Last week a story appeared in a Lebanese daily alerting the country’s multimillionaires that Beirut Boat 2014, “Lebanon’s biggest boat and yacht show”, was “making a return this spring at the Port of Beirut’s Pier 1”. The event, we were told, would be “the ninth instalment of the expo, which brings together owners, buyers and dealers along with others specialising in luxury lifestyle products every evening from May 14-18.” Phew. Someone had been reading his press pack.

 

The piece, which carried no by-line, continued in the same cheery vein, making zero reference to Lebanon’s woeful economy, political paralysis, security nightmare and record-breaking refugee crisis. The peerless Andrew Harvey, my former boss when I was a business reporter on the Beirut Daily Star in the late 1990s, would have chuckled to himself before throwing me the press release and telling me to find out why anyone would be mad enough to hold a boat show in a country that was staring into the abyss. That should have been the story. [Link]