Bernie Ecclestone Quotes

If you don't have a seat at the table, you're probably on the menu.

Bernie Ecclestone’s comment that ‘If you don’t have a seat at the table, you’re probably on the menu.

This idea is extremely clever and highlights that there is exclusivity even around the use of violence. The state can legitimately use force to impose its will and increasingly so can the rich. Take away that facility and societies will begin to equalize. If that hotel in India that I went to was stripped of its security, they’d have to address the complex issues that led to them requiring it. “These systems can be very expensive. America employs more private security guards than high school teachers. States and countries with high inequality tend to hire proportionally more guard labor. If you’ve ever spent time in a radically unequal city in South Africa, you’ll see that both the rich and the poor live surrounded by private security contractors, barbed wire, and electrified fencing. Some people have nice prison cages, and others have not-so-nice ones. But when there’s inequality, there’s got to be someone making sure, with force, that it stays that way.” Matt here, metaphorically, broaches the notion that the rich too are impeded by inequality, imprisoned in their own way. Much like with my earlier plea for you to bypass the charge of hypocrisy, I now find myself in the unenviable position of urging you, like some weird, bizarro Jesus, to take pity on the rich. It’s not an easy concept to grasp, and I’m not suggesting it’s a priority. Faced with a choice between empathizing with “the rich” and “the homeless,” by all means go with the homeless. It is reductive, though, not to acknowledge that all are encompassed by this system and none of us are free while it endures. I’m not saying it’s worse to be one of Bernie Ecclestone’s kids than Jason, the homeless bloke who lives under the bridge at the end of my street; I’m saying that the two are connected and everyone will benefit from change. I should also point out that empathy, sympathy, and love are limitless resources, energies that never deplete, and at this time of dwindling fuels we should cherish and explore these inexhaustible inner resources more than ever.

This comes back to a theme we discussed last time which was that at a certain point in your career, you stop fighting the battles that you would have fought even a couple of years earlier, because you just haven’t got the energy. So the relationship with the FIA I think is clear. When we look at the relationship with the commercial rights holder – which people would identify with Bernie Ecclestone – it is more complicated. Formula One is relatively unusual in that in most sports the regulator doesn’t matter a huge amount because they might decide how big the ball is or whether you use touchline technology, or whatever, but that doesn’t really affect anyone very much or it affects everyone the same. In Formula One the rules matter enormously, and changing the rules matters as we discussed. But the other oddity about Formula One is this three-way relationship between the teams, the regulator and the commercial rights holder. You said that earlier in your career the relationship with the commercial rights holder wasn’t your responsibility because you had people like Flavio Briatore or Luca di Montezemolo doing it. But later, when it was your responsibility at Brawn and then at Mercedes, you delegated it, largely. R Yes.

I had lost a five-year long struggle with the man who controls the sport, Bernie Ecclestone. I described these events in the light-hearted manga format of a book I called The Art of War – Five Years in Formula One.