Philip Delves-Broughton

Saturday

Philip Delves-Broughton

Mormons on the march

From our UK edition

In any discussion of Mormons, it’s worth getting the gags out of the way first. There’s the chafing underwear they must wear to deter them from temptation, which looks like a cilice by Fruit of the Loom. There’s polygamy, which though rejected by the Mormon church in 1890, is still practised by a few perverted loons in remote corners of Utah and Colorado, who construct architecturally fascinating networks of trailers to house their multiple families. There’s Joseph Smith, who founded the Mormon Church after experiencing a vision in western New York State. The notion that God would choose to appear here seems hilarious to many who happily accept He would show himself in south-west France or the Levant.

Saturday

Philip Delves-Broughton

Rotten Apple

From our UK edition

There is a point in the life of all companies where they go from being truth machines to lie machines. The honesty necessary to succeed when times are difficult, either as a start-up or as a firm fighting off disaster, becomes a tendency to distortion when the cash is flowing freely and the profits seemingly endless. Apple may not quite be there yet. But the firm regarded as the benchmark for elegant, popular technology is fast becoming one of the bad guys, a byword for the moral failings of global capitalism. While its profits soar, minor blips, like the recent news that the latest iPhone has a dodgy antenna, can be smoothed over. Last week, all it took was a presentation by its revered CEO Steve Jobs, and consumers were reassured.

Saturday

Philip Delves-Broughton

Not so slick, Mr President

From our UK edition

Philip Delves Broughton says that Barack Obama has not dealt well with the crisis in the Gulf of Mexico — and his party will pay at the congressional elections in November I suppose £260 million isn’t all that much in the scheme of things. Not when you are used to dealing in billions and trillions. Yet at the very moment when the entire Western world is hitching in its belt, slashing public spending and preaching austerity, work is to begin on the most extensive renovations at the White House in 60 years. New heating, cooling, electrical and fire alarm systems will be installed over four years. For £260 million, there must be a few contractors in Washington howling up their sleeves.

Saturday

Philip Delves-Broughton

Is the suit against Goldman Sachs a fraud?

From our UK edition

The official investigation into the firm’s activities is pointless, says Philip Delves Broughton. Governments are too weak to punish the financial giant I loathe Goldman Sachs as much as the next man. It’s part jealousy at the firm’s grip on the world’s treasure. Part horror at the parade of bumptious baldies who run the firm and snigger, as the CEO Lloyd Blankfein did to the Sunday Times, that they are doing ‘God’s work’. The only way to rationalise this was to recall Dorothy Parker’s quip that you can tell what God thinks of money by considering the people he gives it to. Write a cross word about Goldman, and you can be sure to receive an email rocket from the firm’s European PR man, surname Kafka.

Saturday

Philip Delves-Broughton

Chirac and the son of Nippon

From our UK edition

Paris Within the next few months, Jacques Chirac’s illegitimate son will turn 18 and the French press will face a dilemma. Do they celebrate his majority on the front page of Paris Match? Or do they keep it as hush-hush as they have in the past out of courtesy, respect for a statesman’s private life and fear? I talk of Chirac’s illegitimate son as if he were a fact, but all I have to go on is ever more brazen Parisian gossip which says that we are in 1994 all over again, counting down to when Paris Match put Mazarine Pingeot on its front cover and the world found out that Fran’ois Mitterrand had a 19-year-old daughter who lived with his long-standing mistress in a government flat on the Left Bank.

Saturday

Philip Delves-Broughton

Elf warning

From our UK edition

Paris During the past ten years, 34 out of the 128 Cabinet ministers to have served in the French government have been indicted, mostly for financial crimes. President Chirac himself has had to rig up an immunity law to protect him from charges that he treated his previous job, as mayor of Paris, as a cash-till to enrich himself, his party and his supporters. Among Western leaders, only Silvio Berlusconi has a murkier legal past. So when a French judge decides to talk about corruption, it should be no surprise that she is pilloried by Chirac’s heavies in the establishment. Eva Joly, if you believe the macho Chirac loyalists, is nothing but a vain old widow who is ready to bend the truth and takes bribes to promote herself.