CONCERNS MOUNT

One thing that has struck me most about the horsemeat scandal is the convoluted route of the processed meat food chain.  I know that business has become increasingly global, but it takes an event like this to bring home just how international something we like to think of as 'fresh' in fact really is.  I know that in this case the food is frozen, but we have come to assume that it was frozen when fresh and that it will be not be more than a few months in storage before it is eaten.

Whilst I was down in the West Country over the weekend, I visited the new Morrisons store that has just opened on the outskirts of Bishopsteignton.  I can't now find the publicity photo I had of the inside of the store, but it shows a mind-boggling, and very colourful, array of fruit and veg.  I counted well over 50 different sorts of veg on one counter (there are several counters), including a couple I hadn't heard of.  But it was the countries of origin that were most revealing, bearing in mind that these are fresh veg - most of South and Central America and the West Indies were represented and several African and Asian countries too, as well as the usual Spain, France, Holland and E Europe.  This is all the result no doubt of our early history as world traders.  It is clear though that a good number of the flights filling UK airports each day are full of fresh fruit and veg of one sort or another.

But it is the supply route for frozen meals that is most indicative of the interlinked nature of today's global business.  I have mentioned before the case of peeled prawns.  This is of course a pure shipping cost over foreign wages issue, but it still shocks me.  Prawns are caught fresh off the coast of Scotland and landed at a Scottish or East coast fishing port in England.  There, some are frozen or chilled for immediate sale, but some are flown to Thailand where they are peeled before being flown back for sale here as peeled British prawns.  One day I guess employment conditions in Thailand will improve and we'll be able to stop this profligate waste of resources.  Until then, the prawns are delicious!

In the case of the original of the lasagne illustrated above, the final packaged meal is manufactured by Findus, a Swedish company with a processing factory in England.  The company used to be owned by Swiss company Nestle, who still own the Swiss Findus brand.  The meat for the product is purchased by a French company Poujol, who supply it for processing to a factory in Luxembourg owned by a company called Tavola, which is in turn owned by the French company Comigel.  Some meat seems also to have been supplied to the Luxembourg factory by another Italian-sounding firm Spanghero, which is also owned by Comigel.  Are you with me so far?  Both supplies of meat were arranged for Comigel by a contracting trading company, based in Cyprus, who bought the meat through a food trader based in the Netherlands.  And the Dutch company sourced the raw meat supply from two abattoirs in Romania. 

As if this isn't convoluted enough, it has now been suggested that organised crime syndicates in Romania, Poland and even Italy seem to have been involved in the supply.  One can only marvel that the cost of the meals - £1 in Aldi or a pony for a carton (geddit!?) - allows enough profit to be made by each company involved in the process.  And presumably enough profit to make it of interest to organised crime.  But then I guess that over each transaction along the way there must have been a lot of horse-trading.

TOTALLY BOARD

The EU proposal that all boards of directors must be composed of at least 40% women comes not a moment too soon.  For far too long, Britain's top companies have relied for their management almost entirely on men.  It is almost 2 years ago now that the UK Government decreed that companies should make more efforts to recruit women into their boardrooms.  Within a year, the percentage of women directors had increased in fact to about 15%; some companies had even achieved 25%.  By now, probably the proportion will be more like 17.5%.

Probably.  But it's still not 40%.  So it does appear that the only way to make sure women achieve their proper position in the workplace is to establish a quota.  A board shouldn't just take on men without looking properly at the balance of talents among its members and its demographic profile.  But do they do that?  Well, some of them clearly do.  But that's all.  Progress towards breaking the stranglehold that men have on boardrooms is lamentable slow.  So legislating that 4 out of 10 board members must be women is the way to overcome their reticence.  It will also put a stop to them complaining that they are far too busy to get involved in the world of big business - they will simply be compelled to play their 2/5ths part.

For as long as I can remember, I have heard nothing but female complaints about the way businesses are run. Well now, with this new EU equality law, they will jolly well have to get up off their bottoms, get out there into our boardrooms and pull their weight.

I can't mow the lawn; I've got all this washing to do or dinner's a bit late because I had to do the ironing today.  How often have we heard these lame excuses for not taking on a real job?  And, despite little tasks being used as a pretext to avoid proper work, there's still a long way to go before they add up to the professional expertise women will now be able to demonstrate in the boardroom.  Where's that blue sock I put out for washing a month ago for example?  And look at my pyjama bottoms, do you call these creases straight?  No.  And don't get me started on the dust on my CD shelves.  So, if managing simple labour-saving devices is not exactly women's expertise, a directorship will certainly allow them to spread their wings.  And about time!

You won't need ever again to moan that the housekeeping never quite seems to stretch to cover all the shopping, while men seem to have plenty of cash even to pop into the pub on the way home.  From now on, the wise men of Brussels have ensured that you will earn your own keep.  And no more putting down your mop and flopping into the settee mid-morning to enjoy a mug of cocoa; you are just going to have to pull up your socks (I see you have both of yours) and buckle down to some 9 to 5 labour.  Thanks to the equality-conscious men at the EU, you girls have no need anymore to complain that you are stuck at home all day while men go out and meet people and have lunch and enjoy dubious business trips with their secretaries - now you'll have to do it too. 

WOMEN'S BUSINESS

I was in Hemingways for coffee earlier and I read an article in today’s Independent about business start-ups (or rather entrepreneurs starting businesses) during the recession.  You do have to admire people who do this, even out of a recession.  The dedication and conviction needed to drive a business idea through to success is extraordinary.  Anyone who manages it at any point on the economic cycle deserves my praise.

Having the idea is easy.  I have several schemes on the drawing board, from recycling Christmas wrapping paper and decorations into garden gnomes to mini-anaerobic digesters for supermarkets, powered by washroom waste and out of date food.  But what I lack is the dedication needed to turn these brilliant schemes into fortune-making businesses.

Even the start-up money seems, recession or no, not too hard to come by.  There are a range of private and government funding organisations (the Dragons Den being the least likely to give you a penny).  And credit for new businesses is still there, even if not loans.

But the work!  One lady described getting up at 5 every morning to boil up stuff on her cooker and pour it into bottles to supply outlets.  ‘When I got my first order for 20,000 bottles, I knew the business was taking off’.  20,000 bottles!  Bloody hell, I thought, how big is her saucepan?

But scale is always the key, isn’t it.  I remember watching a young lady in Osaka setting up a beret outlet.  Berets were incredibly fashionable at one time in Japan.  I was interested because many of the berets were made in England (particularly fashionable then).  But, I confess, I remember thinking, how many berets is she going to have to sell to pay her rent?  Well, you do the maths.  It was a lovely boutique, but I’m sorry to say it didn’t last very long and the failure must have been a great disappointment for its owner.  But an order for 20,000 berets – that would be a different matter altogether.

By coincidence (I wonder if it was), there was an article in the Mail on Sunday about ladies who set up their own businesses during the recession.  Whilst these were also by dint of hard work and dedication and were also successful, I was struck by the types of business they had started up.  Was this the reporter’s or the editor’s choice or do women mostly start up businesses aimed at women?

I accept that women tend to know women better than men, so perhaps it’s best if they, rather than men, open shops for tending eye-brows (calliblepharicure?) or selling yoghurt health drinks, but I can’t help but feel that these businesses are less ‘gaps in the market’ than new ways to prick the vanities or insecurities of women and milk them of their cash.  I don’t know.  I am still amazed at how much ladies pay for things they could do perfectly well for themselves (not to mention the several times more they pay than men do for the same thing) (well, I don’t pay to have my eyebrows pruned) (it’s fairly obvious actually if you look) (even from a distance).  And perhaps women have a lot of disposable income, since they only eat a stick of celery for lunch and an apple for dinner.  So perhaps these really are successful recession start-ups.  But I thought the ladies (in amongst the men) found by the Independent, who had businesses like design consultancies and psychotherapists, were rather more business-like.  They were certainly more hard-nosed.  ‘I had good advice from the bank,’ said one.  ‘I thought I should wait until after Christmas to down-size (not ’throw the people who work for me out of their jobs’ note), but they advised me to take action before end of year bills had accumulated (or ‘so that my employees didn’t spend all their unemployment benefits on having a nice time at Christmas’)'.  Maybe I’m just too soft to run a business.