentre?
For someone for whom £300 is a large sum of money, I cannot get my head round £3.2 billion. Green is such a great man that he transferred his entire empire to his wife who just happens to live in Monaco. Shifty? You bet.
Some people have even expressed sympathy for Green. After all, he bought BHS for £200 million and later sold it for a quid. That’s a net loss of, say, £200 million. But of course it isn’t. The Telegraph, hardly the working man’s (or woman’s) friend, has revealed that Green’s family had taken £587 million out of the business so, by my fag packet calculation, there’s the small matter of £387 million which has ended up in Green’s already bulging bank account.
Why do you think Green sold BHS in the first place? He might be many thing – none of them very nice – but one thing he is not: stupid. The reason he flogged it for £1 must have been he saw what was happening and got out quickly. He wasn’t “saddened and disappointed” when doing a runner.
The worst thing is that he probably hasn’t broken the law. All fair in business, apparently, and it’s perfectly all right for obscenely rich men like Green to get even more obscenely rich whilst the workers lose their jobs.
If I happen to be appointed King tomorrow – and I know this is unlikely to happen – the first thing I shall do is take away Green’s knighthood. I would then give him a sharp kick in the groin area and suggest that he buggers off to Monaco for good, but only once he has faced MPs to explain just what he has done.
This bloke has more money than is allegedly swindled in UK benefit fraud every year. Think about that when the Mail is running another story on fraudsters having it away with a couple of grand.
