‘Lord’ Mandelson of Bilderberg made an unwelcome return to the nation’s airwaves to defend the relatively indefensible position of French-owned Total Oil to outsource blue collar maintenance to Italian sub-contractors. Unsurprisingly, the former EU Trade Commissioner defended the right to free movement of labour inherent in the 1992 Maastricht Treaty, but he also claimed that [...]
Category Archives: Business
Globalisation works – we can ship in cheap Italian labour for our French oil refineries
February 2, 2009 – 4:43 pm
Inflation may be marginally less depressing than deflation . . . .
January 30, 2009 – 12:01 am
. . . . . . but that’s hardly a reason to be cheerful. And deflation might dampen wasteful consumerism. By Peter West There’s only one thing worse than inflation, and that’s deflation. Inflation got a bad name for itself in the seventies, but just recently when it has looked like being replaced by its satanic [...]
Bob be Nimble, Bob be Quick. Resign from the enquiry now.
December 22, 2008 – 1:27 pm
Although THUS promised to stop wittering about the Damian Green arrest and various attempts to paint the Tories in the unlikely role of supporters of terrorism, yesterday’s ‘revelation’ that Bob Quick, Head of the Metropolitan Police Anti-Terrorist Unit, who is coincidentally leading the investigation into the Home Office leaks which resulted in the arrest of [...]
Loss of Phorm at adware company – and we can't wait for those ID cards, allegedly
December 19, 2008 – 7:27 pm
ZD Net reported that Delaware-registered adware company Phorm (THUS passim) has lost its UK CEO, Hugo Drayton, who leaves the company ‘by mutual agreement’ at the end of December. Lyn Millar, Finance Director has also resigned. They have been replaced by London-based deputy chief executive officer Nan Richards, and UK managing director Nick Barnett. Richards [...]
Ignoring India's poverty is a recipe for nuclear Armageddon
December 19, 2008 – 3:14 pm
Thank God for George Bush. He laughs in the face of fear as he gives more nukes to the country with the most hungry people in it. And the funny bit is that despite parts of the American Christian right actually jockeying for Armegeddon, he probably achieved all this by mistake, and in the process he [...]
A raga of Tata, Land Rover and Jaguar, as British as Tetley's Tea
December 18, 2008 – 1:55 pm
Margaret Thatcher privatised Jaguar in 1984 to howls of protest from people who liked big rusty cars that broke down a lot. Ford bought the brand for $2.5 billion in 1990, to more howls from Bufton Tufton (67) stalwart of the Enoch Powell Golf Club, Jaguar’s only customer. Sales fell to around 15,000 units [...]
German Heretics Say Flash Gordon is not Saviour of the Universe
December 13, 2008 – 12:48 am
. . . in fact, they are implying that Gordon is a Moron after all. By John J. Kelly In a move unprecedented in Europe since Martin Luther said the Pope wasn’t a Catholic, German Finance Minister Peter Steinbrueck called Gordon Brown’s “crass Keynesianism” breathtaking – but not in a good way. Following the rude [...]
Sub Prime Saturday Night Live sketch was no joke
December 12, 2008 – 10:49 pm
I personally don’t find this sketch particularly funny or shocking, but it caused an enormous stir in the US,and was pulled and allegedly banned by in its earlier form by NBC, possibly and speculatively because it allegedly implies that a Hungarian philanthropist was largely responsible for the collapse of the US financial system. If so, [...]
Why you should choose your ISP with care – correction to my earlier piece
December 12, 2008 – 12:49 pm
. . . I got it wrong earlier. Subversion of your Internet Service Provider (ISP) is the real threat to data privacy. In response to the excellent comments posted following my piece about browsers and spyware, I need to point out that the problem goes much deeper than browser technology. Internet Service providers (ISPs) have [...]
Houston, we have a problem. We're running out of planet.
December 12, 2008 – 10:40 am
By Daniel Taghioff, India. We need a Global Climate Deal right now, but when even a Greeny like Al Gore worked hard to dilute the Kyoto Protocol, you start to wonder if the Americans have a collective death-wish. The answer, of course, is no. But why then the insistence on oil? Why the crazy misadventures [...]