On Bribery And Corruption

I was perusing one of these business magazines the other day and came to a lengthy and informative article about the new bribery and corruption laws that have been introduced here in the UK from around July this year.

The article went into detail about the impact of the legislation on business owners and company directors and I read it with fascination, horror, dismay and not a little pride, a good eclectic mix if ever there was one.

If I've understood things correctly, a big "if" I know, then there are some key points to be gleaned from this information and the impact it has on business leaders. My own personal connection to Sri Lanka also made me think of how the law here, and expected behaviour in business, compares and contrasts with the same in the motherland, as well as other countries.

The big points are that:

1. Bribery is defined as occurring when a person "offers, gives or promises to give a "financial or other advantage" to another individual in exchange for "improperly" performing a "relevant function or activity"". Sorry for the multiple quotation marks there!

2. The other side of the coin is that of a person requesting a bribe. It fundamentally says that if you request, accept or agree to accept a gift (pretty much of any sort) in exchange for not performing your function or activity properly, for not acting with impartiality, then you're fucked. It doesn't actually use the word "fucked" though.

3. As a company, company director or business owner you can be held liable if an employee bribes someone, even if you didn't know about it. Ignorance is no defence here. You have to show that you had procedures in place to prevent your people acting improperly.

4. Bribery of foreign public officials is a specific and serious offence. We (Brits) cannot do it, regardless whether it's acceptable practice in the foreign country or not.

Like I said, I was amazed by this. It's serious business, with positives and negatives for UK business people. The bribery act has been universally acclaimed as the toughest in the world, above and beyond the equivalent in the US.

It means, as an example, if my company was competing with a Spanish company for some business in India and the buyer wanted a bribe, the Spanish company might comply and face no punishment in any way, very possibly winning the business, (though I know nothing about the specifics of the equivalent Spanish law), whereas I, as a UK business person, simply wouldn't be able to do same.

Many feel that this reduces the ability of British business to compete with its foreign competitors. They have a point, yet others argue that it levels the playing field for British businesses, also valid.

Another interpretation of it is that actually it's fine to give gifts, money, prostitutes or whatever to your buyer, as long as it can be seen that the buyer still acted "properly", which is where it gets dodgy.

The current fiasco with News Corp and the Government here is very much about whether various people, from the Prime Minister to the former Police Commissioner acted improperly. It's well documented that Sir Paul Stephenson stayed at Champneys, an expensive and exclusive health farm, free of charge. Of course the point here is that Sir Paul Stephenson, (of course!) didn't act improperly in any way as a result of this. Champneys has strong links to Rebekah Brooks and News Corp.

My feelings of pride arose because the legislation is something that the British are leading the way in. Give it time, possibly many, many years, and other countries will certainly follow this. Equally the horror cropped up because of my realisation that it will in effect prevent British companies from acting in ways that are wholly acceptable, even expected, in many countries, Sri Lanka included.

My own company does no business in Sri Lanka, something I don't see changing. But if we did, should I be prosecuted or punished for bribing someone to get something done for me there, or for giving a fellow a nice flat screen TV as a "thank you" for giving me the business, when it's just the way things are done?

What do you think?

A New Pregnancy Test?

I slightly introduced Marc to you here. Well he's still around at my work, the only difference since we last checked in with him was that he's since got married and has a young baby.

He's from the Ivory Coast is Marc and is one of life's gentle but mean looking mothers. He resembles a gangster, well a gangsta, wearing the style of clothing made popular by P Diddy and Snoopy Snoopy Dog Dog, those kind of chaps. His accent is a strange mix of African sounds with French, English and deep gruff noises. The technical term is "fucking hard to understand at the best of times".

He's also one of my best workers. Here's a little story that happened the other day.

It was about 7.45 AM and I was sat at my desk pretending to work. Marc, who starts at 8 AM, rang and I answered the phone, though I didn't know it was him until I'd done so. I listened very carefully in my attempt to decipher what he was saying. The gist of it was that his wife was vomiting and he was running a little bit late because of that but would be at work shortly.

I said that that was fine and asked him not to call me "shortly".

He arrived soon after that, came up to my office to explain again and I told him all was fine, that the main thing was that she was better now. Then, being the joking cad that I am, I asked him if she might be pregnant again, that this could be one of the signs. He went pale, quite an achievement for him, laughed in a slightly forced way and looked more nervous than a Qantas passenger who, casually gazing out of the window, spots some oil staining on the A380's engine, the one with the flames coming out of it.

And off he went, downstairs to his lair in the warehouse. I chuckled at my wit and good humour.

Some time later I went downstairs to the warehouse, because that's where it is. I saw Jay, my right hand man, and told him about my joke with Marc, adding that he might want to wind Marc up a bit about the situation. He burst out laughing and told me what had happened some minutes before after Marc had come to speak to me.

It turned out that I had misunderstood Marc from the very beginning of our conversation. It wasn't his wife that was being sick, it was actually his young baby. So, when I'd asked him if the wife was pregnant again, what with the sickness being a possible sign, Marc had thought that I'm the owner of some wisdom and knowledge and that it was a medical fact that a young baby being sick might be a sign of the mother being with child.

Marc, being concerned, had immediately phoned his wife to ask if she was expecting, as his boss had told him it was likely. She'd told him to stop being an arse, that there is no such old wives' tale, or words to that effect. I don't know the ins and outs of his love life and I don't have any plans to find out, but there seemed no doubt that the good lady knew her stuff.

We all found this mightily amusing, so much so that I might even write to Readers Digest about it.

You've Got To Have A Dream

If you don't have a dream how are you going to make a dream come true?

So the song goes, though I think, if I was being picky, I'd say "how you gonna make a dream come true?" But I ain't no American fake gansta kid so we'll stick to the Queen's English in these parts.

The thing is I'm a firm and ardent believer in objectives, aims and goals. From work to drumming to even writing this blog I have objectives and goals. Often I lose sight or forget about them, sometimes for months, and lapse into a state of "being" in that specific area of my life, just existing on autopilot and wallowing in the current.

And that's where I also face a quandary.

Goals are good, objectives are obligatory and aims are all important. Yet I've realised that they can be barriers, barriers to enjoying the moment.

In recent years, while gigging, I've got into the habit of enjoying playing a song and looking down at my set list to try to mentally prepare myself for the next song. I'm sure it's something many musicians do. While playing one song I switch into "autodrummer" mode, which many might say is an oxymoronic term anyhow, and start to think of the groove, tempo and feel of the next song.

The result is that I'm better prepared for what's to come but that I also lose out on some of the enjoyment in playing that song that's going on at the time. It's a small scale example of the life quandary I'm referring to; that of being so focussed on what's in front of you, so set on achieving the target that we forget to relax and enjoy the now.

But how do we strike the balance? It seems to me that enjoying the now is pretty much in direct opposition to planning for the future.

In the drumming thing I've started to try to leave my glancing at the setlist thing to the last possible moment, to enjoy the current song as long as I can before I then look down and plan the next one.

Is that the answer?

And a merry weekend and a merry October to you out there!

Some Friday Fear

And you thought your commute was tough!

Of Passion, Creativity, Work and Muse

One of the things I've been thinking about recently is these people who follow a passion and are lucky enough to do it for their livelihood.

As I watched the truly stunning performance by Muse at Wembley Stadium the other night I felt conscious that I was seeing three talented beyond belief musicians at the very top of their game doing something they love and gettting paid hugely for it in every way possible.

There are musicians, artistes, writers and vocational types like Doctors and teachers, many of whom have chosen to pursue the thing they love to make a living. Some of them succeed and become the Muses, the de Niros, the JK Rowlings and the, well, Gregory Houses of the world, making fortunes, gaining wordlwide recognition and of course doing lots of work for charity, though not talking about it.

Others, the vast majority, play in bands in pubs and clubs after work (something I know quite a lot about), write books and blogs or act in fringe theatre and spend most of their money to do it. We dream of that big break, yes even at my age, yet know it's unlikely to come.

Here in the UK the music scene is so stark that the only musicians making any money are the ones who suddenly wake up to find themselves in a famous band, often talented but rarely the most gifted and brilliant musicians around. A couple of rungs down the ladder we find the world of the top quality session guy. There are ten, perhaps twenty, amazingly good drummers here who get most of the work going.

They're the best around, hard working, with interpersonal skills that Bill Clinton would admire and they have the respect and admiration of all their fellow musicians. Despite all that, despite the fact they probably earn a "comfortable" living, few of them are truly well off in financial terms. Perhaps their richness is measured in their job satisfaction, perhaps they're less motivated by money than the guy playing drums in the Manic Street Preachers is.

So, excepting the rare millionaires, it does seem that for the rest of us we have to decide between following our passion and making some money. In my case I didn't even find my passion until I was thirty one. Until then I hadn't even sat behind a drum kit, let alone found out that I might be able to play a bit.

I often look at people who've been playing since they were young kids and feel a sense of envy. There are teenagers who've been playing the drums for longer than I have now, who are much better players at that young age than I will ever be. But then I realise that I've made that trade with the devil, I've tried to build a business, to make some money and live a certain kind of materialistic lifestyle. One that I do enjoy.

Had I found my passion when I was a kid I feel sure I would have tried to pursue it professionally. Then the chances are that I would have ended up as one of the thousands of penniless musos here. I'd have loved every single split second of my work, I'd have got more satisfaction out of it then a nymphomaniac porn star gets out of his job.

And I'd be struggling to pay the rent. I'd probably only have two or three pairs of designer jeans, maybe even a smaller engined BMW 3 series, that's how bad things would be.

But would I be happier?

I really think not.

But I admire the passion following chaps, I really do.

What about you?

Here In London Town

The big freeze is settling in for what the weather experts are telling us is going to be some time. This morning I left home early, about six or so and drove over icy roads with my car telling me that it was as low as minus six outside.

Driving is precarious fun. Last night it took me an hour to do a fifteen minute journey. At times my car was wheelspinning from rest. That is, I'd accelerate just to move off and the wheels would spin wildly as they failed to get any traction on the road.

I remembered the tips my old Danish Uncle taught me when I was about seventeen; try to brake as little as possible, use the gears to slow down and stay in as high a gear as possible. They actually take a fair bit of discipline but make a big difference. To a driver it's instinctive to slam the right foot on the brake in times of panic, sometimes these things have to be unlearned. And, when I say stay in a high gear, I mean be in third when you'd normally be in second, that kind of thing. I'm never really sure if third gear is a higher or lower one than second, but I understand the theory.

It's getting so cold that they tell us grit on the roads won't be much use, schools are closed and the rest of our infrastructure is struggling to handle the situation, like a tree sagging and struggling with the weight of snow.

As I sit at my desk and write this I'm feeling a bit like a batsman facing Murali. The balls coming at me are varied, from one colleague texting to say she can't make it in through the snow, another ringing in sick to a customer calling to see if they'll get their collection today. Which, come to think of it, is not really anything like a batsman would have to face, but it's just a simile, there's no need for you to split

It's only just gone eight in the morning and the fifteen year old has called to excitedly inform me that their school is closed. Her and her sister are going to be out with the toboggan today. That makes me smile, it's an old wooden one that was given to me and my brothers in 1981 when we went to Denmark one Christmas. I was fifteen then and we had the best snow filled Christmas you can imagine. The divorced Dad in me wishes I could close the office door and go and play in the snow with the girls.

I'm wearing my new DM shoes, the perfect footgear for the conditions, practical yet stylish too. There are extra warm socks on the RD feet and I even have a hat and a scarf.

It's funny to read the Lankan blogs, to see the facebook pictures and statuses of people there. Our respective climatic conditions couldn't be more contrasting and they're both fun in such different ways.

Then, in other areas, I've got three new songs to learn by Monday. There's Sunflower by Paul Weller, a rocked up and stripped down version of Poker Face, as done by You Me At Six and Uprising by Muse. Three really brilliant choons that will be quite challenging for me in varying aspects.

My birthday yesterday was one of the best ever, surrounded by the people that mean the most to me. Thank you for the wishes.

That my friends, is the latest from auld London town.