Say no to protectionism — and let’s get down to business with Claudia Schiffer
The World Cup is not really my bag, but already it’s done its bit to pep up my GWB (that’s ‘general wellbeing’, for those not yet fluent in Cameron-speak). Eleven giant posters have been plastered around Bank station featuring Claudia Schiffer draped in a German flag. They’re part of a campaign to encourage investment in Germany and feature saucy slogans such as ‘Want to get down to business?’ and ‘Come over to my place’.
Schiffer is an ideal ambassador for Germany. With her hairless armpits and winning smile, the supermodel is a world away from those moustachioed shot-putters who used to fly the flag for German womanhood. In fact, the campaign is such a good idea we should do something similar here. But who would represent Britain? Until recently, the job was Kate Moss’s for the taking. But reports of her drug-fuelled lifestyle rule her out. Elizabeth Hurley is probably too old, Keira Knightley too young and Margaret Beckett wouldn’t look good in a Union Jack. So who? The answer, I realise, is literally staring me in the face. Claudia Schiffer may be German, but why should that bother a country that is happy to let Sven coach its football team and accepts foreigners at the helm of almost a third of the FTSE 100? Schiffer speaks English, has an English husband and owns a home here. ‘Come over to my place’? Yes please, Claudia. Isn’t that in Notting Hill?
Idon’t know anything about the European People’s Party. Perhaps, like the Queen of Hearts, it expects you to believe six impossible things every day before breakfast, in which case David Cameron is right to insist on taking his Conservative MEPs out of it. But I do know that, as far as the City and business is concerned, Europe is at a critical juncture and it would be interesting to know where Cameron stands.
The issue is protectionism and the future of the EU single market. France, inevitably, is the worst offender. In the name of ‘economic patriotism’, it has published a list of ‘strategic industries’ exempt from foreign bids and has introduced new laws allowing companies to use ‘poison pill’ defences in takeovers. But France is not alone. Spain, Italy and Poland have all recently broken EU rules. Encouragingly, the European Commission is showing tremendous zeal in its efforts to tackle these abuses. Perhaps the Commission realises that if it can’t make the single market work, it might as well pack up. Perhaps it also knows that, without the single market, Europe will never build companies strong enough to compete with the US and China.
The snag is that the EU doesn’t have strong powers to force member states to comply. It has to rely on legal processes that can take years in the courts. Ultimately, the only way the EU can be effective is if member states club together to offer the Commission political support. That puts Eurosceptic Tories — more used to bashing the Commission than egging it on — in unfamiliar territory. Indeed, one Tory MEP tells me he wants the Commission to fail, since he believes member states should be allowed to be protectionist if they want. That strikes me as recklessly short-sighted. When Cameron has done with the EPP, perhaps he might tell us whether he agrees?
Idon’t want to count my chickens, but I think I may finally have got myself disconnected from NTL. The saga began when we moved house 16 months ago. The cable company currently merging with the Virgin Mobile network — said it needed a month’s notice and written confirmation. I admit I didn’t take this well, partly because no other utility makes such preposterous demands and partly because I had a four-day-old baby lying among the packing cases. Still, I sent the letter.
But monthly bills continued to arrive. By now I’d cancelled the direct debit, so I was getting nasty letters too. I spent days being passed around NTL’s call centres. In Glasgow and Manchester, you need an eight-figure customer reference number or they can’t access your details. But if you live in London, you only get a six-digit number, so you need to be transferred to Luton. The snag is that Glasgow and Manchester can’t transfer you without a customer number, so your best bet is to hang up and try again and risk another 40 minutes on hold. I thought I’d cracked it last summer but the bills still kept coming, albeit now bizarrely reduced to £2 a month. Early this year, a nice chap in Luton apologised, but warned the letters might continue. Finally, I got one threatening to break my legs if I didn’t pay within seven days. So I rang and spoke to a charming bailiff who seemed familiar with my predicament. I gave him my number and he said he’d call if there was a problem. That was over a week ago. Fingers crossed.
City folk often bridle at the suggestion that the markets are a giant casino. Gambling is a vice, whereas bankers deal in investments, which everyone agrees are a social good. But The Poker Face of Wall Street (John Wiley & Sons), a new book by Morgan Stanley executive Aaron Brown, explodes this humbug, showing how gambling and finance share a common history and culture — and have much to learn from one another.
Nobody needs to convince me about the merits of a poker education. I’ve been playing monthly with the same group for ten years. We range from our thirties to our sixties and span everything from the law to diplomacy to architecture. Until recently, I’d never met any of them anywhere except at the poker table, and yet I’ve learned more from them about business and life than anything I’ve learned at work. Those lessons will be familiar to all poker players, but Brown captures them well. To win, you must take a risk — the trick is to manage that risk; have a strategy, and stick to it, or you’ll lose focus; recognise you may fail, so develop other support networks. Above all, don’t treat other players as opponents and don’t try to win every hand. If you try to gouge other players, they’ll do the same to you. Sometimes, you have to take some beats. Poker is a lifelong learning experience. As I sneak into bed in the early hours after a game, my wife invariably asks whether I was up or down. The answer is always the same: it’s too soon to say. The game has barely begun.
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