I had the misfortune to work on a freelance basis a couple of times for Richard Branson. My conclusion? He’s a greedy, publicity-mad, calculating, self-serving, tight-fisted egomaniac (objectionable enough to make even the Adam Smith Institute into anti-capitalists). So I find this cat-spat between Richard Black and said Mr Branson tiresomely engaging. In the one corner, eco-nut Black is busting a gut to tell us that the Branson publicity wheeze to introduce lemurs to his Caribbean tax-dodge Mosquito Island is very, very bad, because it breaches the UN hallowed rules about biodiversity and the import of foreign species. How is it – I sometimes muse – that BBC reporters don’t apply the same lip-curling xenophobic contempt to immigration stories? The irony would be lost on them, I suppose.
On the other hand, our BBC environment campaigner is lost in admiration and reminds us that Mr Branson’s Necker resort is all about the saintly pursuit of eco-tourism. What a fantastic puff…the highest acccolade in greenieland is to be called “eco”. This $2,000-a-night retreat is obviously somewhere Mr Black dearly wants to go. In glowing Technicolor – the dilemmas and conflicts of BBC green-creed journalism.
