Capital Conversation: Episode 11 Charlie Mullins

[@imogenkent6183]

Charlie went for it when others just talked about it!

[@georgedebenham1042]

Fucking hell he only asked what’s it like owning your own business 😂😂

[@MrDavey2010]

Isn’t education and a skilled use of language a wonderful thing?

[@originalpickaxe]

Pimlico plumbers , now based in Lambeth......

[@JaySmurkzTV]

One of the funniest business men 😂😂😂

[@originalpickaxe]

Yeah funny looking , definitely not Haha.

[@personface5457]

In keeping with Charlie's fondness for personalized license plates, may I suggest: FLUSHSHIT 1. TURDPIPES 2. etc

[@templarknight5557]

The is more chance of finding out " rocking horse shit " is real, than this Rod Stewart revival act ever being elected as our London Mayor.

[@moretimeneeded56]

Julia Callaghan ICFI wrote Mullins’ most recent on-air outing was to slam the proposal to give sick pay to workers forced to quarantine when returning from holiday (returning from destinations the UK government had claimed were safe). “No way. They’re not sick,” says Mullins. “If we start paying people £100 a week to sit at home and do nothing we’re back to square one. The economy can’t afford it.” This is a man who spends £300,000 on holidays every year. For most people, losing two weeks’ pay during quarantine has serious financial implications. Not one of the media outlets has compared the meagre weekly statutory sick pay of £95.85, or even the £34 billion cost of the furlough scheme which has preserved almost 10 million jobs, to the astronomical £350 billion handed over to UK corporations in March. The funnelling of this unprecedented sum of public money straight into the pockets of the corporate elite was conducted without a parliamentary vote and has barely been mentioned since. Mullins did not help his case by conducting his media interviews from one of his several million-euro villas in the Spanish resort of Marbella, filmed against sun-drenched backdrops of swaying palm trees and his swimming pool. Workers suffering the worst global health crisis in a century, and facing economic devastation under a system incapable of prioritising lives over profits, hit back on social media, “How come Charlie Mullins gets so much airtime?”, “Why is Charlie Mullins on BBC news several times in a week?” and “It’s a Mullins monologue.” Many pointed to the unbridgeable class divide. One worker tweeted, “An alarm bell is ringing out loud and clear: One rule for us; another rule for everyone else.” Another wrote that Mullins is, “the worst type of capitalist, slagging off his employees, whilst he sits on his pile in Marbella. He’d run workhouses if allowed.” Others wrote of the desperation the coronavirus crisis has brought into their own lives, “Charlie Mullins is really getting my back up. My company has reopened and I’ve not been brought back when I want to. Furlough/lockdown has ruined everything for me. My mental health has suffered and my marriage has fallen apart and I’m still out of work.” There are those who question how Mullins can be an authority on employment issues at all, given his seven-year legal battle, eventually lost in 2018, over the classification of his engineers as “self-employed”--an attempt to reduce costs and remove workers’ basic employment rights. “Not sure I can agree with tax dodging Charlie Mullins who fought tooth and nail to avoid having to financially treat his employees as employees despite in every other way treating them as employees,” tweeted one. Losing the high-profile case has not changed his business model and all Pimlico Plumbers engineers continue to be “self-employed.”

[@moretimeneeded56]

Charlie Mullins, founder and chairman of the UK’s largest plumbing firm, Pimlico Plumbers, has been given an open door to the media in recent weeks to give voice to the contempt of the ruling elite for the working class. Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson et al. have been forced to make transparent efforts to project a “caring persona” and conceal their class prejudices to avoid a social explosion during the pandemic. Therefore, Mullins has become the go-to-guy for the right-wing media, a rent-a-gob, to say what they all really think’that workers are all “lazy”, “selfish” “scroungers”, who should get back to work ASAP. As COVID-19 cases continue to resurge, the government’s back-to-work-at-any-cost campaign requires the ending of the jobs furlough scheme and all measures protecting workers, their families and their livelihoods. Mullins, “plumber to the stars” with a personal fortune of £70 million, is given centre stage to justify this policy’which will be fully completed by November’by insisting that “time’s up”, asserting that workers have been “taking advantage”, “sponging off the government”, and that anything in the way of “getting the economy going” should be scrapped. The 67-year-old’s anger is heightened by the fact that plumbing is one of the few sectors to have experienced a spike in business during the COVID-19 crisis. In the first half of July, Pimlico Plumbers saw an increase of more than 10 percent on the same period last year. In one week in July it booked in more jobs than any other week in the company’s 40-year history. For Mullins, the sun is shining, and he needs his workers to make his hay. But with some workers staying at home, above all, those with co-morbidities, heightening the threat posed by the virus or with aging relatives, he complains, “You’ve got less people in your company that can create revenue for you.”

[@jiblet46]

Embalmed love child of rod Stewart and a cat.

[@coveralljohn]

Mullins is on everything but stamps ffs.