Murdoch paper reports police raid on union that never happened

This is massively off topic, but I thought it deserved a blog. I follow a few Aussie unions, union leaders, activists etc on Twitter and this morning I saw people from the CFMEU tweeting about a story in the Murdoch-owned Herald Sun.

The story said that there had been a police raid at the CFMEU's offices in Melborne. What's more the story stated the following:

Rank and file CFMEU members at the office said there were several police there.

It's clearly fair to infer from this that the journalist spoke to more that one CFMEU member (it says "members" after all) at the office who confirmed the presence of police.

I can't link to the actual news story, because it has subsequently been taken down and replaced with this one. The first para is below:

VICTORIA Police have confirmed that there was not a raid at the CFMEU offices in Melbourne this morning.A report on heraldsun.com.au incorrectly reported that the raid had occurred.
The report said Taskforce Heracles, which was set up to investigate claims raised in the Royal Commission, had visited the union’s Swanston Street offices. The error was made by the reporter.    

Now I'm old enough to know that journos sometimes make up quotes, I don't just mean that they make the quotes sound/read better. Some of those "A close friend of Harry Styles said..." are clearly fabricated. But they typically relate to an event/person/object that actually exists.

What we seem to have in the case of the Herald Sun story are made up comments about a fictional event. Non-existent bystanders have confirmed an event that never happened. This is pretty impressive, and to call it an "error" doesn't do it justice, it's more like a thought experiment - can a fictional event have bystanders? In any case career in chidrens' fiction seems to beckon for this journo.

The background to all this is, of course, the ongoing attacks by the Abbott "government" on the labour movement in Australia, which has been roared on by Murdoch and his mouthpieces. The wheels are already coming off though, just Google Dyson Heydon for details, and helpfully now a Murdoch paper has joined the Keystone Cops by running a clearly defamatory story about something that never even happened.

Look out for a one para apology on page 8.

One share, one vote

I've only followed the progress of the Shareholder Rights Directive at a distance, but it strikes me that    it provides a fairly important indicator that something is up. The abandonment of the 'One share, one vote' principle, and the encouragement of alternative structures that actively undermine it, seem to me to be one of the most dramatic shifts in direction in corporate governance policy for some time.

It wasn't that long ago that Charlie McCreevey was trying to push through one share one vote, now the SRD is leading in completely the opposite direction.

I personally don't have a particularly strong view either way on this one. From memory McCreevey's efforts were stalled at least in part because the EC's own research could find no evidence for the economic benefits  of one share one vote (though I have no doubt that other factors were at play in the decision). That seems pretty important to me and added with the wider issues of limited shareholder commitment I lean towards favouring loyalty rewards, but I know most investors hate this kind of thing and even vote against it.

But my views aside, the about turn seems pretty significant. The optimist in me wants to see this as a willingness to think a bit more deeply about governance and the fact that the extension of shareholder "rights" is not comparable with political enfranchisement when the "electorate" is largely comprised of often conflicted intermediaries. It may be a further sign of disillusionment with the US/UK model of corporate governance, and almost certainly reflects the UK's diminished status when lobbying in Europe over these kinds of issues. Maybe, even less positively, it reflects lobbying from corporates who don't want activist funds breathing down their necks.

  

Whatever the mix of factors is, something important in corporate governance has happened here, and it leaves the UK on the periphery again. Perhaps this a good time to reflect on whether this is just corporatist Europeans failing to understand why our system is superior, or we're just making our arguments badly or if, maybe, we need to rethink our own assumptions.  

Winstanley

"[T]he power of enclosing land and owning property was brought into the creation by your ancestors by the sword; which first did murder their fellow creatures, men, and after plunder or steal away their land, and left this land successively to you, their children. And therefore, though you did not kill or thieve, yet you hold that cursed thing in your hand by the power of the sword; and so you justify the wicked deeds of your fathers, and that sin of your fathers shall be visited on the head of you and your children to the third and fourth generation, and longer too, till your bloody and thieving power be rooted out of the land."   

Private equity is still a "force for good"

A few years back, I noticed that the phrase "a force for good" was being used with remarkable consistency by people in, or working with, the private equity industry. So I thought I'd do a quick google to see if that was still the case. No real surprise, but it is, and organisations ranging from the UK trade body to free market spin tanks still use the term regularly.

A few quick examples -

Here the BVCA uses the phrase in the headline of a press comment in relation to the care sector - one where the industry has faced a lot of criticism.

Here the American Enterprise Institution has an article (co-authored by Kevin "Dow 36,000" Hassett) with the phrase in its title.

Here is a report (PDF) of a roundtable private equity hosted by a PE firm that also uses the phrase in the headline and the text.

There are plenty of others.