Those selfless charity workers
He’s back! After all these years it looks like Nicholas Hood the disgraced Merchant Venturer caught bang in the middle of the Enron scandal is quietly attempting a return to public life.
The former Chairman of Wessex Water, who made a mint out of water privatisation then another mint when Wessex was sold to Enron to create their ‘global’ water business Azurix, is currently appearing at The Council House, sitting alongside clueless local councillors and making decisions on our behalf on The Downs Committee.
Hood is also listed by the brass-necked Society of Merchant Venturers as their second-in-command or ‘Senior Warden’ as they like to call him.
I wonder if any of the seven councillors sitting down and working with Hood have bothered to raise any questions about his business dealings or his reckless way with public money?
As vice-Chairman of Azurix, Hood made a small fortune for himself as his boss Rebecca Mark walked away with $100m whilst the obvious questions were not asked. Ordinary Enron employees and investors later lost jobs, homes and pensions at the hands of the fraudsters running the bent energy business.
In Bristol, Hood chaired @Bristol until 2001 and squandered £40m of public money on a vanity project creating a Harbourside white elephant where a key revenue stream was handed by Hood to his corporate friends at Nestle. The doomed project has recently made staff redundant and closed two-thirds of its operation to avoid bankruptcy after a halt was finally called to the millions in public subsidies Hood’s attraction required.
Anyone wishing to join the lynch mob should assemble at Merchants Hall in Clifton at 11.00am on 16 July 2007 when Hood will be putting in his next appearance for The Downs Committee. It’s listed by the city council as a public meeting too!