F*ck business!..? 18 10 15 (12) 25 2 1

"F*ck business!"* so said Boris Johnson June 26th 2018 regarding the possible negative effects of Britain leaving the EU? 18 10 15

As a British ex-pat it is nevertheless hard to understand why a Foreign Secretary should use such an expletive, and in the context he used it? But as someone who lived a good half of his life thinking he was a full-on Brit I awoke one day to learn that the hated Irish in my family were overlooking the little known fact that my own father was half Irish, courtesy of his two grandfathers, and that nothing after that should really surprise one..?

Two years before in 2016 the British of course had voted to leave the European Union, when I was taken back to my mid-20s when an old school colleague from 14 years before, never a friend, whilst holding forth in our shared laboratory at a communal coffee or tea break, asked his regular audience rhetorically: "Tell me one country in the world where a republic works?" when to his query I, exceptionally, responded: "What about Finland?" He quickly silenced me with the rejoinder: "Why don't you F-off back to Finland?" and this before the UK finally succeeded in being accepted as a member of the EEC, as it was in 1974.

So perhaps I should have understood the British world view but I have to say it surprised me when more than 40 years later they decided to withdraw, after some of their most successful and prosperous years, in the post-Empire days since 1945... Even though I did as my ex-colleague had suggested and returned to Finland, where for 31 years I have had, I believe, a much better life than the one I should have had had I remained in UK...

By the mid-1980s however I had continued to work in UK and as an R and D Manager of some years standing, during which I had seen my department grow to become almost double the size in man-power since I had taken office, at its peak, when the company fell flat on its face for making some unwise technological or business mistakes, and in its straightened circumstance was the subject of take-over by a conglomerate which started the 1980s a £40 million company but by the end of the 80s had grown into something greater than £1000 million, growing as it did 50% organically and 50% by acquisition and therefore expansion. And when as someone uninvolved with the calamity I was assigned the job of sorting out the technical problem to restore the company’s fortunes, as the Technical Coordinator in a liaising role between Company and Customer personnel, for which I had to delegate a large part of my other duties.

Well after 2 years I achieved the objectives set out and took my first large order to replace the same amount of defective product from 2 years before, and on the back of such success decided to move just in time from UK to Finland to accept a remuneration package that in round terms was twice what I was paid in UK, to take up a customer board of directors' appointment here.

There followed the world financial crash in 2008, wrought by similar players on Wall Street, and as many other commentators have observed in the aftermath no-one so far has really fixed the issues which resulted in the crash, suggesting we can expect another one any time soon..?

This for anyone reading my blog over a longer period is not the first time I have talked about the greed that has taken hold, in place of a more humane approach to both business and government, not only in Britain and the USA and the rest of the developed world in ever increasing compass, but it will need to be arrested if man is to survive the 21^st century… Good luck with that everyone! I for one won’t be around much longer though of course I hope they get it right for my grandchildren’s sake and possibly the sake of their children’s futures too.          

*It was instructive in the process of writing this blog to Google Johnson's utterance to refresh my memory of just how it came out and one can't believe it was anything more than Johnson's usual penchant for speaking with his foot in his mouth, but remarkable all the same for the furore which followed his doing so when one has to think he will live to regret what he said.