How Hard Can It Be_ - Jeremy Clarkson [45]
When you finally get to your meeting with the head of IT for i-IntelCorp (Far East division), don’t kowtow. When Johnny Chinaman goes to see an American businessman, he doesn’t wear a 10 gallon hat and ask the secretary to get him a Bud. So why do western businessmen do all that bowing and taking business cards with two hands? First of all, you’re going to get the depth of your bow wrong, which is worse than not doing it at all. And worse, you’re not being polite. You’re being patronizing. You might as well ruffle the man’s hair, for all the good it will do. So stop it. And don’t sit on the floor. It may work in Japanese culture, but in this respect, Japanese culture is wrong. And don’t play golf either.
Ever since the 1980s there has been a code of conduct for businessmen, and the result is a decimated stock market and the prospect of many years in the economic doldrums. This is because the people who should have been oiling the wheels of commerce have been in a gym or trying to impress their colleagues by owning an underwater laptop with millions of portals that connect to absolutely nothing at all.
There is a better way. Wear jeans. Read books. Talk normally on the phone. Make stuff that people want to buy. The end.
Sunday 19 October 2008
Take in a prisoner as a lodger and that’s two problems solved
Disturbing news from the courts last week. A homosexual who killed and ate his lover was sentenced to thirty years behind bars. Which means, after he gets out a week on Tuesday, he’s going to come round to your house, sprinkle you with some herbs and pop you in the oven.
Plainly, this is unacceptable and something must be done to keep cannibals out of our houses and our schools. But what?
Of course, I’m sure there are a great many people who think that if someone chooses one day to cook his best friend, he has demonstrated fairly clearly that he’s resigned from the human race and must be shot in the forehead immediately, like a useless horse. However, I do not agree with capital punishment. I wish I did. Discharging 4m volts through anyone who has murdered, butchered or driven too slowly up the A44 would solve a great many problems, especially if carbon-neutral energy from wind farms were used. But because I find the idea of state execution abhorrent, I’ve had to spend the whole week dreaming up new ways of ensuring that people who can’t behave properly are kept away from society for an appropriate length of time.
The problem right now is that all our prisons are full; and while there are plans to increase the number of cells over the coming years, few imagine for a moment that the supply will even remotely keep up with demand.
In Scotland, they are even talking of not putting anyone in jail for less than three months. This, say the Jocks, will free up space for those who really need to be there. It’s a nice idea if you are a wishy-washy liberal, but it does mean that young men in hooded tops who run about town centres at night stealing mobile phones and pushing old ladies over cannot be punished at all. You can’t fine them, because they have no money. You can’t confiscate their belongings because everything they have is stolen anyway. You can’t give them an electric ankle bracelet because that is seen as a mark of respect. And if you can’t send them to prison, society is completely stuck.
The obvious solution is to build more prisons, but for a number of reasons, this isn’t possible. First, Alistair Darling has given all our money to Mr Barclay, Mr Lloyd and Mr Rock, so there’s none left. And second, the new prisons would have to be built somewhere. And everywhere is someone’s backyard.
In the olden days, when I was rash, I dreamt up a plan that involved many more prisoners being housed in the jails we have already. The idea, in a nutshell, called for ‘massive overcrowding’. If there are currently four to a cell,