Jim Armitage: If things are so sunny at Park Holidays, why pull the plug on a sale?

Rodents are a perennial problem in holiday parks.

All those picnic offcasts are too tempting for the little critters. I smell a rat at Park Holidays, the caravan parks operator whose private-equity owner has just pulled the plug on a sale of the business.

The reason it’s scrapped the sale, Caledonia Investments says, is because the business’s prospects are just too good. Brexit’s hit to the pound will provoke a staycation boom, filling Park’s parks to the gunnels forever more, it says.

For Caledonia, and the Cayzer family behind it, I sincerely hope Park does enjoy a Brexit boom. Particularly as Park is Caledonia’s biggest investment. But surely if the prospects for a business are good, you don’t just pull the sale, you put the price up or restructure the deal to retain a stake and share in any upside. Besides, whatever happened to that old City adage about leaving something in for the next guy?

Ditching a sale process five months in (and not long after a refinancing paid Caledonia a bumper dividend) gives the impression potential buyers simply baulked at the price.

China bet all at sea

That China has quietly amassed the biggest holding in our North Sea oil is baffling, but not — as some would have you believe today — frightening.

With its dwindling output and the collapsed price of crude, the North Sea is becoming as critical to the UK as Cornwall’s tin mines.

So quite why the China National Offshore Oil Corporation decided to buy North Sea producer Nexen a coup le of years back is anyone’s guess. But one thing’s for sure: if it hoped it would secure a Dr Evil stranglehold on Westminster (or Holyrood?), it was sadly misinformed. Far more likely is that this was simply a gamble gone wrong at a time when crude was $100 a barrel. Since then, China’s investment has been largely only repaid with tax credits from a chancellor happy to have someone take the thing on.

Perhaps more profitable — one day — could be CNOOC’s 13% stake in UK fracking outfit IGas. But there are plenty out there who find that idea just as pie-in-the-sky as future North Sea oil riches.

Equality reality

Yet another flurry of surveys today show women getting paid less than men — 18% less to be precise. As always, nasty, sexist businesses cop the blame.

This narrative is convenient for politicians but ignores the true cause of the problem — which is, as anyone who’s had kids knows, the ruinously high cost of childcare.

Until families can afford to put their nippers in nursery, one parent — and it will always tend to be mum — will be forced to stay home and miss out on career advancement.