Payback time for office slaves
As a hard-working back page, TS is no stranger to working the odd late night, for no reward, to ensure our dear readers get their dose of gags and gossip every Thursday. And, in this it seems, we are not alone. Accountants are one of the most likely professions, alongside insurance, to work excessive hours of unpaid overtime, according to a TUC survey. On average, managers in accountancy work an extra nine hours 12 minutes every week, which if paid at the standard rate, would earn them an extra £10,000 a year. In response to all this free labour, the TUC has dubbed tomorrow ‘work your proper hours day’. Employees are encouraged to start and leave work on time and take a proper lunch break. Bosses are also urged to say thank you to staff by taking them out for coffee or a cocktail. If TS hears of a bar selling £10,000 cocktails, we’ll let you know.
Better late than never
With the New Year now only a fuzzy memory it was a little surprising to see another 2005 calendar land on the TS news desk. This late arrival came from accounting firm Mercer & Hole, which is celebrating its centenary year, and the calendar looks back at some of humanity’s more notable moments since 1905. TS was saddened that January’s page will not get the airing it deserves, given the importance it plays in world events. So, in all its glory, we have reproduced it here for our readers. We’re sure you’ll admit that Messrs Mercer and Hole deserve their place alongside events such as the fall of the Berlin wall and the first moon landing.
A blind bull on the rampage
The only reading material TS usually receives from accountants are piles of files on IFRS and tax. So we were excited to discover that Andrew Segal – founder of insolvency practice A Segal & Co, recently acquired by Begbies Traynor – had served up something slightly more tantalising. Segal is author of The Hamilton Conspiracy, a ‘financial thriller’ promising ‘a roller-coaster ride through the world of high finance’. The novel’s protagonist is the ‘arrogant, overweight and obsessive’ insolvency practitioner Jack Gregory, who has watched his ‘businesses (go) up in flames’. He then ‘hatches an outrageous plan to recover his lost millions’ and ‘like a blind bull, rampages on to a conclusion where even victory will be laced with the bitter taste of defeat’. TS is delighted to hear Segal is to be made a director at Begbies. If he’s anything like his protagonist, the firm could have a pretty interesting time.
In a Leather over the Olympics
All this Olympic bid schmoozing has got TS dreaming of the possibility that London might actually come up trumps, upset all the odds and beat Paris to the finish line. David Leather, finance director of Manchester airport and former deputy chief executive of the Commonwealth Games, is one person who’s keeping close tabs on progress. He may be based a few hundred miles away up north, but he’s as keen as any soft southerner for Lord Coe and his team to beat the French (and the Russians, Americans and Spanish). And if it does come off, our money’s on Leather as FD for the whole London Olympics. Not that he’s admitted he’ll go for the job should it come up, of course. But if his exemplary track record (if you’ll pardon the pun) running the Commonwealth Games wasn’t enough to clinch the deal, TS can’t help thinking that Leather knows a bit more than he’s letting on. The fact that his office is on the fourth floor of Olympic House has got to be a sign, hasn’t it?
What’s an Enron?
‘Do the younger generation know nothing, ’TS grumbled into our Horlicks the other night (we forget which night, but at our age we forget so much). While tapping out our pipe and warming our slippers by the hearth, a learned colleague told us of the MBA lecturer who recently asked his class who remembered what had happened at Enron. Apparently only a quarter of the ‘students’ put up their hands. Disgusted, we began complaining to colleagues about the money we lost in the South Sea Bubble– only to be met with blank expressions and cries of: ‘Put your teeth in when you’re sucking on a Werther’s Original.’ Nurse! It’s time for my shot.
Sorry, u r fired. Cul8r :-(
Accountants aren't best best known for their technological prowess. So expectations that the Revenue is to roll out compulsory online filing in the next few years might strike fear into the hearts of some financial types.
Recent research backs this up, as only 10% of accountants recently said that email was their most used form of communication. This is compared to 24% in the legal profession and 47% within call centres.
But there was one aspect of the modern world that some in the accountancy profession had found more useful than others.
While 2% of accountants said they would make people redundant using text messages - it was a method that other professions found totally unacceptable.
It reminds TS of the time KPMG made 750 staff redundant via email. Perhaps accountants are slowly taking technology to their cold, cold hearts after all.
Romance is dead at E&Y
Love was in the air this week as TS enjoyed the flowers and devotion that comes with Valentines Day. Thanks, boss. But down at Ernst & Young, affection and candle-lit dinners were not the priority.
Instead, E&Y called on couples to cast aside cooing and cuddling and 'consider the fiscal benefits of proposing to their loved one on the romantic day'.
The firm drew up a 'checklist of the key tax benefits of matrimony', highlighting how getting married can be a good decision, even if you are not in love.
'Marriage is a prudent option, if only in tax terms, because of capital gains and inheritance tax benefits,' enthused E&Y's Patrick Stevens.
TS can only imagine how successful that line has been when dropping the big question. You can always rely on accountants to suck the life out of a romantic occasion.
Accountants take it on the chin
TS was glad to see recent government guidance on dealing with intruders meant it was OK to kill burglars - in the right circumstances.
After all, a lot of money had been invested in the infra-red laser-guided machine-gun and RPG launcher at home. But cruelly, it now seems it's also fine to knock seven bells out of your accountant - in the right circumstances.
Company director John Cowie recently walked free from Paisley Sheriff Court after pleading guilty to assaulting his accountant. Cowie, of Bearsden in Glasgow, laid into John Stewart after finding out he faced fines of £1,589 from Companies House because the firm had lost his paperwork. Cowie's actions, however, did not even merit a fine.
So if discipline by your institute for shoddy work doesn't put the frighteners on you, perhaps the potential arrival of an angry client with a set of knuckle-dusters will.
