"We are not eastern Europe, we are central
If we draw a line down the centre of Europe, north to south, from
December 2009 Archives
German adhesives and soap maker Henkel filed suit last month against Formula One team Brawn GP over an incident in which a former employee signed a €90 million ($132 million) Formula One sponsoring contract without authorisation, according to this article on Reuters today.
Henkel rejected on Monday any responsibility for the sponsoring contract, having in September informed carmaker Daimler -- which bought a controlling stake in Brawn last month -- that no such contract existed, a Henkel statement said.
Thursday's EPL (European Petrochemical Luncheon) meeting in
One German producer said that all travel restrictions were now off at his company, although another said that she and her colleagues had been allowed to have just one hotel night, so they had had to arrive very early on Thursday morning to fit in all their meetings.
The after-dinner act "Men in Coats - Silent Comedy" was generally received well, as was the pre-dinner cocktail reception sponsored by Centrotrade. Delegates then got on with the traditional business of spreading gossip about divorces, babies, spin-off companies, travel adventures, sporting prowess and medical procedures.
The smoke-filled bar of the Brussels Hilton was as much of a health hazard as ever, only more disgusting because no-one is used to this any more.
One EPL committee member told the Blog the next morning that he had been in the bar until 3.15 am because one (non-EPL) Hilton guest had been ordering bottles of Dom Perignon 1995. "I don't even like champagne," he said, but he'd had a couple of glasses just to be polite.
Just a quick PS, following on from my "The Joy of Headlines" posting on Monday, I couldn't resist this one in today's Times: "Oh no Darling! You've failed."
Only the Sun today goes one better, perfectly linking my Headlines and Tiger Woods postings, with its headline today which was read out on Newsnight last night and The Today Programme this morning: "Darling has screwed more people than Tiger Woods."
The Blog is blissfully anticipating a year of riotous headlines after reading a press release from the American Chemistry Council this afternoon: "Bayer Corporation CEO Greg Babe to lead American Chemistry Council's Responsible Care Program".
Could there be potential there to equal or even surpass some of the past years' headlines about UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling?
"Sorry Darling, shelving NHS IT system is a false economy" (IT Pro blog)
"So sorry Darling, but who are you?" (Daily Star)
"Oh my darling Alistair" ... (Economic Outlook blog)
"Sorry Darling but you have now lost our trust" (Daily Express)
And more, but none quite so funny as the classic Darling scene in "Blackadder Goes Forth".
I couldn't believe my luck when I saw that a new hate figure was being vilified in the
No doubt a close relative of the "lager lout", the badly behaving Lycra-clad city cyclist now enters the demonology of our times.
London's Westminster Council will be targeting miscreant cyclists who jump red lights or ride on the pavements (sidewalks), recklessly endangering little old ladies and mums with pushchairs, according to a Times article which I spotted on Twitter on the train home this afternoon.
Click here for more Lycra postings on superheroes and dogs in Spandex.
This full page advert for Chevron was in the FT on Wednesday: "12 reasons to celebrate World AIDS Day."
The link is to the advert and various videos, of which "Fighting HIV/AIDS" is one.
More Top Chemical Adverts:
Amazing news - it's snowing in
(photo: Landon Feller, ICIS Houston, Friday 4 December - view from the ICIS office window.)
More snow photos from the Houston Chronicle.
It's no laughing matter, but you've got to be impressed by Rhodia's ability to claim €158m in ebidta from certified emission reductions (CERs) in 2008, compared to the €142m in profit from its nylon business.
Rhodia described the gains as "an unexpected boost to cashflow", according to an article in the Financial Times: "Chemical group cuts emissions but lifts temperatures."
In the past week, the Blog has embraced two hi-tech advances in business travel: iris recognition, and mobile phone boarding cards.
The whole process of having my eyes scanned took just a few minutes in a small office next to security at Heathrow Terminal 5. I just looked into a screen and aligned my eyes with two green dots. So far, I've had only one chance to test it. Coming back into Heathrow from
My colleague Richard sounded a warning note. He found that registration has a time expiry on it, so I will one day find that I am ejected from the iris booth, probably in front of a queue of grinning colleagues.
As for checking in online and having the boarding pass sent to your mobile, I can see that this is going to be useful for when you're on the move and out of reach of a printer. I've had two boarding passes sent to my mobile this week, but wasn't brave enough to rely on them alone and ended up taking old-fashioned paper to the airport instead.
It's a dog-eat-dog world out there in the world of chemical blogging.
Over dinner at the Aromatics Conference in
John, who is enjoying a partial retirement and has plenty of golf and grandchildren to occupy his time, had declined without a second thought. "I just can't be bothered," he told me.
I was shocked to hear that my old friend David Byrne had been made redundant from Shell. I knew him as Shell's styrene business manager when I used to report on the European styrene market, but the job which has been cut is that of Manager, Operations Excellence, based in
Canadian national David becomes for me the human face of Shell's 5,000 job cuts, of which 40 are reported to be in Shell Chemicals.
We met up on the sidelines of last week's ICIS Aromatics Conference in
