It’s all a matter of judgement…
It was predictable for those of us with a few grey hairs that the woke agenda would eventually be checked by a good old dose of common sense, but I will admit that it has taken longer than I had expected for there to be a major news story to make people sit up and think.
It will come to be known as the Alison Rose affair and I predict that it will lead to a re-think of many practices that are getting out of hand across our society.
I will not add to the column centimetres on what happened, save to say that, in my view, there was a terrible failing in judgment, both personally and institutionally. The half-baked attempt by the Board to defend the indefensible has now led to the whole Board and the Bank’s reputation being damaged, possibly irreversibly.
With better judgement the Board should have sent her on her way and not waited for the court of public opinion – rightly expressed by government in this instance – to say that she should go. All of the board members are tainted in my view; one of them I note is Chair of a listed property company!
The relevance of this should not be lost on Property Chronicle readers who are following the shenanigans at RICS, where the Anne Gray affair still bubbles along, and we await some smoke from Great George Street. The parallels are painfully obvious. Many believe that Ms. Gray has acted in a manner that is not becoming of a President of a global professional members organisation and, certainly in my view, brings her reputation and that of the RICS into disrepute. Rumour is that government are less than impressed and have told the RICS so.
