He doesn’t care that Boris Johnson is corrupt, he cares that he doesn’t keep it quiet.
Johnson won’t be there for the next election cycle and he’ll be back in the fold funding them.
It’s not what they are doing, it’s that they got caught. It hurts donors brands potentially.
No story here
If it was really about sleaze and scandals he would never have bankrolled a man who was recorded plotting to beat up a journalist, has been sacked by wives, party leaders and employers for lying, and was caught with his hand in the (donors) till long ago to fund his homes and holidays.
You don’t become a billionaire without your own sleaze and scandals.
John Caudwell is a Brexiter. Interestingly he also believes that Lyme disease can be passed from person-to-person (he claims most of his immediate family has it). Medical science says there’s no evidence that it’s contagious.
I won’t care until he turns against the Tories, which will never happen. Until then its just bread and circuses – just don’t vote for them
Or, hear me out, at COP26 the world leaders agreed to a minimum 15% corporate tax, which was when he noticed BoJo go off-script and they can’t have that.
Noam Chomsky was absolutely right when he said that the billionaires in control of the media love conservatives until they get corrupt. Interferes with their preferred natural order.
While Caudwell is a self-made billionaire, from my limited exposure to his company he isn’t a nice man.
The first thing I’ll say is used to work in the mobile phone industry from the late 80s. Everybody was a crook. Everybody. That might have just meant importing in a back of a van to get around taxes, through to “not thoroughly checking the history of a consignment of goods”. While I have no direct knowledge of Caudwell doing this I would be surprised if he didn’t.
Certainly, by the mid-90s he was selling handsets that were destined for other countries as Uk stock. Easy to tell by the 2 pin plug and network branding such as Moviestar. I used to buy about 1,000 sim free gsm handsets a month at this time but would avoid these even though they were considerably cheaper.
His 4U phone contracts passed normal credit checking, if you had a credit card you’d get a phone. This meant more risk but more connections. He’d sell on any contacts to another company within his organisation. He did this with all services. I presume it was for “tax efficiency”.
The atmosphere within his company was brutal. While he did headline-grabbing stunts like giving the top performers £1 million, the result was to breed the worst kind of sales culture.
I ran a sales team for a few months and it was in an 8, door knocking till 6. Sales meetings would be public humiliations for those that missed their numbers. I remember a salesperson being told by the sales director that he would fist him if he didn’t close a deal but if he was being nice he’d take off his watch first. The sales guys were all offered Gulfs as company cars in the job adverts and interviews but then given whatever shit was available. While it might not seem like much it was a typical example of being told you’d get one thing but reality is much worse.
This culture was from the top down.
No doubt some employees did very well out of it. But every time I came in contact with the company I thought it to be the most toxic place to be.
Why does any of this matter?
It probably doesn’t. But a flawed unpleasant man losing faith in another flawed unpleasant man doesn’t give me any confidence that he won’t back another shit bag that’ll do his bidding.
Tories seven points behind Labour in the poll embedded in this article.
*TONITE ON TORY TOSSER, LIVE & TORY*
Given that this Cauldwell could have just said nothing, some part of him believes that putting himself out as either a liar or a fool, or more likely both, is good for his business…
Am sure this says many things about many things, but fml we need to remove conservatism as something anyone tries to attempt anymore of this nonsense.
What I don’t understand is, you know, a man who plays cricket the day the UK voted out, I mean that and countless children, didn’t that hint at something, like, well, failure to control, like, well, failure to take responsibility for anything. So you’re angry you were as stupid as, well, the entire Tory party and 51% of the UK population who believed the 350m million to the NHS crap.
Not OPs fault, of course, but this isn’t a news story. This is how billionaires influence our government.
The conservative party is so corrupt that I genuinely couldn’t tell you from the headline if the billionaire is objecting to Johnson’s sleaze and scandals, or that Johnson is doing something to prevent the billionaire from indulging in sleaze and scandal.
14 comments
He doesn’t care that Boris Johnson is corrupt, he cares that he doesn’t keep it quiet.
Johnson won’t be there for the next election cycle and he’ll be back in the fold funding them.
It’s not what they are doing, it’s that they got caught. It hurts donors brands potentially.
No story here
If it was really about sleaze and scandals he would never have bankrolled a man who was recorded plotting to beat up a journalist, has been sacked by wives, party leaders and employers for lying, and was caught with his hand in the (donors) till long ago to fund his homes and holidays.
You don’t become a billionaire without your own sleaze and scandals.
John Caudwell is a Brexiter. Interestingly he also believes that Lyme disease can be passed from person-to-person (he claims most of his immediate family has it). Medical science says there’s no evidence that it’s contagious.
I won’t care until he turns against the Tories, which will never happen. Until then its just bread and circuses – just don’t vote for them
Or, hear me out, at COP26 the world leaders agreed to a minimum 15% corporate tax, which was when he noticed BoJo go off-script and they can’t have that.
Noam Chomsky was absolutely right when he said that the billionaires in control of the media love conservatives until they get corrupt. Interferes with their preferred natural order.
While Caudwell is a self-made billionaire, from my limited exposure to his company he isn’t a nice man.
The first thing I’ll say is used to work in the mobile phone industry from the late 80s. Everybody was a crook. Everybody. That might have just meant importing in a back of a van to get around taxes, through to “not thoroughly checking the history of a consignment of goods”. While I have no direct knowledge of Caudwell doing this I would be surprised if he didn’t.
Certainly, by the mid-90s he was selling handsets that were destined for other countries as Uk stock. Easy to tell by the 2 pin plug and network branding such as Moviestar. I used to buy about 1,000 sim free gsm handsets a month at this time but would avoid these even though they were considerably cheaper.
His 4U phone contracts passed normal credit checking, if you had a credit card you’d get a phone. This meant more risk but more connections. He’d sell on any contacts to another company within his organisation. He did this with all services. I presume it was for “tax efficiency”.
The atmosphere within his company was brutal. While he did headline-grabbing stunts like giving the top performers £1 million, the result was to breed the worst kind of sales culture.
I ran a sales team for a few months and it was in an 8, door knocking till 6. Sales meetings would be public humiliations for those that missed their numbers. I remember a salesperson being told by the sales director that he would fist him if he didn’t close a deal but if he was being nice he’d take off his watch first. The sales guys were all offered Gulfs as company cars in the job adverts and interviews but then given whatever shit was available. While it might not seem like much it was a typical example of being told you’d get one thing but reality is much worse.
This culture was from the top down.
No doubt some employees did very well out of it. But every time I came in contact with the company I thought it to be the most toxic place to be.
Why does any of this matter?
It probably doesn’t. But a flawed unpleasant man losing faith in another flawed unpleasant man doesn’t give me any confidence that he won’t back another shit bag that’ll do his bidding.
Tories seven points behind Labour in the poll embedded in this article.
*TONITE ON TORY TOSSER, LIVE & TORY*
Given that this Cauldwell could have just said nothing, some part of him believes that putting himself out as either a liar or a fool, or more likely both, is good for his business…
Am sure this says many things about many things, but fml we need to remove conservatism as something anyone tries to attempt anymore of this nonsense.
What I don’t understand is, you know, a man who plays cricket the day the UK voted out, I mean that and countless children, didn’t that hint at something, like, well, failure to control, like, well, failure to take responsibility for anything. So you’re angry you were as stupid as, well, the entire Tory party and 51% of the UK population who believed the 350m million to the NHS crap.
Not OPs fault, of course, but this isn’t a news story. This is how billionaires influence our government.
The conservative party is so corrupt that I genuinely couldn’t tell you from the headline if the billionaire is objecting to Johnson’s sleaze and scandals, or that Johnson is doing something to prevent the billionaire from indulging in sleaze and scandal.