Monthly Archives: March 2011

London firefighter firm recruiting Brits for UAE military support

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A UAE Hawk jet -part of Assetco's training programme. Pic courtesy http://www.militaryimages.com

The company that owns  and maintains London’s fire engines  is  recruiting British firefighter instructors to train the military in the United Arab Emirates.

They are offering tax-free salaries of £46,812 a year  for  British recruits just as Abu Dhabi has joined the Saudis to help Bahrain’s  rulers  put down dissent among pro democracy demonstrators in Bahrain in the most brutal way. Reports have included torture of nurses, removal of people from intensive care units so they can be left to die and intimidation and possible murder of hospital surgeons. See this Sunday Telegraph report  http://bit.ly/fNNvug

 UAE jet fighters are  also preparing to join the coalition of the willing against Colonel Gaddafi in Libya. They are planning to send 12 fighters and are blaming their civil unrest on the Iranians.

AssetCo, the  troubled fire privatisation company, is hoping to get £40m out of a £120m deal with the  Gulf State’s armed forces to boost its profitability. It has been facing severe problems in Britain, including having to raise £26m from investors and through a  share placing. Revenue and Customs has issued a winding up order against AssetCo seeking at least £4m and they have to pay off a debt to the state-owned Lloyds TSB.

The deal was one of the last negotiated by former chief executive, John Shannon, before he resigned after a huge row  with the rest of directors over the share placing.

 Now they are  desperate to recruit  trained staff so they can fulfill it. The advertisement promises a company car, free medical cover and flights home to Britain. See here. http://bit.ly/ftpdZi

The Telegraph report on Bahrain atrocities, the AssetCo contract and job advertisement can be seen together here. http://bitly.com/i4yYFk 

Matt Wrack, general secretary of the FBU, has written to David Cameron, to protest about the deal.

He said: ” The clampdown in Bahrain has resulted in a significant number of protestors being killed. The clampdown, including martial law, is supported by armed forces from Saudi Arabia and from the UAE.
… I hope you will make it clear that it is not acceptable for them to take British public money, and also to assist the armed forces of the UAE … I hope you will insist that any company which takes on such work in future, does not also undertake work for military clients involved in the suppression of democracy.
May I remind you that, in 1963, fire hoses were turned on school age civil rights demonstrators in Birmingham Alabama. Ever since that deeply alarming moment, fire services have sought to maintain an independent role as a result of their humanitarian responsibilities. We now have a UK firm providing an essential aspect of our emergency service which has close commercial links to a brutal and anti-democratic military. All the talk from politicians about support for democracy in the Arab world is so much hypocrisy if they allow UK public services to operate in this manner. AssetCo and its directors clearly have no regard for the humanitarian role of our service, and are only in it for profit.   ”

It seems extraordinary to me that a  foundering British company is poised to make millions out of Middle East  misery and recruit desperate British people to do it.

Revealed: The £400,000 debts of Barnet’s blogger banning private security firm

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MetPro's fine lads: Owed £20,000 in unpaid wages

Documents filed by Mike Solomon, the liquidator of MetPro Rapid Response, the private security company accused of covertly filming and monitoring the borough’s bloggers, reveal that it went belly up owing over £400,000 ten days ago.

The biggest creditor is Revenue and Customs who are owed a cool £245,611.57, for unpaid tax, national insurance contributions, corporation tax and VAT.

 The company which took over £275,000 from the council taxpayers of the Tory borough to provide security and was used by the  council leader, Lynne Hillan,  to enforce a ban on bloggers filming or reporting the council’s big cuts meeting, could have been involved in tax avoidance.

The break down of the figures show that over £139,000 owed  is in PAYE and national insurance contributions and another £99,000 is VAT.

Employees are also owed over £21,000 in unpaid wages – and are top of the list to receive £8800 in payments if any money can be raised.

 The two directors of the company Kevin Sharkey and Luigi Mansi have put themselves down as creditors – saying they are owed £92,500 for loans they gave to the company. Other unpaid debts include £3400 to  their accountants, Bond Partners, the address where the company was last registered and a £4972 credit card debt to Barclaycard.

Total debts are over £400,000 while assets are just three motorcycles valued at £11,850; computer and office equipment worth £475 and security uniforms worth £1400. As a job lot Mr Solomon estimates he could sell them for £6000 plus a goodwill sum of £13,500 for anybody wanting the business.

The scale of the scandal raises questions about the due diligence employed by Barnet Council in appointing them in the first place, particularly as records show that voluntary liquidation involving the same directors has happened before. There could be a case for an investigation if a complaint was made to the district auditor about how the council tendering procedures handled their original appointment.

Since Barnet have been unable to answer a lot of questions from the public about this whole unhappy saga – may be they will feel they have to co-operate with auditors. Or may be not.

Private security firm that banned bloggers goes bust

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gone bust Pic courtesy MetPro Rapid Response Ltd

The row over  Barnet Council’s ludicrous decision to defy Communities

Some of the fine lads working for MetPro, the blogger busting co. Pic courtesy: Reasonablenewbarnet.blogpsot.com

Secretary Eric Pickles and ban bloggers and film makers from covering their cuts meeting has taken an extraordinary twist.

In order to enforce the ban the Tory council used MetPro Rapid Response – the council’s main private security contractors – to stop some residents and bloggers from entering the public gallery to see the council vote through cuts.

See footage on Broken Barnet website here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQ3CsC7wrNg

Full story on Broken Barnet website. Link is http://bitly.com/i13ngn Mrs Angry also reveals that the company may have done covert filming of residents and may be monitoring Barnet bloggers and this blog. The council says it is ” not aware” of any blog monitoring.

The company  has received £275,889  for work from the  council taxpayer according to Barnet’s documents released on the Openlylocal website.  See http://bit.ly/eitGCW

It has also  received glowing tributes from the council. On MetPro’s website they quote Barnet Council as saying: ” MetPro has removed all of our safety worries at work thanks to their rapid response officers here in our building.”

 But now the company has just gone bust and is being run by a Liquidator, Mike Solomons, who according to the law firm handling the liquidation, Beavis Morgan, has put Barnet’s security staff contract up for sale.

Closer investigation of the MetPro has revealed some extraordinary facts. Its two directors, Kevin Sharkey and Luigi Anthony Mansi appear to have run a  string of companies which have gone bust before.

 The address of the firm until recently was a rented  multi million pound mansion in Totteridge Lane, Barnet owned by the  brothers Cyril and Edward Frey, aged 86 and 89, and a former lawyer from Finer and Company predecessor of Finers, Stephens, Innocent ( the firm defending the Wikileaks founder). The Land Registry entry confirms that the three owners can be contacted through them, though the law firm which handles multi million pound estates, says it does not manage the property.

Contrary to the glowing references from Barnet, its staff have received libellous comments on a security officers chat site. They are not surprisingly  hardly popular with a string of Barnet bloggers.

All this suggests that Barnet Council may  have more to answer than banning bloggers – and some explanation is required about what is going on and how this firm got the contract in the first place.

A Council spokesperson said: “Barnet Council is urgently reviewing MetPro Rapid Response’s position and will be liaising with the liquidators involved.”

Eric Pickles and Boris Johnson: Dirty Large Tricksters

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New Tory image: The Exhaust Pipe. Pic courtesy auto.howstuffworks.com

Remember  David Cameron’s greening of the Conservative Party with that lovely logo of a tree. It is beginning to look as though it has got leaf rot or some other nasty disease. Perhaps the symbol should be replaced with an exhaust pipe.

Pickles: A cunning little plan.Pic courtesy cyclingsilk.com

The rot set in when Eric Pickles decided on a crafty  trick  in the Localism Bill to ” devolve” the payment of European Union fines from Whitehall to town hall. The two likely areas where councils will start having to pay hundreds of millions of pounds are waste disposal and air pollution. Both are affected by EU directives and Britain has little time left to comply with them.

This has caused considerable anger among  Labour councils and even at the Conservative dominated Local Government Association. Authorities now not only face swingeing cuts but also fines unless they spend money to meet tough EU standards aimed at reducing pollution and waste. And if they have to pay the fines they will have to introduce even more cuts or get into expensive law suits with ministers over what proportion of the fine they should pay.

As Baroness Margaret Eaton, Conservative leader of the LGA said:  “ Changing the goalposts now to make councils liable for fines is unfair to them and unfair to the local residents who may have to foot the bill. The Government must amend this unfair, unworkable, dangerous and unconstitutional legislation.” See full press release at http://bit.ly/g2W7EP

But there has been another extraordinary response from Boris Johnson which seems to suggest the solution is NOT to implement the new  EU anti-pollution measures so we don’t have to pay the fines anyway. Flushed out by Murad Qureshi, Labour’s environment spokesman at City Hall, he disclosed that David Cameron and Eric Pickles want the EU to defer new tough air pollution measures for four years until 2015 so major conurbations including traffic ridden London don’t have to do anything yet.

Murad Queriashi is not impressed: “: “London’s air is literally killing thousands of people prematurely every year but it just doesn’t seem like Boris Johnson appreciates this. Improving air quality standards is one area where the mayor of London can, with a bit of will, make a real difference to people’s lives and especially to the lives of children. The statistics obviously haven’t had much effect on Boris – hopefully the threat of a big fine will.”

All this calls into question whether the Tories are really committed to the environment.

 Basically Pickles has devised a very cunning plan. Make councils pay EU fines which will make the EU unpopular. See if you can delay anti-pollution measures which are affecting health – try walking across the Euston Road in London or near Birmingham’s inner ring road  – so we don’t have to bother anyway. If that fails, it doesn’t matter, because it will be the councils who pick up the tab.

Robert Neill, the local government minister, gave it away earlier this year by blaming Labour for signing up to the Lisbon Treaty for councils having to pay fines. But as far as I know there was no provision in the treaty saying councils must pay.

Perhaps Pickles, Neill and Johnson aren’t really bothered by pollution – so an exhaust pipe rather than a tree would suit them.

Millionaire donors bankruptcy threat to Labour attracts record interest

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Just a short note to thank readers who took this website to record levels this week. Not only did it contribute to a  new  high of 3604 in one day, but the  Labour woes story attracted 3848 hits.

Altogether there were over 6500 hits on the website – the majority about the financial killing by Tony Blair’s millionaire donors  who are still lending the party almost £9m. Particular thanks to Paul Staines whose Guido Fawkes website led to 3100 of the 3848 hits ( and two comments from his nibs on the story )and to those who posted a link on the BBC’s Nick Robinson blog and the Political Betting websites, which attracted nearly another 300 hits. Some 17 also came from the Westminster blog on the  Financial Times which commented on the tale.

The second largest hit was on the story revealing three  directors of AssetCo – the private fire fighting company with contracts in London and the Middle East  were quitting their jobs in the wake of the financial crisis that is hitting the firm. Nearly 1700 people read the piece with a large number of hits referred from the Fire Brigades Union, which is fighting the privatisation of fire services, and 91 from Interactive Investor, the website discussion board for anxious shareholders of the company who have seen their shares drop from nearly 70p to 16p at the last count.

Lowest interest is in the plight of the Lib  Dems –  a piece attracted 96 viewers- a rating comparable to their present polling performance.

Could seven millionaire donors bankrupt Labour?

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In denial: Harriet Harman Pic-courtesy http//:thisislondon.co.uk

The Labour Party is sitting on a financial time bomb which could go off at the next general election in 2015.

Tony Blair  made great play when Lord

In the money: Chai Patel pic courtesy:BBC

Levy managed to recruit millionaire donors to the party to end its dominance by union money. The whole thing ended in tears after the ” cash for peerages” scandal. Even though there was not a single prosecution  this brought unwelcome publicity for all concerned.

The result was that some got their money back and the rest agreed to keep their money there to prevent Labour going bust. Everybody thought that the loans were interest free and they were.

But from August 1 last year the seven remaining millionaires started getting an inflation busting 6.5 per cent  on the £8.9m they had lent the party. Not only was this far better than the C0-op Bank’s modest 3.5 per cent charged on a £2m credit facility to the party but nobody anywhere else could get like it from a bank or building society.

The seven remaining millionaires are Sir Richard  Caring, owner of The Ivy restaurant, Soho House and Annabels night club,£2m ;Sir David Garrard, retired City property developer, £2m after he converted £300,000 into a donation; Dr Chai Patel,  former owner of The Priory rehabilitation centre and now running a private equity company, £1.5 m; Rod Aldridge, former founder of outsourcing firm Capita and now running a trust, £1m; Nigel Morris, founder of Capital One, a loans and savings bank £1m; stockbroker, Barry Townsley, £1m and Sir Derek Tulloch, financier and executive chair of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, £400,000.

Two donors –Nigel Morris and Barry Townsley – according to an Electoral Commission document have upped their interest rate to 6.75 per cent.

One of the outstanding donors, Sir Richard Caring, is now a supporter of David Cameron and has donated some £140,000 in gifts and prizes to party events.

Most of the others now seem to have retired from business and are running trusts and in Rod Aldridge’s case, two academy schools with two more in the pipeline.

Labour’s attitude so far has been ostrich like. Harriet Harman, the deputy party chair, when questioned at the Parliamentary Press Gallery lunch this month  by me about this said this: ” Don’t believe what you read or for that matter what you write.”

Well, Harriet I do believe that Labour’s returns to the Electoral Commission are honest and above-board and that is what they say, for better or worse.  Make up you own mind, see them here.http://registers.electoralcommission.org.uk/regulatory-issues/labpartyloans.cfm.

The horror about this situation is that I calculate that the rolled up interest could add almost another £2m to a party that doesn’t have a lot of cash. It can only be paid back by relying on party members or union donations and is all due plus interest on 30 September 2015.

It also lays the party open to serious repercussions. If I were a particularly mischievous official at Conservative Central Office I might whisper into the ear of my new supporter, Sir Richard Caring, and suggest he might just demand his money back  as Labour is fighting an election.

Labour’s NEC  needs to start planning now how they are going to handle this. Otherwise the People’s Party has put itself at the mercy of some very rich and powerful people with the potential to bankrupt them.

AssetCo crisis: Shares in doldrums as investors lose faith

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John Shannon - forced to stand down. Pic courtesy Belfast Telegraph

 Assetco, the badly bruised owner of London and Lincolnshire’s fire engines, is still in trouble despite seeing off winding up petitions from Revenue and Customs and law firm, Nabarros, for millions of pounds.

Shareholders hoping to make a quick buck on a rebound have instead seen their investments fall below 10p a share despite attempts by stockbrokers to recommend the company as a strong buy. Shares have fallen to just 8.20p – the lowest so far.

One commented today:

” I remember posting only a few weeks ago that IMO 8.5p would be a fair price for these shares, but now I’m not so sure. Although I am sure that all the lackies at AssetCo will be posting on hear(Sic) to give all sorts of reasons why this is just another temporary blip and that soon the price will rocket on up! When will this day come? Never in my opinion”

However there are other disturbing signs in the wind – offshore investors like Bermuda Bank have been buying in – and Verdes Management, a company turn round specialist, are demanding a more ruthless management team.

 Recently Rock Nominess Ltd- a company formerly owned by Lord Ashcroft- but now owned by City stockbrokers, Sir Charles Stanley, has increased  its shareholding. The company’s  chair is Sir David Howard, former Mayor of the City of London, obviously hoping for a long term gain.

 Previous updates:

March 25: John Shannon, chief executive of AssetCo, has resigned after being defeated by other directors over the massive dilution of its shares  caused by the  placing to pay off debts and a huge Revenue tax bill. He still has a subsantial shareholding.

This followed two days of high drama with Shannon derailing the company’s meeting by refusing to vote for the extra cash, approaching Arcapita a Bahrain bank to invest, and then being forced by a court injunction brought by other directors  to let the £26m bail out through a share placing go through.

Shareholders are divided about this. Discussion on two investment sites can be shows this  and the man in charge of Assetco’s industrial relations is offering advice to investors, showing how nervous they are . See http://bit.ly/g6Qiqq and http://bit.ly/f2YTY7

March 18: Desperate AssetCo has had to raise another £10m -making £26m in all- from shareholders in a rush to pay creditors demanding their money in case it goes bust. Shareholders worried- London fire brigade should be.  Earlier update:since writing this it is reported that creditors will face delays in payments because of the debt crisis hitting the firm. See http://bit.ly/hxmAUh

The extraordinary crisis surrounding AssetCo, the private company which owns and maintains London and Lincolnshire’s fire engines, has taken a dramatic new turn with the decision of its three main directors to quit their posts.

John Shannon, the company’s founder and chief executive; Tim Wighton, chairman, and Australian Scott Brown, the recently appointed chief financial officer, are all standing down as part of a desperate move to regain public confidence in the company.

 The company has been forced to raise £16m from the stock market to reschedule its debts and fight a winding up order from Revenue and Customs after failing to pay a £4m-£8m demand for tax.

The company’s stockbrokers, Arden Partners, are confident that they will raise the cash – but it seems to have come at the price of  John Shannon losing complete control of the company that he founded. Only weeks ago he and his top directors were thinking they could become multi-millionaires by selling off the firm on the back of the London fire dispute and fire minister Bob Neill’s promotion of private companies to take over  the ownership and maintennace of fire engines across England.

Cadogan PR ,who handle the company’s financial press, confirmed the directors were going. They pointed out that Tim Wightman, the chairman, would have stood down at the annual meeting but was leaving early. John Shannon, who has a huge stake in the company will keep his big shareholding, guarantee the company’s multi-million pound overdraft, and probably stay as a  director. They did not know what Mr Brown intended to do. All are likely to be replaced by outsiders.

Shareholders , hoping to make a fast buck from privatisation contracts, are now seeing a massive dilution in their holdings and are speculating on the Interactive Investor website whether they are going to have to pay out lots of cash to the outgoing directors. They have now seen an amazing 80 per cent drop in the company’s share price and have no chance of it going back to its original high because of the massive dilution of shares.

FBU general secretary Matt Wrack said today:
“This has the feel of a company in meltdown.  But this is not any old company suffering from the economic climate.  Because of the contracts it has obtained from the London and Lincolnshire fire authorities, every person in London and in Lincolnshire depends for their safety on the health of this company.  If AssetCo goes down, the banks own all our fire engines.  Even if the fire authorities manage to buy the fire engines back, there will be no one to maintain them.
“All this unnecessary danger stems from a bit of political dogma which says that there is nothing the public sector can do which the private sector cannot do better.  We had no concerns about the maintenance of the fire engines while the fire authorities did the job themselves.”

He called for fire authorities to take back the maintenance of the engines. London Fire Brigade are unlikely to do this and Brian Coleman, the Tory chair, must be very upset to see John Shannon stand down.  No more wining and dining from him in Westminster or free £350 Harvey Nicks Christmas hampers.

Record Interest in blog banning Barnet and AssetCo’s fire sale

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Last week’s blogs on Tory controlled Barnet’s defiance of Eric Pickles on banning bloggers and the woes facing Assetco, the London strike breaking private fire company, produced record hits for my modest site.

Altogether there were 3293 hits in seven days – with two record hit days of 1,375 and 1021. There were 1324 hits on the Barnet story and 1128 on  the revelation that AssetCo were facing a winding up petition from Revenue and Customs.

Barnet’s refusal to allow bloggers or filmmakers to record their big cuts package was much boosted by decisions by Guido Fawkes and Conservative Home to mention it on their websites. Guido Fawkes led to 1001 visits while Conservative Home attracted 55 visitors.

 The AssetCo story was boosted by being mentioned by the FBU – some 100 referrers – but a lot of the interest appeared to come directly. Mentions by the London Evening Standard and The Mirror produced  20 and 6 hits respectively, suggesting that the traditional media is losing ground to blogosphere sites. They were nearly equalled by hits from Liberal Conspiracy, Broken Barnet,VicKim57 and Left Foot Forward.

Interest in both stories revived hits on an older but updated blog on Brian Coleman, who features in both Barnet and the London Fire Authority. Hits have now reached 2285, with  massive interest in his council allowances,free gifts and expense claims.

So thank you. This week there will be new revelations about Barnet and the plight of AssetCo. So keep watching.

Death and rebirth? of Liberal Democrat England

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Nick Clegg - not quite 100 per cent bad news

Today’s humiliating result for the Liberal Democrats -coming sixth with just 8.25 per cent of the vote in Barnsley,Central is a harbinger of a deeper change facing British politics.

Anybody keeping abreast of local  council election results in Labour strongholds will not have been at all surprised to see this collapse of a party  that has broken many of its election promises and got in bed with Labour’s traditional enemy -the Tories.

All that has happened is the Parliamentary lobby has caught up with a dramatic collapse of Liberal Democrats in working class towns and urban areas.

Less than a month ago a Liberal Democrat decided to stand in Worksop for Bassetlaw council and came bottom of the poll with 28 votes. Labour gained the seat from the Tories with 1174 votes. Other pathetic Liberal Democrat showings in the last six months include 67 votes in Bromsgrove, 45 votes in Wednesbury,98 votes in Swindon  and an incredible 10 votes in Rossendale in Lancashire.

 Labour should be pleased because in some of these pathetic showings it is enabling them to take seats from the Conservatives including coming back in Camborne, Cornwall. In other places like Warrington and Liverpool where they are taking seats directly off the Lib Dems they are being returned  with thumping majorities.

But before everybody gets carried away  with the total destruction of the Lib Dems  there is another story going on  in many (not all) Conservative rural areas. Here slowly but surely the Lib Dems are making GAINS against incumbent Tories in their heartland seats.

Examples  this year include two gains from the Tories -in rural Shropshire and Conwy in Wales. While at the end of last year the Lib Dems took a seat on Fareham council from the Tories with a swing of nearly 30 per cent since the May general election.

 Another surprising gain was in rural Newdigate in Surrey where the Lib Dems took a seat from the Conservatives in their Mole Valley heartland. And they beat the Tories to gain a seat on Bodmin Town Council when an independent stood down.

Of course not every result fits in this pattern, the Tories did gain a seat in South Lakeland from the Lib Dems (where Labour got a pathetic 32 votes) and the Lib Dems did take one seat from Labour in Truro in the same period.

But there does seem to be a bit of a pattern from these scattering of results which will be really tested in May. The scenario appears to be that the Lib Dems will be massacred in major cities by Labour and their collapse in other urban areas will probably cost the Tories control.

But in rural areas it looks like the Lib Dems could hold their own and even, if well organised, make gains from the Tories.

 Nick Clegg’s  and David Law’s realignment of the Liberal Democrats as a right of centre libertarian party appears to be giving confidence to Tory voters to trust them in their traditional heartlands while making Labour the only left of centre show in town. That could make a seismic shift in British politics.

Do Londoners want firefighting on the whim of bankers and hampers from Harvey Nicks?

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a london PFI fire engine equipped with tax debt pic courtesy http://www.freefoto.com

April 20 will be a day of reckoning for AssetCo, the company that owns London’s and Lincolnshire’s  fire engines  and was used by the London Fire Brigade to try to break striking firefighters. It has until April 20 to answer in the Companies Court following  a winding up petition from Revenue and Customs  which could lead to the company and its subsidiaries being put into administration.

On that day it will have to answer  a petition from Revenue and Customs to repay anything between £5m and £8m ( we don’t know exact sum – winding up petitions are secret documents) in overdue tax or go into administration. And a banker will move in to own London’s  fire engines.

This scandal would have never seen the light of day if the directors of AssetCo, led by chief executiveJohn Shannon, had not been hoping to pull off a big coup and make a small fortune by allowing their company to be taken over in the wake of the publicity over the London fire dispute.

Whatever company examined their books – we don’t know the name – obviously did not like what it saw  and suddenly talks were over and shares plummeted. They have not recovered and were trading at 17.5 p yesterday rather than 70p at their height. Within days the company admitted it had to repay some £50.6m of debt and find £8.5m working capital including plus a £3.5m urgent overdraft from the bank. Seven days later it announced that it wanted the same shareholders who had seen their investment plummet to give them another £8m.

It stated: “The Directors believe that with the cooperation of the Company’s creditors and banks, the current financial strain on the Company will be temporary, and the additional funding resources referred to above will ensure that a more appropriate capital structure will be in place to support the future growth of the business. ”

What it did not tell anybody was that two days after the announcement it was in front of the Companies Court in The Strand in London pleading for a delay against a petition  from Revenue and Customs to wind up some nine of its companies because of long overdue tax.

I am told that  Revenue and Customs never issue winding up petitions unless a lot of money is owed and there has been a prolonged period when tax due was never paid.

The company now says it has a £120m new contract from the United Arab Emirates and it has hived off London from the any forced administration so no-one should worry.The London Fire Brigade officially appear unflustered. A spokesman  said: “We plan for all events that could affect the fire and rescue service we provide and do not anticipate an impact on London’s fire engines.”

I understand London Fire Brigade are expecting if AssetCo goes belly up that a bank will take over ownership of London’s fire engines. Then either negotiations will start about the brigade taking back ownership of the engines or another bidder – and the rumour is it might be Babcock who already have  firefighter training centres and run Firebuy’s emergency vehicles – could take over.

No wonder Matt Wrack, general secretary of the FBU, is demanding assurances from Bob Neill, the fire minister.

As he put it: “The safety of Londoners, and of London’s firefighters, is in the hands of a company which could be wound up in six weeks time because of tax debts.  At the least, this will mean that there is no one to maintain London’s fire engines.  At the worst, it could mean that London forfeits its fire engines to pay AssetCo’s debts.
We have all known for some time that AssetCo was suffering from financial problems, though it is only now that I have discovered they are so serious as to put its future in doubt.  I do not know how long Councillor Brian Coleman, chair of the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority, who is close to AssetCo’s senior management, has known the situation. ”

To me it is very simple. If this was publicly owned none of this would have happened. And what happens with AssetCo now could be harbinger of what is going to happen on a massive scale when everything else is sold off across the country.

Do we really want something as precious as saving lives dependent on whims of bankers and companies? The owners appear to have built up tax debts while their directors pay themselves huge salaries and get huge sums in dividends?

Londoner’s lives are more important than receiving a £350 Christmas hamper from Harvey Nicks  (as Brian Coleman has) from grateful businessmen busy making profits out of public services.

Update March 3: AssetCo is seeking to place £16m of shares at a knock down price of 10p a share – nearly a 30 per cent discount – onits closing price of 13.8 p a share last night – to urgently raise funds to payu debts ands tax bills. The offer is being underwitten by its own brokers and adviser, Arden Partners, with a promise from chief executive,John Shannon, to guarantee its overdraft. Other directors are subscribing for £116,000 worth pof the £16m shares.

The statement warns: “If the Placing does not proceed, the Directors believe that the Company will not be able to continue in its cutrrent form”.A spokesman for the company yesterday claimed it was already oversubscribed. Meanwhile the shares had fallen a further 1.5p to 12.50p