David Parkin gives the LEP lip, wants Victor Watson honoured and gets spooked by Halloween

HOW do you take less than £7m and turn it into £150m.

I don’t know, but the Leeds City Region Local Enterprise Partnership claims that grants and loans it is involved in could attract over £150m of public and private sector investment creating 3,500 jobs.

I think the key word here is “could”.

This week a press release from the LEP listed around £6.8m of grants given to Leeds City Region businesses through the Business Growth Programme (BGP) and loans from the Growing Places Fund (GPF).

It ranges from 10 grand for a small manufacturing company to the largest grant of £850,000 recently issued to Huddersfield-based baby products retailer Mamas & Papas.

Just one thing though. Don’t ask what the money is going to be used for because they won’t tell you.

Apparently the LEP are happy to say how much each firm has received but they won’t say what for because it is “commercially sensitive”.

But isn’t this public money? Shouldn’t both those that grant such funding and those who receive it be in some way accountable?

And if the projects the money is being used for are commercial projects, then surely the funding for them would be easily available through commercial channels like banks and other lenders?

And if they couldn’t get funding for these projects from the private sector then are they really viable projects and should the LEP be investing taxpayers’ money into them?

We’ll never know because they won’t tell us.
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VICTOR Watson is a Leeds business legend who should have been knighted years ago.

End of discussion.

When I see the honours list twice yearly my heart sinks. Too many names on the list are egocentric gong-hunters who have ticked the right boxes to get their honour.

So it was nice to see the City of Leeds honouring Victor this week with a top civic honour.

For service to the city for more than half a century, the 85-year-old was presented with a ‘Leeds Award’ by the Lord Mayor Coun Thomas Murray at a special ceremony held in the Civic Hall.

Our report had more positive comments from readers than any other story we’ve written this year.

So I am not alone with my views.

In fact I looked back to a column I wrote five years ago calling for it to happen, you can read it here.

One of the best public speakers I have ever seen, Victor’s career is studded with highlights, from developing Monopoly – which his father brought from the US to these shores – at John Waddington, to fighting off two hostile takeover bids from bullying tycoon Robert Maxwell.

He wrote a book about his experiences which is a great read.

But during his 60 year career he has never forgotten that community and civic pride is equally important and his work for charities, in education and voluntary organisations has been unstinting.

Victor’s lack of ego means he would never have gone looking for a title, indeed he may even have turned one down – that is the only reason I can come up with to explain why he hasn’t been knighted.

The statue of the Black Prince in City Square in Leeds is an imposing sculpture but has no relevance to the city. Perhaps we need one of Victor holding a Monopoly board and pack of Waddington’s playing cards sited next to it.

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I TOOK the opportunity to learn more about the stock market and the improving UK economy last week. It wasn’t at a seminar, it was actually over lunch with Brewin Dolphin’s Martin Payne and Paul Martin.

Conversation covered plenty of topics – both business and otherwise – and it was nice to hear that a recent Brewin Dolphin investment seminar in Leeds was titled ‘Reasons to be cheerful’.

The UK economy is starting to show signs of life and there is cause for optimism, was the message given by Ben Gutteridge, head of fund research at the investment management company. 

I have to say, things certainly looked rosy to me after such a convivial lunch.

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HAPPY Halloween!

Do me a favour.

America’s obsession with celebrating All Hallows’ Eve has well and truly crossed the Atlantic. Trick or treating by kids used to be the main scourge of Halloween but now adults appear to use it as an opportunity to dress up in ridiculous outfits and dance about groping pumpkins.

The event is a marketing dream. We had a box of Mr Kipling ‘Fiendish Fancies’ delivered to our office. The brightly decorated box contained eight orange fondant fancies.

So the formula, also followed by the sweet manufacturers, seems to be: put your bog standard product in a box or packet with images of witches and ghouls on it, call it a different, Halloween-related name, then stick a quid on the price.

Boo!

Have a nice weekend.

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