GlaxoSmithKline, basic stock market principles and atrocious grammar

Über pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline has been successful in obtaining an injunction against animal ‘rights’ campaigners, who have been targeting GSK shareholders and threatening to publish their names and addresses on the internet unless they sell their holdings in the company within two weeks. The campaigners object to GSK’s business dealings with Huntingdon Life Sciences – a long-term target of the bunny cuddling, animal-worshipping fundamentalists – who conduct animal research for medical purposes.

I saw some protesters near where I work a couple of months ago, hoisting their placards in impotent rage outside a branch of HSBC. I was tempted to make some signs of my own with names and pictures of people I know who would most likely be dead if it were not for sophisticated pharmacology derived by animal experimentation. Presumably the animal ‘rights’ movement would prefer that.

As for this feeble intimidation campaign of GSK shareholders, well, where do we begin? Clearly these people spend far too much time in the company of small furry animals and forgot to engage their brain before embarking on this. They threaten to publish details of targeted shareholders unless they sell their investments within a fortnight? Well, sell them to whom? Here’s how the market works: holder of GSK shares instructs to sell. Interested party pays cash for shares. Interested party becomes new holder of shares and therefore new investor in GSK. So all you’ve really done is transferred the investment to somebody else. Somebody else you’ve got to research, and then presumably write to, informing them that if they don’t sell their shares within two weeks you will publish their details on the internet. You’re just making more work for yourselves! You’re also making money for the brokers who take a commission on every transaction. Yes, your intention is to intimidate people into selling, thus driving down the share price and hitting GSK where it hurts, but it’s not going to work is it? There’s always a buyer for every seller. There’s always going to be people putting up cash for a stake in the company.

Perhaps not the smartest people in the world. As if to illustrate this point, The Guardian has quoted an extract from the letter that was sent out (in crayon, I suspect):

“The only way to hold GlaxoSmithKline to it’s [sic] PROMISE is to target it’s [sic] financial vulnerability. We are therefore giving you this opportunity to sell your shares in GlaxoSmithKline.”

PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) describe animal research as ‘animal torture’. Never mind that, what about the above torture of the English language? “It?s” promise? “It’s” financial vulnerability? I have a rule: never trust the words or intentions of grown adults still unable to use an apostrophe in its (did you see that?) correct context.

Talk about dumb animals. Maybe we should experiment on these people instead?

Meat isn’t murder

Like David Cameron (and it’s a horrifying concept, when you realise you like some of the same music as the leader of the Conservative Party), I love The Smiths. In a short but prolific period, Steven Patrick Morrissey and Johnny Marr produced some of the most effortlessly poignant and wonderful songs ever written, scattered across a handful of superb albums. Even in his solo years, Morrissey has continued to be one of the most enigmatic people in his profession, not to mention one of the wittiest and most articulate.

So it was disheartening (but, if I’m honest, not that surprising) to read in The Times today that this most committed vegetarian supports animal rights extremists who target scientists and companies involved in animal testing.

I support the efforts of the Animal Rights Militia in England and I understand why fur farmers and so-called laboratory scientists are repaid with violence — it is because they deal in violence themselves and it’s the only language they understand — the same principles that apply to war. 

A contemptible argument. I’m not going to defend fur farmers or hunters – they clearly perform no useful function, satisfying only the needs of the vain and the bloodthirsty – but nor would I advocate harm against them. The use of animals in medical and scientific experimentation, however, is a different matter entirely. Citizeness Sane, for an example close to home, is kept alive on a daily basis by a cocktail of drugs to treat a medical condition, almost certainly all tested on animals at some point. A horrible fact, but it’s true. So, my girlfriend is alive as a direct consequence of scientists testing on animals. I’m also willing to bet large amounts of money that every single reader of this post is either alive, or knows somebody who is alive, due to a medical breakthrough reached by testing on animals. Nobody wants to do it, nobody is happy about it, it’s just necessary. Animal ‘rights’ activists bombing individuals and companies associated with the industry operate within the same moral universe as all other terrorists and their behaviour can never be condoned.

So I wonder if, were he to be struck down with a potentially lethal condition, Morrissey would refuse to take life-saving drugs if he knew that animals had suffered along the way in their development and preparation? There’s nothing to wonder. Of course he would. In a flash.

They do say you should never meet your idols. You should certainly never read about their political beliefs.