Population

An article in the free Newsweek magazine that accompanied me during my flight to Shanghai, inspired me to write this weeks journal. Newsweek is one of those magazines that reminds me of wikepedia, i'm never sure how true the facts, figures and numbers are? Having wrote the odd study myself, I know how much research is needed to put something together that talks about the differences across continents, countries and cultures. To get your facts correct takes months (or at least weeks) of investigation, analysis and confirmation. Yet Newsweek reals off story after story, full of facts, and figures. Either they have an army of writers, journalists and investigators or they make it up?

Either way the story entitled "The post-China world - The end of the boom is now in sight, and the ripple of slower growth will span the globe", made me think of another impeding crisis heading towards China's meteoric rise to arguably the most powerful nation in todays messed up world.

The story concentrated on the stabilisation of China's economy, slow down in growth and the similarities with Japans boom and bust economy 10 years earlier. It concedes that China's enormous population, and particularly the poor element of its vast human resource will probably continue to fuel cheap labour and cheap export for many years to come, but highlights the lack of passion for internal consumerism as a key reason why it will not be able to balance the drop in demand and competitive advantage it currently sees, as costs and particularly wages increase. True or not the story was backed up by the usual plethora of learned comments and W.H.O. Facts and figures.

The story I would like to tell is one that also suggests the demise of the country I am currently travelling to, and one that seems more like home than any other these days.
I had mentioned previously my old PA Hu Jin, a likeable character, educated in Malaysia and England he was amongst the 1st generation born as result of China's single child policy. Introduced in 1979 by Deng Xiaoping, the Policy was introduced to try and reduce the enormous population growth that burgeoned the countries development, and proved a massive drain on available resources. Growth which led to an extra 15 million people every year! *Growth between 1961 and 1980 ran at 2.2%.

The positives of the initiative are only visible on a balance sheet, it is estimated that the policy has prevented an extra 400 million joining the throngs. However to the foreign visitor, people still hang on for dear life from every nook and cranny, for example, the entire population of Toronto pass through Shanghais underground system every day, and the monthly number of children born in China is equal to the population of some of Europe's major Cities. The effect of this staggering growth leads to numbers like 15,500 new vehicle registrations in Beijing alone - every day! The numbers are mind-blowing, however without the restrictions in place, the situation would be much, much worse.

The negatives of the single child policy are evident only when you know them, and then start to look hard at the situation through the eyes of the young, the elderly, the adopted and the aborted. For every 100 female children born there are 114 males born, which is as a result of unnatural selection. The sexing of unborn babies through scans is illegal, however China has become the home of selective abortion, with more than 15 million official abortions per year (unofficial figures are much higher) or to put it into context, the population of Los Angeles aborted every year, why? Well a multitude of reasons, but mainly because they were female. Like many developing countries, China values sons over daughters, the difference in China is that due to the single child policy - you only get one shot!

The need to have a male son is not as you imagine to do with family name or male dominance in the workplace, in fact in many of the new industries responsible for Chinas incredible growth, females workers are dominant. I once visited a Japanese company called Takarta in a Shanghai suburb, where of the 3000 employees 2980 were female! specifically recruited for their dexterity, obedience and loyalty. Ever since Mao, the female worker has had as many rights as the male, in fact recent changes in employment law favour the female employee - on paper at least.

The need to procreate a male offspring is more to do with a complacency towards the state pension system. It was always expected that the senior son would take up the role of bread winner, carer and provider to his elderly parents come retirement. This was fine when you had 3 or 4 children, the odds were that one of them would outlive the parent, and one of them would be male. The introduction of a single child rule, has led to a concern that if you have a daughter and they get married - that they will be required to support their husbands family in old age, and thus leave the daughters family without a sponsor. The dependance on a son has become enormous and has led to a share increase in both selective abortion and female children being put up for adoption.

This I would suggest is one of the biggest single threats to the continued growth of China. Hu Jin is approaching 30, and his parents have just entered their 50's. They are the lucky ones, they have a son who will continue to provide and care for his/her parents long into old age. for the tens of millions who only have a single daughter, they have to hope that her husbands family are` younger, richer or healthier than them? Added together with the fact that people are now starting to live a little bit longer, and the labour market is getting tougher for the normally less educated middle to late aged employee, a vast problem dawns on the horizon.

As with all metrics in China the numbers are amazing, it is estimated that a current 134 million people are in retirement, and that this will increase to 500 million by the year 2050, and as the national pension scheme only encourages around 15% of the population to contribute, the planned shortfall is catastrophic. The overall slowing of population growth is one thing, couple this with ageing, lack of pensions system and the imbalance of the sexes all add up to a worrying future.

Nobody knows what will happen when an extra 100 million or two are added to the retirement list each year, but it is a sure recipe for civil unrest, in a country facing so many more civil liberty and unrest issues I wouldn't be surprised if this is the one that tips it over the edge!

Speed

The arrival of the postman these days nearly always means another bill, or a flyer from someone trying to sell you insurance cover for the pet gerbil you haven't got. since the introduction of mobile phones, text messaging, and email took over the worlds communication the art of writing with ink on paper has become the sole domain of school children and doctors, the fact that in both cases whatever written is barely illegible, probably makes most of us thankful for the cell phone, computer and printer.

It was predicted that the explosion in alternative communication would decrease direct contact with others and a drop in interaction, however talking, sharing views and exchanging ideas has increased in volumes way beyond anyones expectations, and in ways that none of us could have anticipated or even dreamed of just a few years ago.

I started traveling abroad with work about 15 years ago, and on those week long trips we were allowed a single phone call back to our families to say that we had arrived safely. more frequent interaction would have required either computers the size of your average industrial estate, or smoke, a blanket and a high mountain. Soon after this I did a stint in Georgia, USA, this involved spending 3 months or so at a time in a place just around the corner from the dark side of Jupiter called Brunswick, and aside from the initial phone call the only other means of communication was via a 56k dial up modem and email, although as we never had a computer in our home this proved fairly pointless for communicating anything other that telling work that you were still alive, and hadn't spent all of your company expenses - yet.

In contrast I am now able to tell my family when I am about to go to sleep, when i have woken up, what I had for lunch, how bad the taxi driver smelt, and how soft the toilet paper is in the hotel, in fact technology allows us all to record, display and share every second of our day to anyone anywhere in the world, as it happens, and in full colour. Whilst I can not deny helping my son do his maths via msn, as I travel in a taxi somewhere in the middle of Swaziland is useful, or that checking-in online for a flight to allow yourself the luxury of an extra 30 minutes in bed is a great treat. However i do think that this can all go too far, first we had email, then text messaging, instant messaging, blogging and now twittering.

As a blogger myself it may seem hypocritical for me to dispel twittering as a fad or a craze that doesn't have any real merit. However (although it may not always seem like it) I only use email, texts, or instant messaging if I want to tell somebody something, or conversely find something out. You could still argue that blogging in this context is pointless? I suppose, my original purpose was to let family and friends know what I was up to, However i found that I enjoyed writing and have used it as a way to capture what was going on in my life, my thoughts, ideas and at least it gives me something to do at the airport.

I don't twit, or twat or whatever the correct term is, and I don't post pictures of my shoelaces on Facebook. The idea of twittering doesn't fill me with any excitement, knowing the precise time when your next door neighbour has emptied his bowels or brought a new dishcloth, isn't top of my "things to understand before I die" list. I can see the appeal of following a 'celebrity' if that's your bag, but trying to fit my life into 120 words would be a big problem for me, and besides I have enough problems trying to make my blog interesting using 1000+ words each week, let alone making every 5 minutes seem at all worthy of publishing.

So for the moment I will still to my blog, although a couple of things will/have changed recently, the first is that I am slowly defecting to wordpress, after several years of sticking with Blogger, i have grown tired of not being able to access it in China without engaging the type of technology used by the worlds espionage fraternity. I have also had many problems with reading blogger via Internet explorer and having to revert to the more accommodating Mozilla. Which despite being superior to Microsofts offering, isn't as widely used or even known by many people.

The other event is one that I am bursting to tell, just like a small child would be when wishing to tell everyone where the last friend is hiding in a game of hide and seek, or if his brother had just kicked the football through the kitchen window and his burgeoning desire to denounce any responsibility to his parents. Some people in the press have suggested that the event I am talking about can compare with the feeling they had at the birth of their first born, how stupid - it is far more important and emotional than that, and it doesn't require feeding every five minutes, it doesn't smell like the devils armpit and isn't subject to screaming fits.

Of course the event is the introduction of my new new toy, I am writing this blog on the equivalent of Moses tablets of stone - the Apple iPad. Yes I must be crazy to buy into an unproven technology and of course this isn't as revolutionary as we may have all hoped and dreamed of during the longest labour in history, but it is pretty spectacular.

But surely it's just an overweight iPod touch? But that's like saying the Bugatti Veyron is just a faster Fiat Panda, Concorde was just a sleeker Bi-plane or Buckingham Palace is just a large house. the iPod touch and it's brother the iPhone reinvented the mobile phone market, love or hate Apple you cannot deny the impact these products have had on the industry - especially now that everyone is running to try and catch up.

I have had all 3 generations of iPhone and despite the obvious limitations have loved each one, the iPad just does everything the same just bigger and better - ask any women if size matters, and if they say no, they are trying to protect your ego!

With a desire not to sound like an Apple nerd I won't jump into a 5000 word essay on why it's brilliant, but I will sum my views into one word - speed. Any one who has lived with a windows laptop, will know that the boot-up time can feel like passing a kidney stone, as can the time to find a document, or switch between applications. I can now understand why Steve (The Messiah) Jobs couldn't understand the need to run multiple applications at once, he obviously hasn't used one of Mr Gates windows products, if you don't keep your applications all open at the same time, you die of boredom between waiting for one to open up. The introduction of running multiple applications on the next OS 4.0 may make some people happy - I just hope it doesn't kill the ipads single biggest advantage - speed!

Sleep

One of life’s real pleasures is sleep, although for most its not until you have been through the ‘joys’ of parenting that you realise just how precious those 8 hours of slumber really are. Sleep can be overlooked as an inconvenience, getting in the way of our busy lives, interrupting schedules and quality time, we take it for granted and abuse our bodies by preventing what should come naturally.

As an infant you have no recollection and no control (it seems) of when you wake up and subsequently when you wake your parents up. According to research, new born baby’s sleep for 16 hours a day, reducing to 13 hours by the age of 3. I am not sure who investigates, researches and prints such tripe, but my experience suggests that babies don’t sleep - ever, and when they are awake they have some incomprehensible power to suck the energy from their parents with a force greater than that of a collapsing star!

I have suffered from mild insomnia and have therefore been used to only sleeping for 3-4 hours a day for months on end, however even this could not prepare me for the worst form of Nazi/Japanese 2nd World War prisoner of war torture, dished up by the cute bundle of love in the pink bunny suit! If you see a women or a man walking the street splattered in food, excrement, and puke, looking as if they haven’t slept for 6 weeks, with creased clothes, un-cut, uncombed hair, odd socks and grey lifeless skin – don’t worry its not an invasion of zombies its merely the result of having a baby in the family.

Things change as you grow from a baby / infant into a child, this is when your parents send you to bed when you’re wide awake, and wake you up when you’re in deep sleep – the value of sleep when your young is not necessarily recognised or appreciated. Sleep gets in the way of fun, in the way of playing with friends, riding your bike, building dens and generally enjoying life. The fact that your parents pull you out of bed with a full 5 minutes before school starts amazes most kids, as does the need to shout the time every 30 seconds just in case you never heard the 120 decibel scream the first 18 times. I do remember being a child’s (honest), and I do remember being pulled out of bed by my toenails as my parents tried to extract me from the pit of foul teenage smells. With the resurgence in vampire movies this has become even harder, my son is only 12 and thinks he is one of the Nosferatu, staying up so late we pass on the stairs – me off to work, him off to bed.

As you get older and enter your late teens, sleep is only essential for recovery from hangovers, relationship disasters, and other activities that will endanger my ‘child safe’ website status. Previously the role of university dorms, bed sits and flat shares, it has moved more mainstream family homes, as more and more ‘young adults’ stay home festering and leaching on their parents goodwill rather than risk spending a Saturday nights money on rent or mortgage repayments. Acceptable and almost expected behaviour in your own (or shared) abode is becoming the norm in family households. Including the half naked friends wandering around at all times, the drive festooned with all sorts of scrap iron dressed in spoilers and GTI badges alongside the ‘man’ of the houses Volvo, watching your utility bills treble despite spending more time away from home, and resigning yourself to the fact that you will never find any food in the cupboard despite spending the entire Royal Navy’s canteen budget each week. The dream of repossessing your home, your bed and most importantly some sleep, like the dreams of retirement have to be shelved and put back to a point where they cross and happen sometime after death.

As you hit middle age, you find that sleep is addictive, although somewhat untouchable. I crave for 8 hours deep sleep, and then find myself guilty after only 6. Panic sets in that you are being selfish and ‘sleeping’ your life away. I get out of bed at 6.00am every weekday morning, weekend, bank holiday even whilst on vacation it takes about the same amount of time for me to start to relax, as it does for the early morning start to catch the plane back. Your body becomes conditioned to rising early, and if my father is anything to go by, I have another 20-30 years of this. That is not to say you don’t grab a sly afternoon snooze once in a while, my favourite is to snuggle down on a winters Sunday afternoon following a large lunch and a copy of Harry Potter or Pirates of the Caribbean on the TV – both instant insomnia cures, not that they are bad films, just that my ability to watch a film longer than 36 seconds without snoring is legendary.

Grabbing 20 minutes on a Weekend afternoon, between flights or train journeys is like earning a bonus, buying something decadent or receiving an email from someone thought lost. Those small moments of pleasure when your snoring causes other airline passengers to ask flight attendants to check the aircraft status with for fear of a mechanical disaster, the awkward looks thrown at you from the train passenger next to you as they wipe the remains of your dribble from their shoulder, and the groans from your children as you jump up and declare that you were only resting your eyes as Hermione Granger turns Jack Sparrow into a toad.

As all of my anecdotes and stories recount my times in China, it would be wrong of me to ignore one story that links in with this blog quite well. I remember travelling with a group of senior Chinese colleagues between Nanjing and Beijing, accompanied by my trusty assistant, translator and friend (Hu Jin), we boarded the plane, took our seats and were being served noodles for breakfast before you could say “why is everyone wearing 15 layers of clothes, and asking for the cabin temperature to be increased”. Soon after breakfast the rest of my colleagues (about 8 people in all) kept their tray tables down and proceeded to lean forward and rest their heads on the trays falling to sleep soon after. I had seen this many times before in China, on planes, trains and automobile journeys. It seemed that in every possible circumstance the Chinese would take the opportunity to rest their eyes and recharge their battery’s. I put this down to a harsh life and poor diet, rather than just being lazy. What I was surprised at was my assistant’s insistence that I do likewise and sleep for the next 30 to 40 minutes despite not being tired, when asking why? I was told that taking ‘dead’ time out to sleep shows that you are being efficient with the company’s time, and that you must be working very hard at other times to need the rest. I just continued to pick the weevils out of the bread roll served with the noodles.

I can t really finish my journey of sleep through life by talking about how sleep affects you in old’er age, as I haven’t quite reached it yet. However If I read the most recent research into sleep from the University’s of Warwick and Naples I will get all the sleep I need soon. The research conducted across Europe, Asia and the US suggests that people sleeping less than 6 hours per day are 12% more likely to suffer from premature death. Looks like I had better get my head down!

Grappa

Monday meant my first flight since the Icelandic Volcano fiasco, not sure whether the removal of the restrictions on flying were due to a shift in the wind, reduction in tectonic activity or simply Willie Walsh convincing the faceless authorities that if they didn’t lift the ban soon – there wouldn’t be any airlines left to fly any as they would have all gone out of business. The flight itself was the normal encasement in aluminum, steel, fuel and flammable seats, sitting next to someone who believed they have paid for the whole row and saved showering until they landed, today’s destination Venice. The company I work for has some fairly prosaic plant locations around Europe, one that isn’t, is located just an hours drive from Venice in a small town called Bassano del Grappa, famous for its covered bridge the Ponte degli Alpini, its cathedral and of course its proximity to the Grappa mountains which the Italian national drink Grappa gets its name.

Grappa seems to be brewed from the residue of diesel refinerarys, mixed with turpentine and caustic soda. Like most national drinks; Irelands - Potcheen, Greeces – Ouzo, Chinas – BeiJiu and Scotland’s – Irn Bru. They all taste similar to licking the inside of a petrol tank – whilst it’s on fire. Not sure why they become national drinks, perhaps its similar to why the Beetle or the Mini became national cars – they were cheap, easy to make, readily available and would probably cause blindness, rotten livers and ultimately death – a great way of controlling population growth. Whatever it is they are forced onto weary travelers until they empty their wallets and the insides of their stomachs.

I had visited our Bassano plant several times before, but had started to think that it was located deep in a valley or even in a cave. Having only ever visited in the winter months, I would arrive at night to a hotel 50 yards from the entrance to the factory, and leave via Taxi to the airport the following night. Such is the glamour and delight of international travel, you rarely get an opportunity to enjoy the places you visit, and the only local culture you savour is normally the inside of a Taxi cab, hotel room or works canteen.

I was there for a conference in which I would give a presentation on a topic, that if you had asked me to give say 10, 5 or maybe even 1 year ago I would have laughed at you, shot another peasant and moved on.
The subject has become something that I find myself feeling more and more interested and passionate about, at first I thought it was a virus or I had been subject to some kind of subliminal experiment, my mind seems to have been warped, my beliefs torn and shattered. Everything I held dear to me has been turned upside down and inside out.

At heart I am a result of, and a rabid follower of consumerism, I collect cars, computers, watches, homes and air miles like most people collect socks. I had no interest in how many 4 year olds it took to skin kittens, so that I could have my favorite trim on the seats in my 14-litre Gas Guzzler. The sweat shops of Vietnam, where one armed lepers pick the individual hairs from warty toads, to provide warty toad flavored drinks to westerners never kept me awake, nor did the fact that they slept on razors, whilst being whipped with the tails from those pussycats made me donate to charities set up to look after their orphaned children. However, here I was preparing to give a speech on a Corporate Ethics and Social Responsibility. Had I gone mad? Had I caught some kind of disease? Had all my indiscretions come back to haunt me? The times I had thrown good food away, left the TV on whilst asleep, and buried my right foot firmly into the car mats whilst watching the MPG meter go into single figures, had they started to prey on my conscience? Or had I turned into the world’s greatest hypocrite?

Well I am not sure which it is but I genuinely feel that I (we) have an obligation to ‘do our bit’, and whilst profit, EBITDA and shareholder value keeps Warty Toad flavored drinks on my kids table, it shouldn’t be at the detriment of those one arm lepers. Not only do I find myself at the recycling plant each Saturday, I am now writing about ethics and even addressing a bunch of what could be considered as the most ecologically inept, 'rip-the-shirt-off-your-back' purchasing buyers, that would shanghai their own mothers to a Nigerian pirate if it meant cutting the price of a part by 0.00001 grouts. I wont write too much more at this point as revealing my tree hugging, sandal wearing, Mother Teresa worshiping ‘outage’ has made me feel light headed and need of a lie down – or could that have been the Grappa?

Dreams

Through the medium of television, cinema and books we all know that the American dream is an ethos centred around the virtues of an “all men are created equal” philosophy, it goes on to emphasize that the pursuit of happiness, life and liberty cross all boundary’s of sex, colour or creed and that we are all born equal.




I guess from around the word, America is seen as the land of opportunity, a land where success has no limits and streets are paved with gold.  Where a poor 2nd generation immigrant can become president and ruler of the free world – or something like that. 

The American dream is centred on home ownership, as is the British Dream of ’A man’s home is his castle”   Although to be honest I am not sure what a ‘British’ dream is? As an ethos, it probably doesn’t have the same basis as an American dream; but as an aspiration I guess it’s about owning a corner shop, becoming a train driver or playing football for the team of your choice Vs becoming a barrister, classical musician or ‘something’ in the City whichever path you achieve or desire is still firmly divided by which school you went to, and what family you were born in to – as well as colour, creed and sexual denomination.
 

Of course there are always the examples that break the rules, and those of us who try to ignore precedents and prejudice, but anyone who thinks it no longer exists is either a naive plum sucking, white, male, public school taught toff, who is eighteenth in line to the throne of Hampshire or a politician or both.

Discrimination is still rife, be it class, colour, creed or what football team you support.  The one thing we hold onto is that the belief that despite where you come from, you can make a difference by where you live.  The right side of the river, a certain street, school catchment area, postal code or even council tax bracket can enable you to at least rub shoulders with the upper echelons of society – albeit with a couple of caveats, the first – whilst you can live next door, you will never be adopted – regardless of how much money you have, how deep your St Tropez tan is or how big the ‘rims’ on your shiny new car are.  When your relatives arrive in their 1986 model Serra, sporting florescent pink boob tubes ripped jeans and a bottle of Black Tower, the neighbours curtains will twitch and mumbles of “this area has gone downhill” will echo across the manicured lawns and wrought iron entrance gates.  Perhaps this first point isn’t really unexpected and has been well documented before, what I didn’t expect was the second foe par made by those with enough money (or credit!) to find access behind walled community’s, discrete hamlets and secret enclaves of prime real estate. 

On my return to the UK, the thought of buying a property filled me with dread.  I had spent the last half a dozen years renting accommodation in China, and to be honest thoroughly enjoyed it –no maintenance, a wide choice, limited commitment and need to tie up half the national debt of Greece at exorbitant rates of interest.  So when looking to move back to the UK and not knowing what was going to happen next in my life, I decided to rent rather than conform to buying a property. 

The pressure to buy is everywhere, I don’t necessarily believe in conspiracy theories and wouldn’t suggest that our crazed obsession with making a financial commitment to a faceless banking organisation  that will invest your life savings into a scheme for milking sparrows, then require you to sell a kidney, a left toe and your first born so that they can continue to slalom down the black run at St Moritz on gold skis, is all part of one gigantic government George Orwell inspired conspiracy to keep us all working 600 hours and eat boiled liver 6 days a week.  

 

My parents worry that I will end up on the street if I don’t buy quickly, and every friend, foe and stranger will go at lengths to tell me that renting is dead money and that I am an evil father for not providing a ‘permanent’ home for kith and kin.  This leads me onto what is the 2nd downside of renting,  I am considered a second class citizen, a lower life, a lesser being.  When moving into my million pound former footballers abode, I felt proud, important and like I had finally made it.  I had a gravel drive, a house name rather than a number, bits of wrought iron, even a fountain.   The ceilings were low; beams were exposed and taps gold plated. 

Friends would be invited to cocktail evenings, and lesser relatives not informed of our new address, the feeling was amazing – until... we received a visit from the Lady of the Manor, with a bottle of expensive wine and with a nose so sharp you could open letters with it.  Along with her welcome gift came a – “I understand your just visiting us, and only renting – how long before you leave and buy somewhere?” said with such distain that all of the pride and delight of moving to a new home instantly disappeared, ever since I have been made to feel as welcome as a puss ridden facial boil on prom night.  She is not alone, mention the fact that you are renting and you’re treated as an escaped paedophile, which once raped a horse and swore at the Queen mother.



I put the fact that people were aggressive to my bizarre decision to rent over buy, because they were jealous.  I had a bank account full of unreleased cash from the house that I had sold some years earlier, my weekends weren’t spent with tirelessly trying to peel, plaster, prime, paint and preserve homes that they had mortgaged the next 25 years wages on, and I was able to take a choice of home based on how glamorous, ostentatious and individual it is rather than how practical, sensible or conservative it was.  Not worrying about resale value, appreciation, depreciation and who would pay the mortgage if another baby came or if I lost my job is a fantastic relief of stress, anguish and fear.

However, before everyone runs out, sells their home, deposits the money in a not so high interest account and moves into a national trust managed 16th century  castle. Beware, it has its downsides, choice is limited due to our passion with buying property, landlords vary between Sweeney Todd and Peter Mandleson, and when you read “security deposit”, read “one off payment never to be seen again” based on the fact that you will have worn the thread out on the carpets by half a nanometre, and have therefore waived any right to reimbursement.

But worst of all you will receive a recorded letter through the post at some point, for me it was yesterday when I was informed that my landlord wanted to sell his property and I would need to vacate by the end of the month. 

Perhaps buying is a good idea after all.

Easter

Whilst living in China I wrote about the varied and sometimes strange local festivals and celebrations that occurred during the year.  These included such delights as ‘Tomb Sweeping Day’, ‘Dragon Boat Day’ and of course Chinese New Year. So I thought it only right and proper to write about the reason why I am sitting here at home in the UK feeling rather sick – Easter.


If you were a visitor to the UK during this period you would be forgiven for thinking....

Easter is a festival to celebrate the creation of probably the most important, widely worshipped and infinitely desired icon of popular culture – chocolate.  At this time of the year millions of people purchase billions of pounds worth of cocoa based products to celebrate the foundation of the church of Chocolate.  A religion spanning thousands of years with origins based in central Mexico and the Aztecs.  Born of the Cacao tree it was hailed as “The Food of The Gods” (Theobroma cacao in Latin), a product with powers to heal, to cure, to invigorate and to ultimately corrupt.

"The divine drink, which builds up resistance and fights fatigue.

A cup of this precious drink [cocoa] permits a man

to walk for a whole day without food."
Montezuma II

(1502-1520)

John Cadbury

The word of Chocolate soon spread across the oceans, across cultures and into the hearts of millions, its addictive quality’s quickly corrupted and consumed populations.  Disciples sprang up everywhere, including John Cadbury, Milton Hershey, Franklin Mars, and Henri Nestle (Founders of Cadbury, Hershey, Mars and Nestle respectfully) they all increased its popularity through propaganda and the creation of ‘Chocolate Churches’ or confectionery stores.  Soon we would all become devout followers.


The creation of chocolate effigies in the shape of coins, eggs, bars of gold and stars are used at various periods of the year to remind us how important chocolate has become.   We cease work, school and play to celebrate chocolate, we share amongst friends and family, offer as presents and symbols of love, lust and affection.  Movies, Books and videos are created in its name,  it is all consuming and drives children to hunger, parents to despair and dentists to the sports car dealers.
Easter is one such time that we celebrate the greatness of chocolate, formed into egg shapes to represent new life, we gorge ourselves on high calorie, high sweetness brown parcels of delight. 

The tradition started early in the 19th century and was perfected by John Cadbury in 1875.  Mr Cadbury born in 1801 in Birmingham, to Richard and Elizabeth Cadbury, become a disciple for millions of children and adults.  From humble beginnings, with doubters, and critics, he came to inspire Roald Dahl to write the ‘bible’ of the Chocolate world – ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’, a book expelling the virtues of chocolate excess and worshipped by chocolate lovers across the world.  Millions of people travel thousands of miles to visit the Mecca for chocolate, Bourneville in Birmingham.  A shrine to Cadbury, his family and the divine teachings of this great man, here are some facts and figures to consider:

* On average, each person in Britain eats approx. 10.2kg of chocolate per year.
* The UK chocolate market was worth £2.36 billion in 2009
* Approximately 80 million chocolate eggs are sold annually in the UK.
* The most popular chocolate egg worldwide is Cadbury's Creme Egg, they first went on sale in 1971, and now sell over 200 million each year.
* Easter chocolate sales make up 10% of Britain's annual spending on chocolate.
*  £280million was spent on Easter eggs in the 4 days leading up to Easter 2008.
 

Proof indeed that the tradition of celebrating chocolate at this time of the year is still strong, and that our devotion to this biblical product does not wane even after thousands of years of human development.

Of course some would say that Easter is about the resurrection of some bloke called Jesus – but try telling that to a seven year old!

Recruitment

When did it become necessary to find a job, or recruit by using an agency? I remember a time before Internet Job Sites, or recruitment agencies, a time when companies placed job vacancy notices on billboards outside the factory gates, adverts in newspapers, with careers teachers and even on school or university notice boards. People found employment this way, and businesses found employees, it seemed to work well, local people found local jobs with local companies. Word of mouth, friends of friends and family connections ensured a steady market for both talent and roles, of course this lead to some nepotism and ‘jobs for the boys’, but also ensured that when you hired someone, you at least knew their parents, brothers, sisters or friends and thus they were more likely to come recommended by people who you respected or trusted.

On the downside of course the ‘talent pool’ as its called in HR speak, became fairly shallow and people were squeezed into roles because of their DNA, Chromosomes or School Chums rather than their experience and abilities – still Britain built a Great Empire on this basis, conquering more than half of the known world, establishing democracy, a legal and schooling system emulated and copied by the whole world, all based on a buddy society.

Of course this process still remains strong within the civil service, financial and government sectors to name but a few. Whilst those of us not benefiting from the public schooling, correct blazer and tie wearing gold card membership into these professions, may feel an element of resentment towards those that do, I cant help feeling a sense of pride and security when I hear a ‘proper’ English accent on the TV exclaiming that the British Government will do everything in its power to blah blah.

As an aside I was once in the presence of some media types over dinner in Beijing, who were deriding the current British Ambassador to China, as a pompous, public schooled ponce and that what the foreign office needed was some real people, some earthly individuals who had grown up on the wrong side of the tracks, made their way the hard way and knew how real people felt. They suggested that I should seek a career in this direction, and that I knew more about the cultural differences, business restrictions and opportunities affecting British businesses in China than any double barrel named toff from Oxbridge would. Whilst I may have agreed with the later part of the comment, I exclaimed that I personally felt secure, and proud that the person in charge of representing my country had a plum the size of a grapefruit in his mouth, had endured (or enjoyed!) years of beasting from the older boys, and was slightly barmy. I couldn’t imagine anything worse that finding myself locked up in a foreign cell in some hellhole, only to be met by the local foreign office representative who greeted me with a broad regional accent!! These people and their ever so stiff upper lips, are as essential as the Queen, bad public transport and wet weather – without them England would be – well America!

Anyway back to the main topic – recruitment. I have had to endure years of interviewing both as interviewee and interviewer. I must have spent months asking tedious and crass questions, and listening to even more tedious and crass answers. All of this when lets face it if you haven’t made your mind up by simply reading someone’s name on the top of their CV, you certainly have after the first 15 seconds of actually meeting them. Rarely do you change your mind during the interview because of the response to a question or perspective on a an issue – yes I know that you will say that is ridiculous and I should be ashamed, but all I am pointing out is what everyone else does, and lets be honest what is natural. You knew who your friends would be before you found out that they had a fetish for naturism or a flatulence problem, and now that you do know; you still send them a birthday card. Of course I am generalising and there are those odd occasions where your preconceptions are challenged, which is why you go through the interviewing exercise rather than just reviewing peoples names.

The real point of this blog, was to ask the question “what purpose do recruitment agencies provide?” I have to admit to mildly despising them, if estate agents our the backside of the universe, then recruitment agents are the enema – there I have said it, got it off my chest and probably doomed myself to a torrent of abuse from angry of Basildon. However before I go on I have to admit that amidst a sea of inept sycophants, there are those who float to the top and actually listen to the client/job seeker and try to provide an understanding for both a clients and a candidates needs.(Lord Search & Select, Wetherby’s, and UK Sigma are 3 that spring to mind as being both professional and personal and would thoroughly recommend – and not just because they know where I live! ). The rest suck in poor, sometimes desperate job seekers by advertising jobs that don’t exist for clients they haven’t yet won, and then pitch candidates to companies who hadn’t realized they needed a new director of international and domestic battery charging, with a degree in modern art and twelve years experience of lollipop tasting.

Having been on both sides of the table, trying to find work and trying to find employees the service levels from agents is incredibly varied and unfortunately the bad ones have a detrimental affect on those who treat it like a profession rather than a telemarketing job. When I left college I worked for a Chartered Surveyors, which at the time was a pin stripe profession and I rubbed shoulders with people who had names like Charlie, Byron and Robert, then the estate agents took over and destroyed any professionalism and respect the industry had. Sadly I can see this happening to the recruitment profession, unless they can find a way of dissuading the cowboys from taking over. I realize that they are ‘only providing a service’, but please, please, please sort yourselves out and find a way of controlling those that wish to diminish and degrade an otherwise modern day essential part of business, oh and if you do get any good jobs please don’t hesitate to contact me!

Weight

I guess this isn’t a topic that most men freely talk about, we don’t have weight problems we have clothing shrinkage issues or at worse admittance to a bit of middle age spread. Normally the domain of all women’s magazines, journals and TV shows weight gain, loss, obesity, anorexia, bulimia, binging, compulsive eating and starvation along with diets ranging from Atkins, Cambridge, Cabbage Soup, Detox, fruit, meat, liquid, solid, air and of course the ‘dust’ diet are discussed as regularly as the changing size of Jordon’s breasts, “how to spice up your love life” and dealing with the menopause.

Men’s magazines (not the top shelf versions) on the other hand talk about the changing size of Jordon’s breasts, football, gadgets, the changing size of Jordon’s breasts, Formula 1, erectile problems (whatever they are), the changing size of Jordon’s breasts and new advancements in Breast enlargements.
Unless you buy a journal dedicated to looking like one of the cast from 300 or one intended for guidance on how to shave your chest and pluck your eyebrows in preparation for a drug induced evening of topless rave dancing - you’re not going to find much in the way of guidance on getting back into a merely obese status rather than a morbidly obese one.

I have to say that for the first 30 or so years of my life I couldn’t put weight on even if wanted to. A day started with a good old English, followed by a mid morning snack of two or three packets of crisps, your 5th cup of sweet tea, half a packet of chocolate digestives in time for fish, chips, curry sauce and half a loaf of buttered bread. This set you up for 10 pints (15 on a weekend) of Guinness, a pack or two of pork scratchings and a midnight visit to the local Indian or Chinese. I have memories of getting home after a night on the town, and demolishing 10 strawberry jam filled donuts before bed and the only weight Increase I would incur would be as the hair grew on my head.

It’s only been the last 3 to 5 years that the merest thought, sniff, or advert on the TV can cause the pounds to pile on. I can’t even drive past a MacDonald’s, KFC or Pizza hut without putting on enough weight to qualify for a support bra these days. Just writing about food has caused my chins to multiply and the desk chair beneath me to break under the strain – Christ knows what may happen if I actually ate some Junk food. It’s become so bad that I have had to categorise what I eat into two elements, food which is bad for me potentially cause\ing my spleen to explode, and...... air - I have even resorted to controlling my breathing, just in case someone identifies that air is worth 15 calories per litre.

I have tried everything to get the dial on the weighing scales to go backwards, well almost everything, well ok almost nothing. I simply can’t be doing with eating boiled cabbage water for breakfast, lunch and dinner; life is just too short to spend it worrying whether about the ‘Tran’s’ fat content of a cucumber slice or the carbohydrate levels in a Ryvita. Don’t get me wrong I have stopped drinking alcohol, eating chocolate, crisps and cookies during the week, now I just stock pile them and gorge myself at the weekend! Strangely my diet isn’t working!! I guess I have to accept that I need to throw away my favourite 10 year old jeans, give up dreams of wearing Lycra and resolve myself to baggy jumpers and elasticated waist trousers.

There are lots of theories as to why weight is gained as we grow older, complacency, gravity, and a slowing down of metabolism. However I put it down to eating too much, drinking too much and under taking all the exercise of a comatosed sloth. I get out of breath these days licking a stamp, or combing my hair. Please don’t get me wrong I have tried exercising I event went out and brought some trainers, got the white socks, and invested in some expensive high tech. exercise equipment, which now reside as useful clothes horses and apparatus for stubbing my toes on when going to bed. I want to get out there and train for a marathon, I used to row for a Dragon Boat team and going even further back swim at quite a high level, but now I consider changing gear a form of exercise (and I drive an automatic!).

Statistics tell us that more people are injured on exercise equipment or whilst jogging, swimming and cycling than watching the TV and eating a takeaway – so in the interest of preserving my health, that’s exactly how I am going to control my weight, stay safe and blame it all on the wife shrinking your clothes!