Well, burger me, up-market hamburger joints operator Byron Hamburgers has stirred up a Twitter storm through its collusion with the UK immigration authorities.
The British provider of American/German cuisine chose 4 July – Independence Day in the home of the brave and the land of the free – to invite 35 staff from at least 15 restaurants to an event in London on 4 July, ostensibly for training but actually so they could be arrested and deported because they did not have valid work permits.
The deception has not gone down well with many on Twitter, but it is difficult to know what else the company could have done other than comply with the wishes of the UK border agents.
Also trending on Twitter in the UK is the hash-tag #4pmfinish, a wheeze devised by the maker of a sickly-tasting energy drink, ostensibly to encourage UK workers to knock off at 4pm today and get to work early on getting paralytic through consumption of Jaeger-bombs.
Never mind a 4pm finish, hundreds of illegal immigrants are likely not going to be turning up to work at all today after the shenanigans at Byron Hamburgers.
It’s a measure of how fast food can mess with the brain that I initially misread a headline on the BBC as “Chinese restaurant over Hinkley delay”.
The headline actually refers to Chinese restraint, not a Chinese restaurant, and refers to the British government’s decision to delay signing of a deal that would see the construction of the first new nuclear power station in the UK for more than 20 years, at Hinkley Point in Somerset.
A French firm, EDF, was set to build it, and China was set to fund a third of its cost, but speculation is rife that the government – now headed by Theresa May rather than David Cameron – may be getting cold feet over the whole arrangement, which was cooked up on Cameron's watch.
Many have questioned the wisdom of allowing foreign governments to back the construction of something so vital to the nation’s energy needs, not to mention the safety of the local populace.
They may have a (Hinkley) point.
In a shock development, pressure group Friends of the Earth welcomed the decision.
“Margaret Thatcher cancelled the nuclear build programmes in the early 1990s because the economics were dreadful. Hopefully, Teresa May is about to do the same, and prevent hard-pressed energy bill payers being saddled with unnecessary cost well into the future,” said Mike Childs of the tree-hugging organisation.
In another shock development, bosses’ pressure group the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) made no mention of Thatcher in its press release on the decision.
George Bush did get a mention, but only because that appears to be the name of the poor blighter charged with sending out the CBI’s utterances.
“While it is understandable the Government wants to get to grips with the details of the Hinkley contract, it must press ahead to finalise the deal as soon as possible,” urged CBI deputy director-general Josh Hardie, no relation (I presume) to the founder of the Labour Party, James Keir Hardie.
“The UK is facing a major investment challenge to ensure a secure, low-carbon and affordable energy supply. It’s crucial that we see clear and timely decisions, and send a definite message that the UK is well and truly open for business,” Hardie reckons.
I think “open for business” is business code for “we’ll sell anything we own to anyone so long as the price is right”, but I could be wrong.
Elsewhere in the energy sector, watchdog Ofgem has launched an investigation into SSE plc’s (LON:SSE) pre-payment meter processes.
Ofgem is concerned that SSE’s approach to switching its customers to pre-payment meter tariffs might be prompted more by the wish to make more money than a desire to save its customers a few bob,
“The opening of this investigation does not imply that we have made any findings about non-compliance,” Ofgem said.
The featuring of this investigation in this news column does not imply SSE has done anything wrong, Proactive Investors said.
Jeff Bezos, founder of online retailer and taxation specialist Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN), has overtaken “the sage of Omaha” Warren Buffet to become the world's third-richest man.
Never mind organising boycotts of tupenny-ha’penny burger chains, when are people going to organise a boycott of the likes of Amazon, Google and Apple for their perfectly legal but morally dubious tax policies?
Meanwhile, down at the smaller end of the market, it could be the end of the line for two Proactive Investors favourites.
Sierra Rutile Ltd (LON:SRK) has confirmed it has received a bid approach from Iluka Resources Limited. Then again, as Iluka is thinking about offering 36p a share, which is below the current Sierra Rutile share price, this may not be the end of the line for the London-listed mineral sands group.
It surely must be the end of the Gulf Keystone Petroleum Ltd (LON:GKP) though, which has received a US$300mln cash and shares bid from Norway’s DNO.
DNO’s chairman, Bijan Mossavar-Rahmani, said this morning: "Combining these two companies will create further scale and unlock operational synergies that will reinforce DNO's already formidable presence in Kurdistan.”
Shares shot up 16.6% to 4.55p, which is admittedly a far cry from the days when the shares traded above four quid.