WHEN I was a lad in the 1950s in Brock Road in the hamlet ofHousehillwood, which was an autonomous region of the People'sRepublic of Pollok, there was a man called Colin Gemmell who was thestreet's banker.
Mr Gemmell was not the banker as in moneylender, but banker as incommunity activist.
Mr Gemmell probably did not know he was a community activist. Heorganised bus runs for the whole street down to Saltcoats or Ayr forthe weans in the summer; off to Blackpool at the September weekendfor the adults.
Mr Gemmell also collected money each week from his neighbours and,with the money saved, hampers of food and drink were delivered forthe New Year celebrations. In all Mr Gemmell's years as the BrockRoad banker not a penny went astray.
A wee man with a bunnet and a day job with Glasgow Corporationcleansing department showed financial and organisational skills farbeyond those of the board of directors and chief officers of EuropeanHome Retail plc. EHR is the company responsible for the Farepakfiasco.
In the Farepak fiasco some 140,000 not very welloff families havelost the GBP40 million they entrusted to EHR for the provision ofChristmas hampers and vouchers. Instead of keeping this money intrust, the company lost its funding through unwise investments inother areas of their business.
I am no expert in matters commercial, but the EHR affair appearsto have involved a very careless stewardship of people's money. It'sas if my aforementioned Mr Gemmell had taken his neighbours' Ne'erdaykitty and gone up to the bookies in Nitshill and put the lot on thefavourite in the 3.20 at Wincanton. Which, of course, he never did.
The Farepak investors' money is now gone as EHR went bust. The140,000 families are now creditors and will receive little or nothingin return for their investment. They are the subject of pity andcharity as sundry guilt-ridden plcs chuck token amounts of money intoa Farepak emergency fund.
The Farepak directors and executives are unlikely to face a bleakChristmas. Their salaries have been banked. Their pensions aresecure. They have other directorships to be getting on with.
Farepak managing director Nick Gilodi-Johnson, whose father BobJohnson founded the business, is set to inherit a large chunk of theGBP75m family fortune.
Sir Clive Thompson, EHR chairman and former head of the CBI, ispreviously famous as the bloke who urged the government to keep theminimum wage below GBP3.20 while he was averaging GBP466 an hour fromhis various posts and consultancies.
The Farepak fiasco caused much anger among Labour MPs such as JimDevine, Michael Connarty and Ian McCartney. It was a level of ire ourtribunes of the people never managed on the subject of Iraq.
Labour MP Frank Field alleges that Farepak's bankers, Halifax Bankof Scotland, allowed the company to continue trading "while it clawedback something like GBP1m of people's savings to offset the companyoverdraft with the bank".
A department of trade investigation will be carried out into theFarepak fiasco. We already know that the EHR directors and executivescouldnae run a menage. This is a term of abuse used by us commonpeople to describe individuals who display high levels of financialineptitude.
It's spelt menage as in the French word for household butpronounced minodge as (very nearly) in Kylie, the Australian singer.
A menage was a financial arrangement between individuals, usuallywomen. Each household would contribute a sum every week.
The participants would have a turn to spend the money collected ina particular week, the order being drawn by lots. Getting the firstweek in a menage-a-vingt was a bit like winning the lottery.
The menage was an honourable institution. It only worked ifeveryone kept their part of the agreement. Preservation of honour anddignity meant families in difficult times would do anything ratherthan renege on their contribution to the menage.
They would go without food or pawn faither's suit. They might beg,borrow but probably not steal.
A mother, one of the 140,000 people deprived of their Christmasbudget by the Farepak fiasco, knows better than to head to Toys'R'Usand shoplift the Nintendo DS console on which her wean Wayne has sethis heart. She knows she will end up in Cornton Vale for her trouble.
She'll certainly get no help from the directors, officers, andbankers of European Home Retail plc, who made GBP40m of people'sChristmas money disappear. They seem unfettered by any of thecommunity spirit exhibited by Mr Colin Gemmell of Brock Road and anywife and mother who has ever run a minodge.
GOOD KICKING FOR NASTY HABITS
VICTIMS of the Farepak fiasco will probably not be interested toknow that parts of the ill-fated EHR empire which were funded bytheir money are still trading under new ownership. The EHR directorsmanaged to sell off various marketing and internet subsidiaries forGBP34m before they went bust.
Only the Farepak bit, with the hamper customers' money in it, fellprey to the banks and the insolvency practitioners. One of thebusinesses still operating is called iwantoneofthose. com. Thecompany sells a lot silly things online.
Farepak customers with little spare cash this Christmas areunlikely to be tempted by the fripperies on offer such as the "minireuseable parachute for flying champagne corks no more franticducking when the bubbly's a-popping -" The Farepak Cratchits may findmore use for the Grow Your Own Christmas Tree at GBP2.99, a wiseinvestment for next year. Or The Big Cold Turkey, which, it says onthe website, "may sound suspiciously like a Boxing Day lunch, but isin fact a motivational pack to help you kick your nasty habits".Nasty habits such as trusting such people as European Home Retail plcwith your children's Christmas.
FINISHING WITH A GLOTTAL STOP
WORKING-class teenagers are to be given finishing lessons to helpthem compete for better jobs, Beverley Hughes, the children'sminister, announced last week. I presume this only applies to Englandas Scottish children have surely been devolved.
The kids will not be sent to a school in Switzerland where thefinishing-off process is normally carried out. They will instead betaken to museums and art galleries and taught interpersonal skillsand etiquette (such as eating your mince and tatties with a knife andfork and not a spoon, as I learned in primary one at St Robert's in1955).
The finishing lesson has long been a part of Scottish education. Irecall a heidie at a junior secondary who advised departing alumnithat when they appeared in court, they should wear a smart suit,stand up straight in the dock, and enunciate the word "guilty"without the glottal stop.
HORSING WITH HISTORY
DIGGING up your ancestors, archivewise, is being encouraged as anactivity.
Ancestor. co. uk is allowing free keeks at the passenger lists ofships which took Scottish emigrants to the Americas over thecenturies.
The Mitchell Library in Glasgow welcomes inquiries into its PoorLaw records which detail the poverty and suffering of ourantecedents. Keepers of such documents and information advise somecaution.
They are not kidding. You never know what you might find when yougo delving into the familial past. One Aussie of Scottish descentresearched the details of his ancestor's transportation to thecolonies. He romantically assumed his forefather had been put on theprison ship in the bay for rebelling against the famine and the crownby stealing Trevelyan's corn so that the young might see the morn. Hewas somewhat taken aback to see the documentation showing the reasonfor the one-way trip to Botany Bay was his progenitor's penchant forhaving carnal knowledge of horses.
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