Cuba: insights for a post-Brexit Britain

I did not vote for Brexit. I thought it an idiotic, retrograde concept that would most hurt the poorest in society, accelerate the dismemberment of the United Kingdom, and lead to  diminution of British influence on the world stage. I craved a validatory referendum.

But although I did not vote Conservative in the December election I recognise that it gave Boris Johnson the mandate he wanted. We left the European Union at the end of January and are now feeling our way into what that means.

The news throughout February was a spew of reassuring propaganda about our right to self-determination and our strong negotiating position. Behind the rhetoric I sensed officialdom scratching for expedient things to say. It made me wonder if, in our haste to secure seamless trade and travel for us (but not for them) we have any sense of a vision for the future. What sort of Britain do we want to become?

A recent trip to Cuba provided insights into what it means to be geographically close to a continental bloc while being, at the same time, restricted from trading with it. How does a country balance the demands of free will against economic prosperity out with an established regional order?

It’s a humid afternoon in the middle of hurricane season when I land at Holguin, a provincial capital in the south of the island. My fellow passengers are bound for the beach resorts of Playa Blanca and Guadalavaca, but I take a taxi into town. The driver, Mateo, has the sort of boxy Lada I joked about as a child. I find myself sticking to the seats. I wind down the window, but it only goes so far.

In town, Mateo navigates the grid of unprepossessing, one-way streets to park next to a concrete house with decorous planting along the fence. “Aquí,” he says with a sharp flick of his chin, “hostal.”

The thing to do in Cuba is book a room in someone’s house. It’s legal, although not as formal as AirBnB. The apartment I have chosen through my usual agent, Booking.com, is a spacious granny flat on the top floor of the building. The owners, husband and wife, are both doctors of zoology. The hard currency provided by rental income funds their collecting. The garden is a dense cornucopia of succulents and cacti, ferns and ficus; plants I have only seen growing indoors. From my rooftop veranda, I try to photograph the swooping turkey vultures, then crack open a tin of Cristal and wait for the storm to clear the air. When it comes, pouring in sheets over the guttering, it doesn’t stop the hawkers from splashing through the puddles and calling out their wares in a resonant drawl: “El pan! La sandia!”

On the far side of the road is a school. On the wall is painted the slogan: Sin educación, no hay revolución posible – Fidel. I unpack, and wait for the rain to stop.

That evening, the town centre has an air of refined manners. Shy couples sit hip to hip on the damp steps of the state phone company building to access the Wi-Fi. The plaza is dominated by an art deco theatre that is wonderfully lit but never open. The shops sell household essentials: mustard yellow corduroy for the skirts and trousers worn by schoolchildren, flipflops, saddle oil, blue nylon tow rope, economy bundles of toilet paper.

"They call it el bloqueo, the blockade"

Mike, a Canadian, and the only other resident in my hostal, has been coming for ten years. “They call it el bloqueo, the blockade. Before Obama eased it, there was nothing on the shelves. Nothing.”“

And Trump has put it back?”

“Yes,” he says with a bemused shake of his head.

“Trump has put it back.”Returning to the hostal, I examine the cars parked in the slanted bays round the town square. I had imagined the highly polished, 1950s classics to be a gimmick for tourists in Habana; a photo opportunity on some broad boulevard lined with roystonea, the swaying, regal palm trees common to the Caribbean. The evidence in Holguin proves me right. Transport is mostly provided by compact, horse-drawn taxis, but the streets are also home to patched and overpainted relics from before the revolution. I watch a man replace the cambelt of a rusting, two-tone Pontillac with the inner tube from a bicycle tyre. In this country, everyone is a mechanic. And everyone, I soon realise, is unbelievably open.

As I’m waiting in a patient queue for a bocadillo from a pop-up store, the window of someone’s home, two boys wearing Miami Dolphins tops ask me in English where I’m from. I say ‘Scotland,’ unsure what their attitude to Britain might be.

“Edinburgh,” they giggle, “Glasgow Rangers.”

Their eyes have a friendly innocence I find reassuring. I feel guilty for fearing they might try to rip me off. “Bueno,” I say. “Muy inteligente.”

The boys are served ahead of me. The shorter one pays for a gelato in local currency as opposed to the tourist money I am obliged to use. He orders an extra one and presents it to me as a gift. “Thank you for coming to Cuba,” he says.

After two days in Holguin I am ready to move on. I book tickets for the early morning bus on the state-run, and relatively efficient, Viazul service. At four the following morning I am sitting in a cool, white-painted waiting room. The bus is late but that’s hardly surprising as it started in Santiago, ninety miles south. An hour later I find my seat, pad it out with a jacket, then settle in to watch the sunrise.

Driving north, we pass through mile after mile of sugar cane plantations. The workers are already hacking at the sharp-edged cane leaves just as slaves would have done two hundred years ago. The year-round growing season provides a constant demand for manual labour but means there is never any respite from the grinding nature of it.

The driver shifts into first gear and I crane over the seats to see why. We are held up by a farm cart. A man in a straw hat makes occasional flicks of the whip to keep his mule moving. It is two miles before sufficient space appears in the oncoming traffic to allow us to overtake. The story is repeated a few miles later and I wonder why they don’t banish such vehicles from the main roads.

An hour later we pass below a wide-fronted ranch set on a hillside against a copse of banyan trees. It looks like the location for an Isabel Allende novel. In the field next to the road a brand-new, four-wheel drive tractor ploughs up the cane that has already been cut. Behind the tractor, a flock of white ibis high-step through the turned stalks. This will be the only tractor I see on my trip. Under the shade of a thorn bush, three farm workers are watching the machine from horseback, their hats pushed back on their heads. I am witnessing an industrial revolution in action and sense the possibility of imminent and destructive social change.

I am witnessing an industrial revolution and sense the possibility of imminent and destructive social change.

After another hour, we pull into one of the intermediate towns and halt in the bus station. There is a fluster of bag checking and seat preserving as some passengers get off and others get on. Stretching my legs, I place a coin in the hand of a woman guarding the toilets. She mutters something scathing but I ignore her. The filth tells me I was right to do so.

Back on the concourse I queue for food at the little kiosk. It sells cigarettes, packets of biscuits, and bags of dried fruit. The service is slow. When the bus driver calls us back I rush away empty handed. The wealthy looking woman sitting on the other side of the aisle immediately opens a packet of biscuits and offers me one. “Gracias,” I say, “Muchos gracias.” Sadly, she speaks no English and my Spanish will not stretch to a full conversation.

Just as the bus starts reversing, one of the new passengers shouts out. We jerk to a halt as the man hastily ushers his young son along the aisle.

“El niño necesita el baño?” asks the driver with a toothy smile. He pulls forward and we wait a few minutes for the pair to return from the loo. The queue for the kiosk has died down. I should not have allowed the panic of being left behind to rattle me. Do I not have the same rights as the boy?

Once we get going, I earwig as my benefactor engages her other neighbour in conversation. Hooped earrings dance as her head moves. Manicured fingernails stroke an iPhone, albeit an old one. She is in her mid-thirties and very dark skinned. Her neighbour has fairer skin and is a good deal older. His jeans are worn through at the knees. I wonder what they might have in common but soon he is pulling a photo of his grandchildren from his wallet. There are deep laughter lines beside his eyes as she shows him the photos on her phone. He is enthralled by the way she enlarges the pictures with two fingers.

I think of the prejudicial nature of the 1970s Britain in which I grew up; the race riots, the hooliganism, the undercurrent of sexual violence. If I imagined we had progressed since those days, the Brexit process has forced me to revise that opinion. The fear of otherness, if not of skin colour or social status, then religion or origin, has hardened. The election of Trump, Bolsonaro, Modi, Orban and others prove this a global phenomenon.

After eight hours the bus finally arrives at my destination, Santa Clara. The town sits halfway down the central spine of the country. In December 1959 it was the site of the decisive battle between the revolutionary forces of Fidel Castro and the national army of President Fulgencio Batista. The attack culminated in the derailing of a troop train, el tren blindado, by an earth moving tractor thereby breaking the north-south communication channels. Batista fled Cuba within forty-eight hours.

The train is central to the tourist experience of Santa Clara, as is the man who led the attack, Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara. The town hosts a vast mausoleum dedicated to his memory. His body was recovered from Bolivia several years after he was killed by Government forces on the orders, so legend says, of the CIA. A forty-foot statue towers over the town, the pedestal bearing the legend, Hasta la victoria siempre.

Hasta la victoria siempre.

It’s impossible to escape the iconic red and black image of Guevara. Consciously and aggressively photogenic, artistic and unforgiving, complex and idealistic, the man is everywhere. A mile beyond el tren is a life-size statue of him striding out with a young boy, representing the youth of Cuba, on his shoulder. The lady who owns my hostal describes it with tears in her eyes. “Es tan hermoso,” she says. “So beautiful.”

The Cuban revolution should not, from a military point of view, have been successful. Of the 80 would-be revolutionaries who sailed to Cuba on a dangerously overcrowded pleasure boat in 1953, only 20 survived the government’s defensive ambush. They scattered into the southern hills, gradually regrouping to conduct a five-year guerrilla campaign. Bit by bit they garnered support from the agrarian population and, eventually, the soldiery of the national army. The principal reasons for their victory were the ineptitude and corruption in the government, the exploitative nature of American commercial policies [i], and the charismatic use of radio by the rebels.

A statue in Habana’s Museum of the Revolution depicts the three great leaders – Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, and Camilo Cienfuegos - pointing towards a distant future. Each is recognisable by their idiosyncratic headdress: a beret, a field cap, a Stetson. What marked these men out was their unwavering belief in their cause. Although Cienfuegos was the son of a tailor, the Castro brothers, Fidel and Raúl, were from the wealthy middle classes. Guevara was an Argentine, and a student doctor. All of them could have abandoned revolution for profitable and peaceful lives. But they didn’t.

At the mausoleum I buy a translated copy of The Motorcycle Diaries, the journal of Guevara’s personal odyssey from the southern tip of Argentina up through Chile and Peru to Mexico[ii]. It was here that he eventually met Fidel Castro. At first, I am struck by the immature jottings of impressionable youth, but as the book progresses one senses his emerging political consciousness and his overarching belief in the goodness, and absolute equality, of all people.

The read makes me think of Brexiteers back home. It is clear that leaving the European Union will have a significantly downward effect on the economy. I wonder if economic decline will affect the likes of Gove, Farage, Rees-Mogg, or Johnson. Was their political positioning driven by ideology or personal gain? Donald Tusk, the pragmatic and tireless European Council President, stated that they deserve a special place in hell for the planless confusion they created. I think he’s being kind. As George Bernard Shaw icily remarked, the problem with democracy is that one is given leaders no better than one deserves.

"The problem with democracy is that one is given leaders no better than one deserves..." George Bernard Shaw

The bus from Santa Clara to the coastal town of Trinidad takes a convoluted route much longer than necessary. We pull into the cobbled bus station after dark. The map in the guide book has different street names to those written on the walls. I end up paying a taxi driver the equivalent of £10 to take me less than 200 metres. I am angry. I imagined I had got under the skin of the culture and was worthy of being considered compatriota. It grates to be reminded of my foreignness. And if I am foreign, the stopover in Trinidad forces me to taste the full extent of Cuba’s isolation from the world.

Having booked all my accommodation thus far in advance, I now have to decide where to go next. I access Booking.com, look up La Habana, choose a hotel, and try to pay with the debit card I have registered. On the intermittent internet in my hostal I find myself unable to complete the transaction. I try again, and then again. Finally, I realise the system will not allow me to do so. Booking.com is owned by an American corporation and therefore banned from ‘trading with the enemy’. Although I used the website from within the UK without issue, now that I am in Cuba I can view what rooms are available but cannot reserve them.

During the same transaction, my debit card stops working. This is irritating as I had informed my bank I was coming. Calling the fraud team on a Friday afternoon proves impossible. My network provider (Vodafone) has no coverage in Cuba whatsoever. The only option is to depend on the kindness of my host. It takes three hours, and roughly £70 in call charges, to release sufficient funds for the weekend. He also books a hotel for me in Habana the old-fashioned way, by phone.

This demonstrates the extent to which global corporations are both interdependent and governed by American commercial regulation. To trade with, or in, America you need to comply with their laws - and so must the entirety of your supply chain.

British commercial regulation is intricately entwined with European statutes. This is not a matter of creating red tape but reducing it. If one was exporting smoked salmon to Bulgaria or importing cars from Poland, common trade policies ensure consistency of border controls and trading standards. Choosing to leave this common market presents us with two options: to slowly disentangle ourselves from the complex interrelationships of law and trade, both with Europe and, by extension, America; or to comply with regulations we have no say in drafting.

At last able to access cash, I explore the cobbled squares and uneven terraces of artisanal shops. Trinidad is a photographer’s heaven. A man with leathery brown skin carries a cello on his shoulder against a lemon-yellow wall. A cowboy steers a cob round a red Chevrolet. Two women, one dressed entirely in white, busk among the diners in a restaurant.

Having taken their picture, I listen to their exquisite, close-harmony singing. I buy a home-made CD when they come round for tips. The one in white tells me her clothing is a political statement. Her husband, a journalist, was arrested in 2015 and is still held without charge. Damas de Blanco is a protest movement. She does not, however, blame the Castro brothers for her husband’s incarceration. Nor is she afraid to be identified as a protester despite waves of arrests of the Damas in 2015 and 2016. There is something wonderfully paradoxical about her political stance. “We are all Cubans," she says. "We love Cuba.”

Cubans see themselves as the victims of a never-ending external aggression. The 1959 revolution finally won self-determination after a litany of attempts dating back to the 1820s. In particular, the 1895 war of independence saw America cajoled into protecting Cubans against Spanish atrocities. The war replaced one brutal colonial power with a military occupation that provided negligible political, economic, or social benefit for the natives. American corporations took over the railroads, the sugar industry, and the newspapers. America became a colonial power in all but name. The puppet governments it maintained provided a haven for organised crime[iii]. Powerful unions drove through labour laws that created widespread income disparity and, eventually, economic stagnation. At the start of the 1950s, Cuba had a larger economy than Japan, more doctors per capita than the United Kingdom, and the highest rate of education spending in the region[iv]. By 1958, growth had slowed to 1%. The revolution swept away external interference and consolidated its position by seeing off the disastrous American counter invasion in the Bay of Pigs in 1961. Where Castro failed, however, was in winning external support. Following the Missile Crisis of 1962, Russia left Cuba friendless and alone on the international stage.

Political graffiti near the bus station shows an American marine kicking in the door of someone’s home to demand, at gunpoint, why they hold America in such disdain. The owner of the house does not have to answer. Cubans are hoping el bloqueo is coming to an end. Prince Charles made an official visit. China, ever quick to expand its ‘Belt and Road’ trade initiative, has already spotted market opportunities. The benefits of affordable tractors, busses, and sewing machines are easy to imagine.

Although the EU is undoubtedly a flawed institution, there remains the question of what would happen without it? How will disparate European interests ever define a meaningful stance on Russian expansionism, global terrorism, climate change, ocean plastics, animal husbandry, food standards, health pandemics, or economic migration?

My suspicion is that Britain’s position on the United Nations Security Council will once again be called into question. Scotland will secede. Ireland will unite. And the critical global issues we face today will become minority interests behind energy security and food provision; the economics of corduroy and tow rope. We will overfish our waters and our rural areas will fall prey to the global corporations that have already hollowed out the farming communities of Iowa and Minnesota[v]. People with transferable skills will thrive in a service-based, gig economy. Those without will drift into the minimum-wage, zero-hour work once done by Eastern Europeans.

Through this lens, the visionary nature of the Cuban revolution seems all the more evident. Cuba maintains eight vast national parks. The immaculate beaches of Varadero stretch fourteen miles without a single plastic bag or cigarette butt on the sand. The Bay of Pigs is one of the top diving destinations in the world. The national sporting teams, particularly in running, baseball, boxing, fencing, and basketball, demonstrate the benefit of mandatory lessons in schools and the superlative nature of Cuban coaching. With a population of barely twelve million, Cuba fields over eighty Olympic standard boxers. It is second in the overall Olympic medal table behind the United Sates. Britain is third.

Keen to shift the cultural focus away from America, the Castro brothers started pushing European sport in schools. How long will it be, I wonder, before Cuba beats England at cricket?

How long will it be before Cuba beats England at cricket?

And it’s not just sport in which Cuba excels. Arriving in La Habana one is immediately assaulted by the unstoppable rhythm and swish of drums. Every restaurant has a band, and every band has a style. There are favourite songs – Gauntanamera, Chan Chan, The Peanut Vendor – and each of these can be interpreted through the milieu of musical schools: danzon, guaracha, rumba, mambo, son, trova, chacha, salsa, and timba to name but a few. After a few hours, the music enters your very bones.

Late one evening I am strolling through the Plaza de Armas and listen to a solitary busker in a canary-yellow, double-breasted suit playing a trumpet in the doorway of a bookshop. Stencilled on the window above him are the authors of some of the books on sale: Mishima, Yukio; Huxley, Aldous; Trotsky, Leon; Byron, Lord. I’m leaving in a few days and, though keen to get home, am inhaling everything I admire. I meet a friend in the Plaza Vieja to drink cocktails and discuss Hemingway. She asks me what I like best.

“The equality,” I reply without pause. “There is no racism here, no class division. A busload of wealthy tourists has no more right to the road than a labourer in a donkey cart.”

My friend has been to Cuba many times. Although an American, she entered on a missionary visa. I ask her the same question and she gropes for an answer. “Doing so much with so little,” she says eventually. “It’s the people, really. Despite everything, They’re so nice.”

Her eyes drift across the square to an outlandish statue of a naked, shaven-headed woman holding a huge fork while riding a giant cockerel. “You know what that signifies?” she asks.

I shake my head.

“It’s about the women who had to feed their families after the revolution. Fidel banned prostitution but that was all many of them could do.

”She is urging me to curb my regard. The communist revolution did not, by any means, deliver the benefits it promised. But I recall the tractor in the sugar plantation. The easing of travel and trade restrictions under Obama and then Raúl Castro has allowed an influx of hard currency that is now concentrating in the hands of a few. There is no such thing as a little capitalism. Very soon there could be enormous wealth disparity and I fear for the effect it will have.

“There is still a lot we can learn,” I say.

She nods. “Not just Britain. Everyone should come see for themselves.”

I did not vote for Brexit. But now it has happened I recognise a responsibility to build a country fit for our children. The current conservative government is using its mandate as a veil for a raft of sour-tasting, divisive policies. This is not the Britain I want.

I want Britain to have a significant role in the world. Not the world’s policemen – we can no longer afford that – but the world’s conscience. I want ideas to move freely and our service sector to flourish. I want us to lead on the complex and knotty issues of the day. I want us to be open to others and learn from the best they have to offer. I want our elected officials to be charismatic, visionary, and motivated by a deep sense of service. I want us to value academic, artistic, and sporting excellence, and invest in them all. I want us to be innovative and entrepreneurial, while at the same time a model of social equality. I want the rights of  all to be protected. I want nationalism to become a popular and positive word. I want our environment and wildlife to be cherished. And above all, I want us to be kind.The future is in our hands.

[i] The wonderful novel Telex from Cuba by Rachel Kushner describes the revolution from the point of view of the American staff of the sugar company. Kushner, R., (2014) Telex from Cuba, Vintage.

[ii] Guevara, E., (2004) The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey, Harper Perennial

[iii] See Coppola, Frances Ford, (1974), The Godfather Part 2, Paramount Pictures, New York

[iv] See Sainsbury, B., and McCarthy, C., (2017) The Lonely Planet Guide to Cuba 9th Edition, Lonely Planet

[v] See https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/18/rise-of-mega-farms-how-the-us-model-of-intensive-farming-is-invading-the-world  [viewed 23 January 2020] 

I would like to thank Peter Garrett and Rachel Sargeant (@RachelSargeant3) for their immense help in the development of this essay.

A sour taste in my mouth

This essay is a review of Cubic Construction and its principal proprietor, Qulzam (Cooly) Mahmood.

I am surprised by the absence of other reviews on the internet, either positive or negative, since my experience was so extreme. My goal, therefore, is to provide a thorough and accurate assessment of how this company performed when I hired them to build a house extension in 2010.

At the time, my wife and I lived in a small mews terrace in Rodley overlooking a road junction, a couple of well-known pubs, and the Leeds to Liverpool canal. Needing to expand the space around us, we chose a three-bedroom semi-detached in Tranmere Park, Guiseley as the place to build our future. It had an extensive south-facing garden, off-road parking and, crucially, scope for development. If we removed an old flat-roofed garage there was ample space between the house and the boundary for a two-story extension. We wanted a kitchen-diner on the ground floor and a master bedroom with en-suite upstairs thus creating a modern four-bed semi. Being near good schools and transport links, the home would provide all our needs for the duration of our working lives and prove popular, when the time came, on the market.

Planning permission given, we were immediately swamped by flyers advertising builders’ interest. The first through the letterbox was from Cubic Construction, at the time a trading name for the sole trader Qulzam ‘Cooly’ Mahmood. I was impressed by this proactivity. It showed the spark and enterprise I was looking for in a builder and because the company was located in Stanningley, only a stone’s throw from Rodley, I kept edging Cubic through my selection process.

Builder selection is the key decision in any renovation. I had budgeted for the refurbishment and extension to cost in the region of £100,000. To some degree this was a finger-in-the-air figure, but it was not without grounding. I had read the excellent Haines Manual on home extensions and spent an age researching trade secrets on the internet. I dreamed this would be my Grand Design, but I was not going to be the one gently teased by Kevin Macdonald into admitting that I was forty per cent over budget and three months behind schedule.

Of the eight builders I contacted, three replied. One quoted £250,000 having never visited the house. The second (who came recommended and wanted the job because he was local) quoted £140,000. Cubic was the only company under budget, at £70,000.

Perhaps at this stage I should have been more wary. Why was there such divergence in the pricing? Would the second quote provide any better service than the third? Was the budget reasonable? But in simple terms I could not afford to make any other choice than Cubic and imagined the spare £30,000 would be sufficient to cover any shortfall. I didn’t know that Cubic’s strategy was to under-price in order to win the work and I had no cognisance of what was to follow as they clawed back profit. But to say the decision was merely financial is incorrect. Cubic came with trade membership of the Federation of Master Builders, something I understood to be an assurance of quality. I asked all tenders to produce a project plan and Cubic were the only ones to provide a week by week breakdown. They wanted to be paid partly in cash, which was fine by me. And there was something I thought I recognised in Cooly Mahmood; the same striving for professionalism at the heart of my own life. It was the start of Ramadan, and he was fasting.

I was elated. Through a diligent selection process I had discovered a building company that was capable, affordable, and managed by men of integrity. How wrong this assessment proved to be.

Building commenced in August and the ground works crew proved to be just as tenacious as I expected. In a matter of weeks the old garage had been removed, the footings put in place, the drainage laid out, and the walls erected and insulated. One day of slippage here and another there did not seem to matter and I paid according to a schedule agreed at the outset.

The cost profile of building projects is front weighted to cover the supply of bricks, blocks, cement, concrete, scaffolding and so on. Labour costs remain pretty much consistent as one trade hands over to another; ground works to roofers, first fix (plumbers and electricians) to second (plasterers and painters). I had agreed how much would be paid at what stage but as the project plan slipped, I was slow to realise that I was paying for work that was yet to be completed.

By the end of the first month, the project was a week in arrears. By the end of the second month, it was not much further on. As autumn chilled to winter I was keen to get the building water tight before the rains started, but the barriers to this were, firstly, that Cubic underestimated how long it would take to source matching concrete tiles and secondly, that they had to find and price roofers who would fit them.

Small building companies are, I realised, not cohesive units but fluid federations of independent traders. This suits the building industry as demand expands and contracts in line with economic prosperity. It was quickly apparent that no roofer would do the work required for what Cubic were prepared to pay and as a result my project became further and further delayed. The rains started. Water poured in where the rafters of the old house had been exposed. It pooled on the concrete foundations. The stacked plasterboard disintegrated and the damp rooms began to smell of mould.

My guess – and this is supposition as I was not party to the discussion - is that Cubic made a decision to accept the cost of the roofing but would seek other ways to recover their profit. With the roof completed the building was at last watertight and it looked for a brief moment that we might enjoy Christmas with our family in our new home. This was something we dreamed of, but I did not take into account the quality of Cubic’s first and second fix tradesmen, nor Cooly’s ability to manage them.

While the water and drainage was disconnected, Cubic failed to supply a portaloo until I told them it was not up to me to manually empty the toilet into the sewer. A crate of beer I had been keeping went missing. New fittings were broken by careless handling. I found the remains of an electrician’s sandwich stuffed under the floor boards in what would become the spare room; an obvious enticement to rats.By now in was mid November. The temperature fell by the day and icy mud got stamped everywhere through the house. The skip became so full that the collection lorry could barely lift it. Litter blew through the cage of security barriers and caught in my neighbours' gardens, sparking one or two angry exchanges. Though they did not express it directly, it was obvious that they were tiring of the traffic, parking, dirt, swearing, music, and hammering. My immediate neighbour the other side of the semi had to ask an electrician to stop hammering in the attic at five o’clock in the morning. The noise was keeping his six year old son awake. I repeatedly had to apologise for the work vans gouging deep tracks out of his pristine front lawn.

Now in financial difficulty, Cubic started inventing additional charges and cost savings for work that I considered part of the original specification. Having explicitly ordered a closed-system boiler at the tender stage, they proposed fitting a combi-boiler because it would be cheaper to do so. Fitting a closed-system boiler, they said, would cost equivalent to a total refit of the central heating system, about £5,000. Rendering a twenty-metre retaining wall would cost an additional £1,800, a figure so exorbitant as to be laughable. Very quickly, the spare £30,000 evaporated and I had to break out my pension pot and long term savings to get the job completed.

I agreed to pay the additional charges because I realised that Cooly had under-priced the job. I lay awake at night fretting about the spiralling expenses and what I should do about them. It dawned on me to stop paying and hold the remaining budget until everything was done. I was in an invidious position. About £30,000 worth of work still remained and yet I had only £10,000 still to pay. I couldn’t sack Cubic because no one else would do the work for what I could afford and I was stuck with a company no longer incentivised to do a good job. All that mattered to Cubic was cost reduction, something they set about with unparalleled skill. A carpenter who had been sacked was suddenly reinstated. Jobs did not get done unless I was there to observe. My ignorance was brutally exploited.

But nothing was ever simple. Working on a building site with teams of various disciplines, one becomes swept along in the shifting tides of human relationships. I had, from the start, made a point of treating the men with excessive generosity, providing fish and chips for everyone on Friday lunchtime. As a result they would whisper to me if others, Cooly included, were cutting corners. One man was incredibly multi-skilled and hard-working, able to turn his hand from roofing to bricklaying to carpentry as need dictated. Others were difficult to pin down, unwilling to assume any managerial responsibility. When the beer went missing I had to interview them all like school children to get to the truth.It was awkward. I thought I understood what motivated people. I had, I told myself, been leading teams since the age of nine. But this dynamic was one I never mastered. The loyalties were too thin, too shallow to truly grasp. Someone would steal from me one minute and then down tools to help with heavy lifting the next. Another would apologise for being late one morning, explain that his grandmother was dying and thank me for an expression of concern, but brazenly walk out when others were depending on him to complete a job by the afternoon.

If I was expecting Cooly to provide any form of governance, I was wrong. In the end I stopped giving instructions to him and gave them directly to the builders.

But it would be wrong to say that Cubic were completely incompetent. In one particular instance their technical advice was quite brilliant. The architect’s original plan was predicated in the upper floor extension having a ceiling clearance of seven feet, very low for someone as tall as me. Cubic’s solution was to raise the ceiling using a rolled steel joist, saving me having to duck every time I entered my bedroom. There were times when the subcontractors’ behaviour became so wayward that Cooly had to step in noisily to maintain any semblance of order; something I had neither the skill, nor the knowledge, nor the inclination to do.

Yet by the start of December we had tired of each other and tired of the project. The temperature rarely got above freezing and even simple jobs became painful. The constant worry and competing demands had made me irritable towards my wife, whose expectations were never being met. We were obliged to vacate the house in Rodley as the buyers had a baby on the way and wanted to be in for Christmas. There was a time when I thought we would have to move into a hotel and put our furniture in storage. I wanted them out, no matter what remained. I would borrow more money and get someone else. I made the decision: we would cut our losses and Cubic had to go.

Two weeks prior to Christmas I told Cooly that I was sacking him and de-scoping what remained of the build. Despite this, I would pay everything still owed, including his additional charges, as soon as I was handed a certificate of completion from the planning authority. This was duly provided, and I handed over the cash. On the last afternoon the electrician gave me a certificate of electrical safety but was too drunk to drive home. I told his crew to leave his van, which was eventually collected three days later.

I now had two weeks to finish all the remaining internal work and move house so that we could have my family for Christmas day. The house was dry and warm with the heating on full, but much was still to do: mounting the doors and kicker boards on the kitchen cupboards after the fitter disappeared; carpeting; painting; replacing the recessed lights in the bathrooms where the electrician had drilled holes too large for the ones I had supplied; replacing the lights in the kitchen the electrician broke; filling round the window boards that had been lazily cut nearly half an inch too short at either end; blocking the drafts round the doors; fitting handles; laying insulation in the roof spaces.

The more I looked, the more I saw. In the kitchen the units had been erected without removing the blue protective film. Where they butted up against each other, and the gap was too small to slip any implement, I was left with a ragged corner of film taunting me. The floor boards in the bedroom had been insufficiently nailed down. Anyone walking upstairs sounded like Captain Ahab pegging across the poop deck of the Peaquod. I found guttering that sloped the wrong way; and more in which a hole had never been cut for the downpipe. The rendering so expensively applied to the retaining wall fell off in chunks because it had never set in the cold. The freezing orange mud got tramped everywhere into the house, staining the new carpets, because the patio was never finished.

One of the best bits of advice in the Haines manual was to keep back a retention, around 5% of the total sum, for six months to ensure a builder is motivated to return if any snagging is required. My problem was that the work completed was so shoddy, and the remaining works so extensive, that the paltry retention would never cover it. I told Cooly that I would be using the money to finish work, such as the patio, that I had de-scoped from him. If there was anything left, I would pay it in six months.

Laying the patio cost more than double the retention, but at least I got a reputable landscape gardener who did a brilliant job very quickly. The impact of the patio was immediate; the kitchen ceased to be streaked with drying mud and there was less to tread through the corridors and up the stairs. Drilling away the crumbling render and replacing it cost another £3000. This, of course, required repainting.

In the year following the build I spent around £20,000 either finishing off the programme or repairing work that Cubic had done badly. To my chagrin, this put me well over budget and way behind schedule. A window shattered in its frame because it was under torsional pressure from when it was mounted. Another window, the largest one in the living room, warped from being inadequately fixed into the gap. I had to plug the centimetre wide space to stop the rain and spiders creeping in. The insulation Cooly swore he had fitted had to be laid. The expensive bamboo flooring in the kitchen had to be replaced after the planks warped and buckled. The manufacturer told me I should take Cubic to court; the instructions said clearly that the flooring required a totally flat screed base (the absence of which was one of Cooly’s cost savings) and an impermeable water barrier.

Indeed any number of suppliers and contractors started chuckling when I described the utter hell I had experienced with Cubic. The owner of the window company provided the replacement for the shattered panel at cost. He sent his own men to fit it because I explained that I was never allowing Cubic on my land again.

“You’d be surprised how many times I hear that,” he said.

The cruelty of the project crept into every aspect of my life. Every day repairing and replacing made me coil with anger. An insidious seething permeated the house like a cold mist. Every creek of the floor, or draft of cold air, brought back the helplessness of being trapped in a contract that never seemed to progress and never seemed to end.

And it wasn’t just me infected by the disease. In the summer after the build, the plumber rang me to ask my advice on how to get money out of Cubic.

“He’s took his own profit and not paid me,” he said. “He’s saying you kept money back and I have to take the hit.”

This appalled me. Not only had I effectively paid twice for the central heating system, but I had never held any payment back. In a spirit of goodwill I had even paid Cooly a representative figure when the retention was due. It came as something of a shock to hear he was blaming me for his inability to pay his tradesmen. It came as more of a shock that the plumber was asking for help.

While my family were staying with us for the Christmas immediately after the build, a dark stain appeared on the walls where the stairs doubled round. At first I thought it was water, or steam from the boiler escaping in between the brick skins of the building. I pulled up the newly laid linoleum in the bathroom to investigate, feeling along the water pipes for a leak, but found nothing. Finally, after three days, a creeping stench told me to search underneath the toilet and there I found the cause. The outflow from the loo was inconclusively locked into the soil pipe. Solid effluent was leaking into the walls and every flush of the toilet made the stain richer. It was Boxing Day. My family were downstairs putting on a brave face for my sake. There was nothing else I could do except roll up my sleeves.

***

It is now five years since the build programme. The floor of the bedroom still creaks like the deck of a dhow, and mortar still falls from the roof ridges in high winds, but the majority of the repair work has been completed. I no longer shiver when confronted with a building project and in fact am keen to undertake another. The experience of employing Cubic has been educational. I know for certain that building contractors expect to be treated in an extremely transactional manner. Kindness leaves them uncertain of the boundaries between supplier and client. Some builders, like Cubic, are probably very effective on small budget projects like patios and loft extensions, but they rarely have the capability or experience to manage protracted, inter-disciplinary extensions. Always, always, always employ on recommendation. If a builder charges a premium, you are paying not for additional skill but for integrity. I lacked the hardness required to drive Cubic to meet my expectations and, of course, had created much of the mess by paying too much, too early. The quality assurance I expected from the Federation of Master Builders logo on the Cubic website was utterly vapid. Their level of membership is not a statement of capability but a paid subscription issued to anyone who signs up to a code of practice. I didn’t even bother writing to express my concerns. Furthermore, I had selected Cubic on the strength of something I thought I saw in Cooly. Perhaps, if I am honest, my liberal sensibilities had led me to select a muslim against the prevailing trend of racism I saw around me. I wanted to prove he would be reliable. His failure to be so reflects not on him, but on me. It is five years since I sacked him and I noticed recently that he is using photographs of my house build on his website to advertise his business, which suggests that he had not learned anything from the experience.

In early January 2011, a few weeks after the build, Cooly asked to meet me to discuss why I sacked him. We met on neutral terrain, Costa coffee in Guiseley. He was nervous and uncommonly obsequious, insisting on paying for the drinks. He asked if I wanted anything to eat, then nearly begged me to let him finish the patio in exchange for what was left of the retention, to be paid on completion.

“This project has left a sour taste in my mouth,” he said. “I want to prove I can do a good job.”

I declined. I had spent the morning replacing a leaking outflow in the shower. If he had a sour taste in his mouth, perhaps he could imagine what was in mine. 

26 February 2023

As an afterword, though I have made myself accept my own culpability in the events I describe above – my failure to properly control Mahmood’s activity – people keep responding to this essay. I have had a number of people contact me over the years wishing they had read this piece before hiring him.

In 2020 I wrote a footnote describing one such story. Someone had been diddled by Mahmood in the form of work being paid for but left unfinished. He took the matter to court. In 2023, Mahmood himself contacted me to complain about the footnote, saying the matter had been thrown out of court and the claimant was required to pay costs. I removed footnote because I could not vouch for the story’s veracity to the same level of confidence with which I can evidence the above. Then, in July 2024, the correspondent wrote again to say that the matter was not thrown out of court but had been delayed by Covid. The judge had ruled that Mahmood committed fraud as a company director but, since he had been able to close Cubic construction down, the claimant was not able to recover all that was owed to him.

Mahmood had asked me to remove the full text of the article. It had been found by his teenage daughter and he wanted to ‘get on with his life’.

I was in two minds about removing it. On one, I accept that people can change. Mahmood may finally have learned to place quality of service and client satisfaction over personal, short-term profit. On the other, if I can warn people about his shoddy service and non-existent moral code, the same function as what people do on Tripadvisor, then I will do so. Were I to publish photos of a roof Cooly built, when I could afford to replace it, you would see why.

My instinct is this: if no one contacts me to complain about Mahmood between now and the end of 2024, I will delete this article. If they do, it will remain in place. This means, Cooly, that the onus is on you.  

7 July 2024

Shortly after I published the addendum above last year, I was contacted by someone who knew Cooly on a personal level through playing cricket and, having checked him out on Instagram, had employed him to do some renovations. Despite their personal relationship Cooly left him with the work uncompleted and out of pocket to the tune of £40k, meaning he was unable to afford another builder and had to reduce the plans he had for his wedding. This was in Horsforth, Leeds. The man said: “I share the sentiment of spending sleepless nights stressing over what is going on, and the biggest frustration is that I know him personally. It makes you feel like a fool and a let down when you use someone you know to build a home for your future family, and they act in this manner.”

So I have come to the following conclusion: Cooly Mahmood as a man is not to be trusted, even by his friends. As a builder he is to be avoided. And this essay will remain up on the internet for as long as I decide it adds value to the people of Leeds.

Bibliography

Rock, Ian, Home Extension Manual: Step-by-Step Guide to Planning, Building and Managing a Project (London: J H Haynes & Co Ltd, 2010)

Cubic Construction http://www.cubicconstruction.com/ [accessed 20 June 2015]

B&Q: when the operating model fails

An Operating Model is a way of conceptualising how an organisation delivers a service to customers. It unites the seven basic elements of an organisation into a single cohesive whole.

The most important part of the operating model is the customer. Knowing who they are, what they need, and how to reach them is pivotal for everything else. The second element is the business strategy. This describes how a business will position itself in the market in the service of their customers.

Then we must look at the internal machinations of the organisation. The major business processes are codified sequences of activity that add value to raw materials. They ensure that everyone on the pitch has a number on the back of their shirt and that everyone with a number has an appropriate role to play. Then we have the shaping of staff capabilities into roles and hierarchies. As I have mentioned here, the structure of an organisation should be built around the major business processes so that structure and process are almost synonymous.

All businesses are managed by the processing of reports. The flow of this information is enabled by the technology systems architecture. The operational management of the value chain (the supply chain) determines how processed information is turned into action: orders, payments, contracts and so on. The whole model is held together by the leadership culture of the organisation, the way things are done.

We could therefore represent an operating model graphically, as follows:

Where there is an effective operating model there is a happy customer. Where there is an unhappy customer, one or more elements of the operating model have, to some degree, failed. The purpose of this essay is to examine a moment of operating model failure and identify the possible causes.

My case study is drawn from personal experience. In 2014 I was redecorating a bathroom to replace a leaking bath and associated plumbing. Having researched prices and styles I eventually chose a mixer tap from the B&Q store in Leeds, and ordered the large items - bath, bath panel, and waste piping - from B&Q’s online home delivery service. The bath and panel had credible reviews online and dispatch was promised “within one week”.

One day later, on 9 May, I received a text asking me to book a delivery date. I selected the first available, Saturday 17 May, and on the strength of this understanding, booked a plumber for the subsequent Monday. In the course of this correspondence it became apparent that B&Q did not have, as the website implied, a stock of baths and panels. Instead they were operating as a sales platform for other providers to flog their merchandise in much the same way as Amazon. In this instance the bath and panel were to be provided by PJH Group, a company specialising in bathroom wares. This did not bother me – I did not care who manufactured or delivered the items – only that they would arrive on time.

On Friday 16 May, the day before delivery was due, I was phoned by the B&Q call centre to be told that the bath panel would not be delivered the next day and, indeed, would not be available for some two months. In a frustrated exchange of calls, both B&Q and PJH blamed each other for the confusion. My problem was that fitting the bath could not be done independently of the bath panel. I was annoyed, and expressed this, but there was little that could be done. I gathered from talking to the call centre operator that the bath panels were still awaiting manufacture in India.

The following morning, a bright, cold Saturday in May, the waste piping was delivered along with the bathtub. The driver, from a courier company frequently used by B&Q, insisted that I sign a hand held device indicating everything had been delivered. I refused. Although the bath had indeed arrived, the legs were missing and there were no installation instructions. After another exchange of phone calls I was sent them as a pdf by email from PJH Group and was told by B&Q that the legs would be couriered to me within 5 days. Angry that my project plan was unraveling, I cancelled the plumber at two days' notice, to much griping on his part.

Having mulled on the issue overnight, I wrote a stiff letter of complaint to both B&Q and PJH Group. Surely they ought to have known when I ordered and paid for the bath panel that it was not possible to deliver it within one week. Replies duly arrived and I was again told the legs would be with me “within five days”, meaning the following Friday before a bank holiday weekend. That evening I made the decision not to wait until July for the panel and wrote an email on Tuesday 20 May to B&Q, copied to PJH Group, cancelling it. I would get one somewhere else, I said, and re-booked the plumber for Saturday 24 May.

Two days later, on the Thursday, and still believing that the bath legs were imminent, (fortunately, I was working from home) I became concerned that I had not received any acknowledgement to the email I sent cancelling the order. The money I was owed had not appeared in my account. I rang B&Q again and spoke to yet another operator who told me that the person who had managed my email failed to raise a repayment order. I expressed some element of surprise, after which he did so while I was on the line. When I then asked where my bath legs were, he rang PJH and assured me that they were "in transit and would be with me within five days". He was adamant that even due to the bank holiday, the legs would be with me by Tuesday 27 May. I therefore had to cancel the plumber I had booked for 24 May, to considerable further embarrassment.

I remained at home throughout the bank holiday weekend. I noticed that I was finally repaid for the cancelled bath panel on 25 May, but the bath legs were never delivered. On 28 May I made the decision, in conjunction with my plumber, that we could fit the bath using the legs from another bath and a panel from a more reliable supplier.

The totality of the experience was that having ordered three items from B&Q for home delivery, one was delivered one time, one was never delivered, and the last was missing a critical part of the construction. In order to complete my bathroom I had to pilfer the legs from the old bath, making it unsellable. The plumber did not bill me for the two occasions I cancelled but he would have been within his rights to do so. Dealing with the issue caused me considerable embarrassment and irritation at the wasted effort.

Irate, I wrote to B&Q telling them that I held them responsible. It was fundamentally weak to blame PJH and they should feel obliged to honour the warranty on the bath and repay me at least 50% of the cost for the trouble they had caused. In the end they refunded nearly 80% to placate me, although this was in coupons that could only be redeemed at a B&Q store and would not be delivered for a further four weeks.

So B&Q had a customer (me) ready to buy a product in a channel that we both enjoyed for its simplicity and cost (online shopping). But what went wrong with the operating model for the story to end in such acrimony and financial loss?

Looking at governance webpages of B&Q’s parent company, Kingfisher (kingfisher.com) it is clear that the organisational strategy concentrates not on customer experience, but shareholder value. Whereas funding is, in my understanding, an element of operations management aiming to serve the paying customer, the B&Q model is the opposite. The buyer is a source of cash to ultimately enrich the shareholder.

The website is strewn with verbiage about growth, value, and expansion and mentions almost nothing about customers. The one place they feature is a page titled ‘Our strategy – Creating the Leader’. Underneath this heading is a four-step growth plan, the first of which is called ‘Easier’. Reading on, one finds that this concerns making it simpler to separate paying customers from their money through ‘omnichannel’ retailing. In an energetic use of measurable KPIs, performance is gauged through sales figures rather than any analysis of satisfaction.

I would argue that customer satisfaction in DIY retailing is a function not of access but quality and price. A quick glance round the B&Q trading website (diy.com) reveals a tellingly poor set of customer reviews on every own brand product. Crown non drip paint, for example, scores five stars, as does Unibond tile adhesive. But anything from one of B&Q’s own ranges, whether paint or flooring, lawnmower blades or loft ladders, the customer feedback is at best neutral and at worst, shocking. “Do yourself a favour,” one reads, “pay a few pounds more for something decent.”

Looking at the corporate structure it’s interesting to note that the highest level of governance is channelled through Kingfisher’s subsidiary brands (B&Q, Koctas, Srewfix, Castorama, Brico) supported by a finance function, a productivity function, supply chain management (called ‘sourcing and offer’), and group level internal communications (the first time I have ever seen this appointment at Board level). In other words the business concentrates on financial performance, internal reporting, and brand promotion. If one is to hope that the CEOs of the subsidiary brands are the champions of their customers, I would advise caution. Kevin O’Byrne, the newly appointed B&Q CEO, rose to this position by having been Finance Director in every one of his last three appointments. It doesn't look like he has spoken to a customer in the last ten years and he certainly never responded to the email I sent him last year.

Operationally, B&Q online operates as a trading platform for other partners to sell through. This is not explained on the website and it is only after one has paid that the confirmatory notes explain who is actually providing the goods. In other words, B&Q carries no stock and outsources all of its online supply, charging a premium for doing so.

I can see why. They employ over 20,000 staff and have vast real estates and stock levels all around the world. Many of these estates were bought, according to former CEO Sir Ian Cheshire, on long leases at the height of the property boom. But the woes of the store based business should not affect its online arm. We must be able to tell, with modern inventory management software, whether items are in stock or not. I can only imagine that because B&Q has chosen to partner with companies like PJH Group, that their respective IT systems are not linked. That is the only thing that would explain the utterly chaotic management of my order.

In summary therefore, B&Q have built a strategy around shareholder return. They have structured their online business as a sales platform for companies like PJH Group, but their management systems are incompatible and there are no business processes to manage the inventory. The structure of the organisation is a function of legacy conglomeration and the leadership culture internally and financially focused.

It is reported in the media that Sir Ian Cheshire turned round the fortunes of Kingfisher Group, driving an increase in net worth of 20% and a doubling of pre-tax profit. As he handed over to the new CEO, Véronique Laury, 2014 was proving a difficult year for B&Q and Kingfisher by extension. I am interested to follow how she performs. My belief is that the organisation’s operating model is fundamentally broken and that B&Q will undergo considerable market challenges if it fails to recognise the importance of the customer in how it operates. There are, after all, two more case studies of former Kingfisher brands that failed to do so. One was called Woolworths and the other, Comet.

In the meantime, if you need a plug or a plank of wood, go to a builders’ yard or a plumbers’ merchant. You’ll get a better product for a cheaper price and a smile into the bargain.

Bibliography:

The Daily Telegraph viewed 12 February 2014, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/retailandconsumer/11277279/Interview-No-easy-answers-for-the-grocers-says-Sir-Ian-Cheshire.html

Kingfisher viewed 12 February 2014, http://www.kingfisher.com/index.asp?pageid=193&board=executive&person=veroniquelaury#person

B&Q viewed 12 February 2014, http://www.diy.com/departments/colours-non-drip-interior-exterior-white-gloss-paint-25l/578199_BQ.prd?tab=reviews

The British Army 2020: a chronic failure of organisational design

“The first duty of Government is the defence of the realm”. This truism comes from The Armed Forces Covenant, a Ministry of Defence document articulating the relationship between the state and the soldier. Despite this obligation, the government has pressed the armed forces through a root and branch restructuring since 2010. Because the process of this organisational design has lacked discipline and intellectual rigour, the conclusions are fundamentally flawed.

In this essay I will explain how organisational design ought to be done, outline the context pertinent to the armed forces, and explain why we are witnessing a chronic failure of government and a serious diminution of the state. Organisational design is simple. One starts with market analysis, an honest appraisal of what commercial opportunities exist for a company, given its strengths and weaknesses. With this understood, the next stage is to construct a vision statement that focuses the energy of all involved. This not only articulates a goal, but also suggests the company’s values, capabilities, and relationship to the wider environment. It can be aspirational, but must never be chimerical. The process of creation requires both intellectual rigour and the active involvement of the executive. Without these tenets, the final design will fail.

The vision translates, through constraints such as cash flow, capability levels, and geography, into something more tangible: the mission. This explains how resources and effort are transformed into an effect on the market; why an organisation exists and what it does. The mission is in turn supported by a handful of business processes. In a manufacturing plant, for example, there will be a business process for staff employment which could be made up of sub-processes for appraisal, bonus allocation, or grievance management. Once we understand the processes, we have a picture of the mechanics of an organisation; how it works to deliver the mission in pursuit of the vision.

Now we get to the art of organisational design. Business processes are broken down into their constituent steps, each of which will require certain capabilities. In a manufacturing process, one step might be receiving raw materials and organising them into bundles ready for the assembly line. This could require capabilities such as planning, or reactivity to fluctuations in demand. Once we understand the capabilities, these are broken down into skills such as the ability to drive a fork lift or manage a small team. Skills are then grouped into roles, and the ‘wire diagram’ finally emerges. We now have a pyramid constructed of boxes (representing roles) joined by lines (representing relationships). We can see how the operator pulling the lever in the paint room acts within a sub process, which fits within a major process, which delivers a service to customers. All of this activity, day in day out, is channelled and shaped by the vision with which we started.

This description is, of course, a little simplistic. Organisations often find it difficult to articulate a vision because industries are dominated by one or two global players who shape the market in their favour and quash competition. An organisation’s mission requires a pool of accessible customers. Processes rarely achieve perfect efficiency because of constraints like floor space, leave rotation, legislation, union relations, and managerial capability. Organisations are rarely built from scratch. But if design is more usually redesign, the need for clarity and rigour is all the more critical.

With regard to the armed forces, the 1998 Strategic Defence Review emphasized ‘reaping the peace dividend’ after the fall of the Berlin Wall. It seized the opportunity to reduce the defence budget from a whopping 3.9% of GDP in 1990, to 2.4% in 1999 and 2.5% today. Then three things happened. The first was that Tony Blair started deploying the armed forces on ‘ethical’ operations that boosted his profile as a world statesman. An intervention in Kosovo protected the Muslim Albanian population from the Christian Serb one. An expedition to Sierra Leone defended a terrified capital from a vicious jungle rebellion. Projecting such power justified the nation’s place on the UN Security Council and left us feeling good about ourselves.

But in 2001, an international network of jihadis flew three aeroplanes at targets in the United States, hitting two of them. The attack was executed with extraordinary zeal but its legacy was unremittingly awful. It polarised the Christian and Muslim world and sent America on a bloody path of vengeance. Not wanting to miss the party, Britain chose to “stand shoulder to shoulder” with them and committed force accordingly. But then the third change occurred. Headlines became more critical, public opinion wavered, and resources became scarce. There was no longer a sense of balance between vision, mission, and capability. If the army withdrew from Iraq feeling bruised, it is withdrawing from Afghanistan feeling betrayed.

The coalition government came to power in 2010 with a mandate to tackle the massive inefficiencies in the education and health sectors. In doing so it was difficult to ignore the MoD overspend of £38bn, more than an entire year’s defence budget. Thus, having been heavily burdened by unrealistic war aims and scant direction, the MoD also had to wield the knife.

Now let me combine the two parts of my narrative and explain why the subsequent restructuring of the British Army lacked detail at every stage and thus the final design does not meet the national need.

As stated, when designing an organisation one should start with a coherent analysis of the environment. The National Security Risk Assessment is the nearest document we have for this purpose. It categorises risks to the UK in terms of their probability and impact, and then prioritises them. This is where the weakness in the army’s design originates. Of those risks deemed ‘tier one,’ only one (an interstate crisis) implies the use of conventional military force. The others (cyber warfare, terrorism, natural hazards) are perhaps better understood as threats to domestic resilience. Second and third tier risks are grouped together in a manner that does not make sense. Why is a biological attack on the UK (presumably low-probability, high-impact) bundled into the same category as a significant increase in organised crime? Why is an increase in terrorists trying to enter the UK (high-probability, low-impact?) grouped with an accidental release of radioactive material from a nuclear power station?

One reason for the tawdry analysis is the strong tendency in the civil service for decisive thought to be diluted between committees and working groups. The risk assessment was produced by a body called the National Security Council, an adjunct of the Cabinet Office, but without reference to the Joint Intelligence Committee. Another body, the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy, has accused it of being too tactical in its thinking. From a confused process and weak structures, poor analysis flowed.

If the risk assessment is the closest thing to market analysis, the Strategic Defence and Security Review ‘Securing Britain in an Uncertain Future’  is the nearest thing to a statement of vision and mission. Again produced by the Cabinet Office, this document defines our policy goal: to have an ‘adaptable’ security posture that delivers a resilient state and the ability to interdict trouble abroad. In order to do this successfully, it says, we must address the ‘tier one’ risks, deter attack, integrate governmental activity, and build on our alliances.

The document places the armed forces “at the core of our nation’s security,” and emphasises how challenging future conflict could be. It would involve both state and non-state actors. It would be asymmetrical. It would be conducted under close media scrutiny and in environments where the enemy could hide among civilians. Cyber warfare and intelligence gathering would be pivotal. Operations could be either short term or enduring and possibly involve deployment up to divisional strength.

With these factors in mind, the MoD is given a mission statement expressed as the ‘seven military tasks’. This list continues the increasingly fragile logic behind the design process. Whereas the risk assessment majors on domestic threats (cyber warfare, terrorism, natural hazards), the military tasks retain an external, kinetic bias (defending the UK and overseas territories, projecting power through expeditionary operations, providing security for stabilisation). I do not doubt the veracity of the tasks, but they are not justified by the risk assessment, and the same woolliness pervades all subsequent documentation.

Because the market analysis lacks rigour, the vision fails to pinpoint an accurate goal and the mission lacks foundation. The fragility of logic is further amplified by the MoD leaping from mission to wire diagram without examining the processes, capabilities and skills required. In its hasty response to the defence review, it reduced the standing army, through four waves of compulsory redundancy, to a permanent strength of 80,000 (the smallest it has been since the 18th century) and a reserve strength of 30,000. This egregious decision demonstrates a woeful lack of understanding.

Whereas there is considerable logic in constructing an army of both full- and part-time staff (doing so keeps the army at the heart of society, it benchmarks favourable against other countries at a 70:30 ratio, it’s cheaper, and it allows the military to draw on specialist civilian expertise) there remain considerable problems to overcome. The 30,000 target demands a near doubling of trained reservists within the next two years. This is hopelessly unrealistic given that it takes three years for many volunteers to reach trained status and the recruiting figures are already short. Unlike America, where volunteering is an opportunity to put one’s professional skills at the service of the state, the British reservist sees the army as relief from the drudgery of work. He wants something fun and if he doesn’t find it, he leaves. The government has announced that it will transform the reserve with £1.8m, but does not explain how. Even if the reservist starts training with the regulars, and new legislation protects both his needs and those of his employer, he remains in an invidious position. He has yet to earn the trust of his regular counterpart in a way necessary to make a ‘whole force’ concept work, but is not being given the resources (especially time) to do so.

Warfare is a team game. It is never a function of the Army or the RAF or the Royal Navy, but how all three work together. Being an infantry soldier is a muddy experience requiring high reserves of irony and sweet tea. But the accuracy of naval gunfire, and the certain knowledge that a helicopter would evacuate a casualty, are crucial to morale and fighting spirit. It is surprising, therefore, that so little structural consideration is given to inter service collaboration. In the same vein, the defence review emphasises the need for “combining defence, development, diplomatic, intelligence and other capabilities” yet there is scant attention to both working with allies, other government departments, and the NGO community. In their response to the army design, the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) points out that several key capabilities would have to be developed, not least a means of cross charging to other government departments for the use of military personnel in a civil emergency. In short, the army’s design does not answer the exam question.

The document that communicates the future structure in a manner meaningful to soldiers is called Transforming the British Army, published in July 2012. An update issued a year later includes detail on where units are to be based and how other initiatives (pension reform, new employment and career models) are to be woven in. This document boils down the risk assessment and defence review into yet another mission statement, the ‘core purposes’ for the army. These are to provide “contingent capability for deterrence and defence; defence engagement and overseas capacity building; and UK engagement… to homeland resilience”. What is not clear is how these purposes justify the subsequent structure. There will be a reaction force for short notice interventions and an adaptable force for enduring ones and defence engagement. There will be a balance between armoured and light forces. There will be a training cycle. But the design is clearly weighted towards kinetic warfare, a fist drawn and ready to throw. The logic gap between risk assessment, defence review and design is never closed. Whereas a cavalry regiment based somewhere along the A303 might be able to provide useful support to a flood relief operation in Somerset, it is easy to imagine other structures much better suited to the problem: heavy lift vehicles, emergency engineering, water purification, medical support. Furthermore, the design fails to address issues raised by other governmental inquiries: the Levene report into MoD efficiency and the Ashcroft review of veterans’ employment. Both advocated structural and procedural change, and both have been ignored in the design.

Not only is the logic of the design flawed, but those responsible for getting it right have started distancing themselves. Following the publication of Army 2020, the House of Common Defence Committee conducted an extensive review that was quick to criticise but slow to provide solutions. It gleefully pointed out that the Chief of the Defence Staff was told (by a civil servant!) that the design must fit a ‘financial envelope’ and yet failed to challenge the Minister on the decision. It stated surprise that the National Security Council was not consulted, an allegation so specious as to be comical. Criticising the design from the safety of a committee room, long after the fact, is not a demonstration of democratic thoroughness. It is chronically weak management. It is shameful. 

So who is to blame? New Labour for their profligacy? The generals for their unchallenging haste? The coalition for failing to fund its own vision? Does it matter anymore, since the organisational design is now complete?

We have an army trimmed of any fat whatsoever and yet expected to deploy just as it did when the defence budget was nearly twice the size and the staffing levels 31% higher. It has retained the basic formations that it always had and though this may be desirable, it is not justified by the risk assessment and defence review. Future success depends on the reserve being fully effective, but the risks in this are numerous. Morale across the officer corps is low because those bearing the brunt of pension reform (35 to 45 years old) are the very same people who carried the greatest burden during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The design misses the opportunity to develop capabilities in joint warfare, defence engagement, cyber warfare, and national resilience. Feeling changes in the political wind, politicians are now choosing to criticise rather than show decisive leadership.

The design itself would not survive much political or military pressure. Independence for Scotland would remove yet more units from the order of battle and take the design below critical mass. The next defence review in 2015 could easily announce further cuts. There is no clear provision for how a future war would be funded. In the international arena we are seeing a return to global power politics (consider Israel, Syria, and the Ukraine) and yet we seem too fatigued, enfeebled, or insecure to get involved - something Mssrs Assad, Putin, and Rivlin are only too happy to exploit.

This week we are celebrating the anniversary of the start of the First World War, but do so a nation both impotent and self-deceiving. Either we must be able to project force abroad in order to guarantee security at home, or not. The defence review peddles the line that we are a global power, but it has hollowed out the army to the point where it is capable of little more than noisy self-defence. The UK has slipped into an eroded state without informed public debate. What we need, if we have the moral, political and intellectual courage to face the question, is a clear and honest view of where we stand in the world, our vision for ourselves. If there was something missing from The Armed Forces Covenant, it would be the duty of government to make that happen.

Bibliography

Ashcroft, Lord KCMG PC, February 2014, The Veterans’ Transition Review http://www.veteranstransition.co.uk/vtrreport.pdf

Chalmers, Professor Malcolm, September 2011, Looking into the Black Hole: Is the UK Defence budget crisis really over?, London: Royal United Services Institute Briefing Paper  https://www.rusi.org/downloads/assets/RUSIBriefingPaperSept2011.pdf

Her Majesty’s Government, October 2010, Securing Britain in an Age of Uncertainty: The Strategic Defence and Security Review 2010 https://www.direct.gov.uk/prod_consum_dg/groups/dg_digitalassets/@dg/@en/documents/digitalasset/dg_191634.pdf

The House of Commons Defence Committee, 29th January 2014, Future Army 2020: Ninth Report of Session 2013-14 http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmdfence/576/576.pdf

House of Lords and House of Commons Joint Committee on National Security Strategy, 8 March 2012, First Review of the National Security Strategy 2010: First Report of Session 2010-12, London: The Stationery Office Limited http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/jt201012/jtselect/jtnatsec/265/265.pdf

Levene, Lord of Portsoken, June 2011, Defence Reform: an independent report into the structure and management of the Ministry of Defence https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/27408/defence_reform_report_struct_mgt_mod_27june2011.pdf 

Ministry of Defence, July 2012, Transforming the British Army: Modernising to face an unpredictable future https://www.army.mod.uk/documents/general/Army2020_brochure.pdf

Ministry of Defence, July 2013, Reserves in Future Force 2020: Valued and Valuable https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/210470/Cm8655-web_FINAL.pdf

Ministry of Defence, July 2013, Transforming the British Army: An Update – July 2013 http://www.army.mod.uk/documents/general/Army2020_Report.pdf

Ministry of Defence, The Armed Forces Covenant https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/49469/the_armed_forces_covenant.pdf

National Security Council, Fact sheet 2, National Security Risk Assessment https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/62484/Factsheet2-National-Security-Risk-Assessment.pdf

National Security Council, Fact sheet 5, Future Force 2020: Summary of size, shape and structure https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/62487/Factsheet5-Future-Force-2020.pdf 

Phillips, Mark, June 2012, Army 2020: Roles, Capabilities and People, London: Royal United Services Institute Occasional Paper https://www.rusi.org/downloads/assets/20120702_Army_2020.pdf 

Taylor, Claire, 19 October 2010, A Brief Guide to Previous British Defence Reviews, The House of Common Libraryhttp://www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/SN05714.pdf

The World Bank http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS?page=4 viewed 27 July 2014 

With additional thanks to Jenny Sanders, Chris Ivory, and Gillian Walker

The Power of the Union

The first single I ever bought was Geno by Dexy’s Midnight Runners. 

It sat in a red, drop-front box for nearly five years before I found something worthy of joining it, Billy Bragg’s Between the Wars EP. Only two records, but five awesome songs; a well of virile socialism. On the sleeve of Geno, the Runners stood like a picket line in donkey jackets and woollen caps. On Between the Wars, two children in naval outfits ate toast and jam above the simple instruction never to pay more than One pound and twenty-five pence. This being the eighties, these records provided the soundtrack to my emerging political consciousness and the decade’s iconic imagery: a Royal Marine with the Union Jack on his radio antenna; the miners’ strike; the punk movement surrendering to the New Romantics.

My recollection is of violent social division.  It was like living in a crowded family home where all parties had to yell in order to be heard.  Punches were thrown, glass got smashed, and shins became bruised from the kicking - and yet once the noise died away we seemed to settle down to enjoy the relative prosperity of the subsequent decade.

Twenty years later I am in Leeds Town Hall sitting beneath the idioms written by the city fathers.  High up on the wall to my left is the phrase ‘In Union is Strength.’ This feels apt: I am waiting for Billy Bragg to come on stage. The audience are seated, murmuring to their neighbours, coats folded across their knees.  Bragg comes on to expectant applause and the cosy intimacy of the venue brings out the best in him.  He’s chatty and personable, drinking tea because of a sore throat. The drummer is fluid and expressive.  The lead guitarist alternates between a pedestal and the array of instruments provided by a hard working technician. Bragg introduces each song by relating it to the news. I delight in him singing Between the Wars though am disappointed no one joins in.  When he starts Sexuality, a couple that look like they’re from the real ale community dance unabashed around the speakers.  Bragg tells us with justifiable pride that of all the folk rock musicians around the world, it was him chosen by Woody Guthrie’s daughter to put her father’s remaining poetry to music.  He sings some, and others from ‘Tooth and Nail’, his new album.  I particularly like Handyman Blues (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YmHtISRcz0) and There Will be a Reckoning, which show the breadth of his musical oeuvre.  He intersperses these with the brazier songs I love of old.  I doubt any musician coming out of the talent show sausage machine could ever write such wonderfully polysyllabic poetry, or would dare sing with such flat vowels.  My all-time favourite verse is from the idiotically catchy Waiting for the Great Leap Forward: 

In the Soviet Union a scientist is blinded

By the resumption of nuclear testing and he is reminded

That Doctor Robert Oppenheimer’s optimism failed

At the first hurdle 

The band takes a break but Bragg stays on.  People call out the names of songs and he quips: “Thanks mate, you remembered the title!  I’ve got to do the words and chords as well.”  Then he talks openly about how amazed he is to be still doing this after thirty years; that he is still writing and we are still listening.  “Art,” he says, “is the lukewarm squeegee that cleans the glass of perception,” a phrase so tongue-in-cheek that I had to write it down.  Only just starting out as an author, I find his humility and determination inspiring.  Be true to yourself, he’s saying.  Have courage.  He sings Levi Stubb’s Tears and then, after lambasting how the press behaved in the phone hacking scandal, Never Buy the Sun.  The band comes back on to kick into the classic call to arms There is Power in a Union.  During the final chorus Bragg folds his guitar round his back to sing deeply into the microphone, one fist raised in the salute of solidarity.  In the second row, a single fist answers the call.

After the show I run to the Town Hall Tavern for last orders.  It’s a Monday night but hey, I’ve just seen Billy Bragg.  I’m with a handful of friends who were all once pink-cheeked, placard-waving students who identified with the miners, the dockers, the railwaymen.  Now we are management consultants, supply chain directors, marketing executives; a little heavier, wealthier, and dare we say it, conservative.  But that’s not the point.  I don’t think Bragg would blame us for the paths our lives have taken.  He is a singer ‘mixing pop and politics’, sure, but primarily he is a musician.  It would, I hope, please him that I was listening to his first EP while a pupil at a boarding school and that it cost me 50p, second hand, so the seller could buy some fags.  The message I take away from the evening is simple: be active in the pursuit of social unity.

On Youtube there’s a film of Bragg tackling an English Defence League pundit who was trying to destabilise the community where he lives.  The same is happening to me this year and I am determined to resist, but it’s not the EDL that I must oppose, it’s the Scottish National Party.  On the 18th September, Scotland decides if it wants to be independent.

The SNP have produced a document called ‘Scotland’s Future: your guide to an independent Scotland.’  It presents the referendum as an option between the No vote (stagnation) and the Yes vote (progress).  It states baldly that Scotland is one of the wealthiest countries in the world, a net contributor to the Treasury.  Tax revenues from oil and gas could be invested for future generations in the same way that Norway, Sweden and Finland have vast national savings rather than substantial debts.  It states that an independent Scotland would be fairer, more democratic, and more prosperous than a Scotland under the yoke of Westminster.  If the SNP were elected there would be a raft of business-friendly policies to attract inwards investment: free tertiary education, lower corporation tax, cheaper air travel.  They promise help for small businesses and to set up a commission to determine the future pensionable age.  They promise more choices for infrastructure development and travel.  Social services would be developed on the key values of supporting those in work, protecting those out of it, and ‘a climate of social solidarity’.  On the big international issues Scotland would inherit membership of the European Union and the Common Travel Area (CTA). It would remain part of NATO and the UN.  It would establish a network of embassies and a security agency. A national broadcaster would inherit some of the BBC assets in Scotland but retain rights to Eastenders, Doctor Who and Strictly Come Dancing.  The fishing industry would be revived by renegotiating the Common Fisheries Policy and all of this would be administered by the thirty thousand civil servants currently resident north of the border.

The document is an inspired piece of political rhetoric.  Such figures as exist are carefully placed to attract the lower income vote.  Policies such as the single tier pension stand shoulder to shoulder with nuclear disarmament.  There is much suggested and little promised.  I am suspicious of the facts, where they exist.  Could one really create a potent military force (with air capability and an army of 20,000) for a mere £2.5Bn?  Or would that turn out to be a retired oil-rig helicopter and a pipe band?  Are the thirty thousand civil servants who are going to run the country the same who built the Scottish Parliament and ran ten times over budget?

I am left full of questions.  The document angers me.  I fear for a Scotland that blindly believes this rhetoric and yet it seems that many people do.  The website wingsoverscotland.com is typical of message boards that claim to be impartially ‘soaring above Scottish politics’ and yet the posts are puerile: mash-up photos, comments full of exclamation marks, and puns on people’s names.  It wouldn’t matter what one said, no one would change their mind.

The sad thing is how poorly the No lobby are campaigning.  Better Together, led by Alistair Darling, seem ponderous and uncharismatic in comparison and a Yes vote is always easier to sell (remember Iraq?). At least someone had the wisdom not to let David Cameron enter a televised debate with Salmond.

To find sensible discussion one has to look to the David Hume Institute, which is running a research programme about independence (http://www.davidhumeinstitute.com/).  The papers assess the viability of separation from the legal, commercial, fiscal and political perspectives and there is also a fascinating benchmark of how the Basque country managed separation from Spain.

Strong messages emerge.  An independent Scotland would probably be financially viable in the short term.  Oil revenues could fund the balance between public spending and tax receipts although it is unlikely that they would create the budget underspend that Norway has managed to accrue over fifty years.  The SNP are possibly being disingenuous with the facts, public and welfare spending being much higher than they may wish to admit (Quinn, 2012).  The European Union would not allow an independent Scotland to simply inherit membership – it would have to apply in the same way as Romania has done – and the use of the Euro is out of the question.  Other EU states would doubtless challenge any reduction in corporation tax.  If Scotland retains the pound then much of its monetary policy would be driven by the decisions of the Bank of England whose principle interest, rightly, would be the rest of the UK.  If Scotland developed its own currency and pegged it to the pound, as Hong Kong has successfully done with the US dollar, it would require an expensive financial regulator.  The markets may take some years to build trust in the new state’s fiscal policies, causing the credit rating (currently AAA) to drop and the cost of national borrowing to increase.  Scotland would doubtless gain some measure of UK assets – not just oil revenues but also embassies and a share of the BBC licence fee - but it would also inherit a fair share of the national debt, equivalent to two thirds of the national income (Johnson and Phillips, 2012).  Oil revenues, oft listed by the Yes campaign as the source of not just wealth, but excess, are fantastically volatile and reducing (McCrone, 2012).  For Scotland to attract on-going inwards investment it would require an airport to rival Schiphol or Heathrow, but where would that be built and how would it be funded?  In short, failing to think through the details would be ‘costly and risky’ (Quinn, 2012).  It is of interest that the Basque experience (termed Devolution Max in the Scottish context) increases the amount of resources per capita to the devolved entity but does so at the expence of poorer regions within the remaining union.  This increases stresses across the community as a whole and does nothing to reduce further secessionist demands (Colino, 2012).

Put simply, I believe what Winston Churchill wrote in 1936: “The Union has grown strong the longer it has lasted.”  Independence would be completely against the run of history.  I was brought up partly in Dumfries, partly in Leeds, and partly in Edinburgh.  I went to university in Belfast and having married an Englishwoman, settled in Yorkshire.  Only then, in my thirties, did I move my voting rights south.  I served in a British regiment in the British army in which the battalion colours (red, blue, and green) referred to their historic recruiting areas.  The idea of independence is abhorrent.  Tearing apart the United Kingdom is to rip my mother from my father.

Taking the three pillars of the SNP argument in turn, I do not believe that a vote for an independent Scotland would make the country more democratic.  The referendum franchise is extended to 17 year olds but does not include the diaspora.  It has been decided that being non-resident we do not care, and this is simply wrong.  I care deeply: all my blood relatives live in Scotland and if I were to retire there I would have just as much interest in its future stability as the current teenage population.  McCrone (2012) states that 610,000 Scots emigrated between in the 1950s and 1960s, the equivalent of 130% of the population of Edinburgh.  A rough survey of my classmates identifies that roughly half now work in England or abroad, meaning that there could be over a million and a half interested but disenfranchised parties.  This is not a democracy I recognise.

An independent Scotland would not be more prosperous.  Measured by Gross Value Added (an assessment of productivity) Scotland is, currently, a net contributor to the UK, as is London and the South East.  The other regions of England, Wales, and Northern Ireland are net users of this wealth.  But it is a fallacy to say that independence would mean everyone in an independent Scotland would become richer.  There will always be regions that produce and others that consume and in a smaller state the resource available to support the needy would be reduced.  Independence could be devastating to those who depend on the state for their wellbeing.

The SNP appear to think that Scotland is one nation and that independence is equally attractive throughout.  I challenge this.  I think the appeal of it is mainly held in the cities of the central belt and that the reverse view exists in the liberal north and the conservative borders.  The SNP did very well in the 2011 election but this was fought within the context of a devolved parliament operating within the UK whole.  They would be unlikely to sustain such a broad majority in an independent country, especially once a credible opposition took shape.  A vote that narrowly scraped through in favour of independence would be catastrophically divisive and could spark further secessionist demands, as was the Basque experience (Colino, 2012).  There would be those who gain, sure.  But this would be localised and in the short term.  An independent Scotland could never provide long term benefit to all.

Sitting back from the hubbub and blether it strikes me that the independence vote is essentially an emotional one.  If you want to believe that an independent Scotland will be rich, no statistics will persuade you otherwise.  Conversely, the unionist argument is always presented in rather dull, rational terms: how Scotland benefits from UK fiscal regulation and market trust.  Alistair Darling lacks popular appeal but he has managed to push the hard questions into the public agenda, and Salmond has failed to answer them (Campbell, 2013).

The Unionist vote needs to define its emotional pull, the reason why people like me – the British Scots – feel as strongly for the Union as anyone does for independence.  In Leeds Town Hall, Billy Bragg talked movingly about a diagram he once saw that showed the correlation between declining membership of a (trade) union and increasing wage inequality.  Paraphrasing the lyrics of one of his songs, a union protects the rights of the weakest in society.  Independence for Scotland would build a wall that removes the mutuality and power of the Union while placing the most vulnerable at risk.  

Bibliography 

Bragg, Billy, Tooth and Nail tour live at Leeds Town Hall, 25th November 2013

Campbell, Alastair, Blog: If only Smart Alec Salmond could have brought himself to say ‘don’t know’ to some of the questions on website: http://www.alastaircampbell.org viewed December 2013

Churchill, Winston, A History of the English Speaking Peoples, Volume 3 – The Age of Revolution, Cassel: London, 1970

Colino, Cesar, Devolution-Max a la Basque: A Model for a Scotland within the UK? The David Hume Institute: Edinburgh, 2012

Johnson, Paul and Phillips, David, Scottish Independence: the fiscal context, The David Hume Institute: Edinburgh, 2012

Kelly, Owen, Scottish Independence and Financial Services – an Industry Observer’s Perspective, The David Hume Institute: Edinburgh, 2012

McCrone, Gavin, The Scope for Economic Policy After Independence, The David Hume Institute: Edinburgh, 2012

Quinn, Brian, Scottish Independence: Issues and Questions, The David Hume Institute: Edinburgh, 2013

The Scottish Government, Scotland’s Future: Your Guide to an Independent Scotland, Edinburgh, 2013 Websites:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-13305522http://wingsoverscotland.com/http://bettertogether.net/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_credit_rating   

Please do not sit here - a cultural study of Ryanair

April. I am going to be working abroad for a couple of months. My client is a manufacturing company with a loss-making plant located half way across Europe. There are two options for getting there: the Jet2 flight from Leeds or the Ryanair flight from Manchester. I chose the latter because it departs earlier on Monday morning and tell myself that the horror-stories are exaggerated. In truth, I actually admire the CEO for daring to be different. He managed to turn a profit in a highly geared industry throughout the global recession. Though one might question his public persona, he could never be described as duplicitous.

I get up at three in the morning, drive to Manchester, park in the multi-storey, and then weave past the stuttering queue of passengers pushing hold baggage to the check in desk. I have squeezed my laptop, diary, notebook and five day’s clothing into a small case that fits within two of the three dimensions Ryanair imposes. Over the weekend I was sent an automated email yelling at me to ensure I comply with the restrictions, but due to the wheels and the documents I have crammed into the front pocket, the depth of the bag is about five centimetres too large. I stride across the concourse thinking up things to say to anyone who challenges me: my bag is perfectly acceptable on any other airline; I used this very bag on a flight to Dublin last year and you didn’t challenge me then; it fits perfectly into the overhead locker – why does it need to be any smaller?

The worry makes me hot and sticky, something I want to avoid as I am in these clothes for the next eighteen hours. I tell myself to be calm. If I am challenged I will just have to accept what happens.

I snatch a Massimo Breakfast at the Italian trattoria, then dash for the boarding queue which is already clogging the corridor. The occupants avoid each other’s eyes. I take my place at the back and check my pockets: phone, passport, boarding pass, glasses.

Down at the gate, a woman in the lurid Ryanair uniform has started checking the dimensions of all cabin baggage. This must be the famous baggage inspector, something I have heard about but never believed to be real. She carries a cardboard box that slips over passengers’ bags. Having approved the tidily professional business travellers at the front of the queue she sets about the gaggle of middle aged tourists behind them. She tells a beige-clad lady to place her handbag inside her cabin bag. The woman colours, then clumbers down nervously onto one knee. Her actions are rushed. The zip sticks. She forces it and then places her handbag as flat as she can across her underwear before pleading with the zip to close. The lid bulges. It doesn’t look like it will shut but then it does. The woman stands up, relieved, pressing up on one knee. She lifts the bag upright onto its end. The baggage inspector tilts her head like a sparrow, then primly moves on to the next person in the line. She looks like she is revelling in the discomfort she is causing. I exchange glances with my neighbour. His lips are tight. It has taken nearly five minutes for this public repacking to take place. My bag is not the largest of those around me but it’s not the smallest either. My neighbour’s is a nylon black rucksack that bulges out in all directions. I remove a novel and a newspaper from the front pocket of my bag and squeeze the sides together as best I can. Then I realise I have booked a seat. This enables me to nip forward into the priority boarding queue, which has already been through the baggage screening process. Walking down the line past the inspector I feel that I am dishonouring the sanctity of the queue and somehow evading a just punishment that we all should endure. I tell myself not to worry. In a second my boarding pass is torn apart and I am skipping through the gate and down the steps. I have survived the cull.

May. I am impressed with the workload of the staff on the flight but cannot help wondering if they make life hard for themselves. As soon as I have taken my allocated seat they chivvy others to sit in any free position, separating families and partners. The crew leader mumbles something about needing to pushback within the next five minutes and this creates a mild panic as passengers ram their bags into the nearest overhead locker then dive for a seat. Throughout the flight the staff patrol the plane no fewer than twelve times: to check seatbelts, to sell drinks, to take food orders, to serve the food, to peddle scratch cards, bus tickets, electronic cigarettes, more drinks, more food, landing cards, charity raffle cards and then to remove litter before making the final safety check prior to landing. The near constant blizzard of inaudible announcements followed by the staff hawking down the aisle has started to annoy me. I don’t make eye contact and sit in sullen isolation, pretending to read.

This time I am in row 2DEF, behind the bulkhead. I like this position: it has dedicated overhead lockers and more leg room than on the other side. In front of me is a custard-yellow wall with the airline’s harp logo emblazoned across it. I am struck by the androgynous nature of the harp’s figurine. It leaps engagingly into space, the legs and wings gracefully poised. The body is athletic, pert, and powerful. The outline of the breast is tight and round. But then I notice the head; how square it is, how certain and proud is the lift of the chin. It looks, to me, like the head of an eager young man on the body of a woman.

The staff have been changed from the ones I was starting to recognise. The crew leader is Irish but the remainder of the crew are Eastern European. They take it in turns to announce what will be sold next, each as inaudible and inarticulate as the last. I don’t hold it against them but I don’t buy anything either. The constant hard sell has become wearing. I try to sleep, anticipating the three-hour drive I have when we land.

We touch down. The plane taxis off the runway to a trumpeting broadcast over the tannoy: “Welcome to another on time flight from Ryanair… Ryanair, for the best on time record and the lowest prices.” Someone unclicks their seatbelt and the crew leader has to hiss at everyone to sit back down until the aircraft has come to a complete stop and the captain has switched off the seatbelt sign. I look at my watch. We are landing fifteen minutes later than last week and yet we are still on time. How did we manage that, I wonder?

June. I am certain of it now. It happens every journey, even if there is no turbulence. The crew leader unhooks the telephone handset from above his seat, turns away from me, then mutters to someone in the cockpit. He laughs then places the handset back in its cradle. There is a resonant bong as the seat belt sign comes on. He lifts the handset again to announce to us all that the captain has switched on the seatbelt sign and would everyone please return to their seats. The aisle is to be cleared of hand baggage and the toilets are not to be used at this time. He then locks the toilet door (there’s a bolt under the toilet sign) and the staff congregate by the food trolleys, unfazed by having to work though the impending turbulence.

But there is no turbulence. The flight is so stable that the wings don’t even flex. I realise we are being pinned down in our chairs for the trolley to move freely. I am angered by this, astounded at the cheek of it. Is it legal? Thankfully, I don’t need the toilet while the trolley is going down the plane, but others do. Ignoring the seatbelt sign, a mother and child fumble their way forward. The child is red faced and unhappy. With one hand he grasps the groin of his trousers. His mother holds his other wrist and tries to open the toilet door, but it is locked. The child hops from one foot to the other. The crew leader tells the pair to sit back down as the seatbelt sign is still illuminated. The mother argues but the crew leader has no option but to enforce the law. The boy wails pitifully. His mother urges him to hold it in a little while longer then drags him back to their seats. The crew leader turns away from me, picks up the handset and speaks in hushed tones. Miraculously the seatbelt sign goes off almost immediately. The toilet is then unlocked and the mother barges forward: “Excuse me please, coming through…” The crew leader smiles at her. The mother is wonderfully expressive in her gratitude to the crew leader but I am filled with uncontrollable rage at what I think I have just seen. It strikes me that having the authority to say when you can and when you can’t pass water is one of the most awesome powers available to man. It enfeebles. It reduces all of us to the role of incontinent child.

July. I am told that my contract has extended and therefore I can book flights for the next few weeks. This is good: if I book early the flights are cheaper and there is one more thing crossed off my ‘to do’ list. But I still keep the job till last, dreading the moment when I have to battle through Ryanair’s website. Every text field has to be entered from scratch. There are pages and pages of offers one has to positively decline rather than voluntarily accept. No, I don’t want Ryanair Talk. Or parking in Manchester. Or a city tour. Or a bus ticket. Or car hire. And no I don’t need insurance, I’ve already told you that. And if I did want a cabin bag that fits your demands, how do I know you won’t change them in the future? How would you get it to me?

It takes half an hour to book three flights. The overall cost is about the same as if I had got two flights from Jet2, so I am confident I can prove that I am doing everything possible to keep overheads down. But why don’t they just have a loyalty scheme that remembers my passport numbers and expiry date?

Then I get an email from a market research company asking for my impressions of a recent flight. Would I fill in the survey? You bet I would.

To be fair, I am usually impressed with the staff. I’ve seen them maintaining discipline when the entire aircraft was laden with stag and hen parties. I’ve watched a crew leader gently calm a party down who, having started on the gin at six in the morning, were cackling raucously by ten. Once, when I had paid for a seat on the fifth row, a crew member saw how cramped I was and suggested I move to the empty front row so that I could stretch my legs. My gratitude was unbounded: at over six foot I dread the cramping, dehydrating effects of air travel; how it plays havoc with my digestion, disrupts my sleep patterns, and leaves me stiff and headachy for days. On another occasion I watched a bubbly scouse crew leader trying to explain the word ‘tara’ to one of her Eastern European colleagues. The comedy of this discussion was hugely enjoyable for everyone in earshot. On the feedback survey I complain about the use of the seatbelt light as an instrument of enabling sales. I complain about the baggage inspector. But I forget to ask why they don’t ever pay for an airbridge and make us walk down the steps, across the tarmac and up the stairs. Or why they leave us standing forlornly to board the plane. Or why I was refused tap water and forced to pay exorbitantly for a miniscule bottle. Or why the cramped seating cannot be alleviated by employing the always vacant rows 3 and 4. The nub of the issue is, I insist, about their attitude to their customers. On my most recent flight the reserved seats were adorned with a poorly photocopied A4 sheet on which was written ‘please don’t sit here' above a logo indicating a crossed-out seated man.

August. The survey must have been read by someone. For two weeks I notice that the crew don’t ask the cockpit to put on the seatbelt sign before they have to wheel the trolley down the aisle. I am pleased with myself, but the practice resumes when the next crew take over the route.

I am once again in row 2DEF, sat in the middle. The man next to me is as tall as I am. He’s asleep, his novel about to fall from his lap onto the floor. His legs are crossed and due to their length, one foot extends out beyond the bulwark into the aisle. The trolley comes up from behind us. The woman is struggling with the weight of it. She rams it forward to get the wheels over the plastic strip that joins the carpet to the rubber matting in front of Row 1 and in the process traps my neighbour’s foot between the corner of the trolley and the bulwark. He wakes with a sharp yell. “Excuse me, could I get through please,” the crew member snaps as she continues past. My neighbour curses to himself, rubbing his ankle. The crew member neither apologises nor acknowledges him. He looks for a brief moment like he is going to remonstrate with her but then changes his mind. I imagine him being afraid of further humiliation in front of the cold and distant travellers just waiting for this all to be over.

September. There is a documentary on television that describes Ryanair as taking shortcuts. Almost immediately I see that the airline is planning to take the programme makers to court. I then read in the paper that they have had to issue a profit warning. The article gloats about the shouting that would, no doubt, have issued from the Ryanair boardroom. Standing on the stairs before getting on the plane the following Monday morning, the man next to me says that he heard the boss of the company was recorded as saying, “Well, we’d better start being nice to people.” I snort, doubtful that a culture so institutionally dismissive could ever change. If there was an alternative I would take it, I say. People around me turn and nod in silent agreement.

But the truth is we want Ryanair to survive. We need its cheap flights and efficient service. We just want to be treated better. The stories I mention are all true and I have mapped them against Johnson and Schole’s cultural web model to describe the company’s behavioural norms: the routines we have to endure; the symbols we are blasted with; the cold control mechanisms; the utter domination of even out most basic human needs. Does the profit warning mean the power structure will change? We will have to see. I hear they are planning to allocate seats, change the website, and implement other initiatives that will ‘improve the customer experience’. On my last flight I got offered the chance to buy a calendar showing Ryanair hostesses posing in bikinis, almost provocatively, on a beach. I am told that there were several applicants for every place on the photoshoot. I shake my head. The cultural web model looks like a flower, the petals representing the constituent parts of an organisation’s culture. They are organised around a central element, the paradigm, which captures the essence of the whole and forms the lens through which the petals should be viewed. I try to imagine how I would describe the paradigm of Ryanair: something gaudy and androgynous; something surprisingly uncertain about its identity; something that responds to our basic cravings but that can also be cruel, transactional, and mercenary.

Now what does that remind me of?

Notes: Johnson, G. and Scholes, K. Exploring Corporate Strategy: Text and Cases 3rd Edition, Prentice Hall, 1993.