PhilWriter : May 2009

Wednesday, 20 May 2009

So, it was bonuses

I always remember a client years go who paid commission on the orders a salesman took. This was subsequently changed to giving commission on those orders which became actual sales delivered and paid in full.

The argument being made is that bonuses were paid when traders made money but no account was taken of risk. Well, the story would seem to be that when the traders made money, so did the banks and so did their shareholders. Without taking a risk none of it would have happened. So, does that make a risk OK?

Well, we can think of the RBS shareholders who received growing dividends and the value of whose shares rose dramatically for a long time. This was the upside of risk. The downside was when everything collapsed.

I'm not sure I understand what is proposed for the future. No risk, no bonus, dull dividends?

Sunday, 3 May 2009

Carol Ann Duffy

In his Holy Week talks in Canterbury Cathedral Rowan Williams quoted from Carol Ann Duffy's sonnet Prayer and praised the way she uses poems as places where new combinations of words and ideas spring together. Saturday's Guardian leader quoted the first four lines:

'Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer
utters itself. So, a woman will lift
her head from the sieve of her hands and stare
at minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift.'

The leader goes on to quote Robert Kennedy's complaint that GDP failed to measure 'the health of our children, the joy of their play, the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate - and the beauty of our poetry...neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom not our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.'

This is a timely reminder to put all of this finance stuff into some sort of perspective

About me

Phil Hamlyn Williams's current project is a book entitled William Smith Williams about the man who discovered and mentored Charlotte Bronte and a host of Victorian writers and artists. He is also working on a book that tells the stories of some of those ordnance men who fought in both world wars.

His previous book, Ordnance, tells the story of the men and women who equipped the British Army for the Great War. It was published by The History Press in June 2018. His first book, War on Wheels, telling the story of the thousands of ordinary men and women who together worked to mechanise the British Army in WW2, was published by The History Press in September 2016. He wrote the story of the MacRobert's Reply collaborating with Story Terrace, published in December 2016. This is the story of an aeroplane, the woman who bought it and the men who flew it. He writes family histories for Story Terrace and comments regularly on contemporary issues his own blogs. He is chair of trustees at The Lincoln Arts Trust which runs the Lincoln Drill Hall arts venue. He also chairs The Lincoln Book Festival. He works with others on CompassionateLincoln.

He was awarded an MA in Professional Writing at University College Falmouth in 2009. He has been writing for fifteen years, having spent much of his career in professional services, most recently as a partner in Price Waterhouse, and in the not for profit sector.