Looks like my prediction that the servers for the royal wedding webcam would be overwhelmed may be wrong. I’ve just looked and it’s fine.
Mind you, the action — such as it is — hasn’t started yet. Don’t you just love the tasteful frame!
Rover’s ‘management’
Yesterday, Tony Blair, during his panic-stricken visit to Rover, refused to answer questions about the quality of the management that burned its way through £500 million and took the company to the verge of liquidation. When John Towers and three colleagues took on Rover five years ago, they were regarded by the company’s employees as “white knights”. Hmmm… An interesting piece in this morning’s Financial Times suggests that these gents are looking, well, tarnished.
Taking on Rover presented them with some risks, but nothing like as big as they were prone to make out. Each put up about £65,000 to convince BMW and the government of their good intentions. But the incentives were substantial: a token to buy the company and a dowry of more than £500m, mostly in the form of a loan BMW never really expected to be repaid, to run it.
Also, since buying Rover, the four have granted themselves £10m through a loan note and set up a £16.5m pension scheme, in addition to their pay. They have also made millions of pounds from a side venture in leased Rover cars.
The next Lady Birt
Much to my astonishment, John ‘Lord’ Birt (who likes to put it about that he is Tony Blair’s Best Pal), has announced his intention to divorce his wife of umpteen years, and take up with one Eithne Wallis, a former head of the National Probation Service. Curious to see what his new inamorata looks like, I went searching on Google Images, which turned up a solitary photograph of the lady (with Princess Anne). Result shown above, with Her Royal Highness callously removed.
Quote of the day
The man knows how to build a crowd.
Bill Clinton, observing the crowds pouring into the Vatican yesterday.
Everything you need to know about the Vatican
As someone who saw the repressiveness of the Catholic church at close quarters as a lad, I am less than impressed by the unctuous posturing on display in Rome today. This little report in The New York Times nicely conveys the institutional hypocrisy of the regime presided over by JP II.
Cardinal Bernard Law, who was forced to resign in disgrace as archbishop of Boston two years ago for protecting sexually abusive priests, was named by the Vatican today as one of nine prelates who will have the honor of presiding over funeral Masses for Pope John Paul II.
And how nice to see that not everyone in Britain is going overboard on the premature canonisation of a pope whose medieval stance on Aids, among other things, has contributed to the death of millions. Lovely Op-Ed piece by Polly Toynbee in today’s Guardian. Excerpt:
The millions pouring into Rome (pray there is no Mecca-style disaster) herald no resurgence of Catholicism. The devout are there, but this is essentially a Diana moment, a Queen Mother’s catafalque. People queue to join great public spectacles, hoping it’s a tell-my-grandchildren event. Communing with public emotion is easy now travel is cheap. These things are driven by rolling, unctuous television telling people a great event is unfolding, focusing on the few hysterics in tears and not the many who come to feel their pain.
Thanks to Boyd Harris for the Toynbee link.
Click to remember
From this morning’s New York Times.
The funeral rites for popes stipulated by John Paul in 1996 specifically prohibited photographing the pope on “his sickbed or after death,” except for specially accredited photographers. Signs in St. Peter’s Basilica also prohibit photography.
But this week, the heavy air around the pope’s bier has not been filled with prayer so much as with tiny popping flashes and clicking shutters.
“Of course everyone is taking pictures,” said Antonio Parente, 19 , who had managed to take eight pictures in the 30 seconds it took to walk by the body. “They want to remember this moment.”
Here’s a great marketing opportunity for Nokia — offer to sponsor the funeral of the next pope!
Rover: a puzzle
Here’s a question: the UK and France are countries with comparable populations. How come then that the French market can support three volume car manufacturers — Renault, Citroen and Peugeot — while Britain cannot support one? One possible answer: the French like to drive French cars, while the British clearly didn’t want to be seen in the products of their local industry. There’s a lesson there, somewhere.
The Grokster case: transcript
Jordan Running has performed a terrific service in providing an HTML version of the transcript of oral arguments in the Supreme Court hearing. It’s a long read (55 pages in pdf form) but fascinating. What I love about the Supremes is the way they constantly butt in, so that the lawyers never get a chance to hit their rhetorical strides.
“Events, dear boy, events…”
… was Harold Macmillan’s celebrated answer to a journalist’s question about what can most easily steer a government off course. The extraordinary events of this evening concerning the fate of Rover, the last British-owned volume car manufacturer, provide a vivid illustration of Mac’s adage. First, Patricia Hewitt, the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, announces at a press conference that the company is going into receivership. This is immediately denied by the Board, which says that they have merely asked their accountants to advise them. But even if the company wasn’t going to the wall before Hewitt’s statement, it certainly didn’t seem to have much of a future afterwards! Would you buy a used (or even a new) car from such an outfit?
What’s funny about this (and what reminded me of Macmillan) was that this came on the day after the damaging internal feud between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown seemed to have been settled. It looked as though this last lingering credibility problem for Labour had been laid to rest. And then along comes Rover (which has always been an economic basket-case) and upsets the apple-cart.
Saul Bellow: big ideas and wandering fools
Lovely tribute in OpenDemocracy by Tom McBride. Excerpt:
Ideas for him were about action, and action was about ideas. Originally a Russian Jew from Montreal, he came of age during the depression in Chicago where the banker and butcher alike were reading Shakespeare and talking about ideas because, as he said later, they had little faith in material success. How could you back then? He freely admitted that as a novelist he was formed in the cauldron of urban life, with its terrific literacy and intellectuality. He never ran with bulls in Pamplona, as did Hemingway, or sought concord with talented ex-cons, as did Norman Mailer. He mainly just hung out in Chicago.