The English better learn English

A few months back I read an article warning Indians that if we wanted any tourist money we should learn English. Maybe they should do some research in their own backyard.

Because I couldn’t make anything of what bus drivers, waiters and hostel managers were telling me when I was down to Oxford last week, and fared little better with my English classmates.

Yes, it’s their mother tongue, but it’s not modern business English and they know that. Flabbergasting others is one thing; being hospitable is another.

$ 20 billion vs nothing

This is in no way to say that what’s happening due to the BP oil spill is not very bad, but as an Indian I couldn’t help noticing how quickly BP shelled out $ 20 billion and how long it has took for Union Carbide to come up with anything, and the thousands of cruel, callous, illiterate remarks Western business journalists and judges made in between – and continue to make.

Jobs that cannot be exported to China and India

Every American politician wants jobs that cannot be exported. Well, do they ever ask themselves what happens when they buy oil from Saudi Arabia, or coffee from Brazil, or timber from Canada. They pay. And when they pay, the money goes to employ someone in the country that imports.

In other words, every time America or any other country imports anything, it exports jobs. Of course, it can be argued that if America had a trade surplus it would be a net importer of jobs. But it isn’t quite so because the per capita income in the US is higher than that in most countries it trades with.

The point is that the whole argument is ridiculous, more so because those very same politicians want free trade, exports and what not.

Karl Marx’s bastard

Every biography of Marx mentions he begot a bastard with his maid and that Engels volunteered to be the official father so as to protect his friend’s good name. Strangely, there is next to no evidence on this. This article shows as much. Yet the bastard stays. Why?   

Jinnah’s grandson?

Who is this man? He says he’s Jinnah’s grandson. But Jinnah has only one grandson, Nusli Wadia, the Bombay business magnate. So who is this poor man and why is he, the grandson of one of India’s richest lawyers, so poor?

Was Friedman an anti-capitalist saboteur?

I had heard so much about The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits that I was quite sure that 99% of the people who talked about it had never read it. I was wrong. He did indeed write what most people think he wrote. 

What about the underlying deal?

Our readings in business ethics includes a series of case-lets featuring ethical dilemmas in poor countries. What must the Western company’s manager do? Not once does the author ask, “How ethical was the deal for which the favour was being sought?”

Why can’t managers be sued for neglect?

If your dentist picks out the wrong tooth, you can take him to court. If the CEO of the company you own shares in ruins it, the most you can do is present him a golden parachute for his troubles. Strange. 

Why are the Greeks protesting?

Daddy’s partners have done him in. So daddy has two options. Declare bankruptcy, and perhaps never get another chance, or to pay off his debts, penny by penny, through hard work and harder living.

He chooses the latter. This means no more chauffeured cars and new clothes for you, but it does mean you will grow up in honour and when you enter the cruel world, you will not be burdened with a stigma.

If you are good boy, you bring your little toys to daddy and ask him to sell them off. And he’ll weep and kiss you. And go back to his backbreaking labours. And you’ll never never complain.

But the Greeks are complaining. Why?

Perhaps because there is more to it than meets the eye.

The Greeks must be thrown out of the EU to teach them and the other PIIGS a lesson they’ll never forget. Very well.

Liar Liar
Pants on fire
Your nose is longer that a telephone wire

But what were they doing in the EU in the first place if they were such a financial risk? If the Greeks were pulling figures out of their hats, did no one notice that those figures belied reality? If yes, European economists are not fit to be described as such. If no, then Germany and France deliberately turned a Nelson’s eye to skullduggery and the rest.

Why? Some say it was because they needed growth figures ‘maturing’ economies could ‘credibly’ provide the EU. In which case, there must have been an pact, explicit or implicit, that when the bubble bursts (inevitable), there would be no punishment.

The Greeks don’t see the other side of the pact being kept, and are understandably furious.

So why is Merkel being so difficult? A godfather who doesn’t take care of his jailed hoodlums’ families will soon find himself in trouble. Why does the Chancellor of Germany not get that simple thing?

Well, one reason can be that the indignation could be window dressing for domestic consumption. The other could be that the Greeks, like the Icelanders, over stepped. The latter took Englishmen for a ride. Surely Tony wasn’t going to put up with that. Maybe the Greeks were over-naughty too.

Black father, white child

Why are there so few families with Asians or black parents and white adopted children? Do non-whites insist on adopting children of their own race? Or has it something to do with adaptation agencies?

I Googled the topic and found an article. In it, an American says that his country had did the most in bettering race relations, but… Why do they insist on denying what is for everyone to see? Is it a test of power? The emperor has no clothes, but who dares call him naked?