Monday, December 23, 2013

Fat Of The Land

A UK politician has said that people should no longer use expressions which are synonyms of the word "fat", even those who are using them about themselves, in the great British tradition of laughing at oneself before everyone else does it anyway. (Or is it so that you are then free to make derogatory comments about others?)

fat, fat talk, minister, muffin top, jo swinson, jo swinson, jo, swinson, equalities,
The politician, one Jo Swinson, one will note from her photo, adopts the classic photo pose of looking up to avoid her chins multiplying out, although her original chin does the job of three. It reminds me of how "Princess" Diana, the latter day Whore of Babylon, used to face down (but look upwards in that wounded puppy sort of way) so her ginormous conk wouldn't look so big. Pity she couldn't do anything about her great big navvy hands.

So, “Muffin tops, thunder thighs, cankles (fat ankles) – fat talk and body shaming too easily become a habit and an expectation” and are therefore to be avoided, along with British self-deprecation of all kinds, according to Jo "Chinson". But is it all right to just say someone is a fat cnut, I wonder?


Thursday, October 31, 2013

Methinks They Do Protest Too Much

I am having difficulty with this story from the SCuMPost. Headlined "Police with shields block mainland Chinese from Causeway Bay firm after rip-off claims", at first sight it looks like either a standard Hong Kong rip-off or a tale of aggressive and lawless Mainlanders. Which is it? Or is it neither, or both?
DCHL, a well-established group purveying the usual over-priced "luxury" wares but which recently got some publicity for alleged infringement of the trademarks of a European company whose goods it had previously distributed, is accused of ... err ... overcharging Mainlanders for so-called luxury goods. Where it gets complicated is that it is not just a case of charging a lot of money for something shiny or with extra diamonds stuck onto it, as every "luxury" brand seems to do nowadays in order to satisfy PRC perceptions of what is tasteful. The gullible tat-buyers, from Guangdong and Hunan provinces, actually wanted to pass the stuff on to their compatriots. In other words, they wanted to make a turn by charging Mainlanders for so-called luxury goods. Does the expression "hoist by one's own petard" come to mind?
 
Imagine their surprise when they found out that the French-sounding brand names, such as ED Pinaud, that they had assumed were well known because, well, just because they sounded French, actually just sounded French. And so they exercised their democratic right, outside the Mainland, to protest.
 
But what are they really protesting about? Yes, they are protesting that they didn't do their research and so paid more for something than it was worth. Goodness, if only I could use that argument to get back all the money I spent on second hand cars in my youth!
 
10bfd9736bc0277123c6102b81ff0d70.jpgBut they are also protesting because they, citizens and residents of the Mainland where pyramid selling is illegal, were able in Hong Kong to buy goods for the purpose of engaging in pyramid selling. You see, it is Hong Kong's fault that they had the opportunity to break their own laws at the same time as buying stuff without knowing what they were buying. Life is so unfair.
 
Their logic seems to extend also to their maths. One of the protestors said that the group of 150 had lost from $80k to $3m per person, "adding up to" HK$10 million between them.
 
OK, take out the biggest loss of $3m, leaving $7m between the remaining 149. That's an average of $47k, little more than half of the lowest claimed loss. And the losses claimed are based on the prices a pawnbroker was prepared to pay them. Yes, if I wanted a fair value put on something, a pawnbroker is exactly who I'd go and see. Or perhaps pawnbrokers were these gullible buyers' target market?
 
(Mind you, that one in pink looks quite doable.)
 
But look on the bright side, suckers. Think how much Chinese import duty and VAT you will save on these goods. (You were going to declare them, weren't you?) Not to mention the lower IIT you will pay. And at least ED Pinaud is a world famous brand now!

Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Unfergettable (Geddit?)

So, "Sir" Alex Ferguson has written a book about himself, telling the world about all the slights he suffered while manager of Manchester United and how he was right in every case, just as Man U should have won every title for 26 years, if not for some appalling refereeing decisions.

Perhaps the expression "let sleeping dogs lie" should have come to mind before he published it as he has at best simply shown how much everyone got under his skin during his career. As a result of the book he has been slapped down firmly by several of the people he wrote about and has been accused of being unprofessional for breaching dressing room confidentiality.

It will never have occurred to him that there is some sort of conflict of interest in rushing out such a self-serving book (in time for Christmas) while his successor is struggling with the poor squad he has been left. Any more than he would have thought that suing a fellow director of MU when he was still manager might be exactly the sort of sideshow which he accused David Beckham of creating. The hypocrisy and arrogance of the man are staggering.

Alex Ferguson holding up his book

Just in case there is any doubt, Fergie is shown as the author and the title is given as "My Autobiography". Well, who else's would it have been, if he wrote it, the daft Jock? Yes, it's by you, about you, and to line your own ckufing pockets. You, you, you. We get it.

Monday, October 14, 2013

My Cup Runneth Over

 A woman rejoicing in the appropriate name of Sara Crewe (geddit? SCrewe, screw. Oh, never mind.) has caused much hilarity and probably a fair bit of embarrassment to her husband, perhaps even to herself, by letting the world know about their "penis beaker". Addressing the eternal problem of post-coital mess, the proverbial wet patch, the maps of Africa, she asked the world on a website called Mumset whether it was normal for her hubby to have a glass of water (in Ulie's case, possibly an egg cup or thimble) next to the bed in which to "dunk" (Screwe's words) his todger after making the two-backed monster, before wiping off with tissues.

Apparently, her hubby can't be bothered to quickly hose down, although the wife does, so he dips his old fellow in the water, wipes off with the tissues and goes to sleep. (To be fair to him, most people probably just go to sleep.)

This raises all sorts of technical questions. Given that Mr. Crewe's member should, as the Chinese say (though I don't think they were referring specifically to Mr. Crewe), be at the half past six position when in repose, does he tip the beaker to accommodate this? If so, is the beaker less than full to start with (or even less than less than full, to both allow for tipping and avoid displacement)? Is the water warm and, if so, does he (or she) allow for cooling in the time between pouring and ejaculation? How long do they allow for this - 2 minutes, twenty? (After all, a cold dunk would be a bit of a shock.)
 
One Mumset reader asked what happened if there was a middle of the night shag and presumably a second cup at the ready, to which our Sara replied that having a 4-month old meant that she needed her sleep and this was not going to happen. So that's your lot, mate, and if hubby has a potential dawn breaker he is just going to have to grab for any remaining tissues and the baby oil.

Clearly, images of a cup of cummy water and a pile of crusty tissues may be distasteful to my more fastidious reader and I hope he or she can get them out of their mind before too long. Unless they want to unburden themselves of their own practices on this site.


(Picture stolen from Jean Barker, because I couldn't be arsed to take my own photo. No need to thank me for the traffic, Jeanie.)

Thursday, September 26, 2013

Where's The Beef?

I had breakfast in one of those Simply Life places the other day - well, it makes a change from the Mandarin or the Four Seasons (but isn't the "Four" redundant once you say "the"?).

I had the all-day breakfast, which means that it is available all day, not that it takes (like in some places) all day to arrive. Imagine my surprise when I found that the scrambled egg was made only of egg whites. To put it another way, it was egg, but effectively without the ckufing egg. What's that all about?

It can't be a health thing, as the breakfast includes tasty therefore unhealthy stuff like bacon and sausage. No, it must surely be a way of charging customers twice for the same egg. I'm not sure where the other half of the egg goes - maybe into egg-white-free omelettes - but, sure as eggs are eggs, it must be going somewhere billable.

FFS! Whatever next? Taste-free Cantonese food? Hang on a minute ....

Wednesday, September 11, 2013

Oh, Danny Boy

Oh, those lovable Welsh!

Daniel Cooper, father of 3 despite being only 24, was convicted of indecent exposure after trying to shag a kebab shop counter and a Land Rover whilst drunk. At least it beats (on the indecency stakes - I leave it to my Welsh reader to make any qualitative comparison) shagging sheep whilst sober.

Mr. Cooper, who may or may not henceforth be known as Mini Cooper having been caught in all his naked glory on CCTV, "simulated" (why "simulated"?) sex with a blue Discovery, blue Discoveries presumably being the Essex girls of the car world. Did the Discovery drop its bag of chips, I wonder. We may never know.

Nor does the report state whether Mr. Cooper achieved the necessary degree of arousal, or whether he was properly prepared for his one night stand (what kind of lubricant is best?), though presumably the CCTV could answer those questions.

Cooper said he was so drunk he could not remember what happened until he was shown the CCTV pictures. Riiiight. Although his lawyer claimed that Cooper was "mortified and totally ashamed", he changed his name to "Daniel Hotcock Cooper" on his Facebook page, so not very convincing, really. Unless the description was a literal one, the exhaust pipe being still warm. Just wondering.

One of his "friends" said: "Daniel will never live this down – everyone is saying he was 'tyred' and 'exhausted' afterwards. "He is not a pretty sight when naked. We all felt sorry for the Land Rover and hope it wasn't offended."

Cooper admitted indecent exposure and must stay at home on weekend evenings for the next three months, where he will presumably be watching the Discovery Channel. Geddit?

Wednesday, September 4, 2013

Send In The Clowns

"Sir" Alex Ferguson is an unlucky man. If only a few appalling refereeing decisions had not gone against him, his team, Manchester United, would have been unbeaten for 26 years.

But seriously, he has had his share of luck, including winning one last trophy in his last two years as manager, albeit through landing a single player who made all the difference to his aging team, with a bit of help from Fergie-time as well as some of the decisions he forgot to complain about. So he was able to go out as a champion, and to avoid having to decide, year after year, whether to hang on for just one more season or to go out as not-a-champion.

But he has  gone, or has he? He remains with MU as a director and as their "Ambassador". One would assume that this was to keep his experience in the club and to provide a wise head when needed. If so, it is not working as MU's humiliation in the transfer market has shown.

Much fanfare heralded David Moyes's arrival, with brash talk about the big signings MU would be making. Luring Ronaldo back, buying Cesc Fabregas, attracting Robert Lewandowski; all these projects were yelled from the mountain tops, yet none were achieved. The full sorry story is here: the upshot of the transfer season is that MU bought one 20-year old, paid four and a half million pounds more than they needed to for the only one of the two Everton players they were after, and made a laughing stock of themselves by referring to some well-known Spanish sports lawyers as impostors. They are left with the almost-sole achievement of not having lost their injury-prone and moody striker, Wayne Loony, to Chelsea, whose bids for the fat has-been were surely only designed to wind up MU anyway.

How strange that this chapter of accidents could occur with the wisdom of Fergie still in the club. Did he say nothing to the hapless Moyes and Woodward to suggest that they might, perhaps, think about trying this or that instead of blundering around?

Talking of Rooney, what a poisoned chalice Sir Alice has left there, with his claim when he (Alice) was leaving, that Rooney had asked for a transfer. In what possible way could this have helped his successor? And there we have it; I believe, far from helping behind the scenes, Alice is revelling in the contrast between his reign and his successor's. How long before MU's fans tumble to it?

Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Well, Duh!

Comment is almost superfluous (but I won't let that stop me) on this story: Tony Abbott, Australia's opposition leader, is quoted as saying "No one -- however smart, however well-educated, however experienced -- is the suppository of all wisdom."

Perhaps the kindest thing that could be said about this, from an Australian point of view, is that it diverts attention from the Australians' collapse yesterday in the fourth test match.

Or that, arguably, an earlier gaffe from a candidate in Queensland (of course), Stephanie Bannister, a female welder, describing Islam as a country, was not only worse but was only one of a series, leading her to be described as Australia's Sarah Palin.

Ah, Australia, where men are men and women are welders!

Monday, August 12, 2013

Fatuous

Here's another one for the meaningless apology collection. Geoffrey Miller, a professor in New Mexico (as opposed to old may he koh) has been disciplined (ooh-err!) for tweeting that fat Ph.D. candidates have less chance of success because “if you didn’t have the willpower to stop eating carbs, you won’t have the willpower to do a dissertation".

The university could have tried, in a disciplined academic way, to fault Miller's logic, or perhaps to force him to justify his conclusion with some statistics or a study (surely not hard to find enough fat students in America?), and, if he couldn't, to ridicule his lack of science. If he couldn't support his comments, they could have called him an inner fatty. Or is this what they meant when they "roundly" criticised him?

But no, the university has gone straight for the lazy PC option, saying that Miller broke "at least three"different ethics rules (Can't they even work out how many of their own rules he broke? Are these people too fat to count above three?) with the tweet,and demanded that he apologise to students and colleagues. Not just the fat ones, it seems, but all of them. So Miller (if he does so) will be apologising to thin people for something said in respect of fat people - an apology as empty as the calories the fatties consume.

Thursday, August 8, 2013

Banging The Drum

Finally, there is someone who doesn't apologise immediately after saying something that might, conceivably, offend anyone who is really rather pleased to be offended and to have the chance to parade their offendedness in the media. Ckufing PC wankers.

Hats off to Godfrey Bloom, who questioned Britain paying vast sums of aid, whilst still in debt itself, to "Bongo Bongo Land".

When questioned about his comments (for which, read 'asked to apologise'), Mr Bloom told BBC News it would be "absurd" and "ridiculous" to label them racist, adding that Bongo Bongo Land was "a figment of people's imagination. It's like Ruritania or the Third World. ...It's sad how anybody can be offended by a reference to a country that doesn't exist."

Mr Bloom also said: "If I've offended anybody in Bongo Bongo Land, I will write to their ambassador at the Court of St James."

Later attempts by worthies of his party, the UK Independence Party (UKIP), to smooth the ruffled feathers of the Bongolese by getting Mr. Bloom to apologies had mixed results. The Bloomster said:

"I used a term which I subsequently gather under certain circumstances could be interpreted as pejorative to individuals and possibly cause offence. Although quite clearly no such personal usage was intended, I understand from UKIP party chairman Steve Crowther and leader Nigel Farage that I must not use the terminology in the future, nor will I, and [I] sincerely regret any genuine offence which might have been caused or embarrassment to my colleagues."

Such is the hunger for apologies that the leader of the UKIP, Nigel Farage, claimed on the basis of the above that Mr. Bloom "apologised", whilst the Beeb itself sloppily or deliberately misquotes Bloom as saying "he sincerely regrets causing any offence".

Read it again, Messrs. Farage and Beeb. He "regrets" any "genuine" offence caused to individuals to whom the comment might have been personally pejorative (i.e. not the PC brigade). That means no one.

Good on you, Mr. Bloom.

Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Shifting Sands

I had only just got over my bewilderment at the current AustCham ad on the Australian Channel, where they say they have been "flavouring" Hong Kong for 20 years, accompanied by a cartoon of someone pouring salt (or maybe pepper) over the Hong Kong skyline ("Flavouring", where did that come from?), when I received a circular from "Business Events Australia's Chinese outlet. The circular contains a storyette about a jolly to Australia's Gold Coast by over thousand Chinese delegates from Herbalife China.

Jerry Li, President, Herbalife China said, “When choosing Australia for the Herbalife Leadership Vacation 2012, we were attracted by its world-renowned culture of fun; its people, natural beauty, and its proximity to China.”

Its "proximity to China"? A mere 9 hours' flying time away?
Or is there perhaps some territorial claim brewing under which Alice Springs will be discovered to have always been an inalienable part of Chinese territory?

Monday, May 27, 2013

Graveyard Humour

My mole at the FCC, where the usual closed shop, no term limits, vested interest candidates have been re-elected under a system which the CCP would be well advised to copy, has drawn my attention to a gem in the letters page of the current issue of The Correspondent, the FCC's bi-monthly rag.

Kit Sinclair, wife of the late Kevin, wrote complaining that Kev's name is omitted from the 2008 (the year he died) list of obituaries. The editor of The Correspondent replied that this was "a grave oversight". I am sure that will make Kit feel better.

Friday, May 24, 2013

Bloomberg - Burger-Eating Racist Bastards

Bloomberg's current headline on Ford's decision to stop making cars in Australia is "Aussie dollar is villain as Ford end Mad-Max Land Output". Or "Mad-Max Country" if you look at their screens. If reducing an entire country, nay a continent, to the status of a violent movie caricature is not racist, I don't know what is.

And anyway, everyone knows that Australia is Rolf Harris Country.



Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Bring Me The Head Of Sergio Garcia

Golf, the game which pretends to be a sport, is introducing a ban on "belly-putting". Belly-putting is where golfers use their largest natural asset instead of their hands to control the putter, essentially anchoring it against their substantial gut and removing half of the difficulty of nudging a ball into a hole from a few feet away. I realise that any analogy between golf and sport is essentially flawed, but the equivalent might be for soccer players to be required to only use their feet. Shock! Horror!

The Royal and Ancient and the US Golf Association (i.e. the Brits and the Septics respectively) have, a mere 40 years after these cheat-sticks started to be used, come up with a 40-page report (that's an easy calculation!) justifying their decision to implement the ban, which comes into effect in only 3 years' time.

Golf club makers (although the specialised clubs are not themselves being banned, they would become redundant under the new rule, so no self-interest there, of course) had already made their opposing views known, claiming that it would reduce the attractiveness of golf, by ... err ... introducing some sort of skill or requiring people to be in some sort of physical shape other than round, either of which would be too much of a hurdle for the average lard-arse. Call me controversial but I believe that's where watching golf on TV, or its close cousin, sleeping on the sofa, fit in.

In other golf news, Sergio Garcia has stirred up outrage amongst the PC brigade by suggesting that an American might like fast food. At some sort of golf awards dinner (largest belly, most horrific trousers?), Garcia - whose dislike of the hooker-chasing Tiger Woods is well-known - was asked if he would invite Woods for dinner in the US next month: hardly a serious question. Garcia replied that he would do so every night and would offer fried chicken. Apparently, this is racist. FFS! Fried chicken is an American staple, exported around the world to the delight of gourmands everywhere. Surely offering someone their national dish is the height of hospitality? If someone said they would offer me curry and chips, I would be delighted.

Compare and contrast with the following recently sent by the French and British Chambers in an invitation for a joint networking event:


Or is that racist too?

Friday, April 19, 2013

Someone's Pinched My Winkle

Ooh-err! Rolf Harris, the greatest living Australian, has been arrested, sorry, questioned under caution, for sex offences. 83-year-old Harris, whose real name is Rolf Harris, now lives, appropriately enough, in Berkshire, having first arrived in the UK in 1952.

Two little boys are helping police with the enquiry.

English As She Is Wrote

The Daily Telegraph's "Social Affairs Editor", John Bingham, seems to be targeting the chav market with his headline "Paralysed man taking on Tony Nicklinson right-to-die mantle waves anonymity".

Towards the end of the report, we are told that the handicapped person in question, one Paul Lamb,"cannot use any of his limbs other than a slight movement in one hand". Perhaps that is the ckufing "wave" Mr. Bingham is referring too. Either that, or Bingham doesn't bother to check his own work. (The report and headline have been online for 20 hours at the time of posting.)

Saturday, March 30, 2013

Birds Of A Feather

How strange. My previous post about Andrew Greystoke rose rapidly up the Google rankings but has just as suddenly disappeared, even if you search "Andrew Greystoke + Hong Kong + fumier". In other words, Google has excluded it, although all the information in the post save Mr. Greystoke's presence in Hong Kong came from other sites found through a Google search.

Could it be that, despite its content consisting entirely, apart from Mr. Greystoke's visit here, of matters which are both public record and also covered extensively elsewhere on the Interweb, it touched a nerve, that one of Greystoke's Hong Kong cohorts tipped Greystoke the wink, and a Tarzan minion asked Google to remove the site from search results. No, surely not.

If it is the case, however, it would not be the first time that a sensitive flower has asked (or not, as the case may be) for a foamie exclusive to be removed from the searches. I remember a few years back the same thing happening (or maybe not) when I posted about a charity vanity site (using only the words of the site itself) called Hong Kong People, run by socialites David and Cara Weil, (with the luvly-bubbly Mabel Au-Yeung to give it some credibility). Up the rankings it went then it disappeared, perhaps after a Google vanity search. In this respect, it mirrored the performance of the charity itself which sank without trace (apart from in the Companies Registry's records) shortly afterwards, having - according to its accounts - racked up only about HK$10,000 in inward donations (receipts) and quite a lot more than that in expenses (hence no outward donations to the actual charities it was supposed to benefit) in its short life). Not a very good story for the old dinner circuit in the end, sadly.

Just for old times' sake I may repost that one soon, together with an account of its death throes.

Sunday, March 24, 2013

A Grey Area

Watch out, Hong Kong, Andrew Greystoke is about. The purveyor of financial services, unaffectionately known as Tarzan, and about as convincing face to face, is on a visit trying to drum up business. (For Greystoke's unintentionally hilarious blog, look here.)
 
Greystoke's connections with Hong Kong go way back, at least as far back as 2005 when the numerous Spanish-based boiler plate scams which his law firm, Atlantic Law, "recklessly" (according to the UK FSA) endorsed under their UK FSA licence were investigated by the FSA with the help of the Hong Kong Police, the Hong Kong SFC and other bodies.
 
As a result of this, Greystoke and his firm were together fined £400,000 and Greystoke was banned for life from working in any capacity in financial services. Quite how this sits with his continuing hawking of too-good-to-be true UK listing services is an interesting question.
 
This decision was followed by action from the Solicitors Regulation Authority for "bringing the profession into disrepute". Getting lawyers a bad name? That's quite an achievement. And last year the law firm was liquidated in an action brought by a former employee with debts of approaching  £1m (including amounts which Greystoke claims were owed to his wife). 
 
These were not the first setbacks in Greystoke's career. Declared bankrupt in 1996 following an unsuccessful libel action against Lloyds of London, Greystoke had already made a name for himself in various ventures which had, by a sequence of astonishingly bad luck, left a trail of failure, debt and impoverished punters. Following the FSA decision in 2010, one report summarised, doubtless incorrectly, thus:

"What no one seems to have noticed," the Times commented last week, "is that Greystoke already has a bad record in the City." No one, that is, except regular readers of the Eye, and since 2003 the Mail on Sunday's Tony Hetherington, both of which have been sounding the alarm - the Eye for almost a quarter of a century - about this serial spiv and financial fantasist, who was also a Tory councillor in Westminster during the Shirley Porter era.

"Since the mid-1980s we have been chronicling the various corporate disasters with which he has been associated - Slater Walker America, Maddock, Bremar Holdings, Castle Mill and City & Westminster Group, which collapsed in 1991. By 1995 he owed more than £5m to creditors, including Lloyd's of London, which received a letter from Tarzan's psychiatrist pleading "mitigating circumstances".

"Greystoke was made bankrupt in June 1996. The Department of Timidity & Inaction had started efforts in 1993 to disqualify him as a director over the City & Westminster fiasco - his company City & Westminster collapsed within months of being injected into what became City & Westminster Group - but these were presumably rendered unnecessary by his bankruptcy and never pursued.

"Having failed at business he reinvented himself as a lawyer, but he couldn't kick the spivvy habit - representing, among others, the iffy and whiffy Brain Games Network plc, run by chess impresario Raymond "the Penguin" Keene and fronted by Tory grandee Sir Jeremy Hanley."




For an insight into the level at which this snake oil, sorry, amazing metal coatings, salesman operates, one can do worse than read the report  by the Financial Services and Markets Tribunal, of Greystoke's failed appeal against the FSA decision, in which his evidence, truthfulness and credibility and the methods of the thieves he unwittingly, or was it "recklessly", assisted to steal some million of pounds of pensioners' savings were assessed:

Greystoke's evidence:
"The Applicants (Greystoke and Atlantic Law) continued to approve promotions even after the FSA had begun an investigation and further matters of concern had come to light. These facts speak for themselves."

"It is unfortunately clear that he has made claims in this application that he must have known to be untrue."
 
"When cross-examined Mr Greystoke recalled, apparently for the first time, that he may have been referring to a conversation with Eben Hamilton QC. That seemed to be an example of a witness caught out telling one untruth seeking to cover it up by telling another."


"There is some pattern in Mr Greystoke's conduct of making inaccurate claims and, when found out, apologising to the minimum degree and expecting to move on."


"It follows that we reject the evidence of Mr Greystoke where it is inconsistent with the surrounding material and the probabilities."


And those whom he "recklessly" assisted's, methods: "
The phone calls contain[ed] threats, blackmail, derision and insults ... threats including 'to come to see [an 86-year old] … and gang rape her' ". Nice people, and I am sure that Mr. Greystoke was shocked, shocked, I tell you, to discover this.

Yes, dear reader, be careful out there..

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

A Little Bit On The Top

Ebeneezers, Wanchai purveyors of fine junk food to pissed gweilos, streetwalkers taking the weight off, and respectable persons such as your correspondent, are either falling on hard times or getting greedy.

I patronised one of their outlets the other day, intending to enjoy their nutritious prawn curry and chips, which I ordered at the counter for in-house consumption, but imagine my surprise when I found that I had been short-changed to the tune of $5!

Upon questioning this apparently innocent error, I was told that there was a $5 charge for sitting down. I pointed out that this charge was not shown on the price list and acordingly cancelled the transaction, took my money back and honoured Tsui Wah a few steps along the road with my custom. From the conversation behind Ebeneezer's counter, it was obvious that I was not the first person to have done this on that day alone.

Of course, I am not suggesting that my reader falls into either of the first two-mentioned categories of Ebeneezer customer, but if he (or she) does visit Ebeneezers, then he (or she) should check the bill more carefully than usual.

Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Seaman Stains

There are 419 scams, there are directory scams, and there is franchising.

Dress yourself up in a manufactured qualification, such as CFE (Certified Franchise Executive - surely you knew that!) from the IFA (International Franchise Association), add a few more pay-as-you go "qualifications" such as fellowship of the Institute of Directors (yes, you can become a "Fellow", just like with a real qualification), from£360 p.a., and membership of the Insitute of Marketing (from£130 p.a.) and the Institute of Export ("from only £67.50 p.a."), so in total no exams and about as much cost as parking a car in Hong Kong for a couple of months, and what have you got?

Yes, you have got "Professor" Roy Seaman of the renowned Franchise Development Services Limited, in business since 1981.(This is "Professor" as in Honorary Professor of Beijing Normal University's International Franchise Academy, which somehow fails to get a mention on the university's Wikipedia entry (fix that, Roy!), perhaps because it is really "based in Zhuhai (Guangdong) in partnership with the renowned Beijing Normal University". Ho, hum.)

So, armed with your curious title and your paid-for paper, what next? Why not send out some letters to random people and see what transpires? Such as:

"Following our previous correspondence via the UKTI ..."

err ... what correspondence? I've never heard of you before.

"... we thought that you would like to know that further FDS offices have now been established in the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon, Iraq, Pakistan, Australia and New Zealand. This is (sic) an addition to our well established offices here in the United Kingdom and in Spain. We are now planning to award a Master Franchise for Hong Kong."

Isn't just one "well established" overseas office after 31 years something of an indictment of your own franchising skills? And you picked Iraq and Pakistan ahead of Hong Kong? You think Iraq is more interested in brands than Hong Kong?
 

"Yours sincerely, Professor Roy Seaman, CFE"

Good luck, Roy.

Monday, February 4, 2013

Sunday, January 27, 2013

Cut The Crap

Mixed doubles in tennis is a curious concept. Indeed, so are all the other doubles combos. They seem to exist solely to provide a way for tennis rabbits to stay in a tournament longer than the first round. Or maybe they are there to let the real players have a rest.

Watching the mixed doubles final of the Australian Open (for as long as it took to finish my drink and go, having shown up at my favourite sports bar thinking that the proper tennis was going to start at 1.30), I was struck by an interesting innovation. (Maybe it's not new, but I don't normally watch joke tennis.)Whenever a game got to deuce, the next point was the deciding point, as if to say, enough is enough, we know no one really wants to watch this stuff, so let's just play one more point and move on. The real entertainment will be along shortly.

What a jolly good idea, I thought, and why not take it to its logical conclusion? Why not apply it to women's tennis and, instead of just having a deciding point when it is 40-40, why not do it at the very beginning of the match and make each women's match be decided on a single point? And we could get rid of the arguments about paying women tennis players the same as men because, as Charlie Sheen said when asked why he paid women for sex, we wouldn't be paying them to play, but to just go away.