Richard Branson – the spirit of Brass Necker

Richard Branson is finding out the hard way that another coronavirus side effect is the visceral dislike of people whose businesses don’t pay UK taxes and then have the gall to expect to be baled out by taxpayer. He is looking for £500 million in government aid to help stricken Virgin Atlantic, rather than dipping into his £4billion fortune. Dragon’s Den Duncan Bannatyne and Simon Cowell have hit out at the mega-rich, like Victoria Beckham and Branson, for leaning on the state. Simon Cowell says he will continue to pay his staff.

Tom Bower, his unauthorised biographer, says ‘Branson must rank as the least deserving tycoon in the Treasury’s long list of casualties asking for financial help. He wants a loan from the same tax system he has spent his entire career avoiding.’

What Branson has been superb at is building a media brand image through countless business set-ups and a fair number of failures. One commentator wrote: ‘He is a salesman who breaks rules not out of any radical impulse but because he has always got away with it.” Another described him as a “chancer” and a ‘vacuum.’ He advocates ethical transparency and accountability despite the veil of tax-haven secrecy over his businesses; and campaigns for a fairer world, flying his private jet into climate change summits.

He was born 18 July 1950 7 am Blackheath, England, with an entrepreneur mother who told him he could become anything and a barrister father who paid for his first sexual experience with a prostitute, was dyslexic, apparently cheated at exams and left school at 16. He has a 12^th house Cancer Sun exactly conjunct the Fixed Star Procyon, which raises to great heights and can come crashing down, associated also with rashness and temper. His Sun squares an impulsive Mars in Libra conjunct a publicity-attracting Neptune. His secretive Pluto sits on his Leo Ascendant making him both an enigma and a showman. His Jupiter in Pisces is on the cusp of his 8^th house of business finances giving him luck and opposes his Moon, describing the indulgent mother; on the other side of his chart Saturn in Virgo in the 2^nd, makes him ‘careful’ about his personal finances.

If his birth time is right then his Solar Arc Midheaven and his Uranus will catch the mid year Solar and Lunar Eclipses for a crisis and forced change of direction.  Tr Saturn also opposes his Sun this year and squares his Midheaven. But even more significantly tr Pluto is aiming to oppose his Sun and square his Aries Midheaven in 2021/22 which will put him under tremendous pressure for change and could see a major dent in his reputation. Plus his Solar Arc Pluto is in a blocked square to his Sun in 2021. He’ll push bullishly ahead as he always does supported by a couple of Jupiter uplifts. But if anything his 2022 is worse with a severely jolting Solar Arc Uranus conjunct his financial Saturn; a car-crash Solar Arc Mars square Moon; and possibly a Solar Arc MC conjunct his Uranus.

It may be that the pay-no-tax Leviathans also become a casualty of the CV 19 bug – Amazon, Apple, etc etc never mind Branson. It’ll become a much more mainstream issue given the economic pain of the lockdown and health costs.