Libels and Reflections...

Welcome back regular readers, friends, acquaintances, victims and legal representatives with a G1 postcode. Although initially considering last week’s offering as a one-off purgative affair – think proud toddler brandishing a potty – such was the response, I thought I’d do it again. Regardless.

Joey Deaconland
One of the first things I noticed after spending a few weeks in Hong Kong is the sheer number of spazzers, wheelchair jockeys and menks that jostle for space on the island’s packed pavements – we don’t have sidewalks here, thank fuck.
At first, I thought this phenomenon was possibly caused by the toxic fumes wafting in across the bay from Guangdong, the province responsible for 98.3% of the world’s crap Christmas presents. Either that, I speculated, or it was a result of the lingering legacy of British cuisine, with the populace still scoffing pies, chips and Jaffa Cakes 13 years after, fixed grins in place, they were handed back to the TLC of the PRC.
Alas, I think the answer lies elsewhere and not in the superfluity of Hong Kong’s differently-abled. I think it’s more to do with me. Having spent the last five years living on the Chinese mainland, where the Single Child Policy is still very much in force, my perception of the normal ratio of society has been somewhat skewed. In China, where your child is considered cerebrally challenged if it’s not great at quadratics and is still only a Grade III piano player at the age of seven, what chance for those with cerebral palsy? Or a hump?
At my charitable best, I hope these choices are made in utero, but I fear the reality is far worse. If Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen are kept flid-free by pre-natal testing, I can’t help but wonder what happens in the clinic-free rural areas where the majority of the population still lives.
Unless, of course, all offspring judged sub-standard are put on a bus to Hong Kong. I kind of hope so.

Fox con?
To balance the books and in the interest of future visa renewability, I better say some nice things about the PRC, but don’t worry there’ll be some jokes about the Carnyx group and a Cunt of the Week coming along soon.
Much has been made of late about the 12 suicides at Foxconn this year, one of the major suppliers of Apple components. In a week when Apple overtook Microsoft as the world’s largest technology company, I can’t help but wonder if there hasn’t been a little “dark-ops” from Bill Gates and co involved in stirring the pot.
Now, I’m not suggesting the men from Microsoft are emerging from the shadows in the Foxconn plant in Longhua in Southern China and whispering: “Don’t you miss your mother?” or “Your girlfriend’s been taking it up the bum from migrant workers whilst you’ve been making iPad Micro-SIM card trays…”, but let’s put this into a little perspective.
We’re not talking about Gregg’s on Quay St here. We’re talking about a company that employs 450,000 people – making them about the same size as Sheffield. The average suicide rate per year in Sheffield is 38 (http://www.sheffield.nhs.uk/consultations/resources/mentalhealthstrategy2008v2.pdf). So, if you live in Sheffield you are three times more likely to die by your own hand than if you work for Foxconn. And you have to live in Sheffield – even if not for long.
Incidentally, modes of suicide in the PRC are quite different from those in the UK. Whereas as in the UK taking a Mach III to a convenient artery or going a Paracetomol too far seem the exit routes of choice, in China they largely opt for jumping off stuff. That’s all very well in Tier One cities where there are plenty of potentially lethal lofty edifices to launch yourself off, but I do worry about those in the more rural areas. Here rickety, one-storey structures are more de rigueur. You’d have to throw yourself off them five or six times before you could even be sure of breaking so much as an ankle. For the few tall buildings around, there’s probably a queue.

Tales from the (water) closet
I had several happy months whilst working for the Carnyx group, the cottage industry behind The Drum and the ailing Roses Awards. Unfortunately I was actually employed there for two and a half years. Many memories of particularly arrant stupidity, naiveté or vituperativeness on the parts of the management there stay with me even ten years on. I’d like to share one of my favourites.
A few weeks after Larry, Jim and I foolishly jumped ship from Adline and took the Carnyx muckle, it was announced that Diane Young was taking over as managing director of the company. Suffice to say the surrounding streets did not suffer a dancing room shortage. Had it been announced earlier, I doubt we would have ever left Adline, well not for the Carnyx Group.
We feared the worst and, to be fair to Di, for once she didn’t disappoint. She bought all her previous experience as a junior NHS administrator to bear on her new role.
During one visit to the Glasgow HQ, I noticed one of the innovative changes she had introduced. Whereas at one time the staff WCs had been regularly supplied with toilet roll, Di decreed that from now on all stocks must be kept in her office. We naturally assumed leaky bottom problems.
Whilst I was there, one junior member of the editorial team noticed the roll in the gent’s had been exhausted. Buttocks clenched, he gingerly approached Di’s office and asked for a replacement. “What have you done with the old one?” she demanded with her characteristic lack of humour or irony.
I think it is fair to say that without Di’s stewardship, the company wouldn’t be where it is today.
As we’re on the subject of the Carnyx Group - Drum re-tweeters do us all a favour miss out the middle man and just say: “Hurrah, some undiscerning twat printed my press release at last!”

Cunt of the Week
I’d like to thank the people who emailed or tweeted me about cunts I neglected to mention in the first instalment of this blog. Indeed so much material came flooding in and so many memories were stirred, that I’ve decided to make this a regular feature.
This week I’d like to celebrate the pure vulvanity of Lee Newton,
managing director of ETP, one-time owners of Adline.
Lee and his then business partner, Terry Moutter, became part of the Wilmington family when the group bailed out the financially-incompetent ETP. I remember one Wilmington director gleefully recalling teasing Terry and Lee by asking what all the bracketed figures on their balance sheets meant.
I first met the two at the Wilmington Christmas Party in 1993. The two came dressed as SS Officers. This went down a storm with the group’s chief executive, the decidedly Jewish Brian Gilbert. How he laughed.
Through various machinations, Terry left and Adline became accountable to Essex-boy Lee. In the summer of 1999, Lee introduced his master stroke – a recruitment magazine aimed at travelling salesman and distributed through garages. Unfortunately, despite spending a fortune on radio and outdoor advertising and on printing hundreds and thousands of copies, it foundered – largely because they forgot to sign distribution contracts with any garages. Doh!
With the brackets returning to the balance sheets, the squeeze was on – particularly at Adline. We were doing quite well at the time and in expansive mode – Cream Awards, Synergy etc – but now we were bailing this fuckwit out.
It was soon after this, that all the senior people at Adline – except Debbie Brown – quit to set up the Carnyx-backed Marketeer. This was a major humiliation for Lee –brackets back on his balance sheet and now the only Wilmington MD ever to see a whole senior team decamp as a protest against his ineptitude.
I think it’s fair to say he went mental - demanding the return of databases we didn’t have or want and seeking injunctions against actions that had never been planned, until he get reined in by Nick Miller, the far more grown-up Wilmington overall MD.
Inevitably, that was not to be the end of it. Months later we met at some event in Manchester, maybe the Roses. Tensions had been simmering all evening and didn’t get better as the evening went on. I was knocking back the Chardonnay, Lee was on the Rosé (which was another reason I thought he was a cunt).
Predictably, at the end of the evening, we were on something of a collision course and eventually launched into a dialogue of positively Wildean proportions in the bar of the Palace Hotel.
Me: I bet they all think you’re a cunt at Wilmington because we all left.

Lee: No, they think I’m great. They think you’re a cunt.

Me: Nah, they think you’re a cunt.

Lee: You’re the cunt.

Me: Nah, senior team all leaving. They definitely think you’re a cunt.

The badinage continued in a similarly urbane style for several minutes. Until…

Lee: You’re the cunt and I’ve got to go to bed now as I have to drive to Dartford early in the morning for a group board meeting. That’s how important I am.

Big mistake.
It’s now about 2am. I reckon he has to leave 8am at latest to drive to Dartford for midday. I leave it till about 4.30 am and then call the Palace reception from my mobile.

Me: Hi. Can you put me through to Lee Newton’s room?

Palace Reception: Certainly sir. Putting you through.

Lee: (sleepily) Hello?

Me: They do think you’re a cunt (click)

Get back to sleep after that, you cunt, I thought. In my defence, he had tried to sue me four months previously
About a year later, Lee was bizarrely - and briefly - made overall Wilmington MD and managed to take the company’s share price to its lowest ever level. He never could get the hang of those brackets.

Four (fuck’s sake)square
MSN I took to enthusiastically, Facebook I love, Twitter I gradually became convinced by, but Foursquare…surely the most pointless offering ever from Silly-cunt Valley?
Win badges by telling you’re mates where you are? Unlock your ‘Adventurer’ title by increasing the frequency of your log-ins? It’s like the scouts, but even shitterer. Any hackers out there please hack this system and make GPS log-ins automatic instead of discretionary. How I’d laugh when some poor twat unwittingly informs all his mates that he is now “The Mayor of Big Maurice’s Gentlemen Only Prostate Massage Centre”…