UK Wants To Bail Out Jaguar. Financial Times Hates It. With A Vengeance

The Financial Times (sub) is pissed. Pissed at Peter Mandelson, Britain’s business secretary, and his planned bail-out of Jaguar Land Rover. Forgetting the old school of not mixing reporting with opinion, the FT pulls out the flame thrower and blasts away: “It is hard to imagine a less deserving candidate. The luxury carmaker fails the public interest test on two key grounds. First, its products are of questionable social utility. For the government to allocate scarce funds to prop up the production of the 4.2 Litre V8 Petrol Supercharged Jaguar is a nonsense. It has a top speed of more than 150mph, emits 299g of carbon dioxide per kilometre and costs about three times the average annual wage. True, the UK car industry employs 190,000 people directly and supports several hundred thousand more once components and retailing are taken into account. But if Mr Mandelson wants the government to underwrite this £50b industry, he should harness such public funds as are available to develop the green cars of the future, not pander to vested interests.”

Hmmm. Let us remind you: This is not a rabid blog. This is the venerable Financial Times. We kid you not. Would the pink Financial Times be so ferocious if Land Rover and Jaguar still be a company that’s firmly in British hands? We guess not. The FT seems to have issues with the current owners of Land Rover and Jaguar, who happen to sit in one of Britain’s old and long departed crown colonies. After refilling the flame thrower, the FT launches an incendiary attack in the easterly direction:

Take that, Tata. If you don’t have the money, go back to elephants.