Quote Originally Posted by Oracle View Post
And there was I thinking you were a thinking man , not a consumer of any lefty tosh you come upon. Ah well.

Now study actual history, the two situations could not be more different.

BA waged a continuous campaign of dirty tricks used against virgin to undermine their failing airline, eg stealing hacked information from their customer database to switch sell customers, even claiming some virgin flights were cancelled. Branson had every right to be angry.
He was also libelled personally years before by lord king. Memories die hard.


Also funding BA would have distorted competition, and Branson was right to contest it.
Branson has had to fight too much of this, eg Competing in the US is inherently unfair because of trying to compete with chapter 11 airlines who don’t pay their bills,

Now is completely different.
Virgin has a problem because governments shut it down.
Government created the problem. Government must solve it.
I'm aware of the early 90s. Around the time BA's profits were in the 100s of millions and Virgin were trading at a loss.
The cost of the early 90s shenanigans were a few million an yes dirty tricks, and they paid for them, but Branson was an early form of virtue signaller. My airline is much better, more ethical etc than your airline.

Branson didn't leave it there. He tried for years to take them for 100s of millions in the States and it got kicked out.

In the mid 90s BA were on of my share "punts" when I first started to dabble. I did OK. Bought in, sold at a decent profit a couple of years later and then managed to pick them up cheap not long after and sell again at a profit.

My beef was how BA had been shafted by the EU Commission, Commissioner Kinnock at the time. BA led an action against Air France at the ECJ along with Lufthansa.
They won.
By a signature post case, Kinnock retrospectively reversed about 4 years of legal process.