14 Daily Express Wednesday, August 7, 2019DX1STHere’s another illustration
why many of us regard big
business as a cosy circle of
backscratchers in which the vast
rewards handed out often bear no
relation to performance.
Iain Conn, the chief executive of
Centrica, the company that owns
British Gas, last week announced
he was stepping down from his
position. This came just after
Centrica reported a pre-tax loss of
£446 million in six months.
Since Conn’s appointment in
2014, British Gas’s share price has
dropped by 75 per cent.
Nearly three quarters of a
million customers have deserted
the company.
So, belt-tightening all round at
British Gas, you’d presume? Not in
Conn’s case. He collected a 44 per
cent pay rise, taking his packagefrom £1.7 million to £2.4 million.
Centrica pointed out that profits
were hit by the energy regulator
Ofgem’s price cap.
That might be the case. But, tell
me: the last time your employer
had a bad year, were you given a
44 per cent pay rise?
Most of us accept that great
rewards should await those who
turn a company into a great
success.
By doing so, they benefit not just
their shareholders but help
turbo-charge (to borrow a current
vogue phrase) the wider economy.
But when the pay and perks are
so blatantly at odds with the
performance, the boardroom starts
looking a lot more like the sort of
closed shop its occupants are the
first to denounce when it happens
lower down the food chain.England crying out for Smith
I don’t withdraw a word I said about Steve Smith’s part in
the ball-tampering scandal and his incontinent bawling
afterwards. But give Smith his due after his magnificently
cussed two centuries in the first Ashes Test: he is the world’s
best batsman. His performances also beg the obvious question:
does he have Yorkshire blood in his ancestry? Not that it’s doing Joe
Root much good at present...It’s reported that the
Queen wants Sophie
Wessex to take the
Duchess of Sussex “under her
wing”. The idea, apparently, is
that because she and husband
Edward have successfully lived
out of the limelight, Sophie willbe a fount of advice for privacy-
seeking Meghan.
I hate to break it to the Queen:
but, far from wishing to emulate
the Wessexes, the couple that
Meghan truly aspires for her and
Harry to be like is George and
Amal Clooney.I hold my hand up – I’m one of the 780,000 listeners who
have forsaken Zoe Ball’s Radio 2 breakfast show in the
past few months.
I did give it a go, despite instinctively sympathising with the
listener who tweeted in week one that within five minutes “Zoe
Ball has used the word ‘gorgeous’ five times. I can’t cope.”
As I said at the time, Ball is not the only such offender. But she is
the one in the hotseat of the most popular radio show in the
country. Except it’s not any more, having since been overtaken by
Ken Bruce’s mid-morning show, which comes after hers.
I do still tune in to Bruce each day. It’s just that my
morning routine is no longer accompanied by the
breakfast show, but an iPlayer recording of
Johnnie Walker’s Sounds Of The Seventies or Paul
Gambaccini’s Pick Of The Pops. Which at least
shows Radio 2 I’m loyal.
Like Bruce – who greeted his latest
audience rise by claiming to be
“astounded” by the “allure of my daily
grumpy musings” – Walker and Gambo are
wry, self-deprecating and, crucially,
possess a sense of proportion.
That’s why they refrain from calling
every guest an “absolute legend” who has
“so much love coming your way”. They
calculated quite a while ago that the job
requires a bit more than coming over
constantly like a breathless cheerleader.
They might even suspect that a lot of
listeners don’t share the station
bosses’ middle class fixation with
Glastonbury – which smacks of the
same desperation to appear relevant as
Rochester Cathedral putting
a crazy golf course in its nave.Zoe has dropped the ball
Kelly’s
Eye
BY FERGUS KELLY
Picture: GETTYРЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS