You can find plenty of people who have a favorable story, or stories to tell about any number of despots, dictators, and con-artists. It's not exactly an abnormal occurrence for something positive to be said about a figure, no matter how disgusting some of their transgressions have been over the long haul.smellybeard wrote:Did Bernie lie?
I don't know. I don't see how it makes any difference. He's back at work.
On a personal note - Thirty-odd years ago Bernie took me down the pit lane in Brands Hatch - practically by the hand and introduced me to half a dozen team managers, designers and the like. Frank Williams, Jean Sage, Brian Hart and Tony Southgate have stuck in my mind. If that isn't looking after a fan, I don't know what is. He was a personable and chatty to me as he would be the dignitaries walking about on any exotic grid these days.
It is beyond my ability to say anything bad about the man.
Bernie is nothing more than a used car salesman, and the salesman in him will forever be doing things like what you described at Brands Hatch because it's what he does. It's also the same way he has managed to consolidate power over the past few decades with no one being the wiser, and how he continues to extort money out of so many entities that should know better. It's why you see the media types fawning over him whenever they come face-to-face with the man. Forever being in sales pitch mode, he has them convinced he has something special to give them even when he doesn't.
His life has been one long con, and I suspect it's also what keeps him alive; there is a tremendous rush he gains from the excitement of it all.
You saw one side of him. There is then the other side as pictured here with his dear friend.
Never forget the two of them conspired to defraud the entire sport of the incredibly valuable commercial rights in the year 2000. Those commercial rights were purposely kept from ever being put out to tender on the open market because it would have ensured that Bernie could not have come up with the financial means to purchase the rights. He would have easily been outbid on the open market. He spent over twenty years working towards that moment where he reaped multiple windfalls due to locking up those rights into the 22nd century for a mere $3.6 million USD per year.
You can draw a straight line from the acquisition of those rights thru 2014, with regards to how F1 as a sporting endeavor declined slowly year-after-year, to the point there has been an obsession with the media, and fans about how can "the show" be made more exciting.
After all, the transfer of those rights that Max made possible, ensured the sport would be repeatedly raped every year to line the pockets of a few.
Just imagine how much richer Bernie would have gotten if that intended Singapore Stock Exchange IPO had gone through in 2012? I believe that F1 being issued on a stock exchange was always the end game for Bernie and Max as the riches to have been reaped from that would have been astronomical. Both of them would have been cashed out long before anyone got wind of whatever fraud was involved in all of that.
