Life as we know it ..........Chapter 14 Seven Sisters

Sharpe by name and sharp by nature.

English surnames were derived in the medieval years from nicknames that described the person's character, so that other people in the town or village would recognise who you were talking about. Hitherto, people just had first names.  But before the plagues that wiped out a third of the population in England, poulation was growing and there were too many Jacks and Jills, hence the introduction of surnames, family trait names. Smith for the blacksmith, Carpenter, Brown for the colour hair, and Sharpe for being keen, cunning and witty. Sharpe was a very popular name. The first one recorded in London 1273 as William  le Sharpe (Anglo Saxons were still under Norman Invasion influence).

So Sharpe by name and sharp by nature ( a welsh saying) has stuck. Even Allan in Celt North Wales can be seen over every door. It means "exit".  So the name fits the bill, as there has been many an exit for me, when others were not on my wavelength and did not appreciate my wit, especially as an answer, ha ha.

What follows are the Ides of March in my life. Loyalty, yes that is a two way thing, but often people expect it but don't show it, demonstrate it. One way traffic, leading to  a no through road cul de sac (more Norman influence! Thank goodness I was in the Saxon House at Grammar School, not  Norman, they were red, we were green, hate green, except in gardens !!)

The Case of the  Seven Sisters, the BBC and the Monopoly Commission.

When I was at the BBC, the TV screen emblem was the globe turning. I think the BBC reached its peak in the '80's  the time I  started there. BBC did cover world events world news, we brought stories to the TV screens of Britain from around the world. Even I made films in Spain, Portugal, Canada, America.

The BBC was all powerful, tremendous resources, skilled manpower built up since the birth of broadcasting in the 1930's. BBC employees felt that power. The power to influence. We dined with Parliamentarians, we influenced changes in the law, by bringing causes for concern to the attention of the authorities.

In the 90's petrol in Britain was expensive, as it is now. Heavily taxed, taxes on taxes, because it had two types of tax attached, customs duty and value added tax. 70% of the price of petrol was tax.

However in the 90's the supermarkets started to increase the competition with the main petrol suppliers. In America in the 20's the cartels had been broken up after it was found the petrol companies were consulting with each other fixing prices. Hence the name Seven Sisters.

Petrol is sold through a system called vertical integration. The Petrol Company owns it , drills for it, refines it, sells it. The supermarkets started to compete. They built their own pumps and forecourts and undercut the petrol companies prices by 10p a gallon. It was the only competition the petrol companies had ever had since 1900.

Now the petrol companies say the price of world crude is dictated by the markets, and they have no influence. They don't make much profit from selling petrol and diesel. So they say.

Today the price at the pumps is higher because of inflation, but the petrol companies sell at more or less the same price as the supermarkets, 20 years on from my programme.

20 years ago, my programme, told you the viewer, that petrol was petrol, there were only 7 refineries, and that the different brand tankers filled up at whatever refinery was near. BP in Hindenburg, Jet in Hull, Shell in Chester, Esso in Essex and so on. So BP Shell and Esso tankers as well as ASDA Tesco and Sainsburys supermarket tankers would fill up wherever. In Scotland, regardless of the brand owning the forecourt, you got BP petrol, because that was the refinery that supplied Scottish tankers. Welsh mainly had Texaco from Milford Haven.

The programme also stated that the oil companies could sell their petrol at the undercut supermarket price if they wanted to but they did not want to. Remember 10 years later they changed their minds.

Now I had been given the interim Monopolies commission report into petrol selling. I had it delivered to me in a brown paper envelope, exclusively.

The Government Monopolies Commission ahd the year before looked into the pub and beer industry and decided to make radical and decisive changes to the vertical integration in that business. No longer would brewers be allowed to brew and sell beer. They could chose to own breweries or pubs, not both.

The iterim report was equally as damning on the petrol companies.

My programme went out the month before the main report was published to beat the news and our broadcasting rivals. I was sure of my ground, of my stance.

After the programme Shell went ballistic, with 87 points of criticism, 84 of which I could counter. 3 of which I had to wait for the government report to be published.

Looking back, I was naive to think, little old Allan Sharpe, the boy from Willesden, London NW!0 could take on the Multinational Oil Conglomerates.

The Monopoly Commission  report when published had wholesales pages ripped out of the interim copy. Civil Servants got at, back tracking ?? Well the rug was pulled from under my feet. Never mind what happens today, and some may say I was proved right in time. Those 3 points I had to concede that were in the programme script and the final report no longer supported me.

All programmes are vetted by BBC lawyers, Journalist have to back up their claims, all t's crossed all i's dotted. That interim report was my reliance. But The Monopoly Commission rewrote the final draft. Did a complete u turn. Took no action like with the pubs, and said all was fair in the petrol world. Well money talks huh. Money has power and influence. My position was untenable as Deputy Editor. I was  demoted back to Senior Producer and had one year left at Watchdog. No allies, just deserters of a sinking ship. Except I am not the Titanic. I might list, I might get holed, but I go into dry dock, lick my wounds and come out again guns blazing.

I remember as a child , reading the story of HMS Hood. 1941 in the Second World War. I read encyclopaedias as a child. Fact not fiction apart from comics, the Beano and Dennis the Menace.
HMS Hood was Britain's biggest and most powerful battleship, the pride of the navy. Along with the battleship Prince of Wales it engaged Bismarck off the coast of Iceland. Bismarck was German and bigger. A threat to the Atlantic convoy lifeline to the British Isles . It had to be stopped, but at such a cost. 1300 crew were blown out of the sea, when a salvo from Bismarck hit the magazine weapons room on Hood and blew the ship up. there were 3 survivors. It was another devastating blow to Winston Churchill Britain's war Prime Minister. BUT, just before the Hood exploded, she fired one last salvo at Bismarck crippling it's steering. Prince of Wales had to retire badly damaged. However the British fleet was able to hunt the Bismark down and sink her eventually because of Hood's final salvo.

That taught me a lessons as a child. If you are going to go down, go down guns blazing and take as many of the bastards with you.

Life as we know it chapter 13 Write Off

You’ve either got it or ain’t got it.

You can learn about procedures, pass exams about law and technology. But you can’t learn “how to be an investigator”. You either have it or don’t have it.

My conclusion after years of experience and working with other people, officers, other agencies including the Police and CID.

Now the man on the Clapham Omnibus is renowned in law for his opinion as to what is right and what is wrong, though interestingly enough not what is legal or illegal. Now if we conducted a survey of men and women for that matter on Clapham Omnibus’s or any bus for that matter, I think our survey would say, most people would chose a policeman for an investigator’s job. Not so however, at least it should not be.

Most people, certainly most Officers in any government or non government organisation, rely on orders, red tape, officialdom, procedures…..in other words they do what they are told, left foot in front of right foot. Robots who obey commands from on high.

Initiative, wow, there is a naughty word. Certainly, gets noticed, since Margaret Thatcher’s reign of terror, gets frowned upon. Cold water baths to stifle it. Never mind results, never mind the public, the community. Do it by the book. In fact since Margaret Tatcher, there are now targets set to meet. Once met, you can put your feet up for the rest of the period and eat a cheese roll with a cup,  of coffee. So artificial are these targets and set my management who are judged on them, so they set them at achievable levels. Its not that difficult to figure out. It’s called cover your backside , lick others and go for the easy life.

I guess that is what always set me apart and why I had confrontation not only with the crooks in the outside world, but also with my bosses in the office. Instead of being enlightened and jumping on a band wagon of glory, they tried to apply a handbrake, because their little minds could not appreciate the bigger picture.

Katie Frost for instance. She paid £5,000 cash for a 2^nd hand Ford Fiesta car for her teanage daughter. The Frost Family were just ordinary folk, mum dad both worked, to bring up 2 daughters in a semi detached house in Chingford London E4, suburbia.

The car leaked as soon as it rained, and the car dealer who was Turkish and part of the bunting brigade of forecourts was not interested now he had his cash. So Kate Frost called our office and I took the call. As soon as I saw this car, to the trained eye, I was suspicious about it’s true history. It was shiny and blue, but under the bonnet there was blow paint, meaning it had been cheaply resprayed. So why? Checks on the VIN number of the car revealed it had been hitherto, involved in a head on collision in Lincolnshire. So that is why it leaked because it had been straightened out. But modern day cars are just a compressed metal sprung shell. If distorted they will never be the same again. This car was unfit for the road. It was a death trap.

10 years ago, most of the bunting brigade car delaers in the East End of London sold unroadworthy cars. So much so, that I joined forces with VOSA, the Government’s vehicle inspectorate. We had powers of entry at all reasonable times onto trade premises as Trading Standards Officers. It was na offence of obstruction to try to stop us. We just turned up and the trader, shop keeper, manufacturer, retailer, whoever had to drop everything and let us “inspect and examine, goods and records. More power than the Police. We only needed search warrants when we anticipated that normal visits would defeat the object and we needed to be accompanied  by force because we believed offences were being committed.

So after 4 years of these impromptu, unannounced visits where VOSA engineers would jack up and examine these for sale forecourt cars whilst I checked the paperwork, we cleaned up 80% of the car dealers. Their problem was, they did not want to spend money repairing a car till it was sold and till their was a comeback. The law stated their cars had to be fit to pass an MOT vehicle condition test while there was a price sticker in the windscreen. So cars with faulty brakes, steering, bald tyres, were given a prohibition notice, and the car dealer was taken to the Magistrates Court and fined.

That sort of work was proactive, to try to stop sales to the likes of Kate Frost. That sort of work was conducted , set up, and carried out, on MY OWN initiative. There were no edicts from on high. Why I hear you ask in amazement? Why? Because the powers at be, wanted targets met, so that quarterly and annual reports looked good and met the false criteria. These people earned their super salaries by sitting in front of a computer, making bar charts and filling in excel spread sheets, They never looked out of the window at the real world.

Kate Frost lived in the real world. £5,000 was real money. Paid for a lump of metal, road taxed, insured and on the public highway as they had no garage. The car could not be driven. I put the fear of god up the Turkish Car Dealer, when he refuse to give Mrs Frost her money back  and take the car back. He closed down and did a runner.

I summonsed him to court, I served the summonses on him personally. Yes I tracked hi down. In fact he never showed up at court. A warrant was issued for his arrest the 3^rd time he failed to show. I served that accompanied by local Police. Trading Standards do not have power of arrest. They have powers to track down offenders, even bank accounts, more powers again than the police requiring information from officialdom, but not arrest. It took 18 months to get Alkan to court, by which time the Magistrates, who are generally, lay, unpaid pillars of the community, had realised this crook was never going to own up for his misdeeds. They threatened him with custody unless he paid compensation to Mrs Frost. Even that was a legal argument with the Clerk of the Court as I had to show the court chapter and verse in law as to why Mrs Frost was so entitled. So Alkan , hey presto , dug into his deep pockets and pulled out the readies, yes 5 grand in £20 notes.

Now the moral of this story. I never gave up. Why? Because someone had to do something about  what was going on and when I looked round there was no one else  but me. Alkan was not going to get away with it, Alkan was not going to tell his mates he got away with it. There has to be a detterent, it has to be clearly visible, despite the system, depite no encouragement from on high, no instructions, no assistance. If anything only interference and obstruction, not in  just this case, but in many others and often behind my back.

Called a  “Maverick” , a loose cannon, I knew exactly where my barrel was pointing, and it was at anyone who got in my way. Hence now I write about it, instead of doing it. Once I was a “somebody” now I am a “nobody”…. Just me, because even I could not fight them all and win all the battles.

Investigators have it. They have hunches. They have a natural way of thinking. They think like the criminal, but they are on the other side. They side of right against wrong. They cannot be taught. They have a mentality.

I could step out of a van outside a greengrocers and spot that all his strawberries were not 8 ounces. I could stumble across the pub overcharging by 3p per drink, the butcher charging £2 extra for every Christmas Turkey in his window. The Sale that never was in the biggest Department Store in the area. 

I was called a trouble maker. When the press heralded the results, management viewed on with envious eyes. They could not do it. They did not know how. Maybe they should have, but getting results was not part of their interview when appointed, just arse licking. I was not a trouble maker. I just did not turn a blind eye. I had the biggest workload. I managed my own team. They followed me anywhere. It was fun. We liked our work, dull it was not. Courageous it was. I led by example they followed, again to the dismay of those in charge. I was not a trouble maker.

I was a trouble dealer.