Letters: Carillion’s sub-contractors and suppliers need protection, not the banks

a crane operated by carillion
Credit: jason alden/bloomberg

SIR – To minimise bankruptcies and 
the destruction of smaller businesses, the Government should instruct 
the administrators to pay Carillion’s sub-contractors and suppliers 
rather than seize all incoming cash 
to recompense banks for their ill-advised lending.

The financial collapse of 2008-9 was worsened by banks withdrawing support from viable businesses, demanding repayment when that could only mean destruction of a business. Often these were builders, where banks were financing a “land bank” – enterprises now desperately needed to build homes.

J G R Rix
Bordon, Hampshire

 

SIR – As the owner of a small company for 45 years, supplying fabric to textile manufacturers (an industry notorious for slow payment and bad debts), I have little sympathy with suppliers being prepared to allow Carillion up to 120 days credit terms.

It is not proper trading when suppliers are effectively providing cash-flow finance and working capital to their customers.

The two rules of business are:

Rule 1 Make sure to be paid;

Rule 2 Remember Rule 1.

Ian R White
Morecambe, Lancashire

 

SIR – A crippled company still has an estimated open market value, maybe low or zero. If Carillion is vital to national interests, the Government can forcibly buy it, ie bring about nationalisation.

It can be recapitalised, reorganised and if necessary re-floated later. Yet I have not heard nationalisation mentioned on television, when it is clearly an option. Why? Is it taboo?

Nick O’Gorman
Kingston upon Thames, Surrey

SIR – Quite correctly, the Government has let Carillion fail. Surely the NHS should be next.

Graham Bellinger
Walton-on-Thames, Surrey

 

SIR – Trading when insolvent is a criminal offence. Why did the Government give huge contracts to Carillion after three profit warnings?

Adam Westlake
Farnham, Surrey

 

SIR – The liquidation of Carillion is the perfect opportunity to review many public-sector infrastructure projects. Heading the list should be cancellation of the unnecessary HS2 project.

David Peddy
Oxford

 

SIR – Outsourcing government building maintenance contracts to the private sector in the mid-Nineties was a costly mistake, as was its partner PFI.

I look forward to the Government returning to the guaranteed, cost-effective provision of in-house control and management that pertained in the former Ministry of Public Buildings and Works, and its successor the Property Services Agency.

Ken Orme
Bootle, Lancashire

 

Army’s magic bullet

SIR – If the Army is having trouble finding sufficient recruits to fill its ranks, the answer is simple: recruit more Gurkhas. There is no need to resort to the strange advertisements referred to by Charles Moore let alone the even stranger proposal to abandon the motto “Be the Best”.

Every year the Brigade of Gurkhas faces exactly the opposite problem – having to whittle down thousands of superb applicants to match the small number of vacancies available.

Gurkhas have served the British Crown for more than 200 years 
and fought closely alongside their British comrades. They have in abundance the qualities that make 
a fine soldier: dutiful in peacetime, ferocious in battle.

Recruitment problem? What recruitment problem?

Major Nigel Price (retd)
Marple Bridge, Cheshire

SIR – I was Army recruiting officer 
for the London district area in the Eighties. We had a number of offices 
in the city; each had an officer and several non-commissioned officers in charge, all highly experienced. We took great trouble with the selection of recruits and were able to guide them towards worthwhile careers.

The 2018 recruiting advertisements that I have seen give the wrong message. My teams would have been appalled at being instructed to tell recruits that “they could cry, pray and show emotion”. Army recruiting should be left to military staff.

Lt-Col W R Avens (retd)
Kingston upon Thames, Surrey

 

Care at home

SIR – The most important point in Rob Wilson’s article is that the Government “must also invest in charities, social enterprises and voluntary groups to provide local support for families”.

Our local charity, which provides and delivers hot meals for the elderly housebound, is dependent on 14 staff, about 80 volunteers, a commercial-style kitchen and an income stream from two charity shops (to say nothing of donations in kind and in cash from local people) to help to maintain up to 100 clients in their own homes.

The cost in time, money and effort 
is immense, but the benefit to the country is that these elderly people – many in their nineties, some over 100 – are living independently and out of care homes. This saves the Treasury hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Government, of whatever persuasion, does not understand the value of these small charities but, should they collapse for lack of funding, the truth would be brought home suddenly and painfully, accompanied by those fateful words: “too late”.

Dr Daphne Pearson
Chairman of Trustees, Age Concern Forest of Dean
Redbrook, Gloucestershire

 

SIR – Mr Wilson misses a vital element in any reform of our health and care system: technology. Around the world, health-care systems are incorporating remote monitoring technology to help frail older people remain independent for longer and to assist people with chronic health problems in managing their conditions.

Remote monitoring of daily routines can help prevent chronic conditions getting out of control and reduce the risk of falls that lead to hospitalisation. Not only does this reduce the pressure on the NHS, it also offers peace of mind to the six million family carers who are the backbone of our system.

Technology is not a substitute for social contact but, just as it has transformed the way we work and communicate, in health and care it has the potential to make the system more predictive, proactive and preventive.

Paul Burstow
Cheam, Surrey

 

Trending aid

SIR – I am concerned by the undertaking 
by Penny Mordaunt, the Secretary of State for International Development, to prioritise “issues that matter most to the British people, from plastics pollution to the illegal wildlife trade”.

Worthy as these examples may 
be, government expenditure should never be determined by what is trending on social media.

Patrick Hickman-Robertson
Eastbury, Berkshire

 

Leaving patients to die without food or fluid

SIR – Louise Broughton (Letters, January 11) is right: “no medical intervention” does mean withdrawal of food and fluid, as the Tony Bland case in 1992 decided that food and fluid count as medical treatment.

Nursing staff who provide these are acting humanely, but there is no legal obligation to do so where medical intervention is withdrawn.

It is time the law was changed.

John Duddington
Secretary, Medical Ethics Alliance
Worcester

 

The film that the Government needs to see

A man with a copy of Picture Post, with Churchill on the cover, in He’s Worth Framing (1943) by Charles Spencelayh
Contemplating a Picture Post cover in He’s Worth Framing (1943) by Charles Spencelayh Credit: bridgemanimages.com

SIR – We went to see the film Darkest Hour, about Winston Churchill. The cinema was packed and, at the end, many in the audience applauded.

I wonder if they were showing appreciation of a good film, or whether was it the Dunkirk spirit. My gut feeling says the latter. If I am right, then the sooner the Prime Minister and her Government go to see the film the better.

David Cowgill
Knutsford, Cheshire

 

SIR – Among all the Churchill revisionism, an insight into his character that may have been overlooked can be found in Brian Lavery’s book, Churchill Goes to War (2007).

General Sir Alan Brooke, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, wrote of his leader in September 1944: “He knows no details, has only got half the picture in his mind, talks absurdities, and makes my 
blood boil to listen to his nonsense. 
I find it hard to remain civil. And 
the wonderful thing is that three quarters of the population of the world imagine that Winston Churchill is one of the Strategists 
of History, a second Marlborough, and the other quarter have no conception of what a public 
menace he is and has been throughout this war”.

We all know about Churchill’s achievements, but Lavery’s book tells us more about his drinking, his moodiness and his addiction to adventure and danger. For any lesser man, Brooke’s words might have been damning – but with Churchill they just seem to add to the humanness.

Charles Russam
Hanslope, Buckinghamshire

 

Proving your age

SIR – Why is it so difficult to pick up 
a proof-of-age card application form from a retailer? I spent a whole morning searching before I found 
a shop that stocked them.

I kept being told to try the Post Office, and I did – but it did not stock the forms and I was told to go online.

Bernard Powell
Southport, Lancashire

 

Stick-up sticklers

SIR – What would you call a person who enters a bank with a gun 
(Letters, January 15)? “Sir.”

Chris Geary
Southsea, Hampshire

 

SIR – “Sir” – or “Madam”.

Sheelagh James
Lichfield, Staffordshire

 

Roll-up revelation

SIR – Prisoners have been using pages of the Bible to roll their “coffin nails”. One of Robert Service’s poems, “The Ballad of Salvation Bill”, places a Yukon trapper in the same situation.

Bill rescues a “gospel-plugger”and brings him back to his cabin, only to find mice have destroyed his stash of papers. Eventually Bill gets to use pages from his “pard’s” Bible on the understanding that he reads each 
page before smoking. The best line 
of poetry ever written follows in stanza 11: “I smoked and smoked from Genesis to Job”.

Some might disagree.

The poem ends well for Salvation Bill. Perhaps the prisoners would do well to follow his example.

Billy Montgomery
Dunseverick, Co Antrim

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