Aberdeen Voice

PwC: An Internationally Renowned Institution

 Aberdeen City, Articles, Community, Featured, Information, Opinion  No Responses »
Feb 232012
 

“They rubbish job projections made by internationally renowned institutions” was one of many statements made by Aberdeen City Councillor John Corall in an article headlined “Development opponents ‘tired, blinkered people’” which appeared in the P&J on 20th Feb 2012. Richard Pelling takes a good hard look at PriceWaterhouse Coopers and begs to differ.

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Which “internationally renowned institutions” made the job projections that Councillor Corall was referring to? PwC? They did the TIF business case which contains the only job projections I’ve seen (see Think of A Number in AV for more details). PwC are indeed internationally renowned and hit the headlines frequently, even without taking their role in the Global financial crisis into account.

On 6th April 2011 the BBC reported that “Satyam and PwC are fined in US for accounting fraud” noting that Satyam (an Indian outsourcing company) which PwC audited had falsely reported “more than $1bn in profits over five years” – this cost PwC India a $7.5 million fine from the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

Closer to home, in January 2012, the Yorkshire Post reports that PwC were fined £1.4 million for “wrongly telling regulators for seven years that JPMorgan Securities was keeping its clients’ money safe”

Anyway, the fact is that PwC prepared the City Centre Regeneration Scheme (CCRS) business case for Aberdeen City Council, but Stewart Carruth – Aberdeen City Council’s director of corporate governance – is a PwC old boy, so everything will be in order and we have nothing to worry about there.

Outside of ACC, the projections in the business case are, however, being presented by some as hard facts. For example, in their City Garden Project FAQ Diller Scofidio + Renfro state that the CCRS “will attract 6,500 new jobs and contribute £122m into the economy”. These are projections, not hard facts.

Projections and predictions often go wrong …

Who could have predicted that the once mighty Glasgow Rangers would be insolvent? Couldn’t happen to them could it?
Now, way back in June 2002, Unison published a paper ironically titled “A Web of Private Interest” which looked at how “internationally renowned institutions” had built the case for and benefitted from privatisation in its many forms, citing some work done by PwC :

“PwC has now stepped in with what it calls new “hard evidence”. PwC, which describes itself as No.1 in the privatisation league table, has stepped up its promotion of PFI with a report that claims to have evidence that “PPPs work”
– ( Public Private Partnerships: A Clearer View, October 2001).

This will be balm to the ears of a government that says what works is all that matters.

However, PwC’s evidence turns out to consist of 90 anecdotes about the benefits of PFI from senior managers directly responsible for introducing it. There is no financial or service data despite major criticisms that PFI increases costs and reduces staffing, service volume, and terms and conditions of employment. Asking those with the job of introducing PFI to their services whether the policy is good or bad is by any standards a pretty lame research method. But after 9 years of PFI the government is still relying on evidence of this sort from one of the policy’s main financial beneficiaries.”

Now we all know what happened with PFI don’t we? Turns out that it wasn’t such great value for us at all, we (the public) take all the risk and the private companies take all the profit – still the accountants, lawyers and consultants make their money either way, so it’s easy to see why they would promote a business case for PFI or TIF.

Yes, TIF is not PFI, but the institutions building the business cases are the same and the accountants, consultants and lawyers will no doubt trouser a tidy sum, so take their projections with a pinch of salt and always bear in mind that the public usually bear all the risk.

Vote Retain Union Terrace Gardens.

AV Footnote:

An Aberdeen Voice writer contacted PwC and asked if the firm was comfortable with the way its projections were being used. The Press & Journal printed the large claims in a box called ‘Facts and Figures’.

PwC were asked to confirm:

“…that those are indeed your projections and you stand by them”, and “…these figures appeared in a newspaper recently (Press & Journal,19 January) under a column, ‘facts and figures’. Can you please confirm whether or not PwC thinks its projections should be labelled ‘facts and figures’?”

Did PwC happily confirm the figures were robust and reliable? Not exactly:

“Our work was undertaken on behalf of our client. It would not be appropriate to discuss this with anyone other than our client” was their spokeswoman’s reply.

 Posted by Fred at Aberdeen Voice at 23:04  Tagged with: Aberdeen, Account, Audit, Business, Case, CCRS, Centre, City, Cllr, Coopers, Council, Development, Diller, Director, Employment, Fact, Financial, Fraud, Garden, Gardens, Glasgow, Government, Granite, India, Interest, Policy, PriceWaterhouse, Private, Profit, Project, Projections, Public, PwC, Rangers, Regeneration, Renfro, Richard Pelling, Scofidio, Terrace, TIF, Union, US, Vote, Web

Aberdeen Voice – The 3rd Quarter

 Aberdeen City, Aberdeenshire, Articles, Community, Featured, Information  Comments Off on Aberdeen Voice – The 3rd Quarter
Mar 252011
 

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By Fred Wilkinson.

This 40th issue of Aberdeen Voice marks exactly nine months from the release of our very first issue, and gives us cause for a healthy measure of pride that we have endured to the point that we need to start planning our 1st Anniversary celebrations.

Anyone up for a party?

As I write this report, I find myself looking back at that first collection of articles, and it is abundantly clear that our handling and presentation of material has improved immensely.

The content of that very first issue also demonstrates strong areas of consistency between then and now.

In those first ten articles published in Aberdeen Voice, we find a blend of fact and opinion based pieces, focussing predominantly on council business, Union Terrace Gardens, the condition of our city, supplemented with satire, humour, poetry and news of arts and sporting events – a blend we have for the most part succeeded in maintaining over the lifetime of Aberdeen Voice, and a particular blend which engenders a sense of identity.

Unfortunately, we have been less successful with regard to our plans to move to a more flexible, professional hosting package as announced at the end of December.

This is almost entirely due to the delay in the setting up of an appropriate bank account from which to administer the costs of said package. An account was applied for in January and the bank involved – having identified the account type we required, estimated the setting up process as around 10 days. Well, after a long, long 10 days, (which on hindsight we really should have called an end to about 40 days ago) we are now on course to have an account set up with a different bank – in about 10 days as a matter of co-incidence.

The Aberdeen Voice team is very grateful to those who, by their generosity, have strongly indicated their support for us to proceed with the upgrade

In the last 3 months, our readership has continued to grow steadily at a rate of around 7% per month, and it is only down to the skills of our tech-man in overhauling and streamlining the site that we have been able to handle such an increase in traffic.
Since the installation of our ‘donate’ button, we have received £145 from readers, which, added to £155 from Aberdeen Voice team members, ensures that we have sufficient funds to cover the first 6 months of our running costs on the new package.

The Aberdeen Voice team is very grateful to those who, by their generosity, have strongly indicated their support for us to proceed with the upgrade and for us to continue to produce news, and information articles, which are relevant to the people of Aberdeen and the North East of Scotland, and to further improve the quality and the range of same.

However, the quality and quantity of articles is very much, as always, at the mercy of what we receive from local individuals and organisations, and we continue to welcome and encourage people to write for us. It is pleasing to report that in the vast majority of cases, what we receive is written to a good standard, and the quality of pictures and images supplied are usually at least of usable quality, but often excellent – making the task of processing and presenting your material, and preserving the authenticity of your work, not only easier, but a real pleasure.

We hope you continue to enjoy reading Aberdeen Voice, and that you continue to spread the word by posting/sending links of your favourite articles to friends and associates. We also hope that you can support us further via that recently installed donate button at some point in the near future – when you realise that George Osborne’s budget has resulted in you having so much disposable income that you cannot spend it quick enough.

Thank you all for your sustained and continuing support

 Posted by Fred at Aberdeen Voice at 01:29  Tagged with: Aberdeen, Aberdeen Voice, Account, Citizen, Democracy, Fred Wilkinson, Journalism, Progress, Readership, Support, Update, Voice
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Aberdeen Voice is a weekly independent online news and information source. It promotes Citizen Journalism in Aberdeen and the North East and is not affiliated to any Political Party or the interests of any private company, lobby or third party organisation. Its focus is to give a voice to the general public in the North East and to promote inclusion in affairs affecting the region.

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