Image of the week: Get your Brexit on
Another week, another set of Brexit horrors in mantra-loving Britain, where in the bubble of the Conservative Party conference in Manchester, true believers lapped up the vapid "Get Brexit Done" message and gave Boris Johnson and his Cabinet faithful several rounds of warm applause.
Johnson broke off from this friendly reception to give interviews to major British broadcasters with the notable exception of Channel 4. At one point, he urged the BBC's political editor Laura Kuenssberg to "keep hope alive".
She wearily countered: "This is not about people feeling hopeful. This is about whether or not the government can come up with a deal with the European Union to protect the economy, to protect people's jobs and livelihoods. This is not about telling people to cheer up. It couldn't be more serious."
To which Johnson replied: “I know. But it’s also a question of getting Brexit done.” Aagghhhh.
In numbers: The lion roars
€6,440,635 Box office take for The Lion King in the Republic so far, making it the leader for 2019. The Disney film led an 8 per cent surge in cinema attendances in July compared with the same month of 2018.
€6,408,459 Box office take here for Avengers: Endgame. The superhero ensemble, courtesy of Disney-owned Marvel, may be the highest-grossing film of all time across the globe, but it can only manage the number two spot for the Irish box office in 2019.
4 and 5 The Lion King and Avengers: Endgame are now ranked fourth and fifth in the all-time Irish box office list, according to figures from Wide Eye Media/Rentrak. Avatar, Titanic and Star Wars: The Force Awakens are still ahead of them.
Getting to know: Ken Murphy
Exit "Drastic" Dave Lewis, enter Irishman Ken Murphy (52) at the top of Tesco plc. The retail executive from Cork will take the lead at the British supermarket chain from next summer, having until recently been chief commercial officer of Walgreens Boots Alliance. Before that the chartered accountant held several roles at Boots, including "business transformation director" following its privatisation, having come to the chemist via pharmaceutical wholesaler UniChem (which became Alliance UniChem, which then became Alliance Boots).
Educated at University College Cork and Harvard Business School, Murphy was described this week by Tesco chairman John Allan – in the surprise announcement of Lewis's resignation – as "unquestionably, a seasoned, growth-orientated business leader", one with "deep commercial, marketing and brand experience" in both retail and wholesale. "I firmly believe we have the right person for the job." Over to you, Ken.
The list: Super-rich sweet spots
With 421 ultra-wealthy individuals per million adults in the State, the Republic has the fifth highest concentration of super-rich in the world, according to a study by data intelligence company Wealth-X, putting us behind Hong Kong, Switzerland, Luxembourg and Singapore. But which countries had the highest overall numbers of people with $30 million (€27.4 million) or more to their name?
5. Canada There are 10,400 people ultra-wealthy people in Canada, a number that is falling, but not fast enough to keep it out of the top five.
4. Germany No stranger to the super-rich, some 15,700 people in Germany are in the ultra-wealthy bracket. It turns out there's a lot of cash in Aldi, Lidl and BMW.
3. Japan There are 17,900 ultra-wealthy people in Japan, where the rich don't like to show off their fortunes, apparently.
2. China. Explosive growth in the number of billionaires in China has been the defining feature of the global wealth "charts" in recent years, and it now has 25,000 ultra-wealthy individuals.
1. US Way out in front in the super-rich stakes, we have Donald Trump's US, where hundreds of thousands of people face medical bankruptcy every year, but there are 81,300 people sitting on at least $30 million.
