5 April 2018
Lens on the Week
UK
DPP: Comments made in materials obtained by the charity, Centre for Criminal Appeals, through a Freedom of Information Act request to the Crown Prosecution Inspectorate and the Inspectorate of Constabulary reveal that the police have been routinely withholding information from defence lawyers to increase the chances of conviction. This follows the collapse of a series of rape cases where information was passed to the defence at the last minute leading to a general review of rape convictions. It is a terrible mess, innocent defendents have clearly been prejudiced, and it comes as no surprise that Alison Saunders the Director of Public Prosecutions is to move on.
As the “conviction at any price” culture comes under scrutiny at the CPS, Cressida Dick, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, is taking steps to reinstate the presumption of innocence by abandoning the automatic assumption that victims should be believed and encouraging her officers to approach investigations with an open mind. That is obvious good sense and, had it been followed earlier, would have prevented the very expensive investigations into the abuse which as it turned out did not happen in Dolphin Square.
UNCONDITIONAL OFFER:The practice by the less popular universities of making unconditional offers to students who rank them as first preference has been criticised for reducing pressure in the A level year. That reduces the grades which students would achieve and also results in their not being properly prepared for tertiary education. Still,you can see why they do it. Nowadays bums on seats translate into staff salaries.
NATIONAL UNION OF STUDENTS: Shakira Martin, who has seen off a Momentum candidate to be reselected President of the NUS, welcomes participation of all students including Tories and Lib Dems. She is also keen for the Union to engage with all political parties in an attempt to influence policy. Sensible? At the NUS? Presumably she will be deplatformed.
International
ISRAEL/GAZA: Israeli troops shot dead at least 16 Palestinians and wounded hundreds of others in the most violent confrontation since the war four years ago. About 30,000 Palestinian protesters gathered at a number of points in Gaza near the border with Israel, in a “Great Return March” which is the first of a number of demonstrations planned by Gaza’s governing Hamas party to mark the seventieth anniversary of the creation of Israel. Most of the protesters demonstrated peacefully at a distance from the border, but those who approached to the fence were shot at and gassed by Israeli forces.
SYRIA: The biggest mass evacuation of the war is taking place in Douma, the last rebel-held town in the Damascus suburb of Eastern Ghouta. Fleets of buses are taking thousands of civilians, fighters and their families to the rebel-held town of Jarabulus in northern Syria, as part of a Russian-backed deal between the rebels and the regime. More than 45,000 civilians and fighters have already been bussed out of other parts of Eastern Ghouta; hundreds of thousands of others have fled and 1700 have been killed. Following the evacuation, Eastern Ghouta will be occupied by regime forces after five years of resistance.
ELECTIONS: In Costa Rica, the presidential election run-off took place last weekend between Fabricio Alvarado Muñoz of the Christian National Restoration Party and Carlos Alvarado of the centre-left governing Citizens’ Action Party. The government’s proposed legalisation of gay marriage emerged as the key issue of the election. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights recently ruled to allow it, but Fabricio Alvarado Muñoz, who narrowly won the first round in February, is opposed to it and has threatened to withdraw the country from the court’s jurisdiction if he becomes president.
In Egypt, President Sisi was re-elected with 92% of the vote. There was a 40% turnout. There was only one other candidate; a relatively unknown and unseen supporter of the president. Seven other challengers did not stand, either because they had been detained or had mysteriously decided to withdraw from the election.
In Brazil, shots were fired at campaign buses which were part of Luis Inacio Lula da Silva’s “Caravan of Hope”. The buses were carrying journalists and campaigners. No one was hurt. Mr da Silva has been president twice, and hopes to become president for a third time following next October’s election. He is polling as the favourite, but he has recently been found guilty of corruption and sentenced to twelve years in prison. His supreme court appeal will take place this week; if he loses, he will face an abrupt departure from the campaign trail.
Financial
NOT A JOKING MATTER: Elon Musk, owner of Tesla and other innovative companies would like to be thought of as the Henry Ford of the C21st. He needs to do a bit more reading-up on his hero though – one thing Mr Ford was not noted for was a sense of humour. As Mr Musk now knows, there is a good reason for that. On April 1st Elon posted on social media that Tesla had gone bankrupt, with a selfie of himself apparently destitute and drunk. Alas, the joke went a bit wrong as a number of commentator and investors believed it and the share price of Tesla plummeted. Quite what the regulatory authorities will conclude about the Musk humour is not yet known, but the company hastily corrected the public position, confirmed that they had adequate working capital, and rushed out production figures. Mr Musk had, as it happens, touched a sore point among investors who are increasingly concerned about the company’s ability to get its Series 3 car into adequate production. Sales are not a problem – over 400,000 cars are on order, deposits paid, but the company has dramatically missed production targets, making little dent in forward sales so far. It delivered just over 8,000 in the first quarter of 2018 but says it is now expecting to make and deliver around that number in April, and double that again in June. In fact the company is making more than those broad figures indicate but has a continuing problem with quality issues; around 15% of cars made cannot be delivered, but Tesla says that proportion is rapidly falling as experience is gained. As it points out, it can certainly volume produce cars – it made nearly 25,000 of its top of the range S and X models in the first quarter.
NOT PLAYING AROUND: If your new Tesla Model X has not arrived the alternative is perhaps spending more time with the train, but you may find that too is running late, and it’s got more expensive. Not your local commuter ride – the train set in your attic has got problems all of its own. Hornby, a British toy company founded in 1901, (by way of Triang and Dinky, and incorporating Airfix) has just had to negotiate its debt line with Barclays Bank so as to avoid breaching covenants. Sales in the first quarter of 2018 were slow, not least because of late deliveries from overseas, and prices of many lines had to go up (mainly by stopping discounts) as those suppliers increased their prices; exchange rates also moved against the company. Hornby has had a difficult time in recent years as sales continued to fall, for which Hornby blamed the lure of virtual games and computer based activities. It also, in attempts to control both cost and quality issues, switched supplies from the Far East to eastern Europe, though the improvements were less than hoped for and not helped by that currency issue. Hornby has also suffered, and perhaps more relevantly, from severe competition in the model train and plastic kit markets, from Bachmann, a large American model manufacturer, from other American and European firms which model railroaders seem to prefer, and in the plastic kits business from firms such as Tamiya and Revell. Hornby is owned by Phoenix Asset Management which, as its name implies, specialises in turning round troubled businesses, and it says that it believes it has sorted most of the issues which have damaged Hornby Group’s trading. Indeed, though the business is overall generally cash generative, it hopes in due course to replace the current bank debt facility with a larger one which would allow it to expand and innovate. Play nicely, chaps…
