Sixteen South open new studio - exporting kids TV from a building that once sold fancy hankies round the world

This morning, Sixteen South officially opened their new offices in One Clarence Street, the company’s third premises. Chief Executive Colin Williams explained to visitors and press that back in 1884 the building was home to the Clarence Finishing Company, a linen manufacturer.

“They sold – all over the world – fancy handkerchiefs … and I think it’s a little bit fitting that 130 years later it’s now home to us, part of the new creative industries of Belfast, and we’re trying to do exactly the same thing as the Clarence Finishing Company and selling stuff all over the world.”

Sixteen South are celebrating being in production of season two of Lily’s Driftwood Bay – a show “proudly born and bred in Belfast”. The new series takes it up to 100 episodes of the show that has been sold to over 100 countries across Europe, Africa, Middle East and America. Another show Claude is also in production for Disney and will be dubbed into 21 languages. And there’s a new pilot for PBS in the works too.

Great to see @sixteensouth opening new larger offices in Belfast today with @dupleader & @M_McGuinness_SF pic.twitter.com/MPO25PwztZ

— Alan in Belfast (@alaninbelfast) June 29, 2016

The company’s first foray into children’s television came with two series of Sesame Tree [which led to my favourite ever interview] followed up with Big City Park, Pajanimals, and Big and Small.

Over the years, the First and deputy First Ministers have attended many launches at Sixteen South. Despite acceding to being photographed with Muppets in the past, the joint leaders of Northern Ireland have always seemed relaxed at these events. The gathered press were keen to capture political views on Brexit this morning before the opening began.

The United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union does create uncertainty for the film and animation sector in Northern Ireland. In a few years time they will fall outside quotas for broadcasting EU shows and their product may be a lot less attractive to television channels across Europe.

The First Minister Arlene Foster reminded those gathered that she’d “been a huge supporter of the creative industries right throughout my time as Enterprise Minister”.

“It’s wonderful to see the ambition, the drive, the innovation, the imagination that you have here in everything that you do. Of course, entertaining young people is no mean feat. I had the privilege of visiting many primary schools and many pre-schools during the election time, and they have absolutely no filter! … They certainly are a tough audience and you seem to have succeeded with young people.”

Highlighting the £329 million contribution to the local economy, the First Minister added:

“Animation and everything surrounding the creative industries is so exciting … It’s grown quite quickly but it’s [an industry] that the deputy First Minister and I are committed to continue to support and promote globally for you and your colleagues.”

She finished by admitting that “we’re delighted to be here this morning – it’s a little bit of light relief whilst everything else is going on!”

Colin Williams explaining the background to @sixteensouth's new offices + @dupleader, @M_McGuinness_SF, @niscreenhttps://t.co/aAwE9PrJtc

— Alan in Belfast (@alaninbelfast) June 29, 2016

Thanking Colin for the invitation to attend, the deputy First Minister quipped that “some of those hankies would have come in useful last Friday”.

Martin McGuinness remembered being at the original launch of Lily’s Driftwood Bay and said the international success was a “tremendous accolade to yourselves and a testimony to the quality of the work”.

“Arlene and I are committed to working together even though we were on different sides of the [EU referendum] discussion and the debate. It’s still our duty and our responsibility to take our society forward and we’re absolutely determined to do that.”

NI Screen’s Richard Williams reminded those gathered that the Opening Doors Strategy target is to have a screen industry here in NI that within ten years is second only to London in the UK and Ireland.

“Sixteen South and the broader animation and children’s sector are illustrating exactly how to do that. Totally internationally focussed, connected to every centre of finance and creativity that’s relevant in their sector, and showing the entrepreneurship, the leadership, the innovation, the energy and belief required to ensure that we all deliver on behalf of Northern Ireland our ambition.”

Cross-posted from Slugger O'Toole.

Paym launches in UK ... as cheques edge towards retirement

The bill arrived in Pizza Express and I noticed a message on the curled up roll of paper mentioning that it could be settled via their app. Sure enough, I could type in a code to the app, log in to Paypal and the bill was cleared …

Except that the process still requires the waiter to walk back to the till to confirm that it had been processed and we weren’t about to walk out of the restaurant having pretended to pay the bill! A handheld device that updates the table’s bill status in real time must be the next development.

Another electronic payment innovation launches today.

Paym allows the transfer money between people with a minimum fuss. It relies on you registering your mobile phone number against a bank account. Then rather than juggling sort codes and account numbers you simply enter a friend’s mobile number into your bank’s app (or select it from your contacts), specify the amount (up to a daily maximum of £250) and press send. It works between banks so should be fairly flexible as support widens.

Nine UK banks launched their support for Paym this morning: Danske Bank (that's their personal banking director Tony Wilcox with finance minister Simon Hamilton in the photo), Barclays, Halifax, HSBC, Lloyds Bank, Santander, TSB, Bank of Scotland and Cumberland Building Society. Locally, the Ulster Bank are expected to support Paym later this year; Nationwide Building Society in early 2015.

Paym is the next step in the move from cash and cheques towards a cashless society.

At the moment Paym is intended to be used for payments between individuals. Informal splitting a bill between friends, paying babysitters and tradespeople. But you could imagine a demand for it to be extended over time to schools allowing dinner money (and the myriad of other ad hoc charges) to be paid by parents without having to hunt through the house for the correct change or a cheque book. (The ability to add a simple message to the payment should allow the pupil and the purpose of the payment to be identified.)

Paym is also part of banks reinforcing that the smartphone in your pocket and computer on your desk are taking over many of the facilities that used to be solely offered by physical bank branches and hole-in-the-wall machines. Be in no doubt that Paym is as much about the banking industry introducing efficiencies (ie, cost savings) at the same time as offering innovative customer service.

Cheques are 350 years old. But as they head to retirement, perhaps one of the remaining use cases that hasn’t yet been adequately replaced is the ability to scribble a cheque and put it inside a birthday card without having to run out to buy an store giftcard. Maybe in the future, banks will give us books of blank prepaid debit cards that we can tear out, top up online and hand out to celebrating family members! Or maybe the art of present-buying will have to return ...

Dowload (sic) software from the Ulster Bank!

The Ulster Bank's free supply of security software is supposed to inspire confidence in its electronic banking customers. Unfortunately, poor spelling rather negates the professional pitch!

Hopefully their security is better than their spelling.

VAT rise effects – 5p on my cup of tea

So the price of a cup of tea went up in our canteen this morning, a hike from 55p to 60p. Coffee drinkers will have noticed a rise too.

The VAT increase from 17.5% to 20% should only have added a penny or so to the price of a cup of tea. The above-VAT increase is partially justified by not increasing the price of most of the other items on sale in the canteen. However, it’s bad news if all you ever eat is tea and a scone. And I don’t remember the VAT reduction (when it went down from 17.5% to 15%) being passed on to canteen users in the same way.

The broader question is … has the price of your regular cup of tea or coffee increased today?

Drop a comment and let me know the price, how much it’s gone up by, and where you get it and I’ll post a summary in a day or so.

(Photo used under licence from chumsdock on Flickr.)

Abbey >> Santander today

If you go down in the woods town centre today you’re sure of a big small surprise. Today’s the day the teddy bears have their picnic Abbey National signs vanishes from the UK’s high streets and is replaced with red Santander branding.

I noticed a strange looking sign above the door of the Abbey National branch opposite Belfast Rickety Wheel last week. The middle of the sign looked out of place.

And then I spotted the TEMPORARY SIGN printed in the corner of the plastic section that was obviously loosely affixed over the Santander sign underneath.

Sometime on Sunday, teams of guys with ladders will have toured around the Northern Ireland Abbey branches to unscrew the temporary signs and reveal the Spanish banks logos.

Same story for Bradford & Bingley who make the switch today. The smarter investors in the Alliance & Leicester will have to wait until later in 2010 for the Santander branding to appear.

Paul Moore, ex-HBOS, whistleblower, speaking in Belfast on Thursday night

A quick reminder that the annual Catherwood Lecture is this Thursday night at 8pm. As a consequence of the fire at Union Theological College, the venue has switched from its Chapel to around the corner at Fitzroy Presbyterian Church.

The event is free, so if the title, the whistleblowing speaker or the organisation intrigues you, feel free to pop along on the night.

Paul Moore - Finance and Faith: Can Mammon and the Common Good be Reconciled?

Paul Moore is the former Head of Group Regulatory Risk at HBOS and was the only senior risk and compliance executive in the UK banking sector to speak out publicly in the aftermath of the financial crisis about what he saw from the inside of a bank.

Paul came came to public attention in late 2008 as a whistleblower after claiming that he had been fired for warning HBOS about its excessive risk-taking.

His influential evidence given to the Treasury Select Committee in February 2009 was widely publicised in the media and led directly to the resignation of Sir James Crosby, the Deputy Chairman of the FSA. He maintained that failures in governance, risk management, compliance and regulatory supervision were at the primary causes of the banking crisis.

Paul was educated at Ampleforth College, an independent school run by a Benedictine Monastery. He re-found his faith in the last ten years. This has given him the strength he needed to speak up.

You can read a little more about his background or come along and hear him on Thursday 26th at 8pm.

Pizza Hut not immune from the current financial crisis

I can no longer count on the fingers (and thumbs) of one hand the number of outlets in Victoria Square that have switched off their lights and locked their doors permanently. Every week, there seem to be more stories of well-known and respected brands and outlets facing financial trouble. Not to mention the continual shrinkage of Northern Ireland's remaining manufacturing industry.

Perhaps the biggest shock of the last week was the news that five of Northern Ireland's fourteen Pizza Hut franchises were closed with immediate effect on Friday morning: Coleraine, Dungannon as well as Belfast's Dublin Road, Connswater and Yorkgate outlets.

The Dublin Road branch has been there since my student days, outlasting the Chicago Pizza Pie Factory around the corner, and serving as a venue for QUB Radio Club (no, not the Queens Radio station ... way before that) Christmas Dinners that were rarely ever held in December! And I remember a run-in with the Yorkgate branch for its miserly Chicken Supreme which had a really meagre sprinkling of chicken bits spread thinly across the pizza. They'd apparently been told off for being too generous with the toppings.

While the administrator is confident that the four branches in Ballymena, Carrickfergus, Glengormley and Lisburn can stay open, the remaining five branches are trading with a cloud over their heads while more sums are done. Over the years, I've eaten in all five!

• The branch at Carryduff memorably allowed one of our Youth Fellowship who didn't like pizza to go outside to the KFC and bring back a gourmet chicken meal to eat alongside the rest of us may not survive. Now that is customer service.
• The Odyssey was more prone to long queues - managing to delay my pizza longer than the time it took my wife to eat hers one night.
• Bangor was good.
• Castlecourt's Pizza Hut Express serves up tasty lunchtime-sized snacks (even tried the salad side order once ... just once).
• And the Victoria Square branch has barely had time for the purple paint to dry.

But sitting in the Connswater car park on Saturday lunchtime, it was still shocking to see the East Belfast branch - that had hosted memorable family lunches - closed for ever. Now just a perch for breathless sea gulls.

Ever been overcharged by £17,000 by a hotel?

Going through some old papers I came across a printout of one of the most unusual emails I’ve ever received in 14½ years of work.

Back at the beginning of May 2005, I’d stayed for a couple of nights in a training centre for a work team meeting. The bill had been charged directly to my business unit directly rather than being settled by credit card, so I hadn’t been given an invoice showing the final amount to sign when I checked out.

Alan,

I have noticed that you have been grossly overcharged for your stay in [training centre] on the 2nd and 3rd of May 2005. This was due to the start date of your stay being entered as 2nd May 2004. The charge is £17250.17 whereas the charge should have been £131.18. I will arrange for a credit of the difference of £17118.99 to be raised and you will see these in Jun 05 ...

Please accept my apologies for this error.

James

Crashed Chip and PIN machine at BHD

Grabbing breakfast at the City Airport before joining the queue for the Ryanair flight to Stansted (and ultimately being ordered to drink up or throw out the carton of tea before boarding), the Chip and PIN machine at the cash till was not having a good morning.

PMS makes it onto the Channel 4 news

PMS :: the UK financial scandal that isn’t embarrassing enough to cajole the UK government into action

A couple of posts in November 2008 passed comment on the Presbyterian Mutual Society debacle. In some ways things have moved on since then, and in others they haven’t.

The administrator has now written to PMS members asking them to vote on his proposal to slowly run down the PMS to maximise return on investments (and perhaps leave it running as a going concern), rather than a fast winding up that would definitely undervalue the society’s assets (commercial property).

The main factor that caused PMS members to forget mutuality and seek to withdraw their investments was the government’s move to guarantee investments in other unstable mainstream financial institutions. If PMS had been run under the watchful eye of the Financial Services Authority (FSA), then it would have been covered by the guarantee and not left vulnerable.

So after initial murmurings and letter-writing, at last the NI Executive seems to have turned its full attention to the matter, with (Presbyterian) Sir Reg Empey suggestion on the Nolan Show last week that the First and Deputy First Ministers would now be taking their appeal for fairness to Gordon Brown in a face-to-face meeting.

But it seems strange that the national press and media haven’t really picked up the story of perhaps the only UK financial institution that is being allowed to fail in this crisis. Even UK investors in Icelandic banks (somewhat outside the FSA’s normal remit) were rescued by the UK government. Yet PMS is only failing due to the UK government’s protection of other institutions.

Despite this, the plight of PMS barely gets a column inch in the national press, and doesn’t get an airing (that I’ve discovered) on financial programmes like Radio 5 live’s Wake up to Money or BBC Two’s Working Lunch.

But while the story just smokes in the corner, there’s no embarrassment for the government and no impetus for action. (Mere moral obligation doesn’t seem to be a motivator.)

Update - Monday 19 January - there's a petition running on the 10 Downing Street website calling on the Prime Minister to "provide similar governmental guarantees to UK mutual societies as for banks" which you can sign online if you agree with the statement.

PMS ... what it means to be in community

Cheryl Wonders posted an allegorical tale ("Best Interest") about the PMS story.

Update - And Crookedshore didn't mince his words when he asked "Weal human beings continue to be sacrificed on the altar of institutional survival?" And on Thursday he followed up with an open letter to the PCI Moderator, Clerk, PMS savers and ministers.

Update - BBC NI are featuring PMS's problems in tonight's edition of Spotlight at 22:35 after the News at Ten. (Should be available for replay on iPlayer soon.) Ahem - due to "a technical problem with uploading the programme on to the iPlayer", the soonest the programme will be available to watch online/download will be Thursday evening Friday. Update - it never made it online :(

Update - December - As a saver in the Presbyterian Mutual Society, GroovyJon has started a PMS / PCI blog to track what's happening.

Bigger pack better value ... Sainsburys do it again

I don’t want to reopen another teabag thread of posts. But Sainsburys’ labelling does throw up a question or two.

The Saturday morning conundrum was whether to buy a pack of 3-5 chicken breasts or a bigger pack of 5-8 breasts. The two different sizes of pack were sitting next to each other on the shelves. Both were viable options for the week’s catering requirements.

Of course, the mathematician in me reckoned that price per kg would be a way to make a decision. £7.98/kg versus £8.74/kg. Easy.

But what’s that up at the top of the larger packet?

bigger pack better value

Not in this case!

The “special purchase” (£7.98/kg) seems to override the “better value” (£8.74/kg) of the other pack. While it may not count as improper labelling, it is confusing and disingenuous. Unless you define “value” differently to me!

PMS ... not so mutual after all?

I wasn’t going to make any comment on the difficulties surrounding the Presbyterian Mutual Society (PMS). But as the story unravels, and as I discuss with Cheryl Wonders, I do have a recurring nagging thought on the matter.

The background is that the PMS has existed since 1982, providing a lending and investing facility to Presbyterian congregations and their (Presbyterian) members.

Unlike better known financial institutions, PMS didn’t trade on stock markets or invest in other institutions. Instead, it seems to have invested in retail properties in England and brought in cash from rent. And thus, it seems to have been largely unscathed by the first order effects of the recent financial market volatility.

The other key difference is that unlike banks, building societies, credit unions and most other mutual societies, PMS isn’t regulated by the Financial Services Authority (FSA). When individuals and congregations realised that their funds invested in the PMS were not covered by the government guarantee scheme (FSA), funds were withdrawn and lodged in more traditional institutions that were guaranteed. The second order effects were the ones that got them.

Being (reasonably) safe and secure wasn’t enough. The run of withdrawals used up PMS’s spare cash, leaving them in the position where they could no longer service loans or repay investors without liquidating their long-term assets. With an emergency legislation change, an Administrator was appointed. Extracts from their statement and FAQ explain the situation ...

It is apparent that the credit crunch has had a severe effect on the Society. A number of members have moved funds from the Society to other financial institutions that enjoy protection under the Government's financial guarantee scheme, leading effectively to an unprecedented run on the Society's cash which it could not sustain.

My appointment as Administrator at the request of the Directors of the Society will provide protection for its assets. Administration is not the same as liquidation, bankruptcy or a winding-up. Administration is designed to protect a company faced with liquidity problems. The Administrator's role is to act in the best interests of everyone who is owed money ...

My aim is to see if the Society can be rescued or, if this is not possible, to ensure that the Society is wound down in an orderly manner to maximise the return of money to members.”

“The Administrator is aware that representations have been made to the UK government to have the financial protection scheme extended to the Society's members. He supports this appeal but at this stage there has been no response from government.”

“The Presbyterian Mutual Society has total assets exceeding £300m of which more than £180m is in loans to members and £130m is in fixed and other assets, including commercial property which is held in order to produce a rental income which contributed to the dividend distributed to members.”

There are questions about whether the denomination encouraged Presbyterians to invest in the (legally separate) PMS. I’m not addressing that issue in this post.

A mutual society exists for the benefit of its members. There are no external shareholders to be paid. Profits are only big enough to ensure the stability of the society. The PMS existed for borrowing and saving.

I’ve never had money in the PMS, though I have friends who do. But I’d characterise the act of withdrawing invested cash from the PMS as one that was not in keeping with the mutuality of the society’s aims. While it may have been a sensible move for the most financially astute members to figure out that they could shift their money somewhere even safer, the (probably unforeseen) consequence of their action was to look after themselves, and put others who were less genned up at a disadvantage.

According to a page on the PMS website that is no longer available, the society “is managed by the Board of Directors comprised of experienced and respected ministers and laymen of the church who undertake this responsibility for the mutual benefit of all its Presbyterian investors”. After talking to someone last night, I wonder how many of the PMS directors had money invested in the society during the summer, and how many still had money in it now that the shutters had come down? Part of me hopes that none of them had money in it, and that insider trading could not have been an issue.

But mainly I wonder – though I’ve no evidence – how many of the withdrawals came from church committees? Did groups of Presbyterians vote across Ireland to protect their own interests and investments?

Wouldn’t the mutually beneficial thing to do be for those who withdrew their money to offer to put it back? All of them? To wind the clock back, give the PMS back its spare cash, and allow loans to be handed out as before, and allow investors to withdraw their cash when they need to and not all at once. (Of course, that was a question and not financial advice!)

Then there would be no need for discussion about pastoral care and a potential hardship fund. No need for the Administrator to figure out how much money could be raised by a fire sale of English retail units. It’s a Presbyterian mutual society, a kind of private denominational finance club ... maybe it’s time for Presbyterians to think mutually again?