Fiendish Games

Something I wrote yesterday was (ahem) recycled in the London Evening Standard yesterday, and I must admit to being more flattered than annoyed.

To be honest, I spend my day scouring web sites looking for stuff to write about so I can hardly complain should some hack decide it is easier to rewrite something I have written rather than create something from scratch.

Then again, maybe I am deluding myself. See what you think.

Here's what I wrote ...

A 180-year association with brewing ale is to come to an end at Young & Co's Brewery with the decision by the company to sell its minority stake in the Wells & Young's Brewing Company to Charles Wells.

<<blah blah snip>>

Wells & Young's was formed in 2006 following the merger of the Young's brewing operations with those of Charles Wells, with Charles Wells holding a majority 60% stake. The merger allowed Young's to sell off its Ram brewery in Wandsworth, in London, which had been brewing beer since the reign of the original Queen Elizabeth.


Here's what the Standard wrote:

Young & Co. has been brewing beer for Londoners for 180 years. Today it said it would stop, selling its minority stake in the Wells & Young's Brewing Company to Charles Wells.

<<blah blah snip>>

That deal allowed Young's to sell off its Ram brewery in Wandsworth, which had been brewing beer since the reign of the first Queen Elizabeth.

Maybe, like me, the Standard's writer thought referring to the first/original Queen Elizabeth emphasised how far back the brewing history goes, rather than the more prosaic use of Queen Elizabeth I.

One of my erstwhile colleagues had one of his pieces replicated almost word for word in the Standard once. Again, he was sanguine about it and probably flattered. He's now writing for the Chronic Investor, working to a weekly schedule, so he is less likely to have "cover versions" of his stuff done by time-poor hacks.

Hello all. Well, both of you. Just to let you know I am still here. Been very busy of late, working 12 and 13 hour days. Not much felt like sitting in front of a PC screen when I get home. If I had more time I would comment on the death of Liz Taylor, for my money the most beautiful woman of the 20th century. Actually, I wouldn't; that pretty much sums up all I have to say about the woman.

I was officially served notice of redundancy this week. The company has sold the web site businesses on which I work, so there is no job for me to do once the six week transition period to the new owners is over.

Informally, the new owners of the web sites, a Spanish company, have guaranteed that all employees being made redundant will be offered a new job doing exactly the same thing they were doing at the old place, on the same or better terms.

So, continuity of employment with a redundancy package thrown in. Which is nice.



I was wondering why the new owners had done it this way, when it is more normal practice when buying a business to buy the people as well. One of the top men at the new owners explained: “This way, we can get rid of you after six months if you don’t work out.”

Personally, I appreciate that sort of honesty but I gather the conspiracy theorists where I work are sceptical.

We’ve had a few meetings with the senior management of the new place and they keep banging on about how they reward hard work blah blah. So far as we can tell, they have 28 people in their Madrid office producing about the same amount of stuff as we do in the London office, where there are just five people (and a part-timer) on the team, so I am fairly confident they won’t find us wanting in the productivity stakes.

Our only worry is that the Madrid lot might start worrying they will have to start work at 6:30am, scoff a hasty sandwich at the desk at 3pm and then slope off home having worked an hour or two of unpaid overtime.

Hopefully, good sense will prevail and instead of the Madrid mob being asked to work their cojones off to compensate for being understaffed, the London team will be strengthened so we can leave on time for once.

I am, by nature, an optimistic soul, or, possibly, merely a fatalistic one. The new owners already own a number of businesses similar to the one I work for, whereas our business was a mere neglected sideline for our previous owners, so perhaps the new owners will drive us forward to international domination.

Besides which, our previous owners look like they are in deep doo-doo, judging by the number of people they are laying off, so maybe it is all for the best.

Worst comes to the worst, I will end up redundant and will have a fighting chance of getting the “Metric Mile” board game finished in time for the 2012 London Olympics. Currently, it’s only 11 years past its targeted publication date.

P.S. I’ve just realised. Once I post this I will be doing another hour or two unpaid overtime on a Saturday morning. The new owners have talked of getting University graduates in as interns – “slave labour”, as we term it – and though I don’t agree with abusing the whole work experience option, the Saturday morning task is one I would gladly allocate to someone else.

Bloody hell, this is turning into a car driver’s blog. I drove Mrs. Fiendish’s car for only the second time today and found it an uncomfortable experience, and not just because I had been warned, on pain of death, not to adjust the seat.

Her car is a Lexus GS sport, mine is a Toyota Yaris. This is just one example of roles being the opposite of what one might expect in a stereotypical female-male relationship.

She drives the sporty car (top speed 148 mph, apparently), I drive the little runabout.

She buys from the first shop she visits if it is something she likes, I visit every single conceivable store and end up getting a “bargain” that is all of 2% cheaper than the thing I saw in the first shop (admittedly, that’s a £260 saving on what the Lexus costs us eight or nine years ago).

She a Star Trek geek, I don’t mind it.

I am sure there are other examples (she did all the DIY, I did all the bedtime stories) but maybe that’s a story for another time. Back to the Lexus.

Aside from the frankly worrying acceleration, the car has a long bonnet and a boot, and as well as being longer than the Yaris it is wider too. As such, I was constantly unsure of how much room I had on the road.

I am the world’s worst reverser so I was expecting to have problems backing into the parking space on the forecourt but I nearly pranged the front of the car as well as the front end swung out a lot further than I expected and almost hit the neighbour’s wall.

Little wonder then, that my next car purchase – which will be in about 2025 if I have my way – is likely to be a smaller car, not a bigger one. The Mini-wannabe Suzuki Swift looks quite jolly, though doubtless number one son would disparage it as a hairdresser’s car, and he should know, because he did his work experience in a hairdresser’s.

Here's a thought. Would it not be cool if countries could trade leaders like football clubs trade players? A swap of Mubarak for Berlusconi might be interesting.