Hard to ignore Rogers’ bearish view of Britain

What to make of investment guru Jim Rogers' damning of Britain's faltering economy? Ministers have been quick to rubbish Rogers, who reckons Gordon Brown's credit crunch strategy is flawed and that rather than bail out banks they should be left to collapse and regenerate again — without burdening the taxpayer.

There have even been dark mutterings in some official quarters that he's engaged in a shorting exercise, targeting British stocks.

"I would be outraged. Taxpayers were the innocent ones in all this," said Rogers.

He added he had much affection for the UK, including going to university here, but, oh dear, he could only call it as he saw it. "The fact is that the UK has had two things to sell to the world over the last 25 years. The North Sea [oil] and that's drying up — within a decade the UK is going to be importing oil — and the City of London. But the UK's financial asset is a disaster and it's not going to revive.

"Sterling has got to go lower over the next decade or two because when the North Sea dries up I do not know what the UK is going to sell to the world."

Should we take him seriously? Are ministers right to dismiss his outpourings? Well, people in the know tend to listen to Rogers, especially those who have seen him make his clients 43 times their money.

He also runs an investment fund with another guru, a certain George Soros, who also famously dumped the pound. Gordon and Co, before you rush to judge, how much, exactly, have you made for us?

Ye Olde Royal recession tour

Good to see His Royal Highness is, erm, getting down among the, erm, working chap thingies. The Prince of Wales is today embarking "on a tour of British companies that rely on traditional crafts" to show his "support for traditional British businesses". Will he be off to the West Midlands to support our metalbashers or turning up at a car plant or perhaps meeting those with ye olde skills of taking abuse on the phone in a call centre?

No, the Prince and the Duchess of Cornwall are going all the way to Savile Row to visit the Royal Warrant tailors at Gieves & Hawkes, Paxton and Whitfield cheese purveyors and John Lobb, the shoemakers. Of course.

Baskin's calorie catastrophe

Within a few of days of Essex-born Nigel Travis taking over as CEO of US coffee and food giant Dunkin' Brands, the company has won an award. However, it is probably one that it won't be publicising or that Travis wants. Men's Health magazine has declared its subsidiary's Baskin Robbins' Large Chocolate Oreo Milkshake the worst food in America 2009. At 2600 calories, the magazine called it a calorific catastrophe. Nigel, who earned his spurs at Grand Metropolitan in England, was headhunted from PapaJohn's Pizza to go to Dunkin', which is in a pitched battle with Starbucks and McDonald's over which will give Americans their morning coffee fix. As for that Chocolate Oreo shake, it looks a lot like the Cookie Bandit that Baskin Robbins UK sells here.

Cheeky Ryanair boss has a dig at Irish banks

Michael O'Leary's latest gambit to persuade investors of the generosity of his 748 million offer to buy Aer Lingus is a little below the belt. Says the Ryanair boss: "We are offering to pay almost as much in cash for Aer Lingus as the combined market value of Bank of Ireland and Allied Irish Banks."

* Will Michael Spencer's decision to pledge 123.4 million Icap shares cause a headache for someone? When they were pledged on 6 October, Icap's share price was 326.25p and the pledged stake was worth £402.6 million. Today, Icap's share price is down to 240.5p and the pledged shares are worth £296.8 million, which if City Spy's maths is correct, is nearly £106 million less. Some headache.

* Political correctness watch: CompeteFor is the service acting as a broker for contracts between prospective suppliers and London 2012. Campaign magazine reports that one advertising agency was sent a form which contained the question: "Is more than 50% of your organisation lesbian/gay man/bisexual/transgender owned or led? Yes, no or prefer not to say." What answer should you give if you want to win the order?

Trip down City's memory lane

Some wonderful nostalgia in Men and Money, six 45-minute documentaries on the City from the Sixties, now available on the BBC business website. In one, A Question of Confidence, the senior general managers of the clearing banks — the grammar-school educated former clerks who "look and sound like hard-headed provincials" — line up for interviewer Paul Ferris. As one says: "The expression the prudent banker' does mean something. After all, it isn't his money he's lending. He's lending his depositors' money, therefore he has a duty to the depositor to safeguard his funds." So 1964.

* Morrisons may have reported booming sales yesterday, thrashing its rivals, but the supermarkets chain should make sure it keeps chief executive Marc Bolland on message. Asked if the VAT cut was helping sales, the Dutchman said that "every little helps", the slogan — of course — of its great rival Tesco.

* Is the Pink 'Un full of pink 'uns? A day of action planned by the journalists' union at the FT yesterday over job cuts did not go so far as picketing but gentle leafleting as befits an organ of quiet reason. Highlight of the day was an address by Tony Benn to the assembled brothers and sisters. To think, the old leftie rebel rouser himself, feted at the capitalist trade manual...

* What would cause Robert Peston to be lost for words? How about the BBC's own affairs rather than the banks. Asked by Kirsty Wark what he made of the BBC's financial condition, the corporation's business editor was stumped. "I don't know enough about it," he admitted. "I'm
a great believer that you shouldn't comment if you haven't done your homework, and I haven't done my homework."