Business Diary: A knighthood in the pipeline?

An early bid has been made for some sort of honour from the Coalition Government. Charlie Mullins, the chap behind Pimlico Plumbers, the posh tradesmen, has this to say about the efforts so far of Messrs Cameron and Osborne: "After years of rescuing botched jobs by cowboy plumbers, I've got a rough idea how the Coalition must feel after 100 days in power, trying to turn around Labour's disastrous mismanagement of the country. I may be dealing in millions rather than billions but the frustrations are the same." What a brown-noser.

A name that has some baggage

It is, of course, unkind to snigger at other people's misfortune, but yesterday's profits warning from the insurance services firm Charles Taylor Consulting caught the eye. No doubt it is a fabulous company, but sharing a name with a former African leader now on trial at The Hague for war crimes can't be great for business. Time for a rebranding exercise, maybe?

Blackstone boss says sorry

A sensible climbdown from Stephen Schwarzman, boss of the private equity giant Blackstone, who had this to say yesterday about some comments he made last week at an industry lunch: "I apologise for what was an inappropriate analogy." The analogy in question? "It's a war," Mr Schwarzman reportedly said of President Obama's plans to tax the private-equity sector more heavily. "It's like when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939." Does "inappropriate" quite cover it?

Biting the hand that feeds you

As it struggles to fight its way out of an advertising recession, the media needs every penny it can find, so maybe the Croydon Advertiser, from DMGT's Northcliffe Media stable, shouldn't be condemned for accepting advertising from massage parlours that offer – how shall we put it, ahem – additional services? Still, that revenue source is likely to dry up for the paper now: it has just exposed the advertiser in question as running a brothel.

businessdiary@independent.co.uk