Gone

Not one to forget his roots, Laurence and Baldy have finally found an opportunity to get together.

Laurence: Well Baldy, I can’t say I’m at all surprised.  We had this discussion years ago when Dundas St had to go, and again when Angels went just before my last visit. All the evidence shows that companies that take a holistic rather than a piecemeal approach to their business review are able to dramatically increase infrastructure consolidation gains and improve their flexibility, responsiveness, and resiliency. It’s clear that the incremental cost savings that you’ve achieved through mere tactical changes haven’t saved nearly as much as if you’d taken a more strategic approach to consolidation.
 
Baldy: But the little man with his topper and his cane. He’d become emblematic of our commitment to providing clients with a service that really stood out.
 
Laurence: I’ve got fond memories of Rose Street. We all do but it’s had a fair crack of the whip and you have to recognise that the market’s changed. Some of our best customers have finally retired now. They're Pensioners with a capital P. And I’m afraid we’re victims of an increasing willingness of your average woman to engage in a broader range of intimate acts. The specialist services that punters used to have little choice but to get from our girls, they now get at home from a modern, more sexually adventurous woman unafraid to express her own desires and unconstrained by repressive social norms. You should have seen it coming, taken the business in hand and given it a good shake.
 
Baldy: So it’s definitely over then?

Laurence: Not at all Baldy. The future’s rosy. What you have to realise is that the financial crash way back was the harbinger of a fundamental realignment of social forces that come about as a reaction to the failures not just of globalised capital but of the inability of governments to maintain the social contract that ensured support for the capitalist system itself. Of course, the Left treats Corbyn like the second coming but it’s clear that across the globe people’s thoughts are turning back to a bygone era. A few years of hard Brexit and now Trump and today's nostalgic pining for blue passports will turn inward and become increasingly hostile to all the social ‘progress’ that has you, well, on our knees, so to speak. All the changes that have chipped away at trade will start to be reversed and business will be back on the up. Happy days Baldy. Take my advice and go long on RB.L.