Another Rowan Williams moment

Watching the report on Rowan Williams’ comments about Sharia law on the BBC News, I felt that the response of the Conservatives, that his remarks were “unhelpful”, was somewhat of an understatement. Perhaps it is just the problem of appointing academics, and then allowing them the opportunity to indulge in philosophical debate with themselves. Alternatively, of course, the man is mad.

Graduate divas

See Liz Hoggard’s A London Life column in today’s Evening Standard, commenting on a recent report (not cited) which has apparently concluded that Generation Y and UK bosses are “speaking in different languages”. She says she can’t help admiring the new breed of “graduate divas”, who are ‘young [born after 1982], university educated, techno-savvy’ and ‘know themselves to be in great demand’. But if my daughter (young [born in 1985], university educated (Warwick) and techno-savvy-ish (knows how to turn the PC on) is anything to go by, they are not really much different to how Liz Hoggard and her contemporaries were in the late Eighties. And didn’t she think then that her generation spoke a different language to the older generation? I did in the early Seventies.

Moral hazard

An interesting report by Norma Cohen in the FT this morning on a key test case involving Sea Containers’ legal challenge to a ruling made by the Pensions Regulator last June, when ‘the Bermuda-based, US-domiciled company, received the regulator’s first ever Financial Support Direction last year after the regulator, which is chaired by David Norgrove, concluded that the two schemes of the company’s GNER rail subsidiary were “in a parlous state”.’ Moral hazard involving pension schemes is a difficult concept it seems for corporates. Last year I had to advise an Austrian client and his lawyer on the powers of the UK Pensions Regulator. They didn’t believe it. All the managing director could say was, “No. Surely this cannot be right. This is like Romania”. At the time the received wisdom among pension lawyers (as Norma Cohen notes) was that the Pension Regulator’s ability to use his powers on overseas companies and those in bankruptcy were in doubt. And so I also advised. In the event, the Austrian client did not pursue the opportunity and we never had to decide how best to deal with a UK pension scheme in significant deficit. Probably just as well.