My History in Objects #10

Quiche Lorraine

A referendum held in May 1972 confirmed Ireland’s entry into the European community with 83 per cent of voters supporting membership. On the 1st of January 1973 at the age of 9 I became a European. For the people of Ireland this was no easy transition. Raised on spuds boiled in their jackets, Limerick Ham, Irish Stew and Coddle, what did the EEC offer to the people of Ireland?

Some genius did their research and found the perfect food to bridge the cuisine chasm between Ireland and the continent. If you had offered the Irish a leek tart back in 1973 they would have spurned it. You would have found a vegetarian in 1970s Ireland more easily than get someone to eat a vegetable tart. Yes we ate sausages but in those days there were urban fairytales of truckers being served an Andouille to their disgust. The French were renowned for their strange tastes in food and we picked up the Francophobic reaction to Gallic cuisine from our long association with Britain. Frogs legs, snails, foie gras and no end of strangely named smelly cheeses.

Quiche as a name presented a problem. How do you pronounce it? Kwitch? Keesh? Kwaysh? Ki-chee? But if you can hurdle that fence as far as the Irish go you are into the home straight. Forget lardons or pancetta or any of that foreign sounding muck. The Irish Quiche Lorraine uses tried and tested Irish ingredients, freely available in any shop. Effectively it is an Irish Breakfast served as a tart. Pork sausages, bacon, tomatoes and a bit of mushroom for the more adventurous. Fry it all off a bit, toss it into a pastry case and drown it in beaten egg and milk. Rashers, Eggs, Sausages, Tomatoes – nothing wrong with that. Then grate lots of cheddar cheese on top and bake it in the oven.

Of course it was not considered a “dinner”. It occupied this strange culinary location in our cookbooks as a “supper dish”. In practical terms that usually meant you served it for tea, back in the days when tea was a meal, not a drink. If you had guests over for a “dinner party” this strange new fangled phenomenon of eating dinner at night, I suppose you needed strange foods, like quiche.

The 1970’s was a wonderful decade in Irish cuisine when people experimented with radical new foods. In addition to the Quiche we discovered Spaghetti Bolognese, Garlic Bread, American Cheesecake, Fried Chicken, the Chinese Takeaway and most exotic of all, Indian curry. Without stepping on a ferry we consumed our cosmopolitanism, we ingested globalism and digested continentalism. We ate our way into Europe. Salut!

Da Capo; by Jane Hirshfield

Take the used-up heart like a pebble
and throw it far out.

Soon there is nothing left.
Soon the last ripple exhausts itself
in the weeds.

Returning home, slice carrots, onions, celery.
Glaze them in oil before adding
the lentils, water, and herbs.

Then the roasted chestnuts, a little pepper, the salt.
Finish with goat cheese and parsley. Eat.

You may do this, I tell you, it is permitted.
Begin again the story of your life.

-=o0o=-

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Play U2 again SAM

The world teetered on the brink of nuclear war in 1962. U2 reconnaissance aircraft flying over Cuba identified the construction of a Soviet Russian missile site on the island. What followed was a near disaster for the planet as the Cubans, the USSR and the USA engaged in a Mexican Standoff that lasted from the 16th of October to the 20th of November.

Ultimately sense prevailed and the tension was diffused. Publicly the Russians withdrew their missiles from Cuba with a promise that the USA would not invade Cuba again. Privately the USA withdrew its missiles from Turkey.

A review of communications during the crisis resulted in the installation of a “Hotline” between Washington and the Kremlin to permit the premiers of each nation direct contact should a similar situation arise.

Ultimately the Cuban Missile Crisis resulted in only one combat casualty. Major Rudolf Anderson was flying a sortie in his U-2 over Cuba when he was shot down by a Russian supplied Surface to Air missile (SAM) on Oct 27th 1962. Eighteen other deaths of US airmen over Cuba were caused by air accidents.

An Irish Airman Foresees His Death; by W.B. Yeats

I know that I shall meet my fate
somewhere among the clouds above;
those that I fight I do not hate
those that I guard I do not love;
my country is Kiltartan Cross,
my countrymen Kiltartan’s poor,
no likely end could bring them loss
or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
nor public man, nor cheering crowds,
a lonely impulse of delight
drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
the years to come seemed waste of breath,
a waste of breath the years behind
in balance with this life, this death.

-=o0o=-

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Total Bullshit

There is nothing in the world more hypocritical than an Oil company advertising a cleaner, greener world. There is nothing more cynical than senior business executives telling the world that they have the ability to solve the problems they have created.

As COP26 prepares to “ratchet” up the carbon reduction pledges of the nations of the world there is a distinct smell of bullshit on the morning air. Politicians are firmly in bed with the CEOs of Global Multinationals and between them they have no intention of doing anything to upset the apple cart of big business.

The goal of business is to maximize long term shareholder value within the constraints of the law. Big Corporation CEOs will barely, just barely, operate within the confines of law. They will employ expensive law teams to challenge the bounds of the law at every limit. Expecting these people to voluntarily limit shareholder returns in pursuit of altruistic climate goals is nonsense. They will be sacked overnight.

It is the job of governments to make the laws that rein in the worst excesses of capitalism. Our politicians are failing to make those regulations. This is hardly a surprise because our politicians are bought by big business. They may position this otherwise, couching it it language that makes it seem like politicians act independently. History says otherwise. Large corporations can provide very large campaign funds to politicians. They can also provide big paycheques on the speaking circuit for retired politicians who played the game.

“Nothing has changed from previous years really. The leaders will say ‘we’ll do this and we’ll do this, and we will put our forces together and achieve this’, and then they will do nothing. Maybe some symbolic things and creative accounting and things that don’t really have a big impact. We can have as many COPs as we want, but nothing real will come out of it.” Greta Thunberg

“It’s really irritating when they talk, but they don’t do.” HRH Queen Elizabeth II

Australian PM Scott Morrison arrives to Glasgow waving a document called “The Australian Way” in which 30% of the abatement of emissions relies on technologies that have not yet been invented. He overtly states he wants to protect businesses. At least he is honest about that. Most politicians will not be so forthright. They will make all sorts of vague promises that they have no intention of keeping. Then they will play the finger pointing game “Unless China/USA/A.N.Other reduces emissions what is the point?”

The point is that the planet is burning to serve the next 5 years of political ambitions of our leaders. Evolution is failing. We need revolution. COP26 begins in Glasgow on Oct 31st.

-=o0o=-

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Beautiful Island

Today is a complex day for the Peoples Republic of China. On this day in 1895 the short lived Republic of Formosa was killed off and the people of Taiwan lost their independence. They had only declared that independence in May of the same year. The Qing Dynasty, defeated in war by the expansionist Japanese ceded the Island to Japan under the treaty of Shimonoseki. This signaled the end of the first Sino-Japanese War.

Formosa is a Portuguese word and Ilha Formosa became the standard European name for the island. It was colonized by the Spanish who were then ousted by the Dutch, who got into a row with the Ming Dynasty. It was the Dutch who brought large numbers of Chinese workers to the island to work their plantations. The Island was at times ruled by local warlords or Pirate captains, beyond control of any nation.

When the Japanese gained control of Taiwan and the Dalian peninsula (Port Arthur) from Qing China it upset the big European powers active in the region. A Triple Alliance of Russia, Germany and France forced them to return Dalian to China. These bully boy tactics by the Europeans resulted in the rise of the Japanese war party and created the aggressive expansionist dynamic that led to the humiliation of Russia at Tsushima in 1905 and the second Sino-Japanese War in 1937.

At the end of World War 2 following the defeat of the Japanese the Government of the Republic of China (ROC) relocated to Taiwan following their defeat by the Communist Peoples Republic of China (PRC). This is where things get interesting, because today the PRC say they have claim over Taiwan.

The Taiwanese contest this claim and say they were the Independent Republic of Formosa, and no longer part of China, once they were abandoned by the Qing dynasty. The Taiwanese present their independence under the ROC as a restoration of Formosa rather than a rump of China. It is their independence from the Japanese oppressors.

The Taiwanese signed the Treaty of Taipei securing peace between Japan and the ROC and securing Taiwanese independence in 1952. By 1972 the Japanese accepted that the ROC was no longer the power in China and they should have signed their treaty with the PRC. But the ROC still use the Treaty of Taipei as justification for their independence.

Although it existed for only five months the Republic of Formosa established an independent status for Taiwan, outside of the Qing Dynasty. Life for the PRC would be far easier had Formosa never declared independence.

Taiwan the Formosa; by John Jyi-giokk Ti’n

By Pacific’s western shore, beauteous isle, our green Taiwan.
Once suffered under alien rule, free at last to be its own.
Here’s the basis of our nation: four diverse groups in unity,
come to offer all their varied skills, for the good of all and a world at peace.

-=o0o=-

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Cork and all that Jazz

Back in 1977 Ireland got a new Bank Holiday on the last Monday in October. This was close to Hallowe’en. The Manager of the Metropole Hotel in Cork was Jim Mountjoy and he dreamed up a way to fill his hotel for the bank holiday weekend.

He formed a committee and secured sponsorship from John Player & Son’s Tobacco Company back in the days when tobacco companies were permitted to sponsor events. The inaugural Cork Jazz Festival was held in 1978.

I was 15 back in 1978 and I was more interested in Punk Rock than Jazz. Jazz was old peoples music. I was listening to the Boomtown Rats who were huge in Ireland at the time, releasing their first album in 1977 and Tonic for the Troops in 1978. Rat Trap kicked Grease off the UK No.1 singles chart in 1978, a huge achievement for an Irish band.

In 1978 a 15 year old could saunter into any newsagents and buy a ten pack of fags. Players navy cut would cut the lungs off you – no filters, but they were distributed by the sponsors of the Jazz Festival. Most people I knew preferred Major Extra Size because they had filters. You could buy “loosers” if you could not afford a full pack. I even heard of some newsagents who would take a razor blade to a cigarette and sell you half a Woodbine.

As I grew older I went on many October bank holiday breaks. Mostly hiking or walking trips. Some sailing. Many in West Cork. But for no particular reason I never made it to the City for the Jazz Weekend.

Over time my appreciation of Jazz has grown, which is not to say I like punk rock any less. But I guess it makes me old.

I now live in Cork and this year will be my first time to attend the Jazz Festival. We booked an indoor venue a couple of weeks ago, but the hotel cancelled on us due to Covid restrictions. So we plan to mount shanks mare and wander where the music takes us.

The Weary Blues; by Langston Hughes

Droning a drowsy syncopated tune,
rocking back and forth to a mellow croon,
I heard a Negro play.
down on Lenox Avenue the other night
by the pale dull pallor of an old gas light
he did a lazy sway . . .
he did a lazy sway . . .
to the tune o’ those Weary Blues.
With his ebony hands on each ivory key
he made that poor piano moan with melody.
O Blues!
Swaying to and fro on his rickety stool
he played that sad raggy tune like a musical fool.
Sweet Blues!
Coming from a black man’s soul.
O Blues!
In a deep song voice with a melancholy tone
I heard that Negro sing, that old piano moan—
“Ain’t got nobody in all this world,
ain’t got nobody but ma self.
I’s gwine to quit ma frownin’
and put ma troubles on the shelf.”

Thump, thump, thump, went his foot on the floor.
He played a few chords then he sang some more—
“I got the Weary Blues
and I can’t be satisfied.
Got the Weary Blues
and can’t be satisfied—
I ain’t happy no mo’
and I wish that I had died.”
And far into the night he crooned that tune.
The stars went out and so did the moon.
The singer stopped playing and went to bed
While the Weary Blues echoed through his head.
He slept like a rock or a man that’s dead.

-=o0o=-

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Passes an essential poet

The Marketing Society Christmas Lunch had some top notch guest speakers through the years. Dara Ó Briain was a big hit. Mario Rosenstock had us rolling laughing in our chairs, but none of them came close, not within furlongs, of the quality that was Brendan Kennelly.

Through the medium of poetry he took us to great heights and dropped us to despair faster than a rollercoaster. He rolled us from hot to cold and back again, made us laugh and weep. He did this using poems from ancient and modern times, all memorized in that brilliant brain and delivered in a natural and friendly manner as though each one of us was his best friend out for a pint in the local.

I count it a triumph that I heard him speak in person. Sadly today he has been taken from us and at last he can answer his own question because he is in a place which he knows now more than any of us alive today. He leaves us with a garden complete and filled with delights. Ar dheis Dé go raibh a h’anam dílis.

A Half-finished Garden; by Brendan Kennelly

Because her days were making a garden
she haunted that particular beach
drawing rocks, sticks, shells and stones,
random-pitched sea-gifts, over the years,
bog-oak, sculpted and twisted,
she lugged from the beach up to the garden
that was half-finished when she had to leave it
to go to a place of which I know nothing.

Here is the picture (I have nothing but pictures),
the sea helpless to govern its giving
through rumble and slither, bang, roar and hiss,
a house on a cliff-top with staring blue windows
and, work of the dead to pleasure the living,
a half-finished garden, epitaph, promise.

Marconi in Ireland

On this day, Oct 17th, in 1907 the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company began Transatlantic Broadcasting to Glace Bay in Nova Scotia, Canada from Clifden in Co. Galway on the West of Ireland.

It was not the first time Ireland was at the bleeding edge of communications technology. In 1863 two Prussians; Julius Reuter and William Siemens created the South-Western of Ireland Telegraph Company. They constructed a sixty mile line from Cork City to Crookhaven, an isolated tiny village in West Cork. Their idea was to link with the London Stock exchange via telegraph. At the last moment they could send messages from the London Stock Market via telegraph all the way to Crookhaven. There a small pilot boat would shoot out to sea with a box of messages and pass them up to an Ocean going steamer. Whoever received that information at the other end, again via an isolated pilot boat, had an advantage on the New York market.

The plan worked in the other direction. London brokers could make buy and sell decisions based on advanced information from the New York Stock Exchange long before the steamer docked in Southampton.

Were Messers Reuter and Siemens successful? You bet they were! The modern Reuters and Siemens companies were founded on that success.

The British & Irish Magnetic Telegraph Company built their own line from Cork City to Skibbereen, and out through Baltimore to Cape Clear Island. This gave them a jumping off point even closer to the liners.

This was followed by London & South of Ireland Direct Telegraph Company and the Universal Private Telegraph Company, from Queenstown, now Cobh in Cork. They piggybacked on the already constructed telegraph lines. West Cork was a hive of activity and fortunes were made by access to this information.

In the North of Ireland another cable was run out to Greencastle from Derry to catch the liners coming round the top bound for Scottish ports or Liverpool.

Eventually all these enterprises were replaced by undersea cables that spanned the Atlantic Valentia Island in County Kerry being the anchor for one end.

With the arrival of Marconi in 1907 there was a new way to communicate, Wireless. Marconi and Wireless became synonymous terms in Ireland of the 1950s and 60s.

Following the Second World War the nations of the world were rebuilding their shipping fleets. The Marconi Company was highly aggressive in market expansion. They provided signaling equipment for free to many fleets to establish themselves as the market leader in wireless operations. To operate the equipment they needed radio officers.

Ireland, for some reason, was a centre of excellence for Marconi recruitment. I read a hilarious article many years ago in the Irish Times about the recruitment pitch made by a Marconi recruiter in Kevin’s Street College of Science and Technology (now part of T.U. Dublin). On a dark, rainy day in Ireland the flamboyant recruiter waxed lyrical about the advantages of travelling the world with Marconi.

The leaflet above gives a sense of his start point, a smartly dressed navy officer operating complex radio equipment. Well paid for sure, but then the recruiter painted an even better picture.

First he spoke about how both the alcohol and tobacco were duty free. It was practically given away for free on board the ship. And while on board you did not spend your money. So you arrived in port with pockets full of cash, in countries where that cash went very far. Hot countries with blue skies and warm sun and beautiful girls. Sun so warm that those bright eyed, dark haired brown skinned girls wore hardly any clothes.

“All you need to do” he said, “is pass your exams”.

In the sexually repressed and impoverished Holy Catholic Ireland of the day he was preaching to the choir. One third of seagoing Marconi staff in the 1960s were Irish.

Radio Poem; by Berthold Brecht

You little box, held to me escaping
so that your valves should not break
carried from house to house to ship from sail to train,
so that my enemies might go on talking to me,
near my bed, to my pain
the last thing at night, the first thing in the morning,
of their victories and of my cares,
promise me not to go silent all of a sudden.

-=o0o=-

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Happy Birthday Virgil

Publius Vergilius Maro was born in Italy on Oct 15th 70BCE. He became a Roman in the year 49 when Julius Caesar expanded citizenship north of the Po river. His family then lost their land after the second civil war, displaced to make room for the Veterans of the armies of Octavian/Augustus.

Octavian subsequently became a Patron to Virgil, who went on to create the Julian Family myth and the Epic of Imperial Rome: The Aeneid, telling how Aeneas fled from the burning ruins of Troy to Italy where he was instrumental to the foundation of Rome.

Excerpt from 3rd Georgic; by Virgil (Trans. John Dryden)

Thus every Creature, and of every kind,
the secret joys of sweet coition find,
not only man’s imperial race; but they
that wing the liquid air, or swim the sea,
or haunt the desert, rush into the flame.

For Love is Lord of all; and is in all the same.
’Tis with this rage, the mother lion stung,
scours over the plain; regardless of her young:
demanding rites of love, she sternly stalks;
and hunts her lover in his lonely walks.

’Tis then the shapeless bear his den forsakes;
in woods and fields a wild destruction makes.
Boars whet their tusks; to battle tigers move;
enraged with hunger, more enraged with love.
Then woe to him, that in the desert Land
of Lybia travels, o’re the burning sand.
The stallion snuffs the well-known dcent afar;
and snorts and trembles for the distant mare:
nor bitts nor bridles, can his rage restrain;
and rugged rocks are interposed in vain.
He makes his way o’re mountains, and contemns
unruly torrents, and unfoorded streams.

The bristled boar, who feels the pleasing wound,
new grinds his arming tusks, and digs the ground.
The sleepy leacher shuts his little eyes;
about his churning chaps the frothy bubbles rise:
he rubs his sides against a tree; prepares
and hardens both his shoulders for the wars.

-=o0o=-

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Darwinian Team Design

Agile organizations need a jailbreak process to release resources for Waterfall deliveries.

You are a manager in an agile organization. You have spent a lot of time and energy building the agile flow and everything is working beautifully. Your client requirements are created by your business analysis team, they flow smoothly into product design, they are reviewed by Architecture, they are passed effortlessly into development, are tested and released. Your backlog is cleared out gracefully like watching a well played game of Tetris (yes you can detect the sarcasm here).

This Utopian idyll is then ravaged by a terrible enemy. Your company purchases a third party system, it is probably a multi-tenanted SaaS solution for Risk management, or FIX routing, a BI system or a HR plugin. The third party project team descend upon your peaceful Shire mounted on a Waterfall dragon breathing fire which evaporates your delicate workstreams.

In particular you need to release QA test resources from Agile teams to test the new system. The purchase contract gives you a fixed and limited window in which to test – that fire breathing dragon is booked elsewhere next month.

How do you structure your Agile organization to cope with these incidents? This is an example of why we always need slack in the system. Staff take annual leave, parental leave, they get sick. They also get pulled out of their Agile team for other projects.

I frequently see two problems in real life project delivery: fully committed resources and over-specialized resources.

The fully committed resources have no built in system slack to take on work from outside their backlog. Commitments have been given to customers/clients on release dates and any deviation from the schedule has severe knock-on effects. It is a system designed for a Utopian Idyll that does not exist. Things change, priorities shift, sometimes you need to insert a piece of work. You need some wiggle room in the system to cope with fire-breathing dragons.

Over-specialized resources often go hand in hand with fully committed resources. You have a single agile team that knows the Finance System. They know everything about the finance system and that is pretty much all they do. They are brilliant at what they do. But when they are fully maxed out finance work cannot move. They are under pressure to work extra time to clear the backlog while the team beside them jog gently along with a backlog only 80% full.

Any student of Darwin knows that highly specialized species can collapse when there is a change in the environment. The Agile environment benefits from a Darwinian design. Build your teams to be capable adaptable generalists instead of making them best of breed specialists. Push work to them even though you know they will not deliver as elegant a solution as the specialist team. Move your specialized resources between teams.

I welcome your thoughts on this challenge.

-=o0o=-

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€15 a pack

The Laffer curve is an economics graph which explains the impact of tax on revenue. Nowhere is this played out more clearly than in the Irish market for tobacco. When taxation is low incremental increases in tax are in the “region of increasing revenue”. If you put 50 cent on a pack of cigarettes the Revenue hoover up that 50 cent.

As the tax take rises you reach the revenue maximising point. Any further rises in tax push you into the “region of declining revenue”.

Anti-smoking activists like to celebrate this as winning the war on tobacco. The price becomes so high that smokers simply quit. In truth this is not what is happening. Yes people are smoking less, but this is mostly down to education around the damage smoking does to health. The tobacco industry fought a long and highly effective rearguard action to muddy the waters and delay the messages that smoking kills you.

More effective still was removing the allure of smoking which was created by some fantastic advertising through the years. Without the ads you lose the “cool” status of sucking burning tobacco smoke into your lungs.

In Ireland today there are 5 major players in the tobacco market; JTI, Imperial Tobacco, Philip Morris and BAT. The 5th is the market share held by those who don’t pay tax. As the tax rate rises the benefits from smuggling become ever more attractive.

Some smuggling is small scale and opportunistic. Travelers returning from abroad stocking up on cigarette cartons and selling them to friends. Then there are travelers who regularly arrive with a full suitcase of product which is sold in black markets.

Larger scale smuggling involves moving product in scale. Entire sections of containers are filled with cases of counterfeit product. This is distributed via door to door deliveries in some towns and city communities. Car boot sales and flea markets are also used to distribute the product in bulk. The gangs use the techniques of drug dealers to move the product. You pay one person and a separate person brings you the goods, often a child, who will not face jail if caught.

At the top end of the market are players who build their own cigarette factories. They import bulk tobacco, mostly from China. They purchase the papers, filters, cellophane, packaging etc on the open market. They source industrial scale cigarette manufacturing equipment from engineering companies. In every respect except one they are fully commercial tobacco companies. That one issue is they don’t pay tax.

Smugglers and counterfeiters now hold either the largest or second largest share of the Irish tobacco market. Today the budget raises the legal price of a 20 pack to €15. The criminal gangs are celebrating.