I loved the sign, held up at the Belgian Grand Prix: “Want to borrow a tenner, Ron?”.
An offer of help to McLaren fined $100m last week for using (or not) information from a disgruntled designer at rivals Ferrrari. That’s what happens I suppose when you’re offered a Fiat as a company car instead of a 360!
The weekend news was full of people taking their own tenners out of the confidence shaken Northern Rock. Or Northern Crock as they are now colloquially known. These tenners add up.
For once I had time this weekend to read the papers rather than skim them. Both these stories, and the unfortunate missing Maddie McCann, got me thinking about the truth vs the PR - the steak vs the sizzle as one of my Aussie colleagues calls it.
By the weekend, it seems that far from being sweet and innocent as first claimed, the Mclaren team had 5 trillion emails and texts flying back and forth between test driver De La Rosa and the Fiat driving engineer with answers to various useful questions.
By the weekend, a Portuguese senior policeman, who illegally leaks daily by the sounds of it, is under investigation for covering up a confession under torture in some other kidnap case.
By the weekend, the root cause of Northern Rock’s crash in confidence was starting to be debated. Was it Northern Rock’s business model of borrowing from banks, rather than savers, to lend to borrowers? How many others face the same risk eg Alliance and Leicester? The business model didn’t sound very risky to them, the FSA or the Bank of England. After all that’s what the banking system does.
Or was it the big banks who parcelled up the US sub prime loans, who say they don’t know their exposure (or at least they’re not going to quantify it in front of the newspapers), who have sufficiently little confidence in each other to lend to each other, who just might benefit in a fire sale of some of these upstarts.
Or was it the Government for not letting Lloyds buy Northern Rock just before the crisis, for not getting the BofE to “kick ass” and make bankers lend to each other to keep the wholesale banking system running?
I read the headlines of “no need to panic” whilst in the business pages the end of Norther Rock is only a matter of time, with collapsing confidence in the stock market.
The final blow to confidence, if needed, was a completely lack lustre performance by our Darling chancellor on Radio 4 this morning….. he seemed more interested in staying on message that the UK economy has been wonderfully managed. And of course 100% reasurance that there’s no risk, and no, the insurance scheme wasn’t going to take up that cast iron risk. Surely its as safe as money in the bank?? How short he must feel the public’s memory is of government reassurances about Rail and Equitable Life.
So in these stories, which is steak and which sizzle?
I was left with the overwhelming feeling that I couldn’t tell anymore from reading the papers, nor did it matter. I wasn’t going to get the truth in the headlines given the barrage of PR from one side vs another. In very few pages was there an analysis of the whole problem, the root causes, the possible outcomes. I didnt feel I was getting the story behind the story. Whatever happened to independent journalists researching and writing their own stories rather than repeating salicious gossip, top and tailing PR copy, making sure they include a bold statement from government without evidence just so they don’t get hassle later (sadly, the BBC’s the worst at that!)
Maybe its time that a new channel be started - heh maybe its there on the internet - TrueGoogle.com or some such. The stories behind the stories, from people who have no axe to grind, who quote sources rather than government leaks. Save me looking please - my weekends are only so long - what are your favourite sites for this kind of analysis? Meanwhile I’ll start reading the Economist again despite swearing I wouldn’t because they spammed my letter box so hard.
So back to Ron Dennis’ tenner……
Pavarotti arrives at the pearly gates.
St Peter opens them and says, “Oh, it’s you, Luciano, come on in. Squeeze through.”
Pavarotti says, “Hold on, I’ve got an envelope for you. It’s from the Pope.”
St Peter opens it up and reads it. “HERE’S THAT TENOR I OWE YOU.”
