I've tended not to blog here about my migration status in Australia, for reasons that are probably obvious. But to my great delight and relief, earlier this month I was sworn in as an Australian citizen [1]. The process, from tourist to citizen, wasn't super-easy. However: it was a hell of a lot easier for me than … Continue reading Disruptive illegal migrant gets come-uppance
Category: Financial arcana
There's an absolute stinker of an article in today's New York Times, emotively talking up an terrible lawsuit. When stripped of irrelevant interviews with soldiers' widows and scary quotes from showboating neoconservative lawyers, here's the actual story. The US didn't take the news very well when its puppet state in Iran had a revolution in … Continue reading Time to sue Henry Ford for complicity in car bombings
US-based banana producer and importer Chiquita, the world's largest banana company, is almost certain to be bought by a Brazilian consortium, after the collapse of its attempted tax-dodge reverse takeover of Irish-based banana importer Fyffes. In some ways, this is an entirely normal business story. It features the collapse of the easy, painless [1] tax … Continue reading The death of the banana republic
Qantas announced its financial results today. Predictably, they were a car crash (Qantas still hasn't had a plane crash [*], but they're definitely a crash). $646 million operating loss, and $2.6 billion in one-off write-offs from revaluing the company's aircraft fleet. No rock and roll fun. Fiddling and burning As Qantas CEO for the last … Continue reading A Qantas of solace
It's been Good Times Online as Crikey gets hold of a copy of News Australia's detailed management accounts for fiscal year 2012-13 (I've uploaded a copy here, since the Crikey version, hilariously, is paywalled). As a way of demonstrating its commitment to journalism, News has threatened to sue anyone who reports on the topic. The … Continue reading $27 million a year is a bargain price to buy a government
There is much wailing and gnashing of teeth over the news that Toyota will follow its fellow foreign-owned carmakers GM Holden, Ford and Mitsubishi in ending car assembly in Australia. But at least from an economic point of view, there shouldn't be. The basic problem for the Australian car industry has nothing to do with … Continue reading Only sentimentalism could have saved the Australian car industry
Everyone seems very upset about the fact that private security firm G4S has not delivered as many guards as contracted to police the white elephant that is Sports Day 2012, with many people suggesting it's an example of why outsourced contracts are terrible . I'm not sure they should. Let's rewind on what's happened here... G4S … Continue reading Why the G4S Olympics screw-up proves that outsourcing is good
In the wake of a punch to the face from phone-hacking-Leveson-scandalous-British-naughtiness, and a kick to the balls from shrinking print revenues, News Corporation is contemplating splitting its TV assets from its print ones. The plan would be to remove the newspaper drag from the share price, and hopefully bypass some of the regulatory fallout from … Continue reading The future of News: from one oligarch to the next?
So, you're a lifelong civil servant. You're quite competent, and you're amazingly good at tolerating people who aren't, especially your political 'masters'. You've spent over 30 years in the service, and you've risen to be in charge of collecting tax and that. You're well aware that a lot of companies are headquartered in the UK, … Continue reading Being for the retirement of Mr Hartnett
I've not abandoned this blog - just, whilst struggling with painful paid work on the kind of social media and consumer goods marketing work I tend to post here (it's rewarding and worthwhile paid work, but whilst working on it for pay I'm not so keen to blog on it for no money), most of … Continue reading Why credit ratings weren’t important in the Thameslink deal