Credit Management March 2020

IT’S A FUNNY OLD WORLD…
NOT SO FRIENDLY
AMIGOS
An occasional look at the more absurd side of life
from the credit industry and beyond.
AS press people, we find
ourselves on the receiving
end of a large number of
press releases of various
degrees of quality. Those
that ‘announce’ news as
though they are announcing the birth
of a child are particularly irritating, as
is the over-use of words such as ‘unique’
or ‘revolutionary’. As my first editor 35
years ago once said to me, only people are
unique, Feast, and the only revolutionary
I know is Che Guevara.
A recent press release concerning
Amigo Loans has topped anything
we have received previously and is a
perfect illustration of why you should
DAFT person of the month who must
surely be regretting her recent Radio 4
interview is Ann Francke, the CEO of
the Chartered Management Institute.
Long story short, dear Ann said out loud
that employers should crack down on
sports chat in the workplace because it
excludes women and encourages laddish
behaviour. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear what
were you saying Ann and where was your
PR advisor at the time?
She said, I kid you not: ‘A lot of women,
in particular, feel left out. They don’t
follow those sports and they don’t like
either being forced to talk about them or
not being included. I have nothing against
sports enthusiasts or cricket fans – that’s
AUTHOR – Sean Feast FCICM
Leave your tackle out of it
great. But the issue is many people aren’t
cricket fans’.
She added: ‘It’s very easy for it to escalate
from VAR talk and chat to slapping each
other on the back and talking about their
conquests at the weekend. It’s a gateway
to more laddish behaviour and – if it just
goes unchecked – it’s a signal of a more
laddish culture’.
Blimey. Clearly Ann is the only person
in the country not to have registered the
huge attention given to our splendid
women’s world cup football team,
cricket team, and the massively successful
women’s rugby team? Has she not
heard any of the debate viz equal pay for
women tennis players and golfers? Does
‘A lot of women, in
particular, feel left
out. They don’t follow
those sports and they
don’t like either being
forced to talk about
them or not being
included’.
never let either your legal department
or compliance team in on the PR act.
Emblazoned across the top of said release
it says:
‘NOT FOR RELEASE, PUBLICATION OR
DISTRIBUTION, IN WHOLE OR IN PART,
IN, INTO OR FROM ANY JURISDICTION
WHERE TO DO SO WOULD CONSTITUTE
A VIOLATION OF THE RELEVANT LAWS
OF SUCH JURISDICTION’
I have absolutely no idea what it
means, but there was no way I was risking
what looked like a threat of certain death
by using a release in our news. So sorry
about that. It could have been important.
she never listen to the radio or turn on
the sport at any stage to hear and see
the multitude of female presenters and
commentators, these ladies who she
thinks are ‘excluded’ or ‘forced to talk
about sport’?
Red card Ann. Sport is not the
sole reserve of men, and not all men
enjoy sport either. (Some of them go
running or cycling for example, and
neither can be classed as ‘sport’.) Your
comments are bizarrely out of touch with
the real world. Get down to your local
park at the weekend and see how many
girls are playing football. You’ll find they
are just as passionate about sport as the
blokes.
Advancing the credit profession / www.cicm.com / March 2020 / PAGE 53