The iPad is another gorgeous and intensely desirable Apple product. And could it save the publishing industry?

I’m the only PC in our house. Between the pair of them my wife and oldest son have two desktop Macs, a Macbook, an iPhone and an iPod Touch. And for his 15th birthday. the boy will be pushing to convert his Sony Erickson to an iPhone. Dream on, kid – you’ll only get mugged.

Me? I’ve got an old Acer, a Nokia and I’m writing this on a fairly disgusting geriatric Dell with more bacteria and skin bits in the keyboard than the cold drawer in an undertakers. Our designers here in the office, beautiful people both, use Macs (don’t ask). I may be a PC person – they do the job and rarely let me down – but there’s no passion in it. It really is pathetic that the best that Dell can come up with in an effort to make their laptops look desirable is to knock a few out in lurid pink. Acer bought out a 'Ferrari' model a while back featuring some carbon fibre. Purleez.  

The point, of course, is that Apple is a sublimely brilliant brand. It’s a design-led company that makes beautifully crafted, thoroughly gorgeous and intensely desirable objects. And the fact that the iPhone is almost as ubiquitous as a BMW 3 series hasn’t seemed to lessen its appeal. Apple doesn’t have customers: it has disciples. They believe. So I watched Jobs last night in the ritual announcement. (Why can’t they get him a decent pair of jeans? If you only weigh seven stone you need to take great care how you dress.) My first reaction was that his super duper new iPad looked like an iPhone on steroids. It doesn’t take pictures or video, can’t run Flash and has that wretched internal battery but I bet he shifts  them by the containership load. And Amazon won’t like the look of iBooks, which will sell bestsellers for as little as $4.99.

Those citizens who are getting especially excited about the iPad are the beleaguered members of the newspaper and magazine industry. Take a look at this from Time Inc who own Sports Illustrated. The live action swimsuit issue may belong back in the days of Mad Men, but there are plenty of saddo guys who will be thrilled to see those babes in bikinis actually move. Whether this offers one possible route to salvation for the inky world of print is questionable. Michael Wolff doesn’t think so. But I certainly wouldn’t mind letting you read MT like this. If you’ll pay for it. 

The grey hairs are on the march – today there is more pressure for the UK retirement age to be scrapped. The Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has vowed to make getting rid of the compulsory 65 retirement age a centre-piece of its election campaigning. This is likely to force the hand of the three main political parities to make pledges about what they may or may not do in this area. As things stand the retirement age is fixed at 65 although employees can request an employer to allow them to continue beyond this age. This will rise to 66 for men and women but not until 2024.  (The French , by the way, clock out for the last time at 60 but in the USA 20% of the workforce continues until the ripe old age of 69.)

Of course, fairness as little to do with the political attraction of getting rid of the 65 cut off point. It won’t have escaped your notice that we’re currently skint as a nation and a few more individuals who continue to work beyond 65 – thus not drawing a costly pension and continuing to pay their tax and National Insurance are all good news for our hard pressed Treasury coffers. But it seems to me that an increased degree of flexibility makes a lot of sense. However there are plenty of individuals who once they’ve reached 65 with 45 plus years of hard labour under their belt have had enough and wish to put their feet up. There’s nothing to be ashamed about in this. There’s also an argument that with growing numbers of youth unemployed it makes sense for the oldsters to make way for kids after a job.  One things for sure – the last thing business needs is hundreds more disastrous industrial tribunals caused by disagreement about showing the elderly the exit, clasping the gold watch.

Age seems to be on the mind of many at the moment. Even Martin Amis has joined in. Amis, who is seeking some publicity to crank up sales of his latest novel, has now reached the age of 60. He’s chosen to pick a fight with the grey hairs by declaring that he believes the UK is facing a “civil war” between the youth and the elderly as a “silver tsunami” of the old and knackered put pressure on all our services.

IN a satirical attack in the line of Jonathan Swift’s “Modest Proposal” Amis states that “they’ll be a population of demented very old people, like an invasion of terrible immigrants, stinking out the restaurants and cafes and shops.” He goes on to advocate that there should be euthanasia booths on every corner where the infirm who have had enough could “get a martini and a medal.” Funny that few artists retire. And it’s not because they’re self-employed and they mistakenly put what pension contribs they had into the useless Equitable Life. The fact that they keep on keeping on doesn’t mean they’re turning out quality material, though. How many great works of art have been produced by the post-65s, I wonder? Beethoven may have been deaf and on his last legs when he produced his late String Quartets but he was only in his 50s. Picasso spent his later years just taking the piss. And Amis – well, Money, his finest novel, was published in 1984 when he was 34. Perhaps Little Mart should get himself a job in B&Q – then he might not feel quite so miserable.

I'm annoyed and sad about what's happening to Cadbury - though some of the responses have been pathetic.

So that’s that then: it’s all over bar the photoshoot. Irene Rosenfeld will appear strolling the streets of Bournville, meeting the quaint little Brummie chocolatiers, gripping her Curly Wurly, declaring she’s held a secret, lifelong devotion to Creme Eggs and really respects their fine Quakery CSR heritage. Then she’s back to the grim office in Northfield, Illinois - never to darken the UK’s shores again - to work out how on earth she’s going take the axe to the cost base in a rearguard effort to pay the interest bills on that £7bn.

I’m not going to pretend that I’m not annoyed and a little sad about Cadbury’s fate, even if it was probably right to let the market do its work. Some are saying the board gave Cadbury away and should have gone for at least £9 per share. But the most important thing is that there goes another part of UK business down the same route as our car industry, Pilkington, P&O, Abbey, BAA, Manchester United, O2... the list goes on.

The faint bleats of protest from the Cadbury family were a bit pathetic – if they don’t like the cut of the Oreo-wielder’s jib, they shouldn’t have cashed-in their chips and taken the company public in the first place - which has enabled several generations of Cadburys to live in genteel comfort.  

But the prize for the most fatuous meaningless response to the news comes from our PM.  'The one thing I want to say is this: we are determined that the levels of investment that take place in Cadbury in the United Kingdom are maintained'. A more empty and futile piece of willy-waving it would be hard to imagine. What on earth is HMG going to do to stand in Kraft’s way now?

The banks who’ve done the advising will be laughing all the way to their strongrooms, of course. You can bet that the Masters of the Universe at Lazard, Centerview Partners, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and UBS have been making out like bandits after toiling until 3am on this one. The same goes for all those hedge funds who've been racking up Cadbury shares.

On the subject of unfortunate takeovers by those from abroad, I should be rejoicing today as my club West Ham has now been taken back from its feckless Icelandic owners and is once again in British hands. This would be all well and good if it hadn’t fallen into the clutches of a couple of pornographers (one of whom supports Tottenham). A colleague here has already renamed them Chest Ham. You just can’t win if you’re a Brit these days.

It's a bit rich for this Government to start preaching to institutional investors about long-term thinking.

The tireless Mandelson is at it again. This time he’s summoned big institutional investors to a summit to give them a wigging about their role in City takeovers. The FT reports that shareholders are bracing themselves for Lord M to put the heat on them not to sell 'their shares for short term gain, and to put more weight on the long-term prospects of companies in which they invest'. You’d burst out laughing if it wasn’t enough to make you weep.

It really is cute that suddenly Mandelson and New Labour are coming over all Germanic in their outlook: serious, conservative and looking to the long term. He has a serious credibility problem here, though. Despite the downturn and the need to adapt attitudes towards business, the Government cannot have it both ways. The way in which this regime has allowed its tune to change from laissez-faire to interventionist does not compute. You either embrace the market and let vile capitalism do its work or you don’t. You can’t be French and American at the same time.

It’s all very well to berate institutional shareholders for being tempted to make a quick buck from Kraft, but any gains are welcome these days. If, as a big fund manger, I was currently sitting on a large tranche of Cadbury shares, I’d be sorely tempted to take Kraft’s shilling and bank the proceeds. I’m responsible - indeed I have a duty - to try to grow the pension pots of my members, and I reckon in the current climate that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. If Kraft goes away, bruised and defeated, the latter day Quakers of Bournville may have scored a victory for John Bull, but the first result will be that Cadbury’s share price plummets. You or I may not like it, but that’s the way it works.

Dedicated  readers will recall that we ran a very interesting roundtable a year ago about this very subject with Tomorrow’s Company, called 'Whose company is it anyway?' With some great contributions from the likes of Sir John Egan, Will Hutton and Adrian Beecroft of Apax, we looked at the vexed question of 'stewardship' - and asked how the casino economy short-termism of the Noughties dragged us into the mire.

And, while we’re on the subject of short-termism, and flogging off the family silver in search of short-term gain... It’s time to remind HM Government that it hasn’t exactly been blameless in this area. What about the utilties, DERA or Westinghouse?  What about the fact that our whole nuclear power industry was flogged off on the cheap, and now that we need to build a load of new reactors fast, we no longer have the know-how - because in the private sector the industry has withered to nothing? (The French find this highly amusing, and are waiting to cash in big time as their nuclear engineers pile on the Eurostar to show us the 21st century way to set to with the uranium).  

I can't get too excited about Santander’s Abbey rebrand. But maybe boredom is what the banks want these days.

As a customer of Abbey since god knows when, I wish I could tell you that I sprang from my bed this morning with a quickening sense of excitement about the prospect of my bank changing its name; that I poured the kids’ Cheerios into the bowl with a sense that bliss it was in Santander’s dawn to be alive. But I can’t. The truth is that this ‘momentous’ transition bores me stiff. But maybe that’s a good sign.

I don’t have any complaints about Abbey. Spain’s economy may be even more shot-to-pieces than ours, but Santander is supposed to be a solid, triple-A outfit and they haven’t allowed themselves any insane excursions along the lines of those crazed Icelanders. Me and Abbey (sorry, Santander) have a cool relationship in all senses of the word. It’s utterly impersonal – I don’t know anyone there by name, as one would have done back in the old days. They don’t get in my way and I stay clear of them. The monthly salary cheque goes in, and 30 days later, it’s all gone out again.

One only notices one’s bank when it screws up – “I’ll just go online and see how that Icesave high-interest account of mine is doing…What? Christ, it’s all disappeared!”  Abbey has kept its nose clean with me for a while. But even if they did incur my wrath, I can only imagine the hideous palaver involved if I ever left to sign up with one of the oppo – re-authorising all those wretched direct debits and standing orders. I’d spend half the rest of my days on this earth sorting out the mess on a bad line to Bangalore. That’s why many of us still have an account based in the university town where we went to college: pure inertia.  

But maybe utter boredom is what retail banks are now after. Excitement and banks are best kept well apart in 2010. We’ve had far too much excitement over the past couple of years from those in the finance game. (One reason why I’d steer clear of Branson’s new Beardy Bank - his own finances are about as transparent as a muddy lake.)

You can tell that back to humdrum basics is the new UK strategy for most banking outfits from the grim TV advertising campaign currently being run by Nat West. From the high street bit of the disgraced RBS, you get a 30-second spot showing a bunch of really boring bank tellers, balding salt-of-the earth types with tricky teeth, who smile a lot, ruffle the hair of small children and care deeply about their customers. None of these guys would know a credit default swap if it came up to them in the Bromley branch and punched them on the nose. And bonuses? What’s a bonus? They’re really happy just helping customers and driving around in that four year old Ford Focus for eighteen grand a year. Bit like teachers, road gritters or ambulance drivers, really. Here to help the community.  

It’s hardly the truth. But it’s a safe, acceptable line for battered banks to be peddling at the moment as they struggle to restore their reputations and their balance sheets.

Call me a humourless killjoy, but I’m not wildly amused by the Paddy Power/Monarch Airline story.

Monarch is furious that the Irish bookie – a self-styled 'household name synonymous with fun and entertainment' – has heavily promoted its odds of 4-1 that the airline will be the next to fail. Paddy Power is claiming that it is just responding to a surge of more than 100 punters seeking odds on Monarch’s demise. Funny how these surges always coincide with such an annual publicity push.   

Just how damaging this kind of lark can prove was spelled out last year, when a Paddy Power press ad promoting its 'next airline to go bust' odds was banned by the ASA, on the grounds that it 'denigrated' airlines.  

I’d go further than suggesting it denigrates the airline. It actively damages Monarch’s ability to do business. It sucks away the customer confidence necessary for companies to sell their goods and services. There can be no doubt that with all the emotional weight involved in taking the annual holiday, there will be a good number of Brits who will now avoid booking with Monarch because Paddy Power has put the frighteners on. They will be uneasy about the possibility of winding up stranded in Dalaman or Fuerteventura with a worthless ticket home, their weeping kids slumped in the departure lounge.

If we wrote an article saying Monarch was going to go bust they would sue us for libel, and quite rightly so. (I never thought I’d see myself banging a sentence like that out on my keyboard.)

Monarch employs plenty of people, as well. As its MD Tim Jeans pointed out: 'We have 6.5 million customers and 2500 employees who won’t find this at all helpful or at all funny'. PaddyPower prides itself on having a 'good craic'. So why don’t they sent up a book on the corner of a busy Dublin high street and offer odds on the next OAP to fall on the ice and break his or her hip? Side-splitting.

Like Class A drugs and fast women, I steer clear of gambling. I once spent a week with a number of members of Gamblers’ Anonymous, and a pretty wretched mess they were, too. It’s also true that pure gambling has been the root cause of a large proportion of the economic mess that we find ourselves in at the moment. We’re the victims of a casino economy. We’ve been brought down by the fast-buck banking that isn’t about the boring business of lending money to business to grow, but gaming the system with shorting, credit default swaps or whatever. When business is reduced to mere gaming – reducing companies and those who work in them to the machinations of a crap shoot - we’re right to fear the consequences. As do those unfortunate souls at Monarch whose lives are made more difficult by Paddy Power’s 'good craic'.