My love hate relationship with Land Rover Discovery’s

I expect most people associate Land Rovers with a robust off road vehicle capable of navigating the Sahara desert (see Ice Cold in Alice) or scaling the heights of Mount Kilimanjaro on a single tank of petrol. Robust rugged and ready for any off-road experience. Well the reality is other-wise and my experience of Land Rovers (specifically the series TD5) has shown them quite incapable of getting out of our gravel drive without conking out. Some years ago ‘er indoors had a hare brained idea that rather than pulling the back axle off the Mondey by dragging our half ton Ivor Williams horse box around we should swap out the BMW (yes you saw right) for a Disco. This idea was based on a recommendation from my brother-in-law (her side) that I should have treated with a pinch of salt as he used to work as quality manager for the bunch of idiots at Longbridge who manufactured this car. Anyhoo after I picked myself off the floor and following 24 hours of relentless female logic I found myself at the local Discovery people in Crawley South London.

‘Cor blimey mate your not thinking of getting rid of that one for one of these disasters are you?’ was the opening remark followed by a broadening smile when he realised he had a half wit before him and then turning to me he said, ‘oh you have my sympathies let’s have a look of what we have on the lot.’ We duly traipsed behind him and after looking at a couple of monstrosities they had on offer approached the triumph of engineering that was soon to clutter our front drive for the next nine months (that’s how long this one lasted). A week later it took three salesmen to prise me out of the driving seat of the BMW 523, my tears were for naught, and we were the proud owners of a shiny newish blue Disco – this was the high spot from there on in it went down hill.

A few weeks later we decided to get a new dog (our old Border Collie had died in sad circumstances) so thought we would pop over to the Isle of Sheppey where we knew some good breeders (they have six kids) and picked a beautiful puppy now known as Tess. On the way back the missus was driving and along the M26 just past Wrotham … ‘Oh’er the temperature gauge is going up and down what does that mean?’ Well what it meant was in a little over a mile further along after dark on the motorway we had tea’s up and coolant all over the road. Completely conked out would not start and I had to wait until it cooled a bit so I could start the motor for a few seconds to get it fully on the hard shoulder. Anyhoo we called the recovery people and they said they would be with in about an hour – so we decamped from the dead Disco to the embankment just as it started to rain – yes you guessed it no coats or umbrellas so we got a soaking. ‘Oh this would not have happened with the BMW’er would it’ … Arghhhhhhhh!! You silly **@!!**!!! twit – just then the police dropped by to check the tax disk and generally hassle motorists in trouble. ‘You all right mate!’ ‘No I’m bloody well not alright this heap of junk has just conked out.’ ‘Oh I know terrible they are – we had to get rid of them because they were so unreliable – always conking out!!’ ‘Arghhhh! Why is it we find out now we have paid a small fortune’ (several more expletives deleted here ed.). The friendly cops gave the Disco a quick once over and although a little disappointed they could not nick me for anything then kindly dropped off the missus and my daughter off at the next service station leaving me to wait up on the recovery man.

After an hour nothing – so I decided to give the recovery people a call to see where they were. Now where’s the number – crap – she’s got it in her handbag. So I get the phone out and then notice I’ve only one blob left and getting nice friendly warnings that I need to charge it up. Calls Missus – ‘hello’ – ‘hello where are you?’ – ‘oh we’re at home now the police dropped us off’ – ‘oh that’s good.’ ‘Now get your arse in gear and find the number of the recovery people if there’re not here soon you might as well send for the coroner.’ ‘Oh OK just hang on a minute’ – five minutes later – ‘Hello are you still there’- ‘Well where else would I (remarks deleted ed.) be?’ … ‘now keep yer hair on the number is 1342 … Arghhhhhhh! Bloody phone went dead … fortunately just then the recovery man turns up lights flashing to help me search for the pieces of the phone on the embankment. When I had recovered my composure he turns to the car and says, ‘Oh a Disco is it, (literal words) we had these but they were so unreliable we spent most of our time recovering our own vehicles Ho! Ho! they’re a heap of ****.’ After giving the engine the once over – the verdict – cracked cylinder head – ‘What!! – We only got this a week ago’ – ‘yes they do seem a little prone to this problem’ – ‘anyway you’re dead in the water mate we have to recover it back.’ So he dragged the dead Disco onto the back of the truck (an event I will witness many times in the next few years) and we headed off home. Next day the little man from the garage called around with the truck to pick up the Disco to take him back for repairs – ‘oh its that one is it – I’m surprised they let that one out after the last incident.’ He drags off said dead car and that’s the last I see of it for two weeks while they fix it. Just to cap it all ‘er indoors calls up the insurance to arrange a courtesy car for me to get to work whilst Disco was laid up – ‘oh sorry when you changed the insurance over from the BMW you forgot to arrange that option – sorry!!!’

I am on my way to the trichologist today to see if there is any chance of sticking my hair back into the bald patches that resulted when I started pulling out my hair in frustration at eleven half-witted over paid Muppets again dismally failing at the World Cup. Yup this is one of those England dismal failure rants again. In passing did you know that a player such as Wayne Rooney is paid five centuries (500 years!!!) worth of the national minimum wage a year for this claptrap.

I feel for those who travelled out to see this debacle – most on benefits or on the national minimum wage – gutted I am sure by what happened but never-the-less I guess they will be back for more next time. Perhaps it’s the identification with the players who if it were not for the ability to kick a ball up against a garage door would also be on benefits and the minimum wage and alongside them in the terraces. Anyhoo that’s not the subject of this half baked rant today.

In period of national crisis our nation pulls together and takes stock before starting to look around for a scapegoat to blame. By way of a slight diversion (again ed.) the actual derivation of the word scapegoat is based on a ritual purification ceremony that actually took place during a king’s wedding in the ancient middle east. In this story a she-goat with a silver bracelet hung from her neck was driven out by the whole community into the wasteland. In such ‘elimination rites’, in which an animal, becomes the vehicle of evils (but not sins) that are chased from the community – and as a result the community can then carry on in the belief that it has expunged itself from all blame and evil.

What will probably happen to poor old Capello now is he will be ritually expunged and sent off into the wilderness with a silver bracelet around his neck (and a big bag of money in his pocket) – and we all think that will solve the problem. Then it will be another search for another leader who can pull this rabble into some sort of shape – which will not solve the problem at all. We call this in consulting ‘faulty diagnosis’ by the client – when they come up with an irrational statement of the problem that avoids any sort of culpability. In this case the faulty diagnosis is that the problem is the question of leadership. The king is dead so long live the (new) king so the story will unfold.

What is surprising is that organisations such as the FA buy into this discredited leadership model that is so prevalent in western management thought. The idea goes that the players must be OK (we pay them enough for gods sake) so it must be a matter of discipline and charismatic leadership – ergo lets buy someone who has apparently had great success elsewhere so he can repeat it here – surely he can take us to glory based on his success from past times. But the answer from evidence is NO – and we are going to start another re-run of history in a few weeks.

There is no evidence that leadership has any real sustained impact on performance. Leadership does not make a great deal of difference to how organisations or teams perform or survive – it is in fact a myth and team dynamics is much more complicated than this. Most reports that extol leadership are attributions – an organisation is a success therefore in western management thought it must be due to something that is good at the top. And nothing to do with how well the people in the organisation work together. Now good stewardship is important for sure but the role of a single person in yielding success (or failure) is over exaggerated and it come to our minds due to a process of recency and selective recall in the way we make sense of the world. We remember only the recent successful outcomes – and block out inconvenient truths.

So in a few weeks another England manager is on his way – the guilt expunged blame allocated and we can get on with another build up to disappointment again. The problem is we have to understand that despite high salaries our players are on average about the same in skill as those across the world – team dynamics vary and what is more important is the drive to success for the players. Perhaps it has been all too easy for the England team – young men with riches beyond their dreams who are simply not hungry enough to play well for the glory of their country.

For them there is no value in it so there is no effort.

Cheers

Roy

Would you like you roof cleaned?

I was there doing the washing up – yes I know this is unheard off – when that black and white idiot of a dog of ours starts the hound of the Baskervilles impression and begins to bark the bloody place down. I don’t know what it is with Border Collies but they spend most of their day looking at the entrance to the drive waiting for someone to turn up then proceed to bark their flipping heads off – she’s turned postie into a nervous wreak I can tell you – and when they do get out they proceed to pee all over the visitor as a sign of submission. Anyhoo – ‘shut up you black and white bloody idiot’, I shouted just as she disappeared out of the front door on a blood quest – crap I’ll have to sort that out else she do someone a mortal – so I quickly squeezed out the sponge and in so doing sprayed water all down the front of my taupe trousers right across the front so it now looked if I had had a nasty accident and p*****d myself.

‘Oh hello would like more information about our roof cleaning service?’, said this chirpy lady who was standing on one of our garden chairs whilst our dog circled menacingly still barking of course. ‘Roof Cleaning!?’ ‘What? – will you bloody well shut up else I’ll strangle you!’ ‘Oh there’s no need to take that attitude’ – ‘Oh not you I meant that idiot.’ ‘Oh, I see – yes we offer to come around and clean the moss off you roof – it’s a new service we have started in the area.’ ‘Oh I suppose ‘offer’ means you do it for free?’ Well no you do have to pay but its reasonably cheap for a roof like your its only about £250.’ ‘WHAT!? £250 to loosen up and crack all the tiles and remove the moss I have been faithfully growing over the last ten years – No Way Jose.’ ‘I quite like the moss really so can live with it and as you can see I rather distracted right now.’ ‘Oh yes, wet yourself have you?’ ‘Yes I have wet myself because some bloody idiot called by when I am doing the washing up and…’ (from there it went down hill a bit). ‘Oh I see can I get down? – ‘Oh yes she quite friendly really we only trained her to go after idiot salesreps who waste my time with useless offers.’ ‘Oh I’ll go then – can I leave you our leaflet should you change your mind?’ – full marks for persistence though – and I walked back in to find a dog biscuit to reward black and white idiot for a job well done, to load the dishes into the dishwasher and find the newspaper.

I was talking to her indoors about her sisters son who’s at Bristol University who just had a nasty run in with Gastroenteritis following a ‘delicious’ late night snack of a donar kebab (despite repeated warnings from his mum) after consuming a quick ten pints at the student union bar. This nasty ailment is an inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract involving both the stomach and the small intestine and resulting in acute and sometimes violent diarrhea . The inflammation is caused most often by infection resulting from with certain viruses bacteria or their toxins. Worldwide, inadequate treatment of gastroenteritis kills 5 to 8 million people per year mainly children under five. The lad was actually quite ill with his attack and was bedridden for three weeks.

In case you missed it last time I feel the need to share one of those interesting facts one comes across concerning this perennial favourite of drunks and layabouts after a night on the town and following consuming a skin full of lager; the donor kebab. I do think it is related you need to be drunk to be daft enough to eat this stuff. A recent analysis of the contents of yer average kebab showed about 60% was moisture, 20% a protein resembling meat 15% fat, 3% ash(??) and nearly 2% salt. It was the make up of the protein that caught my eye (no not the occasional horse or cat meat) but the vast colonies of bacteria that take up residence in the salmonella on a stick in the shop window. Psychotropic bacteria, leading the roll call of nasties with coliforms (the bacteria from mammalian poo) mould and yeast coming in with honourable mentions. Now you measure the presence of such things as bacteria by the colony forming units per gram measure (CFU/g) where each single CFU contains around 10 to 20 million bacteria (oh joy) even better is the numbers found in in Kebabs at 5log10 CFU/g which is about 100,000 CFU’s or about 10,000,000,000,000 bacteria per average portion of Kebab. As a matter of pure interest there is even more bacteria CFU/g in turkey kebabs (Bootiful as Bernie from the bird flu sanctuary in Norfolk would say) – mainly due to the slaughtering and collection process that literally vacuums every scrap of meat from the deceased animal’s carcase.

 
Now I’ve always remembered the revolting smell that comes for free with a kebab – my first encounter many years ago was when a colleague brought one into the office to eat at his desk and was told in no uncertain terms by our boss – ‘to get that stinking crap out of here or yer sacked’. So I have always said that anything that smells that bad cannot be good for you (or your career) – and yup my cousin has just found that out for himself – although to be fair after a skinful at the uni bar I doubt he had the intellectual wherewithal to know what he was eating.

Talking of nasty smells I came across this nice word: Osmophobia – the fear of foul odours and nasty smells that often occurs when listening to labour politicians explain their innocent mistakes in accepting illegal funding for election campaigns or explaining why they claimed expenses for porn videos.

Royston

Here is a nice picture of a bacteria magnified sqillions of times:

1.0 “If it has got four legs and it is not a chair, if it has got two wings and it flies but is not an aeroplane, and if it swims and it is not a submarine, the Cantonese will eat it.”

(at a 1986 World Wildlife Fund meeting)

2.0 “Deaf? If you are near there, no wonder you are deaf.”

(in 1999, to young deaf people in Cardiff, referring to a school’s steel band)

3.0 “If you see a man opening a car door for a woman, it means one of two things: it’s either a new woman or a new car!”

4.0 Edinburgh: And what exotic part of the world do you come from? Lord Taylor: I’m from Birmingham.

(1999 An exchange with Lord Taylor of Warwick, who is black).

5.0 “It looks as if it was put in by an Indian.”

(in 1999, referring to an old-fashioned fuse box in a factory near Edinburgh)

Honourable Mentions

“If you stay here much longer, you’ll all be slitty-eyed”.

During a state visit to China in 1986 to a group of British students

“How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to get them through the test?”

To a driving instructor in Oban, Scotland, he asked:

Still throwing spears?

(Question put to an Australian Aborigine during a visit in March 2002)

“British women can’t cook.” (1966)

“Everybody was saying we must have more leisure. Now they are complaining they are unemployed.”

(during the 1981 recession)

“We didn’t have counselors rushing around every time somebody let off a gun, asking ‘Are you all right? Are you sure you don’t have a ghastly problem?’ You just got on with it.”

(commenting in 1995 on modern stress counseling for servicemen)

“If a cricketer, for instance, suddenly decided to go into a school and batter a lot of people to death with a cricket bat, which he could do very easily, I mean, are you going to ban cricket bats?”

(in 1996, amid calls to ban firearms after the Dunblane shooting)

“Bloody silly fool!”

(in 1997, referring to a Cambridge University car park attendant who failed to recognise him)

“They must be out of their minds.”

(in 1982, in the Solomon Islands, after being told that the annual population growth was only 5%)

“You are a woman, aren’t you?”

(in 1984, in Kenya, to a native woman who had presented him with a small gift)

“Your country is one of the most notorious centres of trading in endangered species in the world.”

(in 1991, in Thailand, after accepting a conservation award)

“Oh no, I might catch some ghastly disease.”

(in 1992 in Australia, when asked to stroke a Koala bear)

“You can’t have been here that long – you haven’t got a pot belly.”

(in 1993, to a Briton in Budapest, Hungary)

“Aren’t most of you descended from pirates?”

(in 1994, to an islander in the Cayman Islands)

“You managed not to get eaten, then?”

(in 1998, to a student who had been trekking in Papua New Guinea)

“You look like you’re ready for bed! “

Said to the President of Nigeria, who was dressed in traditional robes.

“Where did you get that hat? “

(1953 To her Madge the Queen, immediately after her coronation)

“The only active sport I will follow is polo – and most of the work is done by the pony.”

“The bastards murdered half my family.”

(1967 When asked if he would like to visit the Soviet Union)

“I’m one of those stupid bums who never went to university, and a fat lot of harm it’s done me.”

“What do you gargle with – pebbles?”

(1968 said to Tom Jones after the The Royal Variety Performance

“Oh! You are the people ruining the rivers and the environment.”

(1999 Said when he met three young employees of a Scottish fish farm)

“Oh, it’s you that owns that ghastly car – we often see it when driving to Windsor Castle.”

(2001 Talking to Elton John after he told Prince Philip that he had sold his gold Aston Martin

“You were playing your instruments, weren’t you? Or do you have tape recorders under your seats?”

(2002 Said to a children’s band in Australia)

“If you travel as much as we do you appreciate how much more comfortable aircraft have become. Unless you travel in something called economy class, which sounds ghastly.”

“French cooking’s all very well, but they can’t do a decent English breakfast.”

(2002 Aboard the floating restaurant ‘Il Punto’ on the river Orwell in Ipswich, after thoroughly enjoying an excellent full English breakfast (Il Punto is owned by Frenchman Regis Crepy)

“It doesn’t look like much work goes on at this University.”

(2005 Overheard at Bristol University’s BLADE (Bristol Laboratory for Advanced Dynamic Engineering) facility, which had been closed in order that he and the Queen could officially open it

“Never pass up a chance to go to the loo or to take a poo.”

When asked his secret for dealing with public appearances.

“Do we need ear plugs? “

At the Royal Premiere of the James Bond film Die Another Day on being told that Madonna sung the theme song.

Priceless – its almost worth keeping them for this alone

Cheers

Royston