The Management Mythbuster

Gordon Ramsey where are you?

After living for many years in America I have learned to endure the ritual denunciation of British cuisine (surely an oxy-moron chorus my Yankee friends).  This always seems a little hypocritical to me, given that America’s most notable gastronomic contributions to the planet would seem to be the Big Mac and the Twinkie. 

British cuisine has improved over the years and the celebrity chef is now a definable tribe but the impact has not been universal, as my holiday dining can attest.  For Boxing Day (December 26th) dinner with the family we reserved a table at Bamburgh Castle Hotel in Seahouses, a small fishing village on the northeast coast of England.  The menu offered a set meal of seasonal fare at 20 pounds ($30) a head or choices from the normal menu.  Expecting some nice local seafood or hearty English pub fare we arrived at the appointed hour. 

Drinks were ordered and consumed and orders placed.  An hour or so later things began there downward spiral.  The mushroom appetizer failed to live up to it's name,; it's tough to burn mushrooms but the chef had succeeded, the Brie cheese looked old enough to vote and the berry relish resembled a sweet tar.  Clearly more drinks were needed. Unfortunately the pub had run out of bitter (you know that dark stuff served warm) and the cider was as flat as a pancake (in England it’s alcoholic and supposed to be a little fizzy).  So no respite there.  The entrees arrived and what a motley selection they were.  The gammon (ham steaks) were cremated; all three rib-eye steaks were cooked the same despite orders ranging from medium rare to well done; the lasagna looked like a lava flow that had partially hardened and even the chips (fries) were a poor advert for one of England’s staples.  The only vaguely edible dish was the sausage and mash.  I am no cook but I could have easily improved on the sad offering and for the princely sum of 136 pounds ($200) could have done it much cheaper as well.

The Bamburgh Castle Hotel shot straight into the top ten worst meals of my life (four of which occurred in America - so there!). The hotel is in urgent need of a visit from the sainted Gordon; although the editors will need the “bleeper” on overtime if he dares to taste the food!

Home for the Holidays

It's 4am in the morning and I'm sitting on the sofa gazing out at the North Sea having escaped the economic misery that is gripping America and replaced it with the economic misery gripping the U.K.  Here in Northumberland (northeast England just south of the Scottish border) they adopt a more sanguine approach to economic decline; after all this region has been through it many times before as coal, shipbuilding and almost every other industry that once made Britain great has disappeared.  You think Detroit has it bad now - Newcastle has been like that for sixty years.

Thankfully we English still have a sense of humour, so the shops are all advertising "Beat the Crunch," as in credit crunch, deals and the locals are still popping out for a pint.  After all its Christmas and in Britain that means that a few big issues dominate, none of which seem to matter stateside:

- First is what will be number 1 in the charts? The answer is Hallelujah sung by a talent show winner, the same song is also at number 2 courtesy of Jeff Buckley which is an interesting throwback to the early-60's when the same song by different artists often charted at the same time.
- What will happen in the Christmas specials of all your favourite TV shows which unlike America are actually shown on Christmas Day not on some random date in early December.
- Who will get knighted, damed, OBE'd or CBE'd in the Queens Christmas Honours list?
- Will Great Aunt Betty get a little tipsy on the sherry and reveal what really happened down in the air raid shelter during the War?
- Can Stoke deal with Man United in the Boxing Day football? The answer's almost certainly No, but we live in hope.
- Will the Brussels sprouts and Christmas pud finally taste good? Probably not so just have another glass of whisky.

Finally as I'm in England I can wish you all a Happy Christmas without fear of being politically incorrect.

News Flash - America bankrupt, Britain launches bailout, but with conditions

During my recent travels in Europe, the local populace has expressed little regard for the behavior of us humble Americans (yes I had to show my US passport a couple of times) - be it our staggering economy, overheated political process, dubious military prowess or penchant for weak beer - the net result is at best bewilderment and at worst disgust.  In Britain this has led to much hand-wringing as to how our former colony, once such a promising juvenile on the world stage could stumble so badly so my fellow countrymen (when using my other passport) have decided to take charge.  The following proclamation has emerged from Buckingham Palace and is now circulating widely among the Brit expat community stateside. I claim no authorship but simply reproduce it for the benefit of my fellow Americans...

"To the citizens of the United States of America from Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.

In light of your failure in recent years to nominate competent candidates for President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves and given the bankrupt state of your economy, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective immediately.

Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths, and territories (except Kansas, which she does not fancy).

Your new Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, will appoint a Governor for America without the need for further elections. Congress and the Senate will be disbanded.

A questionnaire may be circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed.

To aid in the transition to a British Crown dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect:

(You should look up 'revocation' in the Oxford English Dictionary.)

1. Then look up aluminium, and check the pronunciation guide. You will be amazed at just how wrongly you have been pronouncing it.

2. The letter 'U' will be reinstated in words such as 'colour', 'favour', 'labour' and 'neighbour.' Likewise, you will learn to spell 'doughnut' without skipping half the letters, and the suffix '-ize' will be replaced by the suffix '-ise'. Generally, you will be expected to raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels. (look up 'vocabulary').

3. Using the same twenty-seven words interspersed with filler noises such as 'like' and 'you know' is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication. There is no such thing as US English. We will let Microsoft know on your behalf. The Microsoft spell-checker will be adjusted to take into account the reinstated letter 'u' and the elimination of -ize.

4. July 4th will no longer be celebrated as a holiday.

5. You will learn to resolve personal issues without using guns, lawyers, or therapists. The fact that you need so many lawyers and therapists shows that you're not quite ready to be independent. Guns should only be used for shooting grouse. If you can't sort things out without suing someone or speaking to a therapist, then you're not ready to shoot grouse.

6. Therefore, you will no longer be allowed to own or carry anything more dangerous than a vegetable peeler. Although a permit will be required if you wish to carry a vegetable peeler in public.

7. All intersections will be replaced with roundabouts, and you will start driving on the left side with immediate effect. At the same time, you will go metric with immediate effect and without the benefit of conversion tables. Both roundabouts and metrication will help you understand the British sense of humour.

8. The former USA will adopt UK prices on petrol (which you have been calling gasoline) of roughly $10/US gallon. Get used to it.
9. You will learn to make real chips. Those things you call French fries are not real chips, and those things you insist on calling potato chips are properly called crisps. Real chips are thick cut, fried in animal fat, and dressed not with catsup but with vinegar.

10. The cold tasteless stuff you insist on calling beer is not actually beer at all. Henceforth, only proper British Bitter will be referred to as beer, and European brews of known and accepted provenance will be referred to as Lager. South African beer is also acceptable as they are pound for pound the greatest sporting nation on earth and it can only be due to the beer. They are also part of British Commonwealth - see what it did for them. American brands will be referred to as Near-Frozen Gnat's Urine, so that all can be sold without risk of further confusion.

11. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as good guys. Hollywood will also be required to cast English actors to play English characters. Watching Andie MacDowell attempt English dialogue in Four Weddings and a Funeral, was an experience akin to having one's ears removed with a cheese grater.

12. You will cease playing American football. There is only one kind of proper football; you call it soccer. Those of you brave enough will, in time, be allowed to play rugby (which has some similarities to American football, but does not involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full kevlar body armour like a bunch of nancies). Don't try rugby - the South Africans and Kiwis will thrash you, like they regularly thrash us.

13. Further, you will stop playing baseball. It is not reasonable to host an event called the World Series for a game which is not played outside of America . Since only 2.1% of you are aware there is a world beyond your borders, your error is understandable. You will learn cricket, and we will let you face the South Africans first to take the sting out of their deliveries.

14. You must tell us who killed JFK. It's been driving us mad.

15. An internal revenue agent (i.e. tax collector) from Her Majesty's Government will be with you shortly to ensure the acquisition of all monies due (backdated to 1776).

16. Daily Tea Time begins promptly at 4 pm with proper cups and saucers, and never mugs, with high quality biscuits (cookies) and cakes; plus strawberries (with cream) when in season.

God Save the Queen!"

Britain - a more caring society?

For decades people in Britain have been complaining about the so-called "Nanny Society" as numerous safety nets, societal ills, hand-outs, and sociological theories allow the individual to shirk responsibility for their own failings.  "Oh, its society's fault that little Tommy took an ax to his teacher's head" or "Where were the social services when Linda starved her children to death?" 

Now it seems the nanny is focused on the well-being of criminals when they are attacked by police dogs. Dog handlers are being schooled in "cultural sensitivity" to help them ascertain whether suspects may have allergies or a fear of animals before unleashing Max to do his work.  One un-named (he wants to keep his job) police sergeant commented that, "the traditional shout of "Stand still or I will set my dog on you" will have to be modified to, "Excuse me my dog is quite hairy and might cause alarm as he sinks his fangs into your right thigh.  Is that all right with you?"

In an interesting counterpoint to the above, the very next story in my English paper, described how husbands will no longer be able to blame their "nagging wives" for provoking them to kill their attentive spouse. Similarly, the plea of not guilty to murder by claiming a "crime of passion" if their partner was having an affair will also be unavailable to the cuckolded husband. 

Of course, murdering husbands will still be able to blame society, the failure of their mothers to breast feed them or the hallucinogenic effects of Tylenol for their crimes, so at least some sanity remains...

Hi-tech trash - British style

I have always been in favour of recycling and with an environmentally conscious 15-year old in the house, I now have to recycle even the smallest piece of paper (our recycling bin is bigger than our rubbish bin which I think is a good thing) but it does seem that back in the country of my birth things have become a little extreme.

In recent months there has been a huge outcry over the local authorities in some places moving from weekly rubbish pick-up to bi-weekly pick-up as a way to save money - some enterprising councils have even instituted fines if you have too much rubbish; but its in the area of recycling that things have got a little crazy. Consider some of the following measures that are being discussed:

- Forcing households to buy bar-coded rubbish bags (at a bargain 40 cents each!) so that each household's rubbish creation can be monitored

- Purchasing new rubbish wagons that weigh your rubbish and therefore can monitor individual rubbish creation when combined with the aforementioned barcodes

- Demanding that households use lockable rubbish bins so that unscrupulous neighbours don't dump their rubbish in your bin

- Demand that 50% of household rubbish be recyclable by 2010 (who is going to force the the packagers to comply?)

Now I know we need to be green but this seems like a job creation scheme for the local authorities - no doubt a Rubbish Audit Commission will need to be established with inspectors hired to patrol neighbourhoods checking for excessive rubbish creation or underweight recycling; this will also demand that new courts be established to mete out appropriate penalties.  In a few years Brits will no doubt be forced to install new toilets that can weigh their poop to ensure that it is not excessive and also run a batch of tests to ensure it contains the appropriate recyclable content.   

It adds a new meaning to having a rubbish government and squeaky clean politicians doesn't it?

 

 

Vanishing Britain

For decades the accepted image of Britain has been divided into three distinct elements. First is the urban, industrial landscape. This is always portrayed as dark, dank alleyways where it’s always night and Sweeney Todd or Jack the Ripper can safely ply their trade. Rural images are always of quaint villages with charming pubs, a few swans puttering about on the village pond, a horde of bright young things enjoying a weekend of sophisticated debauchery up at the manor house and Miss Marple deep into solving yet another murder that has the local police bewildered.

The third scene is a slight oddity since it reflects an image of Britain that has never existed outside of a few choice neighborhoods in central London. For much of the 20th century it was restricted to Mayfair, Bloomsbury, Kensington and Chelsea. With the turn of the century and the rise of Hugh Grant, Notting Hill was added to the list. This is the London of wealth and privilege where people of considerable means but limited work ethic, shop, drink and dine to excess. Hollywood (and the BBC) have mastered all three forms as they churn out costume dramas, period pieces, tales of country house intrigue and light-hearted comedies (all starring the aforementioned Mr. Grant) for our enjoyment.

Unfortunately none of it exists anymore. In fact most of the things that define Englishness are disappearing:

- Pubs are closing at the rate of 50 a month; half of all English villages don't have a pub anymore
- Nothing is manufactured in Britain anymore - as if Jaguar being owned by Americans was not bad enough its now owned by the Indians, who of course already own the fast food industry at the expense of the fast disappearing "Chippy"
- The village High Street consists solely of Estate Agents and lawyers; kids today have no inkling as to what a baker or greengrocer's shop is.
- Just like America, the mall has destroyed the traditional retail landscape; for us Brits it's the High Street our equivalent of Main Street.
- Mayfair and Bloomsbury have become satellites of Moscow as oligarchs squabble over their piece of England's formerly green and pleasant land. The only competition is a few, very lucky, hedge fund managers who vacated Greenwich, CT to fund much of the oligarchs economic imperialism
- As Russia now owns central London the former residents who make mere millions have descended on the countryside both to live (at least part time) or to make "appropriate" investments in property leaving many villages as virtual ghost towns during the week.

The only good thing is that the industrial images of smog, soot and decay have gone. The clean air act and globalization saw to that so Sweeney and Jack would no longer be able to fade into the shadows as they went about he business. Now there every move would be caught on numerous CCTV cameras and they would be banged up by bedtime...

Is the new England (as opposed to New England) better than the original? Did the original ever really exist outside the author's imagination? I don't know but I long for quiet beer sans ESPN or the latest Premier League “blockbuster.”

England - can we get much lower?

Apparently the American view of Britain is of binge drinking, sunburned, soccer shirt wearing thugs. Pretty perceptive the Yanks aren't they? Our self-image is not much better but we console ourselves in the fact that we are not French or, even worse, American!

It’s been a tough few weeks for Britannia. First Carla and Nick contrive to make our own top couple, Gordon and Sarah, look positively dowdy. We had to resort to Liz and Phil who, while both over-80, still represent the class that once oozed out of every English pore. The Dunkirk and Blitz spirit are long gone. We can't even recapture the days when The Beatles, the Stones and London represented the summit of cool. Now we have a drug addict, Amy Winehouse, and an obnoxious cad, Simon Cowell as our most visible cultural ambassadors. Hugh Laurie, star of House, represents the only class we have to offer and even he has to fake an American accent.

As if that wasn’t enough we then have had the Terminal 5 fiasco where a supposedly high-tech baggage system resulted in 28,000 stranded pieces of luggage and chaos for days. Only days before the terminal opened nameless “officials” vowed that that the new baggage handling facility and other systems would be in perfect order “on day one.” I guess the definition of perfect order has changed over the years.

It makes one wonder how we ever assembled an empire and kept it together for a few hundred years. More worrying, what chance is there that we can pull off the Olympics in 2012?

Selling England By The Pound -- That's Over $2 Now

Genesis sang of selling England by the pound back in 1973 -- now its actually worth something!

Houses of less than 1,000 square feet going for $400,000, a burger in a pub at $15 and $8.50 a gallon at the pump certainly makes Ohio seem attractive. The strong pound has got the dollar on the mat making for an expensive sojourn in my homeland. However there are compensations

Britain suffered an icy Easter; for the first time in years I saw snowmen in the fields and there were road closures in the hills near where I grew up. Despite the inclement weather there was an upside. On a snowy but sunny day we headed out into the hills navigating single track roads flanked by high hedges or dry stone walls and in a couple of places having to open gates to maintain our progress. After an hour or so of spotting baby lambs in the fields we pulled into a country pub with a roaring fire and no ESPN! A combination of good beer (i.e. not American) and big chunky sandwiches served on a bap or barn cake (if you don’t know, don’t ask!) with a heap of real chips (fries) hit the spot and the cholesterol. Another sign that this was an "authentic" pub was that the toilets were outside! The landlord and landlady put on a good show as "authentic" hosts but rather spoiled it when they told me they had spent nine years in Nantucket! It’s nice to know that the delights of Buxton outweigh those of New England.

Television has provided a nice counterpoint to wall-to-wall reality shows, game shows and crime scene investigations although the reality and game shows are still too numerous. Drama shows are set in the 50’s’ or 60’s with real people and nary a pair of Manolos or implants in insight. Soap operas are play out in gritty parts of Manchester and London with pubs and cafes being the centre of the social scene. No mansions, Mercedes or mascara. Radio plays ELO and 10CC and a whole social stratum of Grumpy Old Men (& Women) lament today’s youth, the passing of flares and the Ford Capri

I suspect this all has something to do with Britain’s self image being stuck in a time warp. The realities of today are just a little too depressing so lets reminisce about doing homework by candlelight in the 70’s. We’re a miserable bunch – the English.

The French win again!

Not only does Nicolas Sarkozy have a hotter wife than Gordon Brown, (in fact his last two wives have both been rather attractive don't you think?) but now they are outdoing us in the corporate fraud stakes. For more than a decade "Rogue Trader" Nick Leeson held the world record for dodgy traders with a $1.4billion loss which brought down Barings, a venerable British merchant bank. As an aside Barings was a client of mine for five years in the 1980's and they epitomised the blue-blooded English bank. In their vault were lavishly ornate bond certificates issued by the Russian Tsars that they had been holding for a century or more in expectation of eventual repayment!

Now this Jerome Kerviel has landed Societe Generale with a whopping $7.1billion loss. Even with the diminshed dollar and a decade of inflation he still handily takes Leeson's crown. It appears that SsocGen controls were rather like the Maiginot Line and about as effective!

Oh well there we Brits go again losing another record to our cross-channel neighbours. What ever will it be next?

What it means to be British in a global world

Politicians have been making a lot of noise about the negative impact of global trade and the loss of jobs it has apparently caused. No doubt the same people are not driving Prius', consuming Saudi oil or eating bananas. Anyway I must reference a great letter from Feb 5th edition of the Weekly Telegraph my hard copy link to my homeland. One correspondent, a Robert Readman perfectly encapsulated what it means to be British today:

"Being British is about driving in German car to an Irish pub where we imbibe copious amounts of Belgian or eastern European beer, then on the way home stopping to pich up an Indian curry or a Turkish kebab to consume as we sit on our Swedish furniture watching American shows on our Japanese TVs.

But above all, being British is our suspicion of anything foreign."

Perfectly said don't you think? Watch this space for a suitable American version in the near future.