This article is from the source 'guardian' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.
You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/apr/29/philip-green-arcadia-bhs-bad-apple
The article has changed 5 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.
| Version 0 | Version 1 |
|---|---|
| If Philip Green is a bad apple, the capitalist barn is full of them | If Philip Green is a bad apple, the capitalist barn is full of them |
| (4 months later) | |
| The collapse of British Home Stores was shocking to many, and I can’t be the only person who was largely shocked because I’d forgotten the retail chain had ever existed. For lots of people BHS stores might as well have been abandoned and boarded up for years, sprouting buddleia, sporting warnings that they’re dangerous sites, decaying places to be hurried past, eyes averted. | The collapse of British Home Stores was shocking to many, and I can’t be the only person who was largely shocked because I’d forgotten the retail chain had ever existed. For lots of people BHS stores might as well have been abandoned and boarded up for years, sprouting buddleia, sporting warnings that they’re dangerous sites, decaying places to be hurried past, eyes averted. |
| It was easy to believe, initially, that BHS had been another retail dinosaur unable to adjust to new ways of living, new ways of shopping, increasing customer sophistication. The market had found the retailer wanting and the market had decided it had to go. Except that these sorts of thoughts, so pervasive that they often don’t even seem intensely ideological any longer, are beginning, just beginning, to seem rather quaint. | It was easy to believe, initially, that BHS had been another retail dinosaur unable to adjust to new ways of living, new ways of shopping, increasing customer sophistication. The market had found the retailer wanting and the market had decided it had to go. Except that these sorts of thoughts, so pervasive that they often don’t even seem intensely ideological any longer, are beginning, just beginning, to seem rather quaint. |
| Within what appeared to be minutes of the news breaking, fingers were being pointed. The last time BHS was in the news, in 2000, it had found a saviour, in the form of the retail guru Philip Green, to whom governments turn for advice, advice so valuable that it had earned him a knighthood. What had happened to his supposedly magic touch? | Within what appeared to be minutes of the news breaking, fingers were being pointed. The last time BHS was in the news, in 2000, it had found a saviour, in the form of the retail guru Philip Green, to whom governments turn for advice, advice so valuable that it had earned him a knighthood. What had happened to his supposedly magic touch? |
| Why was BHS in administration, having been sold for a quid a year before to a bankrupt with no retail experience, as a loss-making, highly indebted business that had been suffering from chronic under-investment for years? Why were thousands of people now facing the prospect of unemployment, with their pensions underfunded too? Plenty of people had made huge sums of money from the travails of BHS. But the travails had never been addressed. At all. A parliamentary inquiry has been launched, to try to find out exactly what happened and exactly what should happen now. Good. Except that it had to get to this point for that to happen. | Why was BHS in administration, having been sold for a quid a year before to a bankrupt with no retail experience, as a loss-making, highly indebted business that had been suffering from chronic under-investment for years? Why were thousands of people now facing the prospect of unemployment, with their pensions underfunded too? Plenty of people had made huge sums of money from the travails of BHS. But the travails had never been addressed. At all. A parliamentary inquiry has been launched, to try to find out exactly what happened and exactly what should happen now. Good. Except that it had to get to this point for that to happen. |
| We’ve been here before, of course. During the financial crash it had become apparent that banks, far from working in the interests of their customers, wouldn’t spit on them if they were on fire. | We’ve been here before, of course. During the financial crash it had become apparent that banks, far from working in the interests of their customers, wouldn’t spit on them if they were on fire. |
| Since then it has become obvious that most car manufacturers are happy to lie about the green credentials of their vehicles, that certain pharmacies would rather sell lipstick than fill prescriptions (and can do neither with any flair), that foodstuffs are so bad for us that they should be eaten once a week at the very most, that free-range eggs aren’t really free range and that beef may be horse. | Since then it has become obvious that most car manufacturers are happy to lie about the green credentials of their vehicles, that certain pharmacies would rather sell lipstick than fill prescriptions (and can do neither with any flair), that foodstuffs are so bad for us that they should be eaten once a week at the very most, that free-range eggs aren’t really free range and that beef may be horse. |
| What next? Is sugar not very good for us? Is alcohol a toxin? Does a diet consisting mainly of burgers make you ill? Can an international corporation sell, sell, sell to UK consumers without contributing a penny to the infrastructure that creates and sustains that lucrative market? | What next? Is sugar not very good for us? Is alcohol a toxin? Does a diet consisting mainly of burgers make you ill? Can an international corporation sell, sell, sell to UK consumers without contributing a penny to the infrastructure that creates and sustains that lucrative market? |
| Worst of all, this model that throws up such perverse consequences is the model that has to be adopted for healthcare, for social care, for education, for criminal justice, for everything possible that civilised humans need as well. It’s horrible. | Worst of all, this model that throws up such perverse consequences is the model that has to be adopted for healthcare, for social care, for education, for criminal justice, for everything possible that civilised humans need as well. It’s horrible. |
| It seems almost comical that, against this backdrop, politicians are in the media pretty much round the clock insisting that Britain must get out of Europe because it is smothering business with arduous regulation and pettifogging demands for human dignity. What the BHS debacle reveals is a massive free-for-all, with even “light-touch” regulation ignored and scorned. | It seems almost comical that, against this backdrop, politicians are in the media pretty much round the clock insisting that Britain must get out of Europe because it is smothering business with arduous regulation and pettifogging demands for human dignity. What the BHS debacle reveals is a massive free-for-all, with even “light-touch” regulation ignored and scorned. |
| Our steel industry is on the edge of collapse, not because of Europe’s misguided protectionism, but because the UK vetoed trade tariffs in favour of death-by-free-market. The miracle of the EU is that it genuinely appears to want Britain to stay, thwarting its liberal-democratic leanings at every possible opportunity while cheerleading its free-market ambitions. Without Europe, one wonders, who are these guys going to blame for their incessant, destructive, cynical wrong-headedness? | Our steel industry is on the edge of collapse, not because of Europe’s misguided protectionism, but because the UK vetoed trade tariffs in favour of death-by-free-market. The miracle of the EU is that it genuinely appears to want Britain to stay, thwarting its liberal-democratic leanings at every possible opportunity while cheerleading its free-market ambitions. Without Europe, one wonders, who are these guys going to blame for their incessant, destructive, cynical wrong-headedness? |
| I’m glad there is to be an investigation into how BHS has been run in recent years. But, actually, I’m not remotely comfortable with the rush to blame Philip Green. He’s not some bad apple in a lovely barn otherwise filled with sweet, juicy apples. Hell, even Apple isn’t a paragon of retail, manufacturing and taxation virtue. | I’m glad there is to be an investigation into how BHS has been run in recent years. But, actually, I’m not remotely comfortable with the rush to blame Philip Green. He’s not some bad apple in a lovely barn otherwise filled with sweet, juicy apples. Hell, even Apple isn’t a paragon of retail, manufacturing and taxation virtue. |
| There may be catharsis in singling out individuals and putting the blame at their gold-plated tax-haven doors. But all Green ever received until now were plaudits and rewards, which accrued to him because he was one of many, many people who embraced, embodied and profited mightily from the prevailing spirit of the times. In the free world of which we are so proud, such people get to run for president of the USA and crowds of excited citizens turn up to raise them aloft. | There may be catharsis in singling out individuals and putting the blame at their gold-plated tax-haven doors. But all Green ever received until now were plaudits and rewards, which accrued to him because he was one of many, many people who embraced, embodied and profited mightily from the prevailing spirit of the times. In the free world of which we are so proud, such people get to run for president of the USA and crowds of excited citizens turn up to raise them aloft. |
| I’m not an anti-capitalist. I’m an admirer of Adam Smith. I believe in the invisible hand that raises everyone in the process of building profitable businesses. But I believe, fervently, that Smith was right to insist that this building, this creation, has to be undertaken with moral purpose. That’s what makes the invisible hand an open and supportive one, not a talon that’s gnarled and misshapen from its sick, sclerotic grasping. An invisible thing still has a form, a purpose, a shape and a character. The invisible hand of the capitalism currently shuffling and dealing the deck is an ugly, cheating, filthy, graceless extremity. | I’m not an anti-capitalist. I’m an admirer of Adam Smith. I believe in the invisible hand that raises everyone in the process of building profitable businesses. But I believe, fervently, that Smith was right to insist that this building, this creation, has to be undertaken with moral purpose. That’s what makes the invisible hand an open and supportive one, not a talon that’s gnarled and misshapen from its sick, sclerotic grasping. An invisible thing still has a form, a purpose, a shape and a character. The invisible hand of the capitalism currently shuffling and dealing the deck is an ugly, cheating, filthy, graceless extremity. |