So pleasant to see our dear old friend Roger Ward turning up on the financial pages, where he has always belonged. As our readers will know, champagne-guzzling Rog resigned as chief executive of the Association of Colleges after concealing payments he received as a consultant.
But the entrepreneurial, newly-married (for the third time) Mr Ward has opened a London restaurant. And as the Financial Mail on Sunday reveals, his four-bedroom house in Muswell Hill, north London, leapt in value from pound;210,000 to pound;450,000 in seven years.
Rog, the paper says, doubled his mortgage to pound;80,000, and opened the Cafe on the Hill. It quotes him as saying: “The increase in the value of my house gave me the confidence that if the business failed I would have something to fall back on.”
Curiously, the article describes Rog as a former trade union official. Yes he is, but what about all the things he did afterwards, such as working for polytechnic chiefs, and then the colleges, which led finally led to his unfortunate parting of the ways? Which is to say he resigned in disgrace after The TES helped establish his reputation for financial wizardry.
