When you attend a conference entitled ‘We are Names Not Numbers’, you expect a few starry appearances. Julia Hobsbawm’s bash at Portmeirion, from where I’m writing this overlooking the estuary, doesn’t disappoint.
Simon Schama bought me a Welsh whiskey last night and Michael Wolff, Rupert Murdoch’s biographer, was excellent company as he regaled us with stories about his larks while researching The Digger. We’ve got business school heads, MPs, Home Office mandarins, digital gurus, and even Lord Elis Thomas, the presiding office of the National Assembly of Wales – who for some bizarre reason insisted on addressing us in Welsh (we had Sennhauser ear pieces to provide simultaneous translation). My, we’ve even got Clarence Mitchell, the official spokesman for Gerry and Kate McCann. Clarence is, so far, just listening and has yet to offer his solution to the global credit crunch.
What are we up to? Well, putting the world to rights, of course. We kicked off this morning with an address from David Smith, the CEO of Jaguar Land Rover. That job has to be one of the toughest gigs going at the moment. Smith confirmed he’s not got his hands on any state aid yet, but he’ll have seen with envy that Sarko over in Paris has today bailed out the far less efficient French auto industry to the tune of billions of euros. He just wants some finance for his potential customers, likening his plight to an engine seized up through lack of lubricating oil.
There’s a lot of angst and hand-ringing going on. Plenty of analysing how we all got it so wrong and wound up in this mess. ‘Individuality is the vanity of wealth,’ remarked one wag this morning. Another went even further and asked – rhetorically I assume – whether we are witnessing ‘the collapse of capitalism’. Could an ‘excessive desire for individuality’ really have caused the crash, they wondered?
Hang on a minute. How can wanting a Ford Fiesta that doesn’t just come in black be the root of all evil? I know we’re undergoing a correction at the moment – but we’re not about to spend the rest of our lives in hair shirts, reading Mao’s little red book and organising ourselves into collectives...
In today's bulletin:
HBOS and RBS chiefs say sorry for ignoring risks
JJB calls in the administrators after retail shoeing
Ed makes a Depressing Balls-up
Harriet Harman: No more sexism in the City
Editor's blog: Putting the world to rights in Portmerion
