24 Jan 2011

Cocoa, Coco, Coulson, Co…Why hacks are in a spin

What a time to be a journalist – the last few days alone have produced a maelstrom of news that has left seasoned hacks wondering where on earth to turn next. From Bristol to the Ivory Coast, from Australia to Wall Street, it’s been hard to keep up.

If you are a chocolate fiend the news from Abidjan is bad. Ivory Coast accounts for about 40 per cent of the world’s cocoa production. The unwilling loser of the recent election there, Mr Laurent Gbagbo, has his chocolaty fingers as a result of fiddling about with the country’s cocoa exports. According to the FT, it is the mechanism by which he pays civil servants and the rest some £150m per month to stay in power.

His opponent, and the internationally recognised President, Mr Alassane Ouattara, has now banned cocoa exports in the continuing battle to get rid of Gbagbo. I doubt that the news that fruit & nut chocs are about to get a whole lot more expensive will make much of a splash today.

Neither is anyone likely to do much about cocos. Nothing about chocolate in these…no, ‘cocos’ are the latest effort by bankers to develop an instrument to pay themselves billions without stirring an unholy stink. Barclays wants use them to pay some £5bn to its top 1,000 executives. News from Wall Street that Goldmans, Morgan Stanley, and JP Morgan have a stack of £22bn to pay themselves.

Don’t expect an epic breakthrough on the British banking front by the Coalition Government. Despite all the hoo-ha from both the last Labour Government and the Coalition to clamp down on banking bonuses, it seems nothing has been achieved.

Then there’s Ireland and the disintegration of the government there. The apparent Middle East negotiating secrets are out there to be trawled through. The fast build-up of flood water in Queensland; and an extraordinary stand-off in Tunisia. Arrests for assorted murders in the UK and journalistic heads are spinning.

That’s before we reach Mr Andy Coulson, Mr Rupert Murdoch, and the phone hacking scandal. My own contacts in this matter suggest the practice has indeed been widespread. In the end, as with all things, it will not be the misbehaviour itself that will bring individuals to book, but whether there was a cover up. Heavens, have we even got time to clarify whether there is one?

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