January 23, 2008
Davos, day one - spitting for Britain
The theme of this Davos is meant to be “collaborative innovation” – otherwise known as “collovation”. But my personal theme seems to be spitting.
Yesterday morning I gobbed into a glass tube, so that a new company called 23andMe could analyse my DNA. In the evening I went to a wine-tasting, which also involved a bit of spitting. But there are some activities that shouldn’t involve spitting, unless things go badly wrong – like interviewing President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan and moderating a session on global political risk this morning.
The two things that most worry me are the DNA and the wine. When I texted my wife to say that I was about to get my DNA tested, she immediately sent back a message asking: “Are you involved in a paternity suit?” Actually, it’s not the threat of undiscovered progeny that worries me as much as the prospect of unearthing disquieting information about my health and ancestry. Could I be Jewish? What if I am related to John Gapper? Am I genetically prone to obesity, or do I just eat too much? I should get the results in a few weeks time.
The Davos wine-tasting is usually spectacular. There are a lot of billionaires here, who think nothing of contributing a few bottles of Chateau Lafite. Jancis Robinson of the FT hosts it, and last year there was a good turn-out of Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs. (I think Jancis and the Oligarchs would make a good name for a pop group.) Actually, as far as I recall there wasn’t much spitting last year – which is probably a good thing, since these oligarchs can be an uncouth bunch.
Still, it could have been a problem for me, since I had to be up early this morning asking piercing questions about geo-politics. I know it is vulgar to suggest that you might get drunk at a tasting of fine wines – it’s meant to be more like art appreciation than a piss-up. But these particular art objects double as alcoholic beverages. And if you drink eight glasses of red wine – no matter how distinguished – it can have an effect on your mental acuity the next day. One answer is not to drink the whole glass and just to have a sip of each sample. But that seems such a waste. It’s hard to justify throwing hundreds of dollars of wine down the sink when there are people starving.
Another problem for me at Davos is that, while I keep bumping into famous people, I can never think of anything to say to them. Yesterday morning the first person I saw as I left my hotel was George Soros. I fell into step with him, and after a long pause said something like: “It’s looking quite bad on the markets, isn’t it?” He agreed. Definitely a bit dodgy. I’ve heard it from Soros himself.
Perhaps it is easier if you fail to recognise the person you are dealing with. It turns out that the young woman in the lab coat who bottled up my spit is the wife of Sergey Brin, one of the founders of Google. Presumably she has enough money never to have to handle bottled spit again in her lifetime. It’s impressive she keeps at it.
Goodness! It is already a year since the last Davos…doesn’t time fly?
As an efficiency measure, maybe you could consider interviewing president Musharraf at the wine tasting and spit your wine on him whilst you ask questions about who killed Ms. Bhutto and who supplies the Taliban who never seem short of manpower and weapons.
Finally, your lady wife is very trusting indeed. I can think of a few women who would have immediately gone to see a solicitor, without bothering to ask about the possibility of a paternity suit….but then maybe you’re not rich enough yet for that action to make economic sense.
Enjoy the wine+
Best wishes,
P
Posted by: Pacifist | January 23rd, 2008 at 11:46 am | Report this commentDavos is the Nuremburg Rally for the world’s elite. They hear speeches from the various ‘Fuhrers’ and then march in unison back on to the world stage.
It would be a good time to spit in Britain’s face for all its bad behaviour over the past ten years. While Brits like to moan about Europe, they should ask themselves what positive contributions they have made to today’s world, apart from war and greed.
The financial whipsaw going through the economy seems well deserved and earned. Maybe Davos could slap a talk on Britain on to the agenda and how it could become a civilised member of the European Union.
Posted by: Frank Field | January 23rd, 2008 at 11:49 am | Report this commentCollovation?!
Sounds like something Martin Lukes came up with…
Posted by: jules | January 23rd, 2008 at 12:50 pm | Report this commentPresumably ‘Frank Field’ isn’t ‘THE’ Frank Field…..
Posted by: SGH | January 23rd, 2008 at 1:52 pm | Report this commentThe first few comments here illustrate a popular view of Davos - that it’s some sort of malign, puppeteering über-collective gathering for all sorts of japes at the expense of the man in the street. Like the Bilderbergs, but so bold and powerful as to disdain the secretive trappings.
Posted by: justin | January 23rd, 2008 at 3:00 pm | Report this commentBut could it be true that Davos is merely like so many other, duller and more familiar conferences to which we all traipse; there for no real purpose other than the freebies and the skiving?
So I have a question that it might be interesting for you to answer over the next few days, Gideon: to what extent does Davos have a real impact on anyone’s lives; and why are we so fixated with the event?
The Palestinian Holocaust continues…and everybody shuts up.
Posted by: Enrique | January 23rd, 2008 at 3:12 pm | Report this commentHi Justin,
It seems that GR is not really taking Davos very seriously other than the fact that he has to participate as part of his job and he likes to make us jealous by his description of the freebies and the name dropping.
(It may also be part of Gideon’s master plan to lighten up the nerdy image generally associated with policy wonks :-))
P
Posted by: Pacifist | January 23rd, 2008 at 3:16 pm | Report this commentDNA: why would the “prospect of unearthing … information about my health and ancestry”, and finding out you’re Jewish, be “disquieting”?
Posted by: Vincent Wang | January 23rd, 2008 at 4:38 pm | Report this commentVincent:
Taking a DNA test is no laughing matter! Maybe GR is afraid that he’ll find out that even though his mother is really his mother,his father is somebody else.
But I think he was joking when he said maybe he would find out he was Jewish, because he is. (Unless, of course, his mother is somebody else.)
Posted by: MaryCunningham | January 23rd, 2008 at 5:23 pm | Report this commentIf you bump into Ehud Barak I have some talking point tips for you …ask him to comment on Amira Hass’s opinion piece in HaAretz today…it’s about why his policies of over-aggression always fail! and BTW, they always do!…as will his current Gazan Blockade - attacks…! This breaking down the border wall w/Egypt is a great story about passion, ingenuity and tenacity , I think The Times of London has the most intersting piece on it) and Tell him to free Marwan in a prisoner exchange for Gilad!…
Posted by: Lisa-Helene Lawson | January 23rd, 2008 at 5:54 pm | Report this commentDear Gideon Rachman,
If I were you I would not open the results of my DNA test.
I had one done last year and found out I was not myself but, rather, my second cousin. I was very upset because I don’t like her very much.
Yours sincerely…
Posted by: MaryCunningham | January 23rd, 2008 at 6:37 pm | Report this commentDear Gideon Rachman,
Re. your “… I can never think of anything to say to them.”, here is the best you can do (for the people, that is):
In your view, will asset mispricing be well-deterred,
if and when real asset price histories are
well-apparent to the people?
E.g.,
Posted by: Ed Hamilton | January 23rd, 2008 at 7:18 pm | Report this comment“Real Dow & Real Homes & Personal Saving” at
http://homepage.mac.com/ttsmyf/RD_RJShomes_PSav.html
(and please don’t miss the last chart therein)
Giddy, do let us know what your future holds.
Posted by: Tom | January 24th, 2008 at 1:05 am | Report this commentGideon,
Now that you’ve mentionned your DNA test, I think a lot of your readers (including myself)are quite curious about the results. I hope you’ll keep us posted!
Posted by: Christian G. | January 24th, 2008 at 1:07 am | Report this commentTongue in cheek question to Ms Cunnigham:
How does it come about that using DNA you can establish X is jewish, potugeese etc.?
This one is a bit trickier: Can you be a true atheist and a jew? (imho not possible ; because your adherence to ritual becomes folkloric)
Posted by: Max Papadopoulos | January 24th, 2008 at 6:41 am | Report this commentAmazing isn’t it how the FT’s Chief Foreign Affairs columnist goes on a free jaunt to Davos to drink very expensive wine and hobnob with the world’s rich (the comment “It’s hard to justify throwing hundreds of dollars of wine down the sink when there are people starving” must be one of the most stupid comments I have ever read), and this is what he serves us up with…Gideon, with a name like yours and the chutzpah you have, there is no doubt in my mind you are what you fear you could be…
Pretty strange though, for a foreign affairs columnist and you have no comments to make on the study just out in the US by the Center for Public Integrity and the Fund for Independence in Journalism that has found that the Bush administration “waged a carefully orchestrated campaign of misinformation about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq,”
Further conclusions from the study:
“The cumulative effect of these false statements - amplified by thousands of news stories and broadcasts - was massive, with the media coverage creating an almost impenetrable din for several critical months in the run-up to war”
“Some journalists - indeed, even some entire news organizations - have since acknowledged that their coverage during those prewar months was far too deferential and uncritical. These mea culpas notwithstanding, much of the wall-to-wall media coverage provided additional, ‘independent’ validation of the Bush administration’s false statements about Iraq”
“Bush and the top officials of his administration have so far largely avoided the harsh, sustained glare of formal scrutiny about their personal responsibility for the litany of repeated, false statements in the run-up to the war in Iraq.”
This is one of the biggest scandals ever, involving a war of agression responsible for the genocide of over 1 million people, the ’supreme crime’ in the words of the chief United States prosecutor at Nuremburg Robert H. Jackson, and there’s ol’ Gideon living the high life in Davos…chin chin!
Posted by: David Sketchley | January 24th, 2008 at 9:59 am | Report this commentMax Papadopoulos - get a sense a humour.
Posted by: Steven | January 24th, 2008 at 10:44 am | Report this commentWell, I’m not sure what GR is but judging from the above I would say David Sketchley is a direct descendent of Oliver Cromwell as his Puritan instinct is alive and kicking–off with Rachman’s head for drinking and socializing, eh?–with Mr Sketchley especially scandalized because Gideon is enjoying some nice red.
Maybe GR’s DNA test will show he is the distant progeny of some decapitated Catholic cavalier. Mitichondial (sp?) DNA can be very exact. Anything is possible!
Posted by: MaryCunningham | January 24th, 2008 at 10:49 am | Report this commentThe elites found at Davos are numb and detached from the stench of burnt flesh of their wars for greed, and the squalor of the world’s poor that they encourage to maintain their way of life. I would love to see such people conscripted into the military at the ranks level, so that they can see the world as it is, not as it is in the rarefied, scented bubble they live in.
As for Gideon, he is the idiot savant who the elite let play the role of court fool for their amusement. He doesn’t really matter.
Blair’s great achievement was to fully drain away any sense of responsibility to fellow man from politics. Politics and economics have now become nothing but a grand game of frivolity - much like crocket at the palace of Versailles prior to the French Revolution.
Posted by: Frank Field | January 24th, 2008 at 10:50 am | Report this commentBut what has Davos for entertainment?
(apart from the circus)
Just a village in a mountain.
What´s truth is dialogue is good. Dialogue, understanding, exchange of opinions…
And about the famous DNA test, i would ask if somebody has a jewish DNA does it justify go to a Palestinian village and steal the lands and the house of a guy over there telling him “That´s because 2,000 years ago WE were expelled by the Romans”?
We can imagine the result in the U.S.A. or other countries of the Americas, Australia or New Zealand….a guy arriving the year 3,500 from Paris with a DNA test guaranteeing he is a direct descendant from Cherokee indians and telling an American farmer to give him his house and his land because they were stolen 2,000 years before by farmer´s ancestors…
Posted by: Enrique | January 24th, 2008 at 11:34 am | Report this commentJim Michaels would have approved of your spitting piece with the exception of a few words.
Posted by: A,C.Everett | January 24th, 2008 at 1:59 pm | Report this commentVery good I think.
Best Regards,
ACE
Crikey, David
Surely you recognise humour when you come across it? Methinks you take the wine comment too much to heart. The implication of your comment about failing to mention matters of grave import is that, given the amount of injustice that there always is in the world, there would never be any room for light-hearted commentary such as this.
I appreciated GR’s irreverent approach to Davos, because it seems to me perfectly in keeping with the nature of the jamboree he describes.
So much coverage of Davos takes itself and the event too seriously.
Come on David, keep fighting the good fight, but do relax a little once in a while!
Posted by: DKM | January 25th, 2008 at 3:40 pm | Report this comment