Martin Waller: City Diary
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Two anti-capitalist protesters managed to get on stage at a huge oil industry conference in Calgary, Canada, by posing as industry executives. “Shepard Wolff”, claiming to be a representative of the National Petroleum Council but actually from the Yes Men, who specialise in impersonating business types and disrupting events, started to tell GO-EXPO about what to do when oil and gas start to run out.
“We need something like whales, but infinitely more abundant,” he said, revealing plans for Vivoleum. Versions of events conflict on just how far he got before the audience twigged, but this substance was to be produced by rendering down and recycling the victims of global warming. One story goes that the audience smelt a rat only when one such victim, a janitor who died in a toxic oil spill, appeared in a video posthumously endorsing the product. The Yes Men were thrown off the stage.
Picture above is from the website of an apparently genuine US shirts manufacturer, which is offering a special range of its product, pre-stressed by being blasted with shotguns and other weapons. “We hope you have as much fun wearing these shirts as we did making them,” the firm says. “What’s more fun than getting a group of good buddies together, some beer, some assault rifles, a few shotguns, and about five mannequins?” (Did I mention that they were American?) One takes web stories with a pinch of salt, but it does give new meaning to the term fashion shoot.
Unmissable, but much-missed
I am sorry to have to report the death, under sad circumstances, of one of the first women to make a living on the floor of the Stock Exchange. Elizabeth Sullivan died several weeks ago but the news has only just filtered through. “With flame-red locks and lots of Chanel No 5, there was not much missing her,” one former colleague recalls. Les Ames, now at WH Ireland, recalls working with her at Rogers & Millbourn and the day in the early 1970s when she was sent home to change after arriving in hot pants. He is hoping to arrange a memorial service.
There was a Falklands Anniversary dinner at Guildhall the other day – and I am reminded that the original victory parade 25 years ago was in the City. Baroness Thatcher attended and received a standing ovation during the Lord Mayor’s speech. Also in attendance, Nelson and Wellington – in statue form.
Renaissance Capital, the investment bank, is holding its annual investor conference in Moscow. Colin Powell was there, musing that some people find it hard adjusting to Russia’s new enhanced place in the world order. Including his wife. When the two went round the Aerospace Museum in Washington and he showed her the now decommissioned SS20 and Pershing missiles, she asked: “Why is their one bigger than ours?”
News that Barclays is in trouble with its logo brings to mind Procter & Gamble, the blameless – by US corporations’ standards – maker of soap products. The company battled for decades with the moronic belief that its logo, a horned, bearded man surrounded by stars, was a disguised reference to Satanism. Eventually they gave up and scrapped it.
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