Margareta Pagano: Why has Sir Alan been hired as 'enterprise tsar'?
My list of business people to advise companies would not include Sugar
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Independent Minds
When Sir Alan Sugar turned up at Downing Street last week in his Rolls Royce, a polite newspaper photographer (they do exist) asked him what was the purpose of his visit. Sir Alan's reported response was: "It's none of your business."
Twenty-four hours later came the news that Sir Alan – star of The Apprentice, which had its grand finale last night – was to be handed a peerage and had agreed to become an "enterprise tsar" for Labour. Right then, Sir Alan, now it is our business.
Sir Alan might enjoy huge popular affection and move in circles that embrace both the prime minister and such giants of TV celebrity as Piers Morgan and Simon Cowell, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't hold his business credentials up to the light.
His relations with Morgan go back to when Sir Alan had a column on the Daily Mirror, which at the time was edited by the man who would later make it very big on TV. (It was buying shares in Sugar's Viglen company which got Morgan into such hot water in the so-called City Slickers scandal, although it should be made clear that Sugar had no involvement in the affair).
What of Sugar's BBC connections? How does his new position sit with his role on The Apprentice? Is there a precedent for a Labour peer presenting such a show, and can we really expect the BBC to examine his business record?
Andrew Marr had a go at questioning Sir Alan on his TV show yesterday, but the man who gave us "You're fired!" was quick to deflect the problem by telling Marr that there were no conflicts because he is a government adviser, not a policy-maker. But in that case I wonder why he needed to be elevated to the Lords to do this role?
Some of his new comrades in the Lords are already asking questions – not just about his track record, but about his qualifications for offering up wisdom to bankers and builders. According to the most recent Sunday Times Rich List, Sir Alan's fortune is down by £100m to £730m. Most of his business today is in property – the Amstrad business that he is most famous for having built up was sold for £125m to BSkyB two years ago.
It's surely legitimate to ask whether Sir Alan could really hack it in mass-market electronics, and personally I've yet to get through a full episode of The Apprentice, a show which some business people reportedly despair of because it's such an unrealistic portrayal of what goes on in that world.
When I met Sir Alan years ago, he was as gruff and pompous then as he is now, clearly someone who reserves his charm for the powerful. But, more important, I believe that any list of the top thousand or so British businessmen or women who could do this job would not include Sir Alan. If the Prime Minister was serious about improving Britain's enterprise culture, his first call would have been to Sir John Rose, the chief executive of Rolls-Royce, who works tirelessly to promote serious innovation in the engineering and manufacturing sector of our society.
More pertinently, Sir John knows a thing or two about training real apprentices and graduates, employing as he does thousands of them every year at its Derby factory. In retail there is Kate Swann at WH Smith who has turned it in to a fine business, while at John Lewis there is chairman Charles Mayfield, and at least half a dozen managers below him, who could have been perfect to be tsar – if, of course, we really need such a gimmick.
I could name many more but the quality of these people shows how puzzling it is to have Sugar advising companies what to do. It is an insult to the business community to expect them to accept this man as their delegate in this debate: a debate that is more critical than ever to the UK economy and the future of our young.
His macho reputation is not the point, and we will be following the government spin-doctors up a blind alley if we waste time on that part of his personality. He isn't going to change irrespective of the fact that four of the last five in this season's Apprentice were women, and both of last night's finalists.
What do the people who allow themselves to be patronised by him on his TV show really think of him? The important thing is that no top businessman or woman I know will take him seriously. His appointment is the desperate act of a desperate prime minister, and it is surely time for Gordon's peers show to end.
Margareta Pagano is business editor of 'The Independent on Sunday'
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Comments
Sugar's haughty and rude attitude, confirmed by his curt response to the photographer's justified question, is exactly what needs to be brought to an end. We have had enough of this kind of pompous arrogance from people unfit to tie our collective boot-laces.
Alan Sugar made his millions only by ordering junk computers of a very quirky design, from manufacturers operating somewhere in mainland China, or Malaysia, or Taiwan. He paid cheap bucks, before selling them high in the U.K. at a time when IBM and Macintosh were just beginning to establish the future standards of computing. I once owned an Amstrad and found it a complete waste of money. Later, I purchased a PC from Viglen and it served me well for a while, but I had to dispose of it early because I could not upgrade it. I was motivated to purchase from Viglen mainly because the company blurb stated the PCs had been made (more likely assembled using foreign components) in Britain.
In other words, Sugar is little more than a high-tech version of a norf London barrow-boy. Buy cheap and sell high, then stash your cash. As a genuine engineer, I have never had time for his big mouth, and never will.
The only thing going for him is that he has Jewish ancestry. Since Tony Blair came to office, guided as he was by his impresario Rabbi --- the Levi named Lord --- this pseudo-religious factor seems to have counted most for self-improvement: a fast track to fame and fortune simply because of some presumed and extremely tenuous link to ancient Sumerian myths, that were later hijacked by a non-entity tribe of vagabonds following their brief sojourn in Babylon.
What in heaven's name is someone like Sugar doing in the House of Lords? We might as well call that place the Tabernacle, now that it is stuffed full of other Sugar-like Babes. Isn't it all becoming a little too obvious, what is really going on??? And you can bet your bottom dollar that 'Sugar' is not his real name.
Ms. Pagano refers to Sugar's "gruff and pompous" demeanour. I seem to recall previous employees of Saatchi & Saatchi using similar adjectives to describe the demeaning way they had been treated. Simon Cowell, the 'talent' judge on TV shows such as Pop Idol, American Idol, The X Factor, and Britain's Got Talent, is yet another of the same tribal affiliation in the public eye with a caustic, disrespectful tongue.
It would appear that to have Jewish ancestry in Britain means you believe you possess the latitude (have the God given right even!) to talk down to everyone else as though they were your stupid underlings. This arrogant & pompous attitude is no longer tolerable (if it ever was), and the public will need to confront it, head on, during the next 10 years of radical change, which have been forecasted.
NONE of the above: Sugar-boy, Saatchi, and Cowell are remotely 'Semitic' or 'Semites.' If their ancestors didn't arrive here from the Iberian Peninsula, via the Netherlands, then their forefathers or fore-mothers can be traced back to the Asian Steppe Lands of the Turkic peoples occupying the northern littoral region of the Black and Caspian Seas.
Therefore, I would politely suggest you go take your silly little Communist/Zionist (financed by the Rothschilds) label and go stuff it where it will hurt the most.
When you are man enough to properly discuss the issues raised then you can come back and make a point. Otherwise, you are just another unthinking, "holocaustian android" consuming valuable bandwidth, and a traitor to Western history.
http://www.learnersdictionary.com/searc
And it is excellent to see Sugar put under scrutiny. I hope this scrutiny intensifies.
My only concern is that now he has been made a Lord, we may never see the back of him even after Brown has gone.
He is a gruff, rude & common chap of no particular charm and his TV Show is not "business" , it is nothing more than a faux talent show with fixed winner, and falls into mild entertainment.
I see it more as palm greasing favours rather than anything serious such as "best man for the job ".