Britain clearly remains a nation of animal lovers.

Witness the Big Brother him/her/thing - some non-entity among the rest of the has-beens, wannabes, deviants and wasters - whose "gorilla coat" outraged the truly sad viewers of this dreadful programme.

And, though I thought my sense of geography was poor, then we had the nation's outpouring of grief over the demise of the world's most stupid whale - which found itself in the Thames when it should have been in the Atlantic.

A response that was as touching as it was pathetic.

Almost the same sort of national hysteria evident over the death of Diana.

Not one of our more likeable traits in my view albeit the nation united in a cause has attractive features.

I guess this pulling together offers glimpses of what it must have been like in the Second World War when we stood alone against Hitler.

On the industrial front I have only ever seen it twice.

The first was when the people of the West Midlands demanded that Rover be saved following BMW's decision to dump the Longbridge car plant. That, like the fate of the whale, subsequently ended in tears.

As the Government noted last week, the vast majority of opinion formers were greatly in favour of the John Towers consortium against the Alchemy proposal.

Just a handful of people saw that Towers and his cronies were in it for themselves first and Rover second.

It bought time for the powers-that-be to diversify the region's economy but it cost Rover workers bumper payoffs which could have given many much better prospects for the future.

The other example in the last 15 years was Birmingham van maker LDV when its Dutch parent foundered.

At the time I couldn't see a rescue happening.

LDV was on its knees, with two very old models, the Convoy and Pilot, and no real prospect of a replacement.

But I forgot about the Brummie spirit and Brummie resilience.

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The workers fought for the jobs, the financiers and the business community rallied round, and the management got it back producing.

I'd got it wrong. Or was I just a decade out? LDV is almost in as big a mess today.

In the hands of a secretive US venture capital firm, contemplating job losses, the pension fund in tatters, sales stuttering.

Sun Capital's first step has been to sideline chief executive Allan Amey.

Yet another boss who had won the seemingly cursed West Midlands Businessman of the Year Award.

In some ways Amey did a remarkable job in holding it together for so long but some of his colleagues viewed him as an autocrat and there always was the suspicion that the LDV story could equally end in tears.

Is the Washwood Heath factory destined to end up as just another business park?

It does have its new model, the Maxus, so it has a chance.

But no amount of whale-like emotion will touch new owners Sun Capital.

They will be there for only as long as it is in their interest to stay. Worrying times for LDV.