Imagine 11,000 people. It’s a lot of people, more than Bristol Rovers are attracting to home games. Stand by me at the Memorial Stadium on a matchday and you will understand the numbers. And that figure represents the number of people who have lost their jobs at BHS. Today, the final 15 stores will close, including one near us at the Mall shopping centre in Cribbs Causeway. because following administration, no buyer came forward. 11,000 people have lost their jobs and maybe a substantial part of their pensions too. How can this be?
Step forward, ‘Sir’ Philip Green, who bought the company in 2000, siphoned the profits, legally of course, back to himself, finally selling it to a twice over bankrupt Dominic Chappell (pronounced Shah-pell) for a quid which led to administration. Green was later summoned to sit before one of the parliament’s committees which comprise of elected members. As arrogant as any man who has ever lived, Green treated the entire business with contempt, acting as if he was somehow doing them a favour. To describe him as the “unacceptable face of capitalism” is being generous.
BHS staff earned around £7 an hour and many staff relied on taxpayer subsidies through tax credits whilst the owner swanned around the Med on one of his three luxury yachts, presumably counting his $5.8 billion of wealth. $5.8 billion whilst his staff were forced to claim state benefits to top up their near poverty pay earnings. Neither are BHS pensions generous, but they are all BHS workers have, and even they are under serious threat by the closure of the company. Does Green really have the slightest idea how his former employees live? A man for whom a few hundred million quid is merely pin money whilst the people who helped make his fortune are left to rot. Nice man.
Tomorrow, BHS will be no more and many of these poor employees will be desperately searching for new work or worse still signing on at the local Jobcentre, worrying how to pay the rent and pay for the kids’ dinner money. Green will be posing on one of his yachts, surrounded by his billionaire friends, as if BHS never existed. He couldn’t give a toss. There’s only one thing he cares about and that’s Philip Green.
Take away his knighthood by all means. In any event, I am not sure quite why he was given one in the first place – services to being stinking rich? I guess that counts in today’s post-Thatcherite Gordon Gekko-ite world where greed is good. Judging from his sneering appearance in parliament, he will not care. He will still be rolling in cash, not dreading the next electric bill, like many of his former employees will be.
Just stop doting over people like Green. Tax dodging, uncaring, vicious and vindictive. Just bring in a law banning him from being involved in another business ever. Make sure he sorts out the pension chaos he created and let him piss off to where he belongs. The kind of people he calls friends are not the kind of people I would like to have as friends.
