Davos Newbies

Different views

Matthew Engel on US gun laws: “The most famous of the 27 amendments to the US constitution is probably the fifth… The most bewildering is the second.”

Another trans-Atlantic chasm became the hook for the opening episode of a new and enjoyable BBC series, Spooks. The baddies were radical anti-abortionists, led by a fanatical American. Makes a change from drug dealers and Arab terrorists. Incidentally, the BBC has started an interactive game based on the series, which should keep obsessives busy for a few weeks.

On the artists’ side

Dave Stewart and others are starting a pro-artists entertainment business (strange idea!).

“There is total corruption in the music industry — it’s like Enron. There’s a corporate front end, but at the back end there’s all this wheeling and dealing. It’s a rip-off. The amount of money we’ve made [as the Eurythmics] compared to the amount of money we’ve made for the people around us is minuscule. It happens to every artist. People say that Motown was a great label, but it was the greatest cotton field of all — loads of the artists got tiny royalties. Loads died without a gravestone, yet their songs have sold millions and millions.”

Oddly, given how well informed the Financial Times usually is, there is no mention of the new group’s attitude towards copyright and the Internet.