Big Business Says Goodbye Big Brother

And lo it came to pass that Britain's most in your face, on your High Street, come in come in and see our special offers, mobile phone company decided to 'suspend' its association with CBB over the racism issue.

It's an interesting development, it's happened in football, companies have withdrawn sponsorship because they didn't want to be associated with a team being relegated, conversly big companies form lengthy queues to be associated with the great and good. Sponsorship usually goes over the heads of most watching punters, it's there for people who are in the know to discover who is worth associating with. If you watch American Football you'll know that the target audience spend most of their lives on the sofa eating crisps, pringles, hot dogs and drinking Pepsi.

Remember Nelson Piquet being sponsored by Parmalat? Of course you don't, unless like me you happened to be studying Econmoics at the time and knew what the company did, of course by the end of the 20th century everybody knew what Parmalat did, thanks to a bribery case. Watching boxing it's always struck me how directors of Lonsdale must feel seeing somebody wearing their shorts laying spark out on the canvas - can you imagine if the loser was forced to wear shorts sponsored by George of Asda?

Does it serve any purpose? Well yes it does actually. There's an Eddie Izzard riff where he talks about supermarkets, he makes the point that when you walk into one you are greeted by fresh fruit and veg and that immediately your subconscious responds by telling you it's a good place to shop. Alternatively if you walk into a shop and are greeted by toilet rolls you will think 'this is as poo shop, I don't want to shop here'. What Carphone Warehouse have done is say 'look, if nobody is going to condemn this racism and bullying we are pulling the plug'.

Carphone Warehouse are a big company, when it posted its interim results for the six months to 30 September 2006 revenue was up over 40 per cent to £1.8bn. The phone flogger claimed "headline" profit up an even better 60 per cent to £59.3m. However because of expenses incurred setting up broadband infrastructure, and the launch of Virgin Mobile France, hurt, reducing pre-tax profits to £14.1m, less than half last year's £37m. They can see that however subliminal the connection between their name and the issue here they could alienate part of their potential market.

It should mean the end of BB and all its offspring because companies will not want to queue up to sponsor (in Eddie's words) 'a poo shop'. In the long run it might actually serve society well, saying we've had enough of casual rascism, of bullying, of inverted snobbery. Let's judge people by what they bring to the party not by how they look and how much they earn.....as somebody from Liverpool once wrote 'maybe I'm just a dreamer, but I'm not the only one.'