That is because much of what Mr Brown portrayed as "family-friendly" policy is really means-tested help, aimed at the poor.The chancellor is scrapping the married couples' allowance (MCA), the last recognition of marriage in the tax and benefit system.
Kennedy forecasts that the business will grow by 6-9% for each of the next three years; private-sector business, it says, will grow by only 1-4% over the same period.Britain's Management Consultancies Association (MCA) reckons that the value of public-sector consulting to its members grew by 46% last year, while private-sector business grew by only 4%.
Indeed, as Connie Bruck points out, "the culture of MCA bore no small resemblance to the Mafia's": loyalty ruled and was rewarded, betrayal went unforgiven.This portrait is inspired less by affection than by awe.
So, why did the speech Dr Mahathir made to the MCA seem to undercut both objectives?Mainly, it seems, because non-Malays have been emboldened by UMNO's internal problems.
But a bigger question for Malaysia may be whether the MCA quarrel is a prelude to the breakdown of the National Front's racially-defined political compromise.
He was head of the Music Corporation of America, the MCA, which was daily becoming more powerful and was to dominate Hollywood for the next 30 years.The actors, directors and writers who made Hollywood the world's greatest assembly of creative talent would often feel humbled that their work was controlled by a salesman.
A social conservative, who believed that marriage strengthens society, might have tightened MCA to focus it just on married couples, or just on married parents.
The timing is curious: since the MCA is being scrapped from April 2000, there will be a year in which many parents, not just rich ones, will be less well off.Equally questionable is how CTC will operate.
Ong Tee Keat, the party's president and minister of transport, has vowed to get to the bottom of the scandal, even if it involves former or present MCA officials.
It is also as close as visitors to the exhibition will get to seeing Bowie this year: he hasn't performed in public since 2006.It wasn't a high price tag or art-world intrigue that made this possible: the MCA simply got there first.
By 1960, MCA controlled some 70% of all Hollywood stars, including Marlon Brando, Jimmy Stewart, Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable.
