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But what about my favourite website - I think "Virgin Hell World" might attract the wrong sort of visitors!
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Verminworld? Virgin-on-the-ridiculous?
I was astounded to see the BBC's coverage of this - it felt like I was having a press release read to me. Virgin Mobile (which is all we're talking about) is tiny in mobile terms (£800m isn't really a lot, and is much smaller than ntl). Virgin Net already got absorbed by ntl just over a year ago, and presumably Branson is doing what he usually does - extracting money from one bit of his empire to prop up another or start something new. That's where his true genius lies. The idea that a future media giant controlled by Branson (with a 14% stake) will suddenly start beating Sky into a pulp is, I think, wide of the mark. For one thing, this doesn't make the Telewest merger any less difficult to achieve, and that's much more important.
[veers off topic onto favourite hobby horse (or iron horse?)]
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You have to remember what Virgan started with when they got the trains franchise - a underinvested old network with bad rollingstock, they had to invest billions anbd wait a while before the service was decen
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I suggest some background reading on the subject.
1) They didn't get the network, Railtrack did. Franchises don't actually contain very much substantively
2) We're each subsidising the Virgin franchises to the tune of some £12 per passenger from the public purse, as Stuart C suggested. Under the original plans they should have been paying *back* money, as GNER do.
3) They're effectively run for a fixed management fee from the state now, having more or less gone bust due to unworkable business plans
4) VT is a consortium anyway, like a lot of things that say 'Virgin' on the front, in this case with the bus company Stagecoach, which has 49%
5) Virgin don't even own the trains, either, Angel Trains* do.
6) They were called Virgin Trains from day one
So the much vaunted Branson business acumen consists of planning something unrealistic, then persuading the state to cough up millions when his over-ambitious private enterprise effort goes bust. Great stuff.
Whatever you think about Richard Branson, taking his rail efforts as a yardstick of his business acumen isn't a particularly compelling case
[still veering]
[The 'underinvestment' line is Government spin to stop us spotting the flaws in the rail system, incidentally (such as private enterprise contriving to run the thing *less* efficiently than BR). The average age of British trains is the same as it was 10 years ago but the average age of signalling is six years more, despite the whole thing costing six times as much in subsidy.]
* aka Royal Bank of Scotland. Banks know a good moneyspinner when they see one.
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