by
Felix Columbidae
author, poet, journalist, entrepreneur, businessman, humanitarian.
Felix Columbidae
author, poet, journalist, entrepreneur, businessman, humanitarian.
The regular readers will know that my main contention about Japanese National Psychology (JNP) is that it is based upon pragmatism. Therefore I have full faith in the belief that my Japanese friends will understand that ever since the Tsunami struck I have been very busy trying to make money from the results of natural disasters.
On my five screens I have had Bloomberg monitoring the movement of company stock, I have had CNN reporting every blip in the market, I have been watching NHK reporting on the human cost, I have been desperately monitoring the opinions of experts regarding the aesthetic values of friction on frozen water and, most importantly, I have been transfixed by the BBC's Damien Grammaticus's arms waving like windmills as he describes a disaster for which, no doubt, he deserves a media award.
Crass though it may seem, I am focused on how to make a lot of money out of this. Obviously the play here is about the problems facing the Nuclear Industry. Thousands of people have lost their lives, many thousands, and the world has been turned upside down but the BBC seems to have identified the real issue; the failure of the Japanese Atomic Energy Programme.
After all, once we have been swept away with the initial news item the 29 year old producers from Cambridge halls have to find the "new angle". They are diligent enough to scrabble around and find that real issue.
As befits the intellects from the hothouse, they would never make the comparison between British Nuclear Engineering and our Eastern counterparts. If such an event had happened anywhere near a British Reactor (Engineered by Oxford and Cambridge people) then we would all be fluorescent by now. Thankfully our media is quick to point out that in the event of one of the most awesome displays of nature's power, and our hopeless inadequacy, the Japanese Nuclear Programme has failed disastrously.
Facts have never spoilt a good media story in Britain, especially for the BBC. Whilst it may well look like an impending nuclear calamity the fact is that predominantly the Japanese design has worked well and never before have nuclear installations been tested by a 9.0 Richter scale quake right beneath them.
So as the stock price of Japanese Steel, Jtekt and others have been driven down, we have been busy buying them up in the sure and certain knowledge that there is no better Nuclear Technology than that which can survive a 9.0 Richter scale earthquake and Tsunami capable of killing 40,000 human beings. That is the sort of test standards we free market capitalists love to see and whilst we are at it we will sink some cash into any food exports going Japan's way. There is certainly a profit in that trade.
No doubt we will make a lot of money out of this but I do wonder what happened to our friend who lived in the area where the tsunami smashed home. We still don't know if she survived but at least we have the film we made with her in Tufnell Park. Hey, perhaps we can make money out of that?
