Business Diary: One more for Lord Young's fan club
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Your support makes all the difference.A wonderful hagiography has landed with the Diary. It concerns Lord Young, the Conservative peer, and is penned by Duane Jackson, the founder of accounting software company KashFlow.
Lord Young is one of Jackson's biggest investors, he explains, and it has been "an honour and a privilege to work with him". What a pity, then, that other small firms were denied his services. Lord Young had to step down as David Cameron's enterprise minister last year after suggesting that despite the recession, most people had never had it so good thanks to low interest rates. His implicit message – stop whingeing – did not go down well at all.
Summers sticks it to the Winkelvii
Larry Summers, Barack Obama's former economics guru, has socked it to the Winkelvoss twins again. As we all now know from watching The Social Network, when Summers was President of Harvard, he dismissed a complaint from the pair that fellow student Mark Zuckerberg stole the idea for Facebook from them. Yesterday he told a technology conference: "One of the things you learn as a college president is that if an undergraduate is wearing a tie and jacket on Thursday at 3pm, there are two possibilities: one is that they're looking for a job and they have an interview; the other is they're an asshole." In case you're in doubt, he added: "This was the latter case."
The competitionto cut costs
Tough times at the Competition Commission, where executives are heeding calls for austerity. Its annual report, published yesterday, shows that none of its board members got a pay rise last year, while Peter Freeman, the outgoing chairman, took a pay cut. Looks like everyone was taking the threat of abolition from the Coalition Government seriously.
More fun withthe Murdochs
Our thanks to Mary Clarke from East Sussex for today's contribution to our search for Murdoch gags: "Lamb on offer" reads the notice in the butcher's window. James Murdoch enters and strides up to the counter, but is bustled aside by a desperate looking flame-haired woman. The butcher looks at them both, then says to James: "I think you're next for the chop, sir." Keep 'em coming.
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