Monthly Archives: June 2014

While it's tempting to begin this edition of the column along the lines of last time's theme—‘it's a funny old world’—given that the Iranians are now our best friends and it looks like Gadaffi wasn't that bad after all (a little like Charles Kennedy keeping the lid on the Star Wars cafe scene selection of Liberal Democrats for all those years before they outed themselves, sometimes literally, into the coalition). But no, loftier matter await—notably the issue of 'legacy'. Not the legacy versus sustainability argument, which was the running joke in the BBC sitcom Twenty Twelve, but more the question of what [...]

Don’t you find it odd that, in the UK, a police officer is not allowed to counter-sign a passport application form whereas a banker—that much-reviled figure accused of being responsible for all the woes and ills of the world—still can? Isn’t it strange that despite the untold millions—if not hundreds of millions—of pounds, dollars and euros spent on technology, our industry still doesn’t have true straight-through processing (STP) and many firms are as far away from it as they have ever been? Don’t you wonder why some firms, despite hundreds of years of experience, the benefit of hugely expensive external and internal [...]