Friday High Five – the news this week

The one thing guaranteed to shift public opinion in this country is a sense that we are being taken for fools.

In this week’s news we’ve seen a few signs of a push back against the misuses of power, abuse of dominant position, and rip offs.

Obviously, and crucially the Grenfell report is shifting the dial on how we talk about housing.

But that sense of unfairness and loss of control sits behind the waves of anger over dynamic pricing.

People might accept it in the hotel and airline markets, because the flipside is you can get a cheap flight at non-peak times, or a night in a luxury hotel, if you play along with a system.

But there are no cheaper options for Taylor Swift or Oasis tickets. It is unjustifiable.

Actively pushed by two government ministers, the Competition and Markets Authority inquiry needs to move quickly to stamp out these rip offs across the entertainment industry.

There’s also a reason passengers are miffed about Manchester Airport. Everyone who travels through Terminals 1 and 3 knows it, staff at the Airport know it, and however much they question the methods of the Which? survey, the leadership at the Airport know it too. They are no longer fit for purpose.

It’s why the Airport Group have ambitions plans to create better terminals of the standard of the high quality Terminal 2. But they also have it within their power to do something about exorbitant and ever-increasing parking charges.

But we have been delving into the shocking state of Companies House this week. It is far too easy to set up companies using either ‘muppet’ directors overseas, entirely made-up people, or using stolen identities of established directors and companies.

It’s one thing to give a body like Companies House powers to investigate, quite another to resource it properly.

We also showed how hard and expensive it is for the Insolvency Service to close down a company, and to make a case for a court to ban a director, when crooks who don’t care about the law can easily and cheaply set up again within minutes.

As we say in our story this week, a company law regulator with prosecution powers is way overdue. Businesses, like consumers, are too vulnerable to bad practice and fall prey to out and out villains.

Have a great weekend.