The Presidents Club is the tip of the iceberg

Samantha Rea in The Independent

The Financial Times has revealed that the Presidents Club Charity Dinner procured a harem of “tall, thin and pretty” hostesses for its exclusively male guest list. Wearing “skimpy black outfits with matching underwear and high heels” the women were apparently groped, propositioned, and subjected to lewd comments. The report, which the FT has hailed as their “most read story”, has prompted apoplectic reactions in the media, the business world and on social media, where #PresidentsClub topped the trends on Twitter.

The event has been perceived as so scandalous that the money raised is now being rejected by charities. David Meller, Chair of the Presidents Club, has had to step down from the board of the Department for Education, and Children and Families Minister Nadhim Zahawi faces pressure to resign since it was revealed that he attended the dinner. Big businesses were quick to distance themselves from the event. The backlash has ultimately resulted in the disbandment of the Presidents Club.

All the outrage may well be justified – but I can’t help feeling that it’s disingenuous. Because the Presidents Club Charity Dinner is no different to a normal night in a lap dancing club. 

I’ve spent the last three months investigating the lap dancing industry, working undercover in eight different lap dancing clubs in London. Like the charity dinner, the attendees tend to be well-off men, and those working there are usually young women, many of whom are at university or supporting children, and often from poorer countries.

Hostesses at the dinner reported men repeatedly putting hands up their skirts and one said an attendee had exposed his penis to her during the evening. At the lap dancing clubs, I witnessed men grabbing women’s bums, breasts, and genitals while sitting there rubbing their erections through their trousers. I was on the receiving end of this myself.

For although the licensing laws forbid touching, the women’s financial instability meant the men were able to push the boundaries. Working on a self-employed basis and having paid the club a fee to work there, the women are effectively pitted against each other to compete for custom. Under pressure to earn money (and to make back the “house fee” which could be up to £85) straying hands were often tolerated in an effort to keep the customer. And in more than one club, I was shown the camera “blind spots” where licensing laws are flouted with impunity. 

The FT referred to the hostesses receiving “repeated requests to join diners in bedrooms elsewhere in the Dorchester”. In the lap dancing clubs, I was repeatedly propositioned by customers who asked me to join them in their hotel rooms. They were not ambiguous about what they wanted. One asked me specifically, “how much for a f***?” Another was willing to pay for VIP if it ended in a blow job.

VIP is where the money’s really made, with some clubs in central London charging upwards of £500 an hour for a customer to spend one-to-one time with a lap dancer in private. Typically, the women take home around two-thirds of this after the club take their cut. So if a customer spent several hours in VIP, it was possible for the woman to take home over £1,000. However, it wasn’t unusual for customers to make it clear that if they paid for VIP, they’d expect sex or a blow job at the end of it.

When I turned down a guy who wanted a blow job, he said he’d give VIP a miss – then he casually told his work mates he was leaving as he wanted to go and get “sucked off”. He was a Mayfair based lawyer in his 50s, out for his work Christmas drinks.

There were businessmen, sales directors and – creepily – a gynaecologist. In one club, a surgeon told me he’d heard about the place from guys at work. He’d finished a shift and wanted to relieve some stress. Another guy was a partner at one of the Big Four accounting firms, out entertaining a client.

How do I know who these men were and what they did for a living? Because when I wouldn’t give them my contact details, they’d insist on giving me theirs. I exchanged messages with the Big Four guy, via his work email address.

One of the lap dancing clubs that I investigated was actually linked to an event very similar to the Presidents Club Charity Dinner. The club paid lap dancers to work as hostesses at a men-only black tie charity boxing dinner at a central London hotel. The men – who paid £250 a ticket for ringside seats – were encouraged to follow on to the club, to join the lap dancers in VIP once their hostessing duties had ended.

MP Maria Miller has condemned the Presidents Club Charity Dinner, saying: “How seriously is business taking equality at work if they are still using men only events for entertainment?” She’s suggested that the event could be a catalyst for tightening equality law. This can only be a good thing. But I hope that the Presidents Club Charity Dinner isn’t made a scapegoat, only for similar events to continue slipping through the net, along with “normal” nights in lap dancing clubs, where the same sort of behaviour is re-enacted every day of the week, all over London.

Is single the new black?

Sreemoyee Piu Kundu in The Hindu

Last evening, I went out with my college friend to a popular coffee shop in Kolkata, crowded with young lovers bedecked in the colours of Saraswati Puja, a festival that heralds the beginning of spring.

At the table beside us sat a couple who looked like typical millennials — they constantly clicked indulgent selfies, pouted non-stop, uploaded everything online immediately, with the boy checking and declaring the number of Likes triumphantly by thumping on the table.

‘Young love… wait till they are married and saddled with kids, pets, maids, homework and in-laws,’ my friend smirked.
Feminist type

‘We’ll be told we are eavesdropping, bad manners,’ I winked. My friend was about to say something when the girl at the table, who wore a purple sari and backless choli, raised her voice.

We stole a fleeting glance.

‘Let me tell you straight… I have no interest in being married. I am extremely independent, love my job, enjoy solo travel, I can’t give up my flat… and anyway, I am… umm… commitment phobic…’ She made a face and pushed away the boy’s left hand.

Was there a ring in there?

My friend and I exchanged looks.

‘Dude,’ the boy sniggered, taking back his arm defensively, adding almost under his breath, ‘You don’t want to grow into a sexless spinster, living alone with a bunch of cats in a cold, lonely apartment at 40.’

I’d just turned 40 in December, on the 14th. The last word stuck to me, more than the rest of his bhavishyawani.

I waited for the girl’s response.

‘Besides, I don’t think you are commitment phobic, you’ve had a string of flings, haven’t you?’ the boy clicked his tongue, resuming sheepishly, ‘I would say you are nothing but a bloody feminist.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ the girl retorted in a shrill octave.

The boy asked for the bill.

‘Nothing,’ he shrugged his shoulders.

‘No, tell me,’ the girl met his eyes.

‘It means that you hate men… that you think you are better and can survive alone. It means that you are too opinionated and have a foot-in-mouth disease. It means you want multiple partners, and maybe you are a lesbian. It means you have jholawala, nari morcha type principles… it means you are lonely, lousy and lost…’

* * * *

Single women reportedly constitute 21% of India’s female population, being close to 73 million in number. These include unmarried, divorced, separated and widowed women. Between 2001 and 2011, there was an almost 40% increase in their numbers. Media reports say that the Women and Child Development ministry under Maneka Gandhi is slated to revise policy for the first time since 2001 to address the concerns around being single and female, which include social isolation and difficulties in accessing even ordinary services. .

There’s been a huge growth in this demographic, and ministry officials have said that government policy must prepare for this evolution by empowering single women through skills development and economic incentives.

The policy revision also aims to address concerns related to widows and universal health benefits for all women. And yet, a little over a year ago, and despite the social relevance of the subject, when I actually discussed the idea of a non-fiction book on single women in my circle of single women friends, I sensed a reluctance to talk freely about what being single really meant in India.






Some of them, 40-plus, shyly confessed that they’ve just created their nth profile on a matrimonial site, but made me swear I would not tell anyone else lest they be laughed at. Others clandestinely admitted to flings with married or younger men.

They spoke of serious struggles with basic life issues such as getting a flat on rent or being taken seriously as a start-up entrepreneur or getting a business loan or even getting an abortion (statistics collated by Mumbai’s International Institute for Population Sciences claim that 76% of the women who come for first-time abortions are single).

They confessed to a gnawing sense of loneliness, the looming anxiety about the onset of old age, health issues, of losing parents, siblings and friends over time, of personal security, of being elderly and alone.

I started introspecting on my own single life. When did I begin to realise it wasn’t so much a choice as a culmination of circumstances that I must eventually get used to and learn to adapt to, despite the occasional speed-breaks. That being single wasn’t only about relationship-centric fears.

It also covered physical and mental health, living with parents vis-a-vis alone in another city, the nauseating, never-ending pressure of marriage, the need for sex (a friend insists on calling it ‘internal servicing’), the desire to birth one’s own children, coupled with a general all-consuming pressure to conform to the larger majority, the statistic that sells — married people — who seem to be swallowing you up and swarming in population, be it virtually or really.

* * * *

‘Get her uterus removed,’ the gynaecologist declared. It was three years ago and I was at one of Delhi’s prestigious hospitals. She was the third gynaec I was consulting. I kept going back to her every Wednesday at 4 p.m., waiting on the claustrophobic ground floor, complaining of how my menstrual pain had gotten severe in the last few cycles, even unbearable. My mother accompanied me on most occasions, vouching for me, a lingering sadness in her ageing eyes. Perhaps she was just as fragile. In ways that we could never show each other.

‘But she’s so young, only in her 30s?’ my mother stuttered, protesting, as if against a looming death warrant. The doctor was busy talking with the nurse about a woman in labour. Not very interested in the ones who didn’t qualify in her estimation. Those like me who kept coming back — same complaint, same pain, same marital status.

“Why don’t you find her a husband soon? With her history… first Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome… now endometriosis…and, of course, her weight… is she interested in having a baby anyway?” I pushed my chair back impatiently, fighting back tears.

‘Shall we try Ananda Bazaar? They have a ‘Cosmopolitan’ section… more your type,’ Ma had whispered on our way back, as I looked away.

Beleaguered. Belittled. Barren?

* * * *

Nita Mathur (name changed on request) was born in a conservative Uttar Pradesh family, and grew up watching her mother ostracised for not bearing a son. I met the 34-year-old HR professional in an upscale South Delhi café a month before her marriage, which had been arranged by a family astrologer. Nita was preparing to return to Kanpur, her hometown. ‘I grew up with a gnawing guilt that I was born a girl… I wanted to get out of Kanpur at any cost. I battled with my father and uncles to come to Delhi to get an MBA degree,” she told me.
Like a virgin

For Nita, living alone in a Delhi PG meant life on her own terms, earning her way. She started dating, had sex. “It was, strangely, a way to get back at the closeted patriarchy I had been forced to deal with as a girl,” she said.

But her single status and living alone was a stigma for her parents, who wanted Nita married, and her sisters after her. They pressurised her, using tears and threats. “My mother always cried on the phone, warning me that life as a single woman, though seemingly attractive, would return to haunt me later. She told me my behaviour would affect my sisters’ lives….”

Nita finally agreed to marry. And since she could not tell anyone that she was sexually active, she decided to have a hymen reconstruction surgery. “It was the first question my to-be groom asked when we were granted half an hour alone.” Nita spent ₹60,000 on the half-hour procedure.

In an April 2015 report in indiatimes.com, Dr. Anup Dhir, a cosmetologist from Apollo Hospital, said, ‘There’s been an increase of 20-30% in these surgeries annually. The majority of women who opt for this surgery are in the 20 to 30 age group.’

* * * *

I went to visit a single friend in her 40s who lives in a plush apartment complex in Thane. As my rented car entered the imposing iron gates, a lady security officer asked which apartment I was visiting. When I told her my friend’s name and flat number, she smirked: ‘Oh, the madam who lives by herself? Akeli? Not married?’

In the course of my interviews with 3,000 single urban women across India whose voices are integral to breaking the stigmatised silence around singlehood, I came across Shikha Makan, whose documentary Bachelor Girls is on the same subject.

Shikha spoke of being in the advertising industry, of keeping late hours. “From the first day, we felt uncomfortable. The watchman stared at us, as if he wanted to find out what we were up to.” Once, when she returned home at 2 a.m., a male colleague escorted her home. But when they reached the gate, the watchman stopped them and called the society chairman who accused Shikha of running a brothel. He threatened to throw her out.

“I called my father, who gave him a piece of his mind, and we continued to stay there. But we felt extremely uncomfortable. Then, the harassment started; someone would ring our bell at 3 a.m. or write nasty stuff on the walls. We decided to leave.”

* * * *

Ruchhita Kazaria, 35 and single, born to a Marwari family, started her own advertising agency, Arcee Enterprises, in 2004. She has since faced backlash for trying to conduct business without the backing of a husband’s surname or the validation of a male partner. Running her own company for the past 12 years has led to Ruchhita believing that “women in general, unfortunately, are still predominantly perceived as designers, back-office assistants, PR coordinators, anything but the founder-owner of a business entity.”
Sans arm candy

“In October 2014, a friend asked if I was “secretly” dating someone, probably finding it difficult to digest that a single woman could head a company minus a male counterpart and socialise sans arm candy,” she wrote to me. Within 15 minutes, the friend had sought to enrol Ruchhita with couples and groups that participated in swapping, threesomes and orgies, encouraging her to be a part of this ‘discreet’ group, to ‘hang loose’.

With single women, it’s their sexuality that’s always at the forefront of social exchanges, not their minds or talents.

* * * *

‘What did you say?’ the girl at the next table squeals, her eyes glinting.

The boy’s chest heaves as she shoves in the returned change into his shirt pocket.

‘I am a feminist,’ I say, suddenly, protectively.

Then before the boy can say something, I add, ‘and I am single, 40. So?’

The girl pushes her chair back.

‘I’m Payal,’ she swallows hard.

‘I’m Riya, 54, divorced, two kids, that’s my son,’ the lady sitting behind them walks over to the girl’s table.

‘Amio single, feminist, war widow,’ says another woman who has just walked in. ‘Can I have your table please after you leave? Bad knees!’

The boy looks genuinely puzzled.

‘I hate cats. But I love sex,’ my friend pipes up.

We burst out laughing.

‘Single, huh?’ the boy barks.

‘No, but my husband is away on work in another city, so maybe, umm, okay, just feminist,’ she grits her teeth.

Five of us then make a curious semi-circle. Standing around the girl, who wraps her hands around her shoulders.

We watch him stomp off and leave. The girl looks at me. I hold my friend’s hand. The older lady touches my back. The woman waiting for the table clumsily clicks a selfie.

And just like that, in the middle of an ordinary, noisy restaurant, we become the same. A statistic. A story.

Men Only: Inside the charity fundraiser where hostesses are put on show

Madison Marriage in The Financial Times

At 10pm last Thursday night, Jonny Gould took to the stage in the ballroom at London’s Dorchester Hotel. “Welcome to the most un-PC event of the year,” he roared. 

Mr Gould — who presented Channel 5’s Major League Baseball show — was there to host a charity auction, the centrepiece of a secretive annual event, the Presidents Club Charity Dinner. 

The gathering’s official purpose is to raise money for worthy causes such as Great Ormond Street Hospital, the world-renowned children’s hospital in London’s Bloomsbury district. 

Auction items included lunch with Boris Johnson, the British foreign secretary, and afternoon tea with Bank of England governor Mark Carney. 

But this is a charity fundraiser like no other. 

Auction lots included a lunch with foreign secretary Boris Johnson and former England cricketer Ian Botham. 

It is for men only. A black tie evening, Thursday’s event was attended by 360 figures from British business, politics and finance and the entertainment included 130 specially hired hostesses. 

All of the women were told to wear skimpy black outfits with matching underwear and high heels. At an after-party many hostesses — some of them students earning extra cash — were groped, sexually harassed and propositioned. 

The event has been a mainstay of London’s social calendar for 33 years, yet the activities have remained largely unreported — unusual, perhaps, for a fundraiser of its scale. 

The questions raised about the event have been thrown into sharp relief by the current business climate, when bastions of sexual harassment and the institutionalised objectification of women are being torn down. 

The Financial Times last week sent two people undercover to work as hostesses on the night. Reporters also gained access to the dining hall and surrounding bars. 

Over the course of six hours, many of the hostesses were subjected to groping, lewd comments and repeated requests to join diners in bedrooms elsewhere in the Dorchester. 

Hostesses reported men repeatedly putting hands up their skirts; one said an attendee had exposed his penis to her during the evening. 

WPP, the FTSE 100 advertising conglomerate, sponsored a table at the event as it has in previous years. Martin Sorrell, chief executive, was not present this year — though he has attended in the past. 

Andrew Scott, its chief operating officer for Europe, hosted the table in his absence. Other table sponsors included CMC Markets, the UK-listed spread betting company, and Frogmore, the London-based real estate investment business. 

A seating plan for last week’s event seen by the FT listed those due to attend as including well-known British business figures such as Philip Green of Arcadia Group, Dragons’ Den star Peter Jones, and Ocado boss Tim Steiner. 

Financiers on the seating plan included Henry Gabay, founder of hedge fund Duet Group, and Makram Azar, the head of Barclays’ investment bank’s Middle East business. From the world of politics were Nadhim Zahawi, newly appointed undersecretary of state for children and families, and Jonathan Mendelsohn, a Labour peer and party fundraiser. It is not clear whether those listed all turned up on the night. 

The comedian David Walliams was the host for the evening. Previous attendees have included Michael Sherwood, a former vice-chairman of Goldman Sachs, and Poju Zabludowicz, a Finnish real estate billionaire and Conservative party donor. 

Current and past supporters provide a roll call of British wealth and business influence: patrons include high-end developer Nick Candy; former Formula 1 magnate Bernie Ecclestone; and TV presenter Vernon Kay. CMC Markets founder Peter Cruddas is also a regular attendee. 

The event has a laudable fundraising aim with prestigious prizes offered for auction. During the three decades The Presidents Club has been running, it has raised more than £20m for charity. Thursday’s event alone raised more than £2m. 

The organisation’s charitable trust has two joint chairmen: Bruce Ritchie, a Mayfair property developer who founded Residential Land, and David Meller, from the luxury good specialist Meller Group, who also sits on the board of the Department for Education and the Mayor’s Fund for London. 

But the auction offers a hint of the evening’s seedier side. Lots included a night at Soho’s Windmill strip club and a course of plastic surgery with the invitation to: “Add spice to your wife.” 

The accompanying brochure included a full-page warning that no attendees or staff should be sexually harassed. The glossy auction catalogue distributed to attendees during the evening included multiple images of Marilyn Monroe dressed in revealing, tight dresses. 

The nature of the occasion was hinted at when the hostesses were hired. The task of finding women for the dinner is entrusted to Caroline Dandridge, founder of Artista, an agency specialising in hosts and hostesses for what it claims to be some of the “UK’s most prestigious occasions”. 

At their initial interviews, women were warned by Ms Dandridge that the men in attendance might be “annoying” or try to get the hostesses “pissed”. One hostess was advised to lie to her boyfriend about the fact it was a male-only event. “Tell him it’s a charity dinner,” she was told. 

“It’s a Marmite job. Some girls love it, and for other girls it’s the worst job of their life and they will never do it again . . . You just have to put up with the annoying men and if you can do that it’s fine,” Ms Dandridge told the hostess. 

Two days before the event, Ms Dandridge told prospective hostesses by email that their phones would be “safely locked away” for the evening and that boyfriends and girlfriends were not welcome at the venue. 

The uniform requirements also became more detailed: all hostesses should bring “BLACK sexy shoes”, black underwear, and do their hair and make-up as they would to go to a “smart sexy place”. Dresses and belts would be supplied on the day. 

For those who met the three specific selection criteria (“tall, thin and pretty”) a job paying £150, plus £25 for a taxi home, began at 4pm. 

The backgrounds of the dozen or more hostesses met by reporters were varied: many were students, hoping to launch careers as lawyers or marketing executives; others juggled part-time jobs as actresses, dancers or models and did occasional hostessing work to make ends meet. 

Upon arrival at the Dorchester, the first task given to the hostesses was to sign a five-page non-disclosure agreement about the event. Hostesses were not given a chance to read its contents, or take a copy with them after signing. 

At first, hostesses were assembled in the Dorchester’s Orchard Room, where a team of hair and make-up artists prepped women for the evening ahead. During the pre-event preparations, some of the women new to hostess work sought advice from those with more experience. The feedback was mixed. 

A number of the hostesses seemed excited about the evening ahead. It was a fun night, they said, especially as — unlike most hostessing assignments — you could drink on the job. 

One experienced hostess acknowledged that a portion of the men were likely to be “arseholes”, but said others were “hilarious”. “It really depends on the luck of the draw,” she added. 

Others were more apprehensive. One woman who had last worked at the event five years ago sighed to herself: “I can’t believe I’m here again.” 

Towards 7pm, during a staff buffet dinner, Ms Dandridge entered wearing a smart black suit and gave a briefing; she said if any of the men became “too annoying”, the hostesses should contact her. 

Hostess uniforms were distributed — short tight black dresses, black high heels and a thick black belt resembling a corset. Once dressed, the hostesses were offered a glass of white wine during the final countdown to their entrance into the ballroom. 

As the 8pm start time approached, all of the hostesses were told to form two lines in height order, tallest women first, ready to parade across the stage as music began to boom across the venue: “Power”, by British girl band Little Mix. 

Entering in twos from opposite sides on to a stage positioned at the front of the ballroom, hostesses presented themselves to the men before walking towards their allocated tables alongside dinner guests. This continued until all 130 women were spread across the room. 

With the dinner properly under way, the hostess brief was simple: keep this mix of British and foreign businessmen, the odd lord, politicians, oligarchs, property tycoons, film producers, financiers, and chief executives happy — and fetch drinks when required. 

A number of men stood with the hostesses while waiting for smoked salmon starters to arrive. Others remained seated and yet insisted on holding the hands of their hostesses. 

It was unclear why men, seated at their tables with hostesses standing close by, felt the need to hold the hands of the women, but numerous hostesses discussed instances of it through the night. For some, this was a prelude to pulling the women into their laps. Meanwhile champagne, whisky and vodka were served. 

On stage, entertainers came and went. It was soon after a troupe of burlesque dancers — dressed like furry-hatted Coldstream Guards, but with star-shaped stickers hiding nipples — that one 19-year-old hostess, recounted a conversation with a guest nearing his seventies: who had asked her, directly, whether she was a prostitute. She was not. “I’ve never done this before, and I’m never doing it again,” she said later. “It’s f***ing scary.” 

According to the accounts of multiple women working that night, groping and similar abuse was seen across many of the tables in the room. 

Another woman, 28, with experience of hostess work, observing the braying men around her said this was significantly different to previous black tie jobs. At other events, men occasionally would try to flirt with her, she said, but she had never felt uncomfortable or, indeed, frightened. 

She reported being repeatedly fondled on her bottom, hips, stomach and legs. One guest lunged at her to kiss her. Another invited her upstairs to his room. 

Meanwhile, Artista had an enforcement team, made up of suited women and men, who would tour the ballroom, prodding less active hostesses to interact with dinner guests.

Outside the women’s toilets a monitoring system was in place: women who spent too long were called out and led back to the ballroom. A security guard at the door was on hand, keeping time. 

At 10pm, the main money-raising portion of the evening got under way: the charity auction, where the lots on offer ranged from a supercharged Land Rover to the right to name a character in Mr Walliams’ next children's book. 

Richard Caring, who made his fortune in the retail sourcing business before scooping up a long list of London’s most fashionable restaurants, including The Ivy and Scott’s, rounded off the money-raising portion of the evening with a successful £400,000 bid to place his name on a new High Dependency Unit at the Evelina London children’s hospital for sick children. 

It was a moment of respite for the women, most of whom had been allowed to return to the Orchard Room. Some were excited to have been offered jobs by men in the room. Others had been offered large tips, which they had been obliged to decline. One woman struggled to re-apply her eyeliner. “I’m so drunk,” she said apologetically, blaming tequila shots at her table. 

The women filed back into the ballroom at 11pm for the final hour of the main event, which would be followed by an “after-party” elsewhere in the hotel. 

Most hostesses had been told they would be required to stay until 2am. One was told that this final leg of the evening offered a chance to drink what she wanted and seek out those men she found “most attractive”. 

The after-party was held in a smaller room off the main lobby at the Dorchester, packed tight with guests and women. 

According to the 28-year-old hostess, while men danced and drank with a set of women on one side of the room, a line of younger women were left seated on a banquette at the back of the room, seemingly dazed. “They looked shocked and frightened, exhausted by what had happened,” she said. 

Meanwhile, in the centre of the room, Jimmy Lahoud, 67, a Lebanese businessman and restaurateur, danced enthusiastically with three young women wearing bright red dresses. 

“You look far too sober,” he told her. Filling her glass with champagne, he grabbed her by the waist, pulled her in against his stomach and declared: “I want you to down that glass, rip off your knickers and dance on that table.”

In a statement the Dorchester said it had a zero-tolerance policy regarding harassment of guests or employees. “We are unaware of any allegations and should we be contacted we will work with the relevant authorities as necessary,” it said. 

The Presidents Club said: “The Presidents Club recently hosted its annual dinner, raising several million pounds for disadvantaged children. The organisers are appalled by the allegations of bad behaviour at the event asserted by the Financial Times reporters. Such behaviour is totally unacceptable. The allegations will be investigated fully and promptly and appropriate action taken.” 

Ms Dandridge of Artista stated: “This is a really important charity fundraising event that has been running for 33 years and raises huge amounts of money for disadvantaged and underprivileged children’s charities. There is a code of conduct that we follow, I am not aware of any reports of sexual harassment and with the calibre of guest, I would be astonished.” 

None of the trustees of the charity provided a comment for publication. 

Harvey Goldsmith, a former trustee, said he was “gobsmacked” by the accounts of sexual harassment taking place at the event. “I’m totally shocked to be quite frank,” he said. 

The BoE said: “The Bank of England did not approve any prize for auction on the occasion described nor would it have for that organisation under its guidelines for charitable giving.” 

Mr Walliams declined to comment. 

Mr Caring said he “was not aware of any of the alleged incidents”. 

Barry Townsley, a well-known stockbroker and lifetime president of The Presidents Club who helped to set up the charity, said he had not attended the dinner for a decade. He added that it was previously “very nice and civilised” and a “mild-mannered charity”. “What goes on now is not my business,” he said.

A travesty of divorce: Triple talaq has nothing to do with religion

Tabish Khair in The Hindu



It is easy to blame political parties for the mess around the triple talaq issue. But before doing so, one has to put the matter in perspective: it is not political ‘manipulation’ that came first; triple talaq already existed. Can you really blame others for tossing stones into your house when you have a gaping hole in the roof?

True, only a minuscule percentage of Muslim men practised triple talaq, but still the number of afflicted women ran in the tens of thousands. There was no justification for it — legal, political or social. There wasn’t even a convincing theological argument in favour of it, as the Shias wisely accepted.

Rashly rejecting a constructive say in the matter (and, once again, failing to position itself on the progressive side of history), a section of the so-called Sunni leadership in India is now resorting to various other objections — some of which are justified and many of which are not — against the law that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government seeks to pass to stop triple talaq.

This unholy mix of objections has even confused Muslims who were against triple talaq, partly because of the general suspicion that Muslims bear towards the BJP. This suspicion is misplaced at times, but it is not groundless: if many Muslim leaders have failed to build bridges, many BJP politicians and (more often) their acolytes have also trumpeted their dislike for Muslims and everything Muslim. It has been a mutual failure of the sort that no nation can afford.


Need for a law

Despite the reasons for suspicion among Muslims, there is a pressing need to legislate on this issue. Triple talaq is not going to go away without a law against it. Perhaps this could have been a possibility if Sunni leaders had collaborated in delegitimising it publicly. But having chosen to miss that chance, they have left the government — BJP or not — with no option but to pass a law against triple talaq.

Legislation against triple talaq is not a law against divorce, as has been made out in some Muslim quarters. It is simply a law that ensures equal rights to the wife. Its purpose is to ensure that a husband does not abandon his wife outside a proper legal set-up, which may obtain some rights for the woman after years in a marriage. Of these rights, financial maintenance is central in a place like India, where often wives ‘do not work’ (read: wives work at home but without remuneration) or their earnings are appropriated by their husbands.

The greatest failure on the part of so-called Sunni leaders has been their inability to see triple talaq as part of a major social problem that has nothing to do with religion: wife abandonment. But viewing the matter through their own set of saffron-tinted glasses (as against the green-tinted ones of the Sunni leadership), the BJP too has failed to see triple talaq as a type of wife abandonment, which exists in other forms and other communities too. It is common knowledge that far more (Hindu) wives are abandoned by their Hindu husbands without a divorce than (Muslim) wives are ‘divorced’ with a summary triple talaq by their Muslim husbands.


Abandonment by the husband

Please note that wife abandonment is not the same as the decision by a married couple — Hindu, Muslim, or whatever — to live separately without suing for divorce, if this decision is mutual, legally negotiable by both parties, and without any undue pressure on either party. Wife abandonment involves a one-sided decision by the husband to live separately from the wife, without providing her with legal and mutually negotiated maintenance, and either refusing to divorce her, if she should so desires, or divorcing her arbitrarily and without equal legal recourse. Triple talaq is a form of such an arbitrary divorce, a travesty of divorce. But it is by no means the only form of wife abandonment — within or without Muslim communities.

If triple talaq is seen as a type of wife abandonment, the government could come up with a better law than the current proposal. The proposed law seems to actually recognise triple talaq as effecting a divorce, while penalising the husband with criminal sanctions. This is illogical and provides the wife with no real protection. Instead, triple talaq should be considered a type of wife abandonment, along with other versions in all communities. It should not be accepted as an effective divorce, but as abandonment by the husband and grounds for the wife to obtain a divorce in her favour. Its ‘use’ should be automatically converted into a case of legal divorce through the law courts, which can then implement the conditions of divorce in favour of the wife, with added penalties on the husband.

As men resort to triple talaq and other forms of wife abandonment only to shirk their financial responsibility, this would be a far more effective course than needless criminalisation.

No law is foolproof. Even laws against murder can be misused, and they do not eradicate the incidence of murder. One cannot demand a foolproof law or a non-punitive ‘law’ (as that would be no law in effect!), but one has every right to expect a comprehensive and fair law. Countries are built with such laws. And they can be written, if we take off our variously tinted glasses.

Trump an evil genius who wrongfoots opponents who underestimate him

Gideon Rachman in The Financial Times 

When Donald Trump described himself as a “very stable genius”, even some of his supporters sniggered. The US president is clearly not a genius in any normal sense of the word. Rex Tillerson, his own secretary of state, is reputed to have described his boss as a “f***ing moron”. 

 But Mr Trump has a legitimate claim to three other kinds of “genius”: political genius, instinctive genius and evil genius. Moral disgust with Mr Trump means that his opponents are reluctant to credit him with any kind of intelligence or success. But that kind of thinking, while understandable, is also dangerous. It is one reason why the president frequently wrongfoots his opponents. 

 As Mr Trump pointed out, when making his own immodest claim to “genius”, he achieved something unprecedented in modern American history. He was a complete political outsider who won the presidency on his first attempt. His enemies would point to the current government shutdown to suggest that the president is nonetheless completely unfit to govern. But Trump supporters will respond by pointing to a growing economy, and the passage of the first large-scale tax reform in more than 30 years. 

 Mr Trump campaigned on themes — protectionism, isolationism, opposition to immigration — that the political establishment was convinced were sure-fire losers, and even un-American. His political instincts told him otherwise. Steve Bannon, Mr Trump’s estranged campaign manager, was the man with the grand theories about economics and culture, larded with references to obscure and sinister European philosophers. Mr Trump was guided by an instinct that told him that he could smash taboos and not just fail to pay a price, but actually be rewarded. 


 His ideas about race and immigration are nasty — but they are also widely shared, and not just in America 


The number of Mr Trump’s offences against truth and decency are too long to remember, let alone list. But they have a common theme. Time and again the mainstream media (of which I am a proud member) would proclaim that he had gone too far this time and that he was surely finished. Time and again, Mr Trump would prove them wrong and come back stronger. The things that failed to kill him politically — in particular racism and misogyny — actually made him stronger. 

 That is why it is also legitimate to describe Mr Trump as an “evil” genius. He has deliberately used lies and offensive language to stoke up America’s culture wars and racial tensions, confident that he will benefit politically. There is a direct connection between the current row about the president’s complaint about immigration from “shithole countries” and the campaign that launched his political career — the “birther” lie that President Barack Obama was not born in the US. 

 Mr Trump and many of his supporters are tacitly defending the idea of America as a “white country”. The president’s opponents are right to describe this as a racist vision. But they may be wrong in thinking that this is a decisive argument. By the 2040s, the US is predicted to be “majority-minority”. Whites will be still be the largest ethnic group in the country, but they will be less than 50 per cent of the population. By railing against Mexicans, Muslims and Haitians, and calling for more immigration from Norway, Mr Trump is appealing directly to voters who feel angry about that racial and demographic shift. The current government shutdown is also linked to these issues, since it is caused by the president’s refusal to accept an amnesty for illegal immigrants who arrived as children. 

 It should never be forgotten that a majority of white Americans voted for Mr Trump. Are these voters likely to turn away in disgust now because of the president’s “shithole country” comments? Or are they more likely quietly to agree? The record suggests that Mr Trump knows exactly what he is doing. 

 His ideas about race and immigration are nasty — but they are also widely shared, and not just in America. Japan accepted 28 refugees in the whole of 2016, and precisely three in the first half of 2017. It is virtually impossible for non-ethnic Chinese to gain citizenship in the People’s Republic of China, whose citizenship laws make explicit reference to “Chinese blood”. The EU has been split down the middle by the Polish and Hungarian governments’ refusal to accept EU-mandated quotas of refugees. The demand to “take back control” of British borders was fundamental to Britain’s Brexit vote. And the decline in Angela Merkel’s political fortunes in Germany has been closely linked to the chancellor’s decision to open her country’s borders to more than 1m refugees. 

 No European country has yet elected a Trump figure. But the continent’s politicians are tying themselves in knots trying to combine liberal principles with practical politics. President Emmanuel Macron speaks the language of tolerance, but is actually speeding up deportations of illegal migrants and tightening border controls. And nobody in Ms Merkel’s CDU party is campaigning for the Hungarian government to rip down the border walls that helped to stop the flow of refugees into Germany. 

 The fears and hatreds that the US president exploits exist well beyond his base. Liberal politicians need to find more effective policies and language to deal with those fears — or the “very stable genius” may continue to outsmart them.

I founded Ukip. It’s a national joke now and should disappear

Alan Sked in The Guardian




I founded the Anti-Federalist League in 1991 to take Britain out of what became the European Union. The party was renamed Ukip - the UK Independence party – in 1993 and was a thoroughly mainstream one. It had policies on a wide range of issues but not immigration, not then seen as being controversial. Its membership form stated it had no prejudices against foreigners or lawful minorities of any kind. All that changed after I resigned as leader in 1997 to devote myself exclusively to academic life.

Before I left, I expelled Nigel Farage and two others from the party. They had convened a public convention in Basingstoke to examine why I had not won the 1997 general election. Media representatives and others were invited but not me. I, of course, would have explained that with fewer than 200 candidates, only £40,000 in the bank, no media coverage or name recognition, and with a wealthy Referendum party as well as the major ones to fight, there was never any chance of winning an election.

In any case, the Ukip national executive committee expelled them for bringing the party into disrepute, but really for their embarrassing political naivety and stupidity – qualities that they infused into the party when, after a costly legal battle Ukip could not afford to continue, they were restored to membership. Farage, of course, never ever managed to get himself elected as an MP in 20 years, or get any other Ukip candidate (save a couple of Tory turncoats) into parliament.

Yet, despite the lack of brainpower, Ukip was saved from oblivion by two external factors. First, in 1999, the EU changed the voting system for the European parliament, allowing parties with very low votes to enter. This allowed Ukip to become the default protest party in European elections, although its MEPs did little other than collect their salaries and expenses.

This enabled the party to appear on the BBC’s Question Time but brought no political gains domestically. Farage was not interested in ideas, policies or recruiting decent candidates. Only immigration mattered to him. He himself could joyfully describe Ukip’s 2010 manifesto as “drivel, sheer drivel”. The party that year secured only 3.1% of the vote, and fewer than one million votes. It is important to remember this.

However, it was now saved by another external factor. Nick Clegg took the suicidal decision to enter a coalition with David Cameron’s Tories, agreed to triple university tuition fees and back austerity. All this caused the demise of the Lib Dems and their replacement by Ukip as the default protest party domestically. This was already clear by the 2012 local elections and in the 2015 general election, when Ukip won more than 11% of the vote. 

By then, of course, Cameron had committed himself to a referendum on EU membership, which he lost in 2016. Michael Gove and Boris Johnson secured Brexit; Farage, a toxic and divisive figure, was kept at arm’s length and success came in spite of him, not on account of him. (Only Donald Trump believed the opposite.)

Since the referendum Ukip has fallen apart. With a leave vote achieved and Farage gone, it has suffered from poor and eccentric leadership, falling poll ratings (less than 2% in the 2017 general election) and a general perception that Brexit can be left to the Tories.

The love life of its present leader has made it a national joke and the party’s MEPs and so-called front bench have deserted him. Indeed, Ukip may not be able to afford to run a new leadership election. As its founder I can only suggest that it should now dissolve itself. There may be a need for a party to hold the Tories to account over Brexit but that is not Ukip. It now lacks all political credibility and provokes laughter rather than sympathy. It is high time therefore for it to disappear.

Pioneering Britain has a rethink on privatisation

 Jonathan Ford and Gill Plimmer in The Financial Times

It was one of the most influential reports ever written by a modern British economist — and perhaps the most rushed. 

Stephen Littlechild, then a little-known academic, was commissioned by Margaret Thatcher’s government in October 1982 to design a regulatory mechanism that would prevent Britain’s soon-to-be privatised telecoms monopoly, BT, from exploiting its position and gouging the public. 

The work was urgent. The prime minister wished to push through legislation that would enable the company to be sold as soon as possible, making it a pioneer for the privatisation of public utilities that she hoped would create a new shareholding democracy in Britain. She needed the report by January 14 1983, which Prof Littlechild said gave him just “10 working weeks (allowing for Christmas!)”. 

 His formula “was invented between 5 and 7 January 1983” allowing just a single week “to write it up in a plausible way, test it against the specified criteria, [and] conclude that it was the best available option”, Prof Littlechild recalled. 

Fortunately, “RPI minus x” passed muster not only with Mrs Thatcher, but also with BT’s investment bankers, SG Warburg, which thought it vastly preferable to the profit ceiling used by US utilities. “It was politically defensible and even attractive,” recalled Prof Littlechild. It won the day. 

The Littlechild formula has gone on to serve as the template for all UK regulation of privatised utilities. In modified form, it sits at the heart of the mechanisms that still regulate prices set by electricity and water companies. 

That means it is also at the centre of the divide in British politics, which in the past two years has fractured about the merits of allowing private companies to run essential utilities that are natural monopolies. 

After a series of scandals and controversies over poor service, high prices and generous payouts to shareholders, the country that was the global frontrunner in privatisation is rethinking how to run its essential utilities. Almost three decades after they were sold off, critics — and many voters — believe that investors have run rings around the watchdogs set up by the government to regulate the industries. 

Under Jeremy Corbyn, the opposition Labour party has come out firmly for the renationalisation of rail, water, energy and the postal service. 

At the Labour party’s annual conference in September, the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, promised to bring “ownership and control of the utilities and key services into the hands of people who use and work in them”. 

Labour’s attack has exposed the fragility of public consent for private utilities. An October poll conducted by the UK’s far-from-socialist Legatum Institute showed 83 per cent of respondents favoured the nationalisation of water. For energy, the figure was only slightly lower, at 77 per cent. 

“If you look at this list, you see the public most objects to private ownership of natural monopolies — ones where there is little real possibility of injecting meaningful competition,” says Martin Blaiklock, an infrastructure expert and former head of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development’s power and energy division. 

 Prof Littlechild’s regulatory system was supposed to substitute for competition, giving consumers a fair price while also offering private owners incentives to innovate and find efficiencies. Charges were set to give operators a reasonable return on their capital assets, indexed for inflation (the retail price index) less a certain amount each year (x) to spur them to drive productivity. 

 What makes Britain’s regime different from the one for private US utilities, for instance, is that these returns are not capped. “We didn’t like the idea of an effective 100 per cent tax on efficiencies over a fixed rate of return,” recalls Prof Littlechild. “Margaret Thatcher’s economics adviser, Alan Walters, was particularly offended by the cap. He said: ‘We can’t do this. It’s socialism!’” 

Instead, every few years the watchdog estimates the costs the company is likely to face in the next regulatory period. If the company can achieve greater savings, it is permitted to keep 100 per cent of the extra it makes. 

 This sounds logical enough. It has helped to usher dozens of utilities into the private sector and support huge investment. But critics allege the system has delivered neither the discipline nor the innovation that was promised. They think regulators have been too lenient in setting the efficiency targets that are used to justify extra returns for private capital. 

Take, for instance, the water industry, which was sold off in 1989. Cathryn Ross, until recently the chief executive of Ofwat, boasted that her organisation’s efficiency demands had saved consumers £120 off bills (which currently average about £400) since privatisation. That may sound a large number, but it equates to an annual productivity improvement of just 1 per cent. It is well below even the anaemic 1.5 per cent average rate for the UK economy over the same period. 

“By giving the companies an easy ride, the regulator has ensured that customers’ bills have risen more than they should have,” says David Hall, director of the Public Services International Research Unit at Greenwich university. In the case of water, they have gone up by about 40 per cent above the rate of inflation since 1989, although the steepest increases took place in the first decade after privatisation. 

Second, regulators have paid too little attention to the way companies structure their finances. Finance costs are a key factor watchdogs weigh when setting prices. Yet they have consistently overestimated these expenses during a long period of falling interest rates. 

That, combined with a reluctance to regulate companies’ balance sheets, has resulted in an orgy of borrowing, as this allows owners to achieve “savings” that have more to do with financial engineering than effort and enterprise. Stratospheric debts — including high yielding shareholder loans — have also suppressed tax revenues. Thames Water, for instance, has paid almost no corporation tax for the past decade. 

In 1989, the water industry in England and Wales was privatised with no net debt. Yet almost three decades on, it has built up borrowings of £42bn. 

All but three of the 10 English water companies have been taken off the stock market by private equity investors — many backed by foreign sovereign wealth funds and pension schemes. In the meantime, all the industry’s post-tax profits have been carried off in the form of dividends. Shareholders’ funds have barely budged since 1989. 

A comparison with Scottish Water is instructive. The Scottish utility was not privatised in 1989, but remained in the public sector. Like its southern cousins, it has been forced into a heavy programme of investment, much of it at the behest of the EU.  

Yet unlike the English utilities, it remains relatively unleveraged. Its borrowings of £3.8bn represent just 48 per cent of the value of its regulated assets, as against the 65-80 per cent that is prevalent in England. Meanwhile, the average bill from Scottish Water was £357 last year — 10 per cent lower than the English average of £395. 

Some believe that tweaks to the regulatory regime could make the system function better. Prof Littlechild argues, for instance, that instead of keeping 100 per cent of any extra efficiency gains, these could be split with the customer. “That way there would be some community of interest,” he suggests. 

Mr Blaiklock, a longstanding critic of excessive leverage in utilities, believes the watchdog should intervene much more in companies’ financial affairs, which he thinks are unsustainable in the long term, especially if interest rates rise. “The regulator should be given stronger executive powers to intervene in extreme financial engineering initiatives and aggressive tax tactics.” 

Faced with mounting criticism, watchdogs are making changes. Ofwat is proposing to alter the payment terms for water companies so that more of their money comes from hitting performance targets. 

Critics warn that this will make an already complex system even more baroque. “You have to question whether any system this involved can be transparent, when even people with an interest in getting to the bottom find it very hard,” says Mr Hall. The intricacy of the regulatory process also troubles Prof Littlechild, who notes that it takes about three years to decide the next regulatory settlement. “When we created it, I fondly imagined the regulator sitting down with the companies shortly before the expiry of each period and just setting a price,” he says. 

 Not everyone is convinced that tweaks are sufficient. Mr Hall argues that the regulatory system is inherently dysfunctional. “There is a fundamental contradiction between the regulator’s duty to protect consumers and its overarching duty to ensure that the companies have enough money to deliver investment,” he says. 

Prof Littlechild’s original idea with BT was that the watchdog would simply hold the fort for the consumer until competition arrived like the US cavalry. Permanent regulation is vulnerable to industry capture. “The problem is that the regulator spends all its time talking to the company and its investors,” says Mr Hall. 

Ofwat, for instance, has been criticised for its focus on investors rather than customers. While the watchdog sets aside two days a year to give presentations to the City of London, there is no forum for it to meet customers. 

While regulators do have the power to strip companies of their licences, this has been invoked only once in the water sector — when the collapse of Enron in 2001 forced Ofwat temporarily to take control of its Wessex Water. 

According to Mr Blaiklock, this lack of grip explains why privatisation has failed to achieve its primary purpose — of passing the operational and financial risks for the delivery of a public service to the private sector. London’s £4.2bn “super sewer”, for instance, is financed directly from customer bills, with households rather than the company bearing the risk of a complex project. 

Few developed countries have copied the British model in selling off whole utility networks to private entities. In Europe, the model has generally been to separate asset ownership from service provision and to grant private companies the right to operate concessions. 

In recent years, doubts about the governance and customer benefits have encouraged other countries to reverse this process — especially in water — and take these concessions back into municipal ownership. A study of French water services in 2004 found that the price of privately-delivered water was 16.6 per cent higher than in places where municipalities delivered the service. 

Similar arguments buttress the Labour party’s plans to bring utilities back into public ownership. 

Its proponents stress not efficiency, which they claim is much the same in either public or private sectors, but cost and accountability. A publicly-owned utility would not have to deliver the returns demanded by the private sector. 

A study by Greenwich university claims that refinancing utility debt and equity with government bonds and scrapping dividends could save £2.3bn a year. That is equivalent to a saving of almost £100 off the average £400 water bill. Public ownership would also remove all the incentives that, Mr Hall claims, encourage bosses to favour financial management over customers. 

 “These are local amenities supplying a basic service that ought to be properly accountable to local people,” he says. 

Other structural options involve introducing more competition by separating network ownership from the services, and auctioning limited concessions. The snag is that this would be extraordinarily expensive, requiring the state both to buy out the existing owners and then retender the operations. Taxpayers could end up paying twice — first to compensate existing investors and then potentially to reward the new operators. 

Lastly, there is the possibility of placing utilities in not-for-dividend entities, akin to Welsh Water, which was restructured in 2000. Although they would remain regulated entities, companies could use retained earnings only to invest in their assets or to cut customer bills. Shareholders and executives would no longer be able to skim off all the cream. 

There may be no cheap and easy answers to the problems facing Britain’s utilities, but the status quo is unlikely to hold. “What we can now see is that the regulatory regime is not robust enough,” says Mr Blaiklock. “We need to change that.”