UK business growth held back by pointless language, argues Oxford Professor.

Royal protector of the British Lexicon, Oxford Professor Mark Etting is to consider removing the word ‘Publicity’ from its 2012 edition of the Oxford dictionary.

Etting's controversial new proposals could eliminate shits like him

At a roundtable discussion with heads of government, including business Secretary Vince Cable, and leading linguistic experts from the university of Oxford, it was proposed that the word ‘publicity’ should be eradicated from the British business lexicon in order to stimulate growth in a ‘flat-lining’ British economy.

Professor Etting claimed, “We have been analysing how language could be having a direct impact on business performance,” he continued, “What we have discovered is an enormous tranche of total business spend is wasted on so-called communications agencies, and especially publicity peddlars, who are paid enormous retainer fees to promote individuals or brands, with little or no real-world effect on profit.”

The professor and his team proposed that the government could introduce tough new legislation to ban words and their co-hips relating to the word publicity.  “That would include words and phrases like ‘offering’ ‘message validation’ or marketing guru, and the tedious sobriquet Tsar.”  When asked what impact that would have, he chortled:

“Imagine being in a business meeting and the director of marketing (who incidentally couldn’t be called the director of marketing under the proposed new legislation) says, ‘right, let’s call in the mmm-ahhh-mmm-you-know-who experts to front this campaign, everyone would reply ‘what the hell are you talking about? And the danger of sinking large sums of cash into a ridiculous and shallow enterprise would be avoided.’  It would render six-figure branding campaigns utterly redundant, flooding the economy with billions previously frittered away on free bath robes and those awful branded mugs that nobody uses anyway.”

The depth research conducted by Professor Etting’s team at Brasenose (Oxford) used a complex algorithm that discovered most people within the ‘a-hum-you know what’-industry were 4xy to the power of ten times more likely to be completely surplus to real economic progress.  Instead argued, professor Etting, “Imagine an admittedly unlikely scenario, where business leaders actually invested in the intrinsic product where consumers could genuinely appreciate tangible improvements.  It might even stimulate competition as prices are lowered as pointless publicity budgets are completely eliminated.”

In response to some extreme initiatives where proponents of publicity and its related fields would be rounded up and kept in wire-caged isolation as a lesson to others, the professor replied, “Silly ideas shouldn’t be discounted merely because they are silly, vile and misanthropic.  I have a strong hunch this world would be a better place if Max Clifford and Piers Morgan were filled with a faceful of buckshot.”

Plugging the Gap Year

30-year old James Egan decided to take a ‘constructive’ Gap Year but claims the real world opportunities that have followed have been limited and he is now questioning his decision to leave a decent career.

work, it ain't easy here either mate..

James is adamant the decision to take a Gap year wasn’t made overnight and that he had spent months planning how to make it as profitable and rewarding as possible.

Unlike the typical pre-university, prelapsarian Gap Year wanderer, James’ Gap was completely self-funded and wasn’t driven by the thought of avoiding university or full time employment.  It was a conscious break to build on life experiences having already proved himself a decent executive.

“I was employed before I could even work.  I had secured a position as a marketing writer and researcher for a respected publishing agency while I was still frantically finishing off my dissertation.  Then I was offered a really exciting position as a communications writer for a high profile, global brand, so naturally I took it.”

“ Suddenly, at 25 [years old], I felt as though time was slowly passing me by and I had better venture out of the office before I became part of the furniture.” James and his long term girlfriend, Maria, both drew up lists of how to make the most of their year out.  “We wanted to learn Spanish in Central America, so we signed up for a 2-month Spanish course in Xela, Guatemala.  I also wanted to seem as though I was contributing so I travelled to this remote indigenous village, called Nebaj.  I signed up with the American Peace Corp, and spent over a month helping to run a family guesthouse and restaurant.”

James and Maria budgeted and saved diligently for their adventure for over two years, ensuring they weren’t in debt when they finally returned to the UK.  Admittedly, James extended his break to just over a year, investing in a Cambridge CELTA diploma – a six week English language study course, which then ushered him into a corporate teaching post for Siemens in Colombia.

Since returning to the UK, James claims he has struggled to find work back in his previous field of marketing and communications.  He has signed up with several specialist employment agencies, who all, so James claims, believe that his Gap Year endeavours have set him back at least 18-months.  “Each agency I speak to has made the same point.  The skills and employment I gained during my year out have little relevance for the positions I wish to go for.”

Presented with a creeping recession and employment among the young at an 18 year high (1.016million and rising in the UK), huge doubts remain for James about his decision to build a ‘constructive’ year out of industry.  He quipped, “I might as well have had an eight month full moon orgy party on Hat Rin beach, for all the good it’s done.”  Speaking to a senior marketing manager and recruiter at a leading UK high street bank, Brendon Matthews, suggests, “The constructive Gap Year is a bit of a myth.  Senior executives here work long hours and invest seriously in their careers.  To be honest, I take a pretty dim view of the Gap Year as it essentially appears on the CV as a deliberate escape.”

 

London Olympics – the real games begin long after 2012.

Phew, ok, everyone, this is a big one. Here’s the deal. In exchange for hosting the world’s most celebrated sporting event – think Daley Thompson and, yup, Daley Thompson – you’re going to have to stump up 9.3bn big ones.

Ouch! That sounds like a lot money.  That’s because it is a lot of money. Greece invented the bloody games, and look where it lead them.

That’s a bit wild and ridiculous to say?  Probably. But there’s a recession going and parts of Europe are in deep deep sh-. Plus, by my rotten calculations that’s £465m a day. We couldn’t set fire to that amount of money. Then bam, it’s all over and some other crisis-ridden state can foot the tab.

You’re looking at it rather negatively, aren’t you, there must be some benefits?
I’m broke, live in London, and have no tickets. Of course I could be mildly slanted in my opinion. But if you don’t like my warped view, you might want to hear what Andrew Zimbalist, a professor of economics at Smith College(US), and author of “Unpaid Professionals: Commercialism and Conflict in Big-time College Sports,” has to say. http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/02/do-olympic-host-cities-ever-win/ His statistics from the 1976 Montreal Games will swell your brain. They finally paid back all the debts they were saddled with in 2005. Athens £1bn budget ballooned to £10bn, and maintenance costs were around £100m for 2005. And just to put the metaphorical boot in, hardly anyone uses the Olympic football pitches.

Holy Jesus! Surely London will learn some lessons?
Hell, this is London and we’ll swallow and deal with anything that’s thrown our way, and yes, there is good news to speak of. The vast tranche of land that is to be known from now on as the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, was a rotten hell hole. The soil is now clean. Great underground power lines charge the area, and many defunct waterways surrounding the park will have resumed a healthy life. Not to mention, they’ll be five new neighbourhoods with as much as 35% affordable housing, three new schools, and all the usual array of amenities you’d require as part of a community like libraries, office space and bars.

Overseeing all this pie in the skyhilton thinking legacy work is the Olympic Park Legacy Company. Effectively, they’re the park’s landlord in conjunction with one or other agencies or more. You have to have eyes like a hungry falcon to see through the hype, but they claim to be looking for suitable property investors to whom they can lease the land for housing development.

You see, it isn’t all doom and gloom – what happens to the various venues?
That is a mighty good question and one I put to the Legacy Company. Once it comes to dismantling the Games, they’ll begin scaling down structures like the Aquatics centre, and removing bits like vast unnecessary seating areas. Then they’ll farm out the buildings to operators who meet the application requirements. There could be an Evian aquatics centre for example, or the Wriggley’s Acellor-Mittal Orbit.

On the upside, we do at least have a legacy company looking out for life after the Games, and they claim, that once they’ve borrowed another £200m of taxpayer dough to kick start all the legacy work, it will start paying us all back well within twenty years.  This does assume, of course, that everyone’s fit and wants to invest.

Ooh, I feel a Specials hit from 81 coming on…’This town is coming like a Ghost To-  Now who’s negative?  Let’s give them time.  But not an easy ride.

…..This place, is coming like a ghost town
No job to be found in this country
Can’t go on no more
The people getting angry

This town, is coming like a ghost town
This town, is coming like a ghost town
This town, is coming like a ghost town
This town, is coming like a ghost town

Electric Pod Centre Acid Test begins in Manchester

Ron Stratton, the man whose name is synonymous with high performance AMG-tuned Mercedes; Ferrari and Bentley; is head of a new private consortium launching a network of electric vehicle sales centres known as ‘Pods’ in Manchester this October.

One of Six new EV sales 'Pods' to roll out in Manchester from October

15 Elevated isometric no logo

The privately funded Manchester Electric Car Company (MECC) is set to establish a network of charge points and sales centres across Greater Manchester over a two year period, in partnership with local government under the ‘Plugged In Places’ scheme. The £3.6m government grant will be matched by MECC.

Stratton, a sharp entrepreneur, first made his name selling AMG Mercedes under the eponymous Stratton brand. He has since made a series of profit-turning moves in commercial property and automotive channels in the Caribbean. He claims, “the future is electric” and with his track record he may have few doubters.

At the time of publication, we still have no idea exactly what marques will be available at the Pod centres, as MECC is still in ‘the procurement process.’ We’ll keep you updated on that.

Kissinger: close ally of Watergate President in frame to ‘clean-up’ FIFA…

Hunter S Thompson, the counter culture US political journalist, who probably got closer than anyone to the Ex President of the United States, Richard Nixon, wrote an unflinching piece on his funeral for Rolling Stone magazine in 1994, entitled simply, ‘He Was A Crook’.  Of Nixon’s closest personal adviser during the Vietnam era and the subsequent ‘Watergate’ tapes scandal, Henry Kissinger, he wrote:

“It would be easy to forget and forgive Henry Kissinger of his crimes, just as he forgave Nixon. Yes, we could do that — but it would be wrong. Kissinger is a slippery little devil, a world-class hustler with a thick German accent and a very keen eye for weak spots at the top of the power structure. Nixon was one of those, and Super K exploited him mercilessly, all the way to the end.  Kissinger made the Gang of Four complete: Agnew, Hoover, Kissinger and Nixon. A group photo of these perverts would say all we need to know about the Age of Nixon.”

With that in mind, Guardian reporter, Matt Scott on June 2, says Kissinger will be “FIFA’s answer to the corruption problems that have shredded its reputation in recent months.”  This is the same Henry Kissinger who conspired with Nixon to keep the relentless carpet bombing of innocent Cambodian civilians not just a secret from the press, but the rest of Federal intelligence.  Documents falsified, military chiefs completely undermined…we shouldn’t forget the brutalisation of Cambodia opened the door for genocidal maniac Pol Pot to continue his own campaign of doom.

“We’ll do whatever it takes..we’ll kick the shit out of them,” screamed Nixon down the line to Kissinger, imploring him to “think big” on Nuclear in Vietnam, shortly before turning to US TV cameras in the Whitehouse to state categorically that he was not a crook.  Without digressing too far from our central theme, we can all thank intelligence officer Daniel Ellesberg and his close allies, for exposing the whole filthy truth that lead to the eventual “self-impeachment” of one Richard Nixon. Ford was sworn in as President at noon the next day and pardoned the toad, knowing he too would “go to hell” for it.

Fast-forwarding to the present, even the most fanciful sports journalist could not have written this latest chapter in Sepp Blatter’s and FIFA’s current deep-rooted accusations of bribery and corruption.  Rather than turning down the heat on the story, Blatter has turned it up to eleven by announcing his backing of Kissinger as the man to head up his ‘solutions committee’ whose job it will effectively be to open up FIFA to outside scrutiny and rid it of corruption.

The idea of Kissinger and transparency is about as convincing as Nixon’s desperate plea of innocence in light of all the evidence against him.  Not least with all his Nixon Vietnam-era baggage, Kissinger remains a close personal friend to Blatter, so there’s already a major conflict of interest.  The FIFA Family’s feeble attempt at opening up.

So what have the rest of the British media to say:  Simon Jenkins of the Guardian and Evening Standard called Blatter a “villain” and claimed that the whole FIFA system was “corrupt.”  Sitting next to him on the UK politics show, Question Time, was Sunday Express reporter Julia Hartley-Brewer whose reaction to the alleged individual payments of $40,000 to FIFA officials was to say, “I think we should have been paying higher bribes.”  And Brewer likened Blatter’s business deals as the norm in global business, as if that somehow extricated the bastard.  Short-lived Shadow Chancellor, Alan Johnson’s reply could not have been more spinelessly opaque beating his moral chest and relating it to issues like the NHS and the national debt, saying disingenuously, “I can’t get too excited by this…I don’t think it deserved to be top of the news agenda.” His sentiments entirely miss the point.  He was esentially saying that corruption within a billion pound industry, within the most democratic sport in the world, was a small issue.  Don’t ask a narrow-minded postman for his opinions.

The great HS Thompson was not afraid to quote someone else at length if it aided the story at hand, so I won’t be.  As Blatter recently claimed to be the captain of the FIFA ship currently drifting through “troubled waters”, I’ll go out with this, aimed squarely at Nixon but just as relevant to the re-elected FIFA President: “He was utterly without ethics or morals or any bedrock sense of decency. Nobody trusted him– and honest historians will remember him mainly as a rat who kept scrambling to get back on the ship.”