It was revealed two weeks ago that our former president, sorry prime minister, Tony Blair has been interviewed by inspectors from the Department of Business, who continue to investigate the collapse of MG Rover. This disclosure has come about by the publication of the Rover Report, by the lovely and entirely trustworthy Lord Mandelson, in his latest role as business secretary. Mandy announced on September 11th that he intends to ban the so-called Phoenix Four from ever running companies again. With what they took out they’re all far too busy building villas in the sun anyway. Whitehall sources are highly critical of Messers John Towers, Nick Stephenson, John Edwards and Peter Beale, attesting that this fine quartet who, you may remember, bought MG Rover for a tenner in May 2000, thereafter trousering £40 million while the company posted hundreds of millions in losses before going bosoms-up. You paid for that.

The inspectors further claim that the four were" out of their depth," only in it for "personal gain" and had planned to take even more out of the troubled company. I’m sure you’re as delighted as I am that the bleeding obvious is alive and well. The bad news is that grinning Tony appears to be in the clear - but a government report would say that, wouldn’t it? All this came the day after it was announced that the Canadian car parts manufacturer Magna and Russia’s Sberbank have snaffled up the lion’s share of General Motors’ European arm, namely Vauxhall and Opel.

It seems entirely likely that the German Opel bit will survive in the long term, but I can’t see the Luton plant surviving beyond 2013, when a van deal with Renault hits the contractual buffers.

Magna claims that it is committed to Vauxhall’s Ellesmere Port plant, where the Astra is nailed together, but I’m prepared to bet my ocelot driving gloves that hundreds of Liverpool workers will lose their jobs as a result of all this. Please note that Vauxhall/Opel plants also exist in Belgium, Spain and Poland - you don’t need me to tell you where labour costs are cheaper. The irony of it makes my timbers shiver, when I consider that all the experience in building cars these three countries share comes to not one scintilla of what this once
proud industrial nation could boast.

Will the name Vauxhall survive? Probably not. Will we mourn it? Again, doubtful. I am no sentimentalist for the increasingly bland brand that became Vauxhall as it is today. I do, as a "humanist", despair to see the calamitous effects of all these closures. There is no return. What a waste of resources - both fiscal and, more importantly, human. You will pay for this as well.

Look at Rover. ’Nuff said. Down Boy.

Zog Ziegler