Any other business

Saturday

Paul Johnson

Don’t despise paper — it’s a central pillar of civilisation

One need not be depressed by lugubrious calculations of how many trees are chopped down to produce one edition of a popular newspaper. The timber industry is so profitable that there are probably more usable trees than ever. Still, we should not take paper for granted. Considering that it is made of old rags and pulp and whatnot, it is a daily miracle. In the artist’s household in which I grew up, where drawing, watercolour and etching were paramount, there was never any danger of us underestimating the importance of paper. As the headmaster of an art school, my father was sent endless samples by the big art-paper manufacturers, and I learned to recognise by sight the weight, absorption power, quality and resilience of all the different grades.

Saturday

Martin Vander Weyer

Lenin and Sid Waddell provide words to describe the leader of the Tube strike

Don’t mind me asking,’ a Geordie lad accosted me on the train, ‘but aren’t you Sid Waddell?’ I looked blank. Don’t mind me asking,’ a Geordie lad accosted me on the train, ‘but aren’t you Sid Waddell?’ I looked blank. ‘Go on, you are, aren’t you,’ his mate insisted, pumping my hand. ‘Hiya, Sid.’ Thanks to an on-board internet connection and Google Images, I was able to prove to my new friends that I was not the veteran metaphor-mangler of television darts commentary. Nevertheless the three of us agreed that I might just have been mistaken for him across the fog of a crowded club in pre-smoking-ban days, and I felt a strange affin-ity with my newly discovered lookalike.

Margareta Pagano

‘Greedy? Short-termist? No, quite the opposite’

In the 1880s two young American salesmen-cum-pharmacists, Silas Mainville Burroughs and Henry Wellcome, invented the ‘tabloid’. It was not a cut-down newspaper but a form of compressed pill — the name was an elision of ‘tablet’ and ‘alkaloid’ — which they imported to Britain. Helped by its sales, their company Burroughs Wellcome achieved huge success: insulin was another of their inventions, while Henry Wellcome created the first proper medical bags, giving them to Stanley for his trips to Africa and Scott for his walk to the Pole. When Sir Henry Wellcome (as he became) died in 1936, he left a fortune which he asked five trustees to distribute for the improvement of human and animal health.

Richard Northedge

How the Governor lost his eyebrows

‘Bank of England denies NatWest rescue move,’ screamed an Evening Standard headline in December 1974 as the credit squeeze strangled the clearer most exposed to the secondary banks that were falling like dominos. This month the Bank has been denying it has just rescued Barclays: the £1.6 billion lent at short notice was not an emergency loan, it insists, simply the use of a strategic safety valve. Just as well, because it is no longer the Bank of England’s job to go round rescuing banks that run out of money. When Gordon Brown put the Bank in charge of setting interest rates a decade ago he took away its role as the supervisor of the banking system.

Matthew Lynn

Sarkozy picks a new CEO of France Inc: himself

Nobody expects total honesty from politicians, particularly on the campaign trail. Still, when the new French president Nicolas Sarkozy promised a ‘rupture’ with France’s past, and even praised Margaret Thatcher for her willingness to ‘break taboos’, you might have expected the pledge to hold good at least for a few months. And yet since assuming the presidency, Sarkozy has shown himself as wedded as any of his predecessors to the traditional French industrial policy of creating sturdy national champions. He has just engineered the merger of Suez and Gaz de France to create one of Europe’s largest utilities. He has extended France’s influence at EADS, the Franco-German defence and aerospace conglomerate that controls Airbus.

Paul Johnson

What did the Duchess get up to in her wood-and-turf hut?

There are many odd tales behind the origins of classic gastronomic dishes. Who would have believed that the old Ipswich bruiser, Cardinal Wolsey, was responsible for that perfect combination, strawberries and cream? No one had thought of serving them together before. There is an even more curious history of that admirable side dish, pommes duchesse. It was not invented by Talleyrand’s chef or a three-star maestro from the Michelin, but by that earthy, not to say peat-stained, painter Sir Edwin Landseer (1803–72). How so? He came from a fairly humble background. His father was an engraver who campaigned vigorously (as any student of the Farington Diary will know) for those of his trade to be admitted as full members of the Royal Academy.

Saturday

Paul Johnson

When the skies darken, the glow of gold is always welcome

‘When markets are unsteady and investors are nervous, you can’t beat gold.’ That was my grandfather’s saying, common enough, I daresay, in late Victorian Manchester. Jimmy Goldsmith was another believer. ‘You know what the Aztecs called it,’ he would say with relish, ‘they had a special word for it — the excrement of the gods.’ Jimmy was a great buyer of gold, especially towards the end of his life. He bought bullion — gold bars — and would inspect them in the bank vault where they were kept. ‘Like visiting Fort Knox,’ he’d say. He also bought shares in gold mines, the simplest way to invest in gold.

Anne Hyland

Coffee-shop trade suffers as the General keeps Thais guessing if he’ll run for office

Anyone who claims to understand Thailand’s politics should be sectioned. The country is preparing for a national election in December and the leader of last year’s bloodless military coup, General Sonthi Boonyaratglin, is retreating on his promise to drive his tank back to barracks. Anyone who claims to understand Thailand’s politics should be sectioned. The country is preparing for a national election in December and the leader of last year’s bloodless military coup, General Sonthi Boonyaratglin, is retreating on his promise to drive his tank back to barracks. Instead, he’s flirting with the idea of clinging to power by running for prime minister.

John Andrews

Golfers with more clubs are more likely to win

You know Kipling’s words, about meeting triumph and disaster? Well, imagine this. You’re in your mid-forties, chief executive of one of Britain’s fastest-growing public companies. You know Kipling’s words, about meeting triumph and disaster? Well, imagine this. You’re in your mid-forties, chief executive of one of Britain’s fastest-growing public companies. Your personal fortune is in nine figures; you are fast becoming one of the Britain’s top philanthropists; you own a luxury hotel in France. You’re on holiday with your family in Botswana, enjoying the fruits of success; you’re right in the middle of a sentence when suddenly, categorically, you cannot say another word ... and you have no idea what’s happening to you.

Neil Collins

Who’s the mug at the table?

Once upon a time there was an investment banker. He was hardly today’s stereotypical WASP smoothie, but an overweight, sweaty trader from the Bronx who shouted a lot, ate pizza at his desk when he wasn’t standing on it, and treated colleagues as imbeciles. Once upon a time there was an investment banker. He was hardly today’s stereotypical WASP smoothie, but an overweight, sweaty trader from the Bronx who shouted a lot, ate pizza at his desk when he wasn’t standing on it, and treated colleagues as imbeciles. Lewie Ranieri was, according to Michael Lewis in Liar’s Poker (1989), a fat slob. He was a hugely industrious slob, though, and made piles of money for Salomon Bros, his employer.

Richard Orange

The desert breeding ground of India’s billionaires

‘This is backwoods, really backwoods,’ says Aditya, as the rackety, jam-packed bus pulls into Rajgarh, a small town in the north-west of Rajasthan, India’s desert state. ‘This is backwoods, really backwoods,’ says Aditya, as the rackety, jam-packed bus pulls into Rajgarh, a small town in the north-west of Rajasthan, India’s desert state. Aditya is the only person on the bus who speaks any English, and the goggle-eyed stares and toothless grins of many of his fellow passengers bear him out. They are clearly wondering what on earth a foreigner is doing in their out-of-the-way part of India and it’s only when I mention the name of Lakshmi Mittal that it clicks.

Saturday

Martin Vander Weyer

Now America faces not-so-friendly fire from the rest of the financial world

I’m back, as Arnold Schwarzenegger famously declared in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. In fact I haven’t really been away, just hovering in cyberspace to leave room for other contributors in our slimmed-down-for-the-beach summer Business section. I’m back, as Arnold Schwarzenegger famously declared in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. In fact I haven’t really been away, just hovering in cyberspace to leave room for other contributors in our slimmed-down-for-the-beach summer Business section. While I’ve been up there, financial markets have begun to look like a Los Angeles freeway visited by an enemy android at the wheel of a runaway fire truck.

Wednesday

Edie Lush

Calling in the Geek Squad

Why would anyone choose to spend an afternoon with a self-proclaimed geek in a clip-on tie, who calls himself a ‘field agent’? Carphone Warehouse is betting that many of us will jump at the chance. They’ve brought the Geek Squad over from the US and are offering their nerds to UK consumers and their computers. Why would anyone choose to spend an afternoon with a self-proclaimed geek in a clip-on tie, who calls himself a ‘field agent’? Carphone Warehouse is betting that many of us will jump at the chance. They’ve brought the Geek Squad over from the US and are offering their nerds to UK consumers and their computers.

Paul Johnson

Whoever expected writers to be other than difficult people?

As someone who has spent nearly 60 years as a professional writer, I am inevitably set in my ways, though capable of changing them radically in a crisis. But I recognise that my ways are not typical, that there is no such thing as a typical writer. Starting early is for me axiomatic (it is 6.45 a.m. as I write these words). It was for Trollope too, who paid his groom an extra sum annually for bringing him a scalding cup of coffee as dawn was breaking. And I, like Trollope, start writing immediately. By contrast, J.B. Priestley told me that he needed anything up to an hour fiddling with the objects on his desk before actually beginning the process of putting words on to paper, though once begun he wrote steadily. A morning start, however, is beyond many writers.

Saturday

Robert Cottrell

Contagion’s next target is contemporary

Writing in the midst of turmoil, one is always at risk of being overtaken by events, but I have found myself vaguely approving of the recent market panic. The American housing slump has made fools only of those who thought house prices could go on rising steeply for ever; the resultant sub-prime lending crisis reminds us that you shouldn’t be lending money to people who shouldn’t be borrowing it; a few big painful reversals among hedge funds should curb the general arrogance of that industry; tighter credit is forcing the new blowhards of private equity to draw breath; and the Fed has been following Walter Bagehot’s admirable 19th-century advice that central banks should counter panic by lending willingly but expensively.

Matthew Lynn

Does Britain still need an arms industry?

The fiercer the fighting for our boys in Basra and Helmand, the more important you may think it is that Britain has a thriving arms industry to supply them. The reasons that this isn’t so can be summed up in one Arabic phrase which translates, ironically, as ‘dove of peace’: Al Yamamah. The fiercer the fighting for our boys in Basra and Helmand, the more important you may think it is that Britain has a thriving arms industry to supply them. The reasons that this isn’t so can be summed up in one Arabic phrase which translates, ironically, as ‘dove of peace’: Al Yamamah. Over the past 20 years, Saudi Arabia has paid tens of billions of pounds to BAE Systems under a deal negotiated by the British government called Al Yamamah.

Paul Johnson

Visiting cathedrals? Here are England’s top ten

Recently a friend from abroad, anxious to enrich himself from our past, asked me about the cathedrals. Which must he visit, which should he visit if he had time? These are not easy questions. Many years ago I wrote a book about British cathedrals and was surprised to discover how many of them there are, if you spread the net wide enough. And also how varied they are, much more so than comparable buildings on the Continent. Our individualism turns each of them into something unique. Indeed, one of the oldest and most splendid of them, Westminster Abbey, is actually a ‘royal peculiar’. Founded, renewed and adorned by kings, it has always been a sacring-place of monarchs, where they are crowned, married and buried.

Saturday

Allister Heath

Unintended market consequences

If only Alan Greenspan had read John Locke more attentively. The 17th-century philosopher, who doubled as a brilliant economist, was among the earliest exponents of the law of unintended consequences. It is one of the most powerful lessons economics has to teach, yet one the former US Federal Reserve chairman conspicuously failed to heed. To understand why hedge-fund whizz-kids have spent the past few weeks tearing their hair out, and why Greenspan is largely to blame, let us take a trip back to 1692. That year, Locke wrote with passion against a parliamentary bill that proposed to cut interest rates. Its supporters wanted to help the poor; but Locke realised that government intervention would be worse than doing nothing.

Judi Bevan

The last dotcom entrepreneur

Chilling echoes of the 2001 dotcom crash attended the flotation of the internet price comparison business Moneysupermarket.com at the end of last month. Simon Nixon — not the financial journalist of that name but the company’s founder — was jetting around America and Europe on his roadshow as the market started to wobble, spooked by the American sub-prime lending crisis and the global credit crunch. On the day of the float, 26 July, the market fell nearly 200 points, its largest one-day fall of the year until then. ‘I thought we might have to pull it,’ says Nixon, a man who cherishes being in control. ‘But in the end the demand was there from investors at the lower price range.

Paul Johnson

Not so much the Mad Hatter, more the Mad Scientist now

In this age of creeping censorship ‘mad’ is not a word to be used lightly. It would certainly be unlawful to use it in Kipling’s sense when he refers to frontier tribes being ‘stirred up’ by ‘a mad mullah’. In this age of creeping censorship ‘mad’ is not a word to be used lightly. It would certainly be unlawful to use it in Kipling’s sense when he refers to frontier tribes being ‘stirred up’ by ‘a mad mullah’. I rather think Winston Churchill used it in this sense in his book The Malakand Field Force, but then practically everything the old boy said or wrote in moments of excitement or exaltation would now be banned. To be fair, mad has long been suspect.