farmdoc's blog post number 288

When I think of bailouts, I think of people in small boats, water lapping around their ankles, frantically scooping with buckets. In these troubled financial times, bailouts have acquired a new meaning. For the past several months, governments across the ideological spectrum have been bestowing billions of dollars of public funds upon all manner of enterprises that they believe have even the remotest chance of being saved by that money. Cap in hand the captains of industry have come to governments; and in the main they’ve not left disappointed. Do the governments know what they’re doing? Who knows – but that’s not what I write about today. Last Thursday the Guardian announced that Honda’s financially and competitively beleaguered Formula 1 team is seeking a bailout from the UK government via that government’s multi-billion euro car industry aid and support package. Honda’s F1 team is impoverished because its parent company, Honda Japan, withdrew funding last December. So how is the UK government responsible? I don’t know. Anyway, one of the UK government’s bailout criteria is that the applicant must be committed to reducing carbon emissions. Well the best way for F1 to reduce carbon emissions is to disappear from this warming planet. A bailout of Honda F1 would be obscene. Which reminds me: the pornography industry wants a bailout, too.