GFTU BGCM Minutes 2017

there was this very much, you know, “Yes. No. Should we buy it? Shouldn’t

we buy it?” and people were really hostile against buying it, because we were

going to buy a pig in a poke, a white elephant. I heard it called a number of

things. But I would say true to our guns and our beliefs, we bought it, and I

seriously believe it is one of the best things that we have ever done as far as

the GFTU goes.

As I say, a little bit of history and I am sure people will pick me up on figures,

but my understanding from when we owned Central House in London on

Woburn Place is that we owned a building that was virtually empty, we did not

maximise or capitalise on what we had, we used a floor and the rest of it we

probably had to heat because otherwise it would have been damaged and in

the end we sold it off for £13 million or thereabouts, a big asset, a lot of money.

You would think with £13 million in the bank we would be going forward as an

organisation like we are and we would be delivering university education

virtually now with £13 million. The fact is the money went in the bank, it got

frittered away. I am not saying anything untoward happened, but there was not

any financial acumen, I believe, that was put into using that money. We had

the financial crash, we had poor investment and I think, more importantly, we

had a lack of focus at the top of the GFTU. There was no direction. I think that

when Doug came in that changed, it changed dramatically. He made people

think. He looked at the levels within the GFTU. But that money, that £13

million, over the years had just dwindled away. It went out of the door, it went

out of the window. Nobody noticed that it had gone virtually until we had the

realisation that we are sat on £6.5 million and we have lost it and we then

realised we have got to do something. That is when the idea that Doug put

forward to the Executive came up for Quorn. I have got to say, I think that was

a really brave decision, not just on behalf of Doug, but the Executive at the

time, to go forward and take that decision to get something that is going to be a

benefit to us.

I am not going to apologise for reiterating some of the stuff that Doug did or

said, but Quorn, for what we bought it for, £1.6 million, has now realised more

than that. It has money that has grown in the business. It is an asset for you

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