Carillion: Death of a Frankenstein
Boris Karloff in The Bride of Frankenstein.
It’s hard to overstate the importance of a company called Carillion to the British government and the British economy. Well, it collapsed today.
Like its cannibalised name, Carillion is a corporation made up of the caracasses of other corporations. It was stitched together in 1999 to take advantage of the then-Labour government’s crush on the private sector.
Carillion was hived off as a “service” arm from a much older construction company called Tarmac, created in 1903. This is how it describes itself on its website.
“Carillion is a leading integrated support services business. We employ around 43,000 people and operate in the UK, Canada and Middle East. We have annual revenues of more than £5bn.”
For example, Carillion would find the finance to build a school, build it, clean and maintain the site and provide the school meals. Just one contract like that is worth a lot of money: Carillion had loads. Carillion runs about half the prisons in this country, for example. So Carillion may have started as an umbrella for construction companies but it’s ended up providing all kinds of other services — like cleaning and catering.
So if this company goes under, thousands of jobs (9,200 people are directly employed but that’s not including subcontractors) will go in this country and around the world. In Oxfordshire, school meals are delivered by this company. That’s not to mention the £520m hole in the pension fund.
It all seems about right for the week when the Moon is helping Saturn to deal a nice hard reality thump. Saturn, Pluto and Capricorn are all about Big Business — and what could be more Saturnian than a construction company — except, of course, this one lost the idea of what it was and became one of those “anything for a profit” companies.
The company was incorporated on May 28, 1999 under the name Cameron 1999 plc but changed its name on June 11, 1999 to Carillion. The usual procedure for companies is to set a chart for noon on the day of incorporation, but I am tempted by the naming day, Virgo Rising seems right for a service-based company.
Here is some astrology in action though. Mars was retrograde on May 28, but direct by June 11, when the company really got down to business. That Mars is, of course, crucial for today, since it’s the planet most affected by transiting Uranus (surprise! shock! kablam!) at 24° Aries.
This morning’s astrology
You have to admit there is a certain beauty to the chart set for the time that Carillion’s liquidation was announced on the BBC’s flagship Today Programme. Saturn is rising. Moon and Mercury are conjunct — news travels fast, and as the Moon reaches all those other planets over the next few days, we’ll see the repercussions from this announcement.
Set for the date the company was named.
Here are some points to look at
The upcoming eclipse on January 31 is on 11° Leo just by Carillion’s North Node.
A change of destiny — or the end of a good run. There’s the solar eclipse on February 15 at 26° Aquarius too.
Neptune is sitting on the Descendant.
Flaky partnerships unravelling.
Partnerships are what Carillion is all about.
Saturn, Moon, Mercury and wild card Lilith oppose Carillion’s Mercury in Cancer.
Pluto is coming up to a quincunx to the Sun.
This can be quite a violent aspect.
Oh and the Frankensteinishness? Uranus conjunct the South Node square the Taurus Moon-Saturn (good for a construction firm).
I do wonder what entities like this one will be next. Can’t have that Saturn & Pluto energy procedure inspection and transformational activity without some kind of visible shakeup in most sectors. (Given the topic, Saturn feels a lot like the Health Inspector or a tax auditor come home to roost)
My first thought is “Who’s had their hand in the till?”.
Because I really can’t see how a company this size fails. Especially when it gets awarded numerous Government contracts and probably at inflated prices.
Well, I’ve just listened to a news report that said they were still paying out big dividends even when they were deeply in debt, the CEO is still drawing his HUGE salary even though he left in September, and the Financial Director was paid 1.2m last year including bonus. That’s hands in the till alright — even if it might be legal.
Saturn is now making visible what has been hidden under the surface since Pluto has been churning his way through Capricorn. I see this everywhere, the stark reality. Saturn insists on making right with our actions. Make the changes, pay the debts, do the work or get out!
Strangely I disagree. The first chart you show above, and in which you seem to concentrate upon Mars, actually has Mars making aspects with Uranus and Chiron. Now isnt Chiron work/career and Uranus fame, and isnt Mars/Uranus Blitzkrieg?
The second chart which seems to be the birth chart for carrilion for 1999, has Neptune at 4 degrees and retrograding. Isnt transiting Saturn at the moment making a very close aspect to that Neptune? Talk about long-term Neptune meets short term Saturn.
Yes astrology really is that simple.
Wait until transiting Chiron moves forward to around 26 degrees, therefore making an applying aspect to Mays Saturn (retrograde). Just watch her career suffer.
This is not to do with Carrillion but I am surprised no astrologer has done a chart to see how WASPI women will fear. Those of us born in the 50s must have some unqiue features in our chart that might identify our fate.
From Wikipedia … “Women Against State Pension Inequality (WASPI) is a voluntary UK-based organisation founded in 2015 that campaigns against the way in which the state pension age for men and women was equalised … The 1995 Pensions Act increased the state pension age for women from 60 to 65 in order to equalise the age with men, with the change to be phased in over ten years from 2010 for women born between 1950 and 1955. This transition was later sped up by the 2011 Pensions Act.”
No surprise then that with all this talk of equality it covers the generation with both Saturn and Neptune in Libra. And that it became an issue as they hit their 2nd Saturn returns in 2011. (And of course the Cardinal Grand Cross that had occurred in summer of 2010).
But this is surely the nature of astrology. Asking strongly Libran people to look at issues of equality and fairness and also challenging them to integrate some Aries by fighting for what they believe to be right.
We will be losing a lot of money does this show or will Saturn sort it out
Bit worried about that — will have a look later
Report is out on Carillion. Really highlights what we already know about corporate world – it all stinks. Basically their auditors didn’t challenge them, the regulator are toothless, the execs were just focused on getting their bonuses.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-44129678