London Marathon 2012 Training Wk 6: East London Cemetery

The Pension strike on Wednesday and the LAPFF Pension conference on Thursday meant that I missed two days marathon training. I have also swapped my weekly “long run” from Sunday to Saturday, since I want to keep up with going for country walks on a Sunday whenever possible.

This week I was supposed to either take part in a 10k race or go for a 60 minute run. I was too disorganised to find a race so instead I went for the run. First a warm up walk and then jog through Forest Gate backstreets. Followed by stretches near Romford Road. I then started running through West Ham Park, down to Plaistow Road, then across West Ham ward to join the Greenway via Canning Road. I turned left at the Greenway and ran along what will be a major route into the Olympic Park next year.

I then decided to turn right and go down to the East London Cemetery. Near to the gates of the cemetery there is a memorial to two mass graves of civilian air raid victims from Hackney during World War Two. Also buried in the cemetery are Elizabeth "Long Liz" Stride who was the 3rd victim of Jack the Ripper and Carl Hans Lody the 1st German spy to be executed by firing squad at the Tower of London during the World War One.

After the cemetery I went into Newham memorial Park, back on the Greenway then home. On way back I said “hello” very briefly to two of my ward constituents in West Road who I had met on a Street surgery last month.

This 60 minute run had been pretty tough but I was pleased that I had managed to keep going at a somewhat respectable rate. Even though my thigh muscles are giving some gip and I find it a little difficult to walk up stairs.

I am running the London marathon next year using the official advanced training programme and will be raising funds for Homeless Youth charity "Alone in London". Click here to sponsor me.

(picture of WW2 bomb victims buried in East London Cemetery and poster board with long list of "West Ham Air Raid Casualties")

LAPFF 2011: "More Soviet than City"

The 2nd presentation at the LAPFF conference on Thursday was "Owners and directors: challenges to board", chaired by John Plender, of the Financial Times.  Simon Laffin, formerly Finance Director Safeway, former Chair Mitchells & Butler spoke first about the failure of regulators to ensure that British billionaires shareholders behave properly.While Ken Olisa, formerly Non-Executive Director Eurasian Natural Resources Company (ENRS) entertained us with a colourful account of the failure to ensure his Kazakhstan billionaire shareholders behaved any better.  He ended up the first Non-Executive Director of a FTSE 100 company to be sacked at an AGM! In his case this is a badge of honour methinks.

Afterwards there was a Q&A. Anne Kvam, Norges Bank Investment Management (Norwegian Sovereign wealth fund) and Stuart Morgan, National Express joined the panel.  I asked a question whether having a employee representative on a company board could improve diversity and the necessary checks and balances? Many successful European companies have such representation and they seem to do very well?  Anne said she was concerned that there were only 2 firms of headhunters who appoint nearly all Non-Executive directors in the UK and that in Norway a 1/3 of the Board are employee representatives while in Germany it is 50%. Simon was opposed and argued that a company board needed to work as a team and trust each over (not sure what he meant by that?), Stuart didn't think it would be much of a problem, while Ken thought that an employee representative would only represent employees and not the interests of the shareholders. 

My response to Ken would have been that he was speaking to an audience comprised mainly of different employers, officers and employee representatives who sit together on pension committees and should be putting the interests of the pension fund beneficiaries ahead of any thing else.  All members of a board however they are elected should act in the same way for their shareholders.

I only realised today that by one of those bizarre coincidences that often makes life interesting, Ken Olisa is also the Chair of ThamesReach. This is a housing charity whose members belong to my UNISON branch (I am the branch secretary) who were on strike over pensions and had a picket line outside ThamesReach HQ in Aldgate on Wednesday.  It's a small world.

LAPFF Conference 2011: The Continuing Crisis

Another early start on Thursday to get to the Local Authority Pension Fund Forum (LAPFF) 16th annual conference in Bournemouth from East London for 9am. LAPFF “exists to promote the investment interests of local authority pension funds, and to maximise their influence as shareholders whilst promoting social responsibility and corporate governance at the companies in which they invest....Formed in 1990....combined assets of over £100 billion”.

It is of course quite ironic that this conference took place less than 24 hours after I had been on a (number of) picket lines in the biggest industrial dispute since 1926 over pensions.

Both of the local government pensions schemes I have an “interest” in are members of LAPFF. This year for the first time I was at the conference as a Councillor rather than as a Staff side representative. Which caused some confusion. I’ll try and post on as many of the excellent presentations and debates as possible. If you are a member of a local authority pension committee or panel in any capacity (and any Party or Union) then this is the conference to come to. It is politically non-partisan which in this context I think is very much a good thing.

Tom Watson MP was to be the opening speaker but his mum has fallen ill so he has had to send his apologies. The Chair of LAPFF Cllr Ian Greenwood and PIRC Tom Powdrill instead did a presentation on “The Hacking Scandal: Lessons for Investors”.  

LAPFF have been trying to remove James Murdock (son of Rupert) as Chair of BSkyB not so much with regard to the appalling behaviour of News of the World reporters etc but concern about his independence and the reputational risk to our investments and what this is doing to shareholder value. For example will OFCOM still consider NewsCorp to be a fit and proper shareholder of BSkyB? If they don’t - what impact will this have to Pension fund investments in BSkyB?