Martin Vander Weyer is business editor of The Spectator. He writes the weekly Any Other Business column.
Is it time for a reassessment of Sir Richard Branson? Chosen by the Treasury as the ‘preferred bidder’ for Northern Rock, he’s back where he craves to be and so often manages to put himself: in the headlines. And like every time he grabs the nation’s attention, two quite different caricatures of him have been
With Alistair Darling coming under increasing pressure after the loss of the personal data of twenty-five million people by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, Martin Vander Weyer reviews how Darling and Gordon Brown have also moved into the firing line in the whole Northern Rock debacle. They along with its employees and shareholders now have the
Is prison reform an economic issue, as well as a moral and social one? Well, if it’s uppermost in my mind and this column, then it must be — and it holds both of those positions this week not so much in response to the news that ex-jailbird Jonathan Aitken is to head a Tory
I like to think I was the first (indeed I may have been the only) journalist to have been invited to climb the scaffolding under the clock at St Pancras station. That was back at the beginning of May, when the refurbishment of what is, from today, London’s Eurostar terminus still had a little over
Rail delays are a daily fact of life, but Grand Central’s ghost train has set new records. Due to depart from Sunderland last December, it has yet to pass York en route to King’s Cross. I’ve read the timetable — three services a day north and south. I’ve read the BBC travel website, which reports
‘A triumph for the European Commission’ (as USA Today chose to describe it) is not something usually to be celebrated here. But yesterday’s finding by the European Court of Justice against Germany’s ‘VW law’ – protecting Volkswagen against takeover via a blocking minority vote held by the state – really does look like a blow
The concentrated aroma of — how shall I put it — deep piggy doo-doo that wafts through your car window as you motor up the A1 through North Yorkshire is, in normal times, nothing more nor less than the smell of money. So I was taken aback to hear a farmer from that part of
Over the past 20 years or so, I have found myself almost continuously on the client side of building contracts, large and small, domestic, corporate and charitable, in four different countries: Britain, France, Hong Kong and Japan. It is an activity in which optimism is rarely justified by experience: builders the world over tend habitually
The proposals in the pre-Budget report were a desperate, knee-jerk response to the swing to the Tories in the polls. Rather than demonstrating Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling’s vision for the country, it revealed their commitment to blatant, vote-chasing expediency. Ultimately, this will make the country think less of them. Martin Vander Weyer There’s a
Can we make a link between the chopping of 1,500 jobs, mostly in London and New York, by the Swiss banking giant UBS, and the news that the City of London Corporation has come up with a £300 million contribution to the financing of Crossrail, the long-awaited Heathrow-to-Docklands transport link? Well, connecting unrelated news events
When I bumped into Barclays chief executive John Varley at Wimbledon one mid-week afternoon in July, I thought he looked remarkably relaxed for a man locked in a potentially career-breaking takeover battle with his deadliest rival. We had just watched Venus Williams make mincemeat of Maria Sharapova, and perhaps Varley was cheered by the thought
The first thing to be said about this combination of history, autobiography and polemic is how heavy it is — not in the literary sense, though it is by no means light reading, but in the literal sense that it is a surprising weight in the hand. Befitting its title, it is printed on unusually
Hindsight suggests that the Rock was always likely to get the Northern into trouble one day. The Northern Counties Permanent Building Society, founded in 1850 as the successor to the Newcastle Land Society, was by reputation ‘a serious establishment’ (one of its first decisions was to ban women from its board, a ruling observed by
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
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
Shoppers stay home as rates and floods rise — but there’s a bit of better news for M&S Shoppers have spent these past few weeks sheltering from incessant rain, rising interest rates and renewed threats of terrorism. Fuel- and flood-hit food prices are on an up-trend too, so we must brace ourselves for a spate
The £6 billion merger of Saga and the AA is a gift for cartoonists: a company whose ideal customer is Victor Meldrew with a broken fan-belt on the hard shoulder of the A22. To complete a brand conglomerate for grandads — and since all three are owned by private equity funds — why not bring
At wet, chilly Garsington last night I saw a spectacular production of Ariadne auf Naxos. Strauss’s wonderful finale was all the more uplifting for the triumph it represented on the part of cast and crew, all partially exposed to the elements, over prolonged downpours in the second half. Before, after and during the so-called picnic
Margaret Thatcher’s speechwriters always struggled to get her to do the jokes. I once had a similar problem with Shriti Vadera, the former banker who will next week become, arguably, the most powerful woman with a paid job in Downing Street since Lady Thatcher’s departure. Miss Vadera is Gordon Brown’s most trusted policy adviser and
I have long been a fan of Patak’s, the Lancashire-based Indian sauce-and-pickle empire that was acquired last week by Associated British Foods for an undisclosed price thought to be somewhere north of £100 million. The business that now sells 30 million jars of curry sauce a year and supplies three quarters of Britain’s Indian restaurants