David Foster

Local Governments vs Industry

by

Here’s an article about the attempt of Waukegan (IL) to drive out two companies that have been there for years: National Gypsum, which operates a wallboard plant, and Lafarge, which has a cement distribution center. The city wants to use the lakefront property for condos, restaurants, boating, and boutiques. It is attempting to use legislation to bar commercial vessels from the harbor, thereby cutting off NG’s source of supply and forcing it to close.

Steve Rogers, who manages the plant, points out that the workers are “not going to get an $18- to $20-an-hour job making mocha frappuccinos” if they lose their jobs at NG.

Most likely, the people pushing the redevelopment are very concerned about “working people” and are supportive of keeping manufacturing in the US. In theory.

This article reminded me of a post I did a couple of years ago regarding similar events in Seattle.

More at ShopFloor.org, including a link to an interesting video titled Made in Berkeley… apparently, artists and light industries have found common ground in the zoning wars of that city.

What Year is This?

by

…because it increasingly seems that the first 3 digits must be one, nine, and three.

Denis MacShane, a British member of Parliament, writes:

Hatred of Jews has reached new heights in Europe and many points south and east of the old continent. Last year I chaired a blue-ribbon committee of British parliamentarians, including former ministers and a party leader, that examined the problem of anti-Semitism in Britain…Our report showed a pattern of fear among a small number of British citizens — there are around 300,000 Jews in Britain, of whom about a third are observant — that is not acceptable in a modern democracy. Synagogues attacked. Jewish schoolboys jostled on public transportation. Rabbis punched and knifed. British Jews feeling compelled to raise millions to provide private security for their weddings and community events. On campuses, militant anti-Jewish students fueled by Islamist or far-left hate seeking to prevent Jewish students from expressing their opinions.

Read more

September 1939

by

On September 1, 1939, Germany launched a massive assault on Poland, thereby igniting the Second World War.

Britain and France were both bound by treaty to come to Poland’s assistance. On September 2, Neville Chamberlain’s government sent a message to Germany proposing that hostilities should cease and that there should be an immediate conference among Britain, France, Poland, Germany, and Italy..and that the British government would be bound to take action unless German forces were withdrawn from Poland. “If the German Government should agree to withdraw their forces, then His Majesty’s Government would be willing to regard the position as being the same as it was before the German forces crossed the Polish frontier.”

According to General Edward Spears, who was then a member of Parliament, the assembly had been expecting a declaration of war. Few were happy with this temporizing by the Chamberlain government. Spears describes the scene:

Arthur Greenwood got up, tall, lanky, his dank, fair hair hanging to either side of his forehead. He swayed a little as he clutched at the box in front of him and gazed through his glasses at Chamberlain sitting opposite him, bolt-upright as usual. There was a moment’s silence, then something very astonishing happened.

Read more

Business Fiction

by

…and no, I’m not talking about pro-forma income statements, but about actual novels.

Howard Davis, writing in Financial Times (8/22) says:

It is often said, with some justification, that there is no current British novelist who shows an interest in, and understanding of business life to match, say, Tom Wolfe. I can think of no fictional representation of the flora and fauna of London’s financial markets to rival The Bonfire of the Vanities. Nor can I imagine a British novelist who could write a magnificent novel about an estate agent, like Richard Ford’s recent The Lay of the Land.

Actually, it seems to me that serious recent novels that deal with business are pretty scarce on both sides of the Atlantic. Right off, I can think of a couple:

Read more