Colonialism is Alive and Well

‘Sierra Leoneans have no work ethic’ he generalises, knocking back the country’s average daily wage worth of spirits with a deft flick of the rest. Meanwhile,  tired locals pass by selling the same wares they were hawking 12 hours ago in the burning hot sun. The man has taken great personal offence at his housekeeper’s temerity in tending to one of her orphaned siblings on a work day, and has deducted her wages accordingly.

I soon establish that the man is one of almost 100 McKinsey consultants working, alongside two other international consultancies, on the Ebola recovery project.  A firm famed for telling its clients to fire people makes an interesting choice of advisor for a country where diamonds are easier to come by than stable incomes. With even the most junior McKinsey staff being paid a good $10,000 a month, it feels to me like Sierra Leone needs McKinsey like it needs another outbreak of Ebola.

The aid model has gone through various stages and, whilst there is almost unanimous agreement that all the previous approaches didn’t work, everyone continues to insist, like a gambler down to his last chip, that ‘this one here’s a good ‘un’. But whilst indiscriminately funneling millions of dollars to humans rights abusers like Mobutu was clearly wrong, that doesn’t make channeling it through hugely profitable western corporations (or, David Cameron, funding ‘moderate Jihadis’) any more right. In the 70s you just had to be on the right side of the cold war divide; today you have to buy into the West’s insatiable appetite for consumerism. Different criteria, but those setting the agenda are the same.

The last 40 years of aid have been a complete failure... but this time it might just work for us!

Ultimately, the whole ‘International Development’ complex is built upon the whole predicate that westerners know how countries should develop, and that these countries cannot be trusted to lead their own development. If they could be trusted, we could all just save whole outlay on expensive consultants and white Toyota land cruisers, and just give the money straight to the poor. Because, if we’re being honest with ourselves, a slum dweller in Burkina Faso probably know a lot more about what poor people want and need than a rich consultant from Frankfurt, no matter how many degrees the latter has*.

Unfortunately, this is not the case: in the worst cases, beneficiaries are made to jump through more hoops than a circus performer, just to be in with a shot at actually receiving any material benefit. I have met many business owners who have told me how they have received ‘business training’ from a parade of different NGOs (sometimes verging on double figures); we’ve done income and expenses until we’re blue in the face, they tell me. We get that, but what we need is the capital to replace our broken machinery.

“What’s that, you need money for food? Hold on while I teach you about Neoliberalism”

It’s not that I doubt the good intentions of most expats (expat is what you call an immigrant who is white); King Leopold probably thought he was doing the right thing by civilising the Congo.  But good intentions only get you so far. If I’m working hard to solve a problem, and some-one comes and tells me I’m doing it wrong, and I should just do like they’re doing, my first reaction is to tell them to where to stick it. The point isn’t who’s right or not, it’s that often comes across patronising and demeaning to go around telling strangers that their methods are inferior to yours.

Imagine now that everything you do, your whole way of life, is subject to this condescending judgement. Imagine a group of people, all of whom incidentally have a very different outward appearance from you, constantly telling you that your way of life is primitive and backward, whilst handing out suggestions on how you can be as amazing as them. This would be bad enough if they had a good case, but when the lecturers in question are facing crises of economic stagnation, inequality, critical global warming, and growing depression, it becomes an unfunny joke.

Largely these third world Jerry Springers fall into two categories, both of whom can agree that the entire continent is a den of savages who, if left to their own devices, would be hurling shit at each other and rubbing sticks together to make fire; one believes that the way to salvation is that of the lord Jesus Christ (somehow the colonists weren’t quite thorough enough in their systematic indoctrination), the other a course of ‘market based reforms’.

Somehow, despite the former tend to be let their views be more clear: ‘they are evil; they eat their own children!’ ‘they worship the devil!’ etc; they decry their tribalism, ignoring the fact that most tribes were living in far more harmony than the cities and nations of europe before colonialists came a divided societies along tribal lines.

But, despite have seen more than enough poverty stricken individuals place 10% of their measly earnings into tithe envelopes (one preacher called all the unemployed in the church to the front and prayed for them, telling them to give the first fruits of  their labour to the pastor) and the disgusting scene of an american preacher telling a stadium of entranced listeners that God had spoken to him and told him all their ills will be magically healed if they would only put more financial faith in Him, the neoliberalists somehow manage to be more insidious; the loony Christians are clearly a joke, but these guys, quite literally, mean business.

“What’s that, you need money for food? Hold on while I teach you about Neoliberalism”

- Unidentified INGO big-shot

And if going around inflicting the living nightmare that is Quickbooks Pro on every small business that suffers the misfortune of coming to an NGO looking for funding is not rubbing enough salt into the wounds, there is the whole issue of appearances. It would not be an overstatement to say that, at least in some countries, the average expat working for an international NGO earns at least 50 times the average wage. And it’s not like they try and fit in, either; some of the eating spots frequented by said NGO workers are so out of reach of the average population they may as well have a sign saying Whites & Politicians Only; and, given their general reluctance to actually venture into the slums and general living areas of the people whose lives they should really be trying to understand, the clearest glimpse most people get of these people is through the tinted windows of their shiny 4x4s as they shield their passengers from the baying hordes outside. Humans are not rational being it doesn’t matter whether someone is here to help, ostentatious displays of wealth can be galling, especially if such wealth shows no tangible signs of trickling down to the man on the street.

The developing world represents potentially our greatest chance of salvation; billions of people with the opportunity to do it over, to come up with a new and unique model of development, of doing business. Unfortunately, a select group of people -mostly white power brokers and the corrupt but ultimately placatable cronies that wield power in the target countries, like  some sort of middle management - have too much of a personal interest in trying to make every country in the developing world a shitty version of ‘the West’ - complete with primark t-shirts, premier league football and candy crush - to let them go their own way.

A free t-shirt goes a long way… to destroying local industry and enforcing western cultural stereotypes.

My Capitalism is Bigger than Yours

‘Less regulation, more privatisation!’ my colleague exhorts, foaming at the mouth. I reach into my bag, frantically feeling around for an effective projectile.  All I can find is a copy of the communist manifesto, which really lacks sufficient heft. Where is Das Kapital when you need it?

Whilst not every proponent of neo-liberalism voices their views with the vehement verve of a robotic Richard Simmons, the general, and often unspoken, devotion to this norm is prevalent far beyond the corporate sphere. Nowhere more so than in the world of international development, where previously mild mannered idealists become free market exponents purely through a lack of imagination.

A likeness of my capitalist colleagues.

But the best evidence against the implicit raison d’etre of many of the biggest NGOs is right under their noses, they just need to look at their clients to see the folly of the capitalist creed. Take Sierra Leone, the country that tried and failed to make eating children’s hearts cool.

Since, in 1961, the British decided their cute little colony was ready for the big wide world and released it, bright eyed and bushy tailed, into the realm of independence, Sierra Leone has suffered under the yolk of a farcical parade of military coups and corrupt dictatorships, none of which has had strong regulation or infrastructure as a particular priority. A cynical person might say that some of them were more motivated by money than by the good of their people.

In fact, the successive governments of Sierra Leone have given about as much attention to oversight and regulation as the British government has given to monsoon mitigation. Any semblance of property or employee laws, intellectual property rights or environmental standards  hold no real way in practise. Tax rates can be negotiated with the tax authority, land rights generally come down to who pays the most, and any laws that are written down are riddled with spelling and numerical errors and unlikely to be taken seriously. An officer at the Ministry of Labour laughed heartily when I told him I wanted to operate in accordance with employee laws. ‘Sir,’ he said, gathering himself together, ‘If everyone followed all the rules in this document, there wouldn’t be any businesses left.’ He then wiped his face with a $100 bill and excused himself, presumably attending to his sex-weary concubines*.

The upshot is that, historically, businesses have been able to do as they please, provided they have money to grease the cogs along the way. Building on someone else’s land? Want to tear town protected forest? Nothing that has proved much of an impediment in the past; money talks here. Before you know it, you end up with an ecosystem where thousands of workers are paid below the minimum wage (the choice is between that or nothing), businesses save costs by driving 30 year old cars that spew poisonous black gases toward flocks of pedestrians too poor to afford transport and the transport system is operated entirely by 20 somethings who wear sunglasses at night and call themselves things like ‘Mr. International’.  This is a place where you have to pay a bribe just to report a bribe to the police, and homeless child labourers ask not ‘please, sir, can I have some more?’ but ‘please, sir, can I have some?’

Not only has Sierra Leone let its (weak and ailing) private sector take over all the essential functions of the country, but it has long since sold off the rights to its minerals and mines to foreign contractors; they have killed the goose, feasted on its innards, and then starved while the foreign multinationals dine out on its golden eggs.

Amidst these squalid free for all, the only wonder is that Sierra Leoneans are asked to pay taxes in the first place; given that the national tax authority’s buildings are about the only physical evidence of taxpayer money being spent, it begs the question: are they paying taxes solely to fund the collection of more taxes?

So for those who espouse more free-markets, less state involvement and less regulation; which really adheres more to you capitalist ideal; the United States, with its public health systems, massive investment in university and state research funding, and its network of national parks, or Sierra Leone, the country where mothers sell their children to witch doctors whilst their husbands buy underage girls at a dollar an hour? And which would you rather live in?


*This may sound silly but two officers at another government ministry introduced a quiet and shaken looking young secretary to me as ‘Comfort’. ‘That’s a nice name, I told her’; the officers laughed loudly, ‘that is; she’s our comfort’. Cunts.

Pursuit Training

‘Go on. You wouldn’t be the first client I’ve screwed today.’

Another reader writes in: ‘Our firm has recently set up a series of workshops under the banner of ‘Pursuit’ training’, in an attempt to help us cross-sell our different services to ‘potentially receptive’ clients (The business parlance for such clients is ‘pinatas’).’

These workshops range from ‘Starting the conversation’ to ‘Making an offer they can’t refuse: the Don Corleon guide to Networking’ and ‘Sealing the Deal: Waterboarding your clients for Increased Revenues’.

One of these sessions encouraged junior employees to prepare ‘elevator pitches’ which they could then spring on unsuspecting victims on 'elevators, subways or even nightclubs'. This link was provided as an example of model pitches:

http://yourpersonalbrandname.com/elevator-pitch-examples/

Where the fuck to start with this cornucopia of corporate bullshit? Unfortunately it appears the art of the business card introduction is dead, which is a shame because at least business cards can be used to provide sustenance in a survival type situation. Instead, we are now being trained in how to verbally assault unsuspecting targets as if we were Nigel Farage being let loose at a human rights convention.

Take the first example on the link provided; if I had the misfortune of sharing an elevator with Simon King, and he attacked me with his pre-prepared 257 word soliloquy, he would get as about far as informing me about his ‘excellent track record in achieving agreed profit improvement objectives’ before he finds his ‘WOW factor’ has been forcibly jammed so far up his anus that shit starts spewing out of his ears. ‘Simon King,’ the reader opines, ‘you are dead to me. Just like my brother was when he killed Mewtwo and then saved the game on my old Pokemon Blue’. Well said, reader.

Simon King - this is how you make me feel.

‘My accounting firm has a solid track record of balancing books.’ Fantastic, considering that virtually every single accountancy system in existence will prevent you from creating accounts which do not balance. This is not an achievement, more an absolute minimum standard. An accountant who cannot balance his books is about as much use as a leaky condom in an Asian whorehouse. ‘...We are virtually error-free’ he goes on. Perfect... if my business is looking to ‘more or less’ increase revenues.

And if your elevator pitch opens with ‘I met someone at a party recently who was in so much debt he was having trouble paying his monthly bills.’ Before explaining that ‘as a result of my free in-home consultation I was able to consolidate their debt’, my immediate thoughts are not ‘Oh yes, you sound like someone I want to hire’, but 1) What the fuck kind of parties do you go to? And 2) What sort of dickwanker goes to a party only to advise people on restructuring their personal debt?

Anyone who steps into an elevator, turns to me and says ‘let me tell you how great I am’ can quite honestly go to hell. If you primarily see the elevator as an opportunity to shake other people down for money, I can almost guarantee that knowing you would make my life more miserable. And for God’s sake, if you you think ‘moving drums and climbing ladders’ entitles you to introduce yourself as ‘the Willy Wonka of Chemistry’, I hope you get blended into a smoothie and shat out into a sewer in Shoreditch.

Busy Season Tips

It’s just a shame creativity and individuality are diametrically opposed to being a good corporate employee.

To understand the major accountancy firms’ relationship with ‘work-life balance’ try to imagine the relationship the Yorkshire ripper might have with women’s rights if he joined the WI and then forcibly sodomised its members with a 12 inch dildo bought using his Ann Summers card.

To demonstrate this point, a reader recently supplied me with a series of unsolicited busy season ‘tips’ sent round to all members of staff in his office on how to maintain a healthy work life balance. Ranging from the blinding obvious (‘an absence of fear or insecurity isn't happiness: It's just an absence of fear or insecurity’) to the cripplingly patronising (‘a positive mind makes you more productive’) and from the utterly incomprehensible (‘When you speak with more finality than foundation, people may hear you but they don't listen’) to the mindless cliches (‘Don't let your fears hold you back…Today is the most precious asset you have’), these cringe worthy nuggets of advice were, surprisingly, not the words of Barney the Dinosaur, nor of Paul McKenna. They were, he tells me, ‘the duplicitous oeuvre of a manager who thought nothing of keeping me in the office until 3.30am on consecutive days, having worked through my lunches, to perform work some staggeringly pointless that it never made it anywhere near the final file.’

‘Having to dig out and read through these memos’, the contributor continues, ‘felt like being forced to trawl through the family photo book for that childhood picture of yourself smiling to the camera with your balls tucked between your legs pretending you’re a girl.’ He added that, after forwarding on the offending emails, he deleted them from his inbox, erased all backups and thrown his laptop into an industrial incinerator, to avoid any future pain arising from accidentally stumbling across them while trawling his inbox for swimsuit season fashion tips.

Busy Season Tips: Conversation Starters

The apex of condescension comes in the form of an email entitled ‘Busy season tips: Conversation starters’ which is useful because, presumably, her colleagues are so socially inept they couldn’t talk a donkey’s arse into taking a shit. The offending manager goes on to drop pearls of wisdom like she’s an unmanned US drone indiscriminately dropping bombs on Aleppo. Bring on the rhymes:

‘Why not scan Google News right before you go anywhere where you might need to

make small talk?’

A quick perusal of today’s top Google news headlines show me that ‘Iraq hangs dozens for Isil's 2014 Speicher massacre’,‘Suicide bomber at Turkish wedding was boy aged 12-14’, and a ’Huge fire tears through secondary school; explosions heard’. Luckily I have a client meeting tomorrow with someone who someone who has previously told me that his personal hero is Douglas Carswell (the first Member of Parliament for the UK Independence Party). I can’t wait to find out what his nuanced views are on the indoctrination of children by Jihadist extremists.

‘Ask getting-to-know-you questions. [For example,] “What internet sites do you visit regularly?"

...These questions often reveal a hidden passion, which can make for great conversation.’

I’m sorry, but neither myself nor my client care about which internet sites I visit regularly and nor, I dare say, would either want to share that information with each other.  While I suspect that my client’s Financial Controller is a frequent poster on 4chan’s /b/ board, I am quite happy for that thought to remain unconfirmed.

‘If he makes a joke, even if it’s not very funny, try to laugh. If she offers some surprising information (“Did you know that the Harry Potter series have sold more than 450 million copies?”), react with surprise!’

If my client, apropos of nothing, told me that the Harry Potter books had sold more than 450 million copies, I think the most surprise I would physically be able to muster without injecting adrenaline into my arm would be manifest itself in the response ‘are you taking the fucking piss?’

‘Ask open questions that can’t be answered with a single word. For example, if you ask, “Where are you from?” an interesting follow-up question might be, “What would life be like for you at the moment if you still lived there?”

Given that my half of my clients come from the same place they are currently living, and most of the others have transferred from their native country via some faceless and homogenised multinational recently enough that they can still answer with some incredulity ‘exactly the fucking same as it was when I left’, this only really leaves those who have come to this country to escape war/famine/discrimination in their country of origin. For the sake of poking the wounds of forgotten childhood trauma, I think I’ll pass on this one.

~

Busy Season Tips: Coping with Stress

In the long awaited sequel to ‘Conversation starters’, our favourite tipster goes on to bust out home truths quicker than Biggie can bust rhymes. This is from her next hit, ‘Coping with stress’:

‘Look for unexpected surprises such as ‘my sunny office window’ or ‘cool work friends to have lunch with.’

1. Accountants don’t have cool work friends. It’s an oxymoron. 2.  Accountants don’t get to take lunch during busy season. 3. You sit in the same fucking place every day, the only way you office window could be an unexpected surprise if your eyes have been glued to the screen since the day you walked in the door and 4. For God’s sake don’t end a sentence a proposition with. Did people in this industry even go to school?

‘Challenge yourself to take a risk each day, whether it’s talking to someone new, asserting

yourself, trusting someone, setting a tough workout goal or anything that pushes you

out of your comfort zone.’

None of these examples are taking a risk in any meaningful sense of the word, unless you are the sort of person who considers choosing a different brand of wheat bran as being a potentially life changing step into the unknown. And no-one but an accountant would describe ‘talking to someone new’ as being ‘out of their comfort zone’.

‘Recite at least 10 reasons why you’re grateful for your job’

Okay, this one’s easy. Simply describe the 10 most spectacular and cathartic ways you can announce your resignation. Bonus points for publicly humiliating your bosses in the process.

~

Ultimately, your employer only has an interest in your work life balance up to a point. As much as they give lip service to the idea of a happy, enlightened work force, the truth is that the more happy & enlightened people become, the more they realise that a corporate office career provides an equivalent level of sustenance for your spiritual and moral well-being as a diet consisting solely of shoes would for your physical health.

Jumping off a first storey window over and over. A metaphor for the corporate life. (Incidentally, next time anyone claims that American comedy is even on a par with British comedy, show them this sketch)

A few months after these tips were published, an overworked junior employee the firm’s London office killed himself. In response, HR sent staff a video of a frog to explain the concept of work-life balance.

PwC's A Day in the life

If everyday is different, how can you have such a thing as a typical day?

In many ways, my ambitions were typical of any self respecting teenager. It wasn’t until one fateful day, while being herded into a recruitment fair like cattle soon to be made into gourmet pork sausages, that I threw aside my ambitions of a cushty life as trade union leader and decided that I’d be better off fighting the machine from the inside.

Whether it was the blonde from HR telling me about the work-life balance or the jacked rugby player telling me what a great firm this is for which to work, I fell for it. This firm is different from the others, they said. Every day is different, they said.

First day on the job; girl from HR has left on maternity leave (she won’t be coming back). The corporate social responsibility programmes turn out to be a metaphor (for what? Don’t ask), extracurricular means drinking cheap beers in the office kitchen with people you regularly fantasize about mowing down with a AK47, and every fucking day consists of the same old tired shit. Same food, same pointless checklists, same mind-numbing fucking spreadsheets.

Helpfully, PwC have agreed to help demonstrate my point by allowing a team of Marxist computer hackers to infiltrate their website with cleverly worded parody pitches, in which 20 identikit employees describe their ‘typical days’ (tldr; their days all follow the same pattern of commuting, catch-up meetings, and chasing the clients for deliverables):

http://www.pwc.com/us/en/careers/campus/why-pwc/day-in-the-life.html

Any self respecting marketer knows that the first pitch is crucial. You have to sell the pitch from the word go.

“If you choose public accounting, it is a fast paced environment where no two days are ever the same and there can be last minute changes in a schedule or plan.” (Katy)

“My favorite projects usually involve me performing both detailed analyses and completing high-level deliverables.” (Matthew)

“I love being able to assist my clients in achieving their business and operational goals in the most tax efficient manner and assisting them during the implementing stage.” (Liz)

Wow. Sign me up.

Then we have Christina, who has used the feature to send out a subtly worded plea for rescue from the corporate cult. Christina believes that PwC letting her eat lunch at her desk actually HELPS her to achieve a better work-life balance:

“I generally eat lunch at my desk – a choice I make to help me leave the client at a reasonable time, let my dog out of her crate, and spend time with my family. Many of my team members choose to do the same, and I believe it contributes to our own personal work/life balance.”

Unfortunately, Christina’s work life balance resembles a see saw with an African elephant perched on one end. She can’t help having a cheeky sneek at all those oh-so-urgent work emails before she climbs into her cozy bed, in order to build of the energy for another exciting day in Risk Assurance.

“Following dinner, I ... continue working before bed.”

We also have Ryan, who is part man, part machine. Ryan’s favourite part of the day is lunch, because ‘it is a great time to develop relationships with my teammates’. Being a cyborg, Ryan doesn’t need to chill, hang out, or chat with friends. He build relationships. All day, every day. Ryan’s other interests include entering into relationships with vulnerable old ladies so that he can claim their inheritance money.

Max, meanwhile, like to start off the day with a workout because ‘You never know what the rest of the day will throw at you!’. What this means is that Max will be in the office at midnight eating a Chinese takeaway, thus restricting his only possible workout time to the early morning.

The award however, for most dedicated worker bee must surely go to Liz, who uses her 7am commute as an opportunity to ‘to catch up on work’. Jesus, the day is only just fucking begun, how much work can you possibly have to catch up on?

After a full on morning without any meaningful social contact, lunch is a welcome respite, which allows Liz to ‘catch up with my co-workers.’ Presumably on work related matters.

After an afternoon spent catching-up with, at various points, her junior, her manager, her client, a tax specialist, and the audit team, she gets the bus back home. I wonder what she does on this journey? ‘I use this time to catch up on work’ she says. Of course, wouldn’t want you to have missed anything.

Presumably Liz eats when she arrives back home, but obviously this is not a priority she cares to mention. So what does she do in the evening?

“I generally check email in the evening to see if anything urgent came up and check my calendar for meetings that I have the next day.”

Of course, Liz. Just in case anything important came through between checking your emails on the way home and you actually getting home.

Intrigued by whether this meaningless drivel was written by actual people, or simply outsourced to a delivery centre in India which churns them out at 10p per testimonial, I picked up a copy of one of our local publications. Sure enough, I opened up the magazine to find the banner of one of the ‘Big 4’ accounting firms draped over the heavily photo-shopped pictures of two beaming young graduates (predictably, one was a rugby player, the other was a rather photogenic blonde)

‘Whether it’s working directly with clients or conducting field-work, every day bring new challenges and experiences in the assurance department’

Says the rugby player. When I managed to get in touch with said individual, he decline to comment, noting that he’d been stuck on the same risk assessment analytic he’d being doing for four days now, and he didn’t have the time to answer questions.

So I tried the blonde. When asked what advice she would give to graduates looking for employment, she had casually responded with

‘Chat with those who are already in the role you’re considering by attending the career fairs and recruitment events. Events like [Big 4 firm’s] informal recruitment drinks at [generic mid-priced eatery] at 5.30pm on 18th April. No registration required. It’s your chance to find out everything about building your career and life experiences with us.’

Just rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it? Disappointingly, on getting in touch with the girl featured, it turns out the truth was rather mundane. See, this is how it works – you get approached by the marketing team with some generic questions, they vet (rewrite) your answers and if you’re lucky they’ll run it by you on their way to the publishers. Of course! If anyone has drunk the kool aid enough to actually believe this shit, it is the marketing departments.

And this isn’t the worst of it. Delving deeper into the murky world of accounting firm testimonials, I’ve come across people who have been surprised to see their face in publications, giving answers to questions they were never asked!

Yet, depressingly, it seems to work. Each year, more and more people step onto the corporate conveyor belt to have their individuality savagely beaten out of them. And every year, the legally dubious ‘Day in the Life’ articles are regurgitated and rammed down the throats of graduates who could have otherwise done something useful with their life.

So finally, a word of warning to all you corporate minotaurs out there: while you may think it’s harmless to puff your chest out and tell that cute young graduate how you ‘help oil the cogs of capitalism’ or that ‘every day is a new challenge which I have to rise to’, it is not. These type of talk has very real repercussions. There are people out here who, in the dog eat dog world of the 21st century, will lap this crap up like a cat that hasn’t seen milk for a month. And for each and graduate to whom you tell these lies who subsequently enters the labyrinth, you are directly responsible for the moral death of another human being’s soul. You are directly responsible for the death of that human being’s dreams, aspirations, and sense of self worth. For every person who decides not to pursue a career as a doctor, a nurse, an aid worker, or a policeman, and chooses to become a lawyer or a bankers or an accountant, you have blood on your hands. So fuck you. As far as the corporate life goes, every day is not fucking different, it’s is the same fucking shit every single day until you finally muster up the courage to gouge out your eyeballs with a rusty fork you found under the vending machine and end the naseauting tedium of being reminded every single day of what a pathetic social parasite you have become.

Corporate Superheroes - (Ironman Part 2)

At a spritely six o’clock the next morning, I disembark a shuttle bus along with forty shaven headed (it’s for aerodynamics, clearly) middle aged white men, and a smattering of youths and females confused as to why the number 7 has seemingly transported them back to 1984. My are led out onto a field filled with hoards of lycra-clad figures bonfiring hundred euro bills in offerings to the cycling gods. 

I muse to another competitor that cycling seems to be the new golf. He gives me a stern look. ‘This is different, this is so much more inclusive’ he replies, presumably speaking on behalf of the other 82% of the competitors who are both white and male.

In an attempt to lighten the mood somewhat, so I turn to a man with a beer belly and some form of serious genital swelling beneath his cycle shorts. He is dressed as the Human Fly. ‘The year 3000 called, they want their space suit back’ I jest. He lowers his visor and looks at me, presumably zapping me with some form of mind control powers. Luckily, no obvious side effects were forth-coming.

We finally get round to starting the race and, as I join the herds being cattle-prodded toward the start line, I overhear an interesting conversation. ‘I do hate when people pull over to go to the toilet.’ Complains competitor one. ‘I peed myself three times last year’. ‘Three? That’s nothing,’ responds number two; ‘I went five times in my last race… and that was just on the bike!’ I begin to wonder if I am baddass enough for Ironman. 

My fears are misplaced. It turns out that the Ironman is basically a really long cycle ride bookended by a paltry swim and a jog. The jog, it transpires, neatly manages to last around the same amount of time that most MAMILs take to describe how their bike’s performance over the preceding cycle. 

One man’s wife and children cheer him on from the sidelines with a homemade placard, as we race through a small village. ‘We love you!’ they cry out. ‘I love you too’ he purrs, stroking the shaft of his bike frame. 

I trot round the run course sure footedly, eschewing the Powerbar aid stations for the snickers bars I had stashed in my pockets earlier. ‘See, money can’t buy you this sort of achievement’ wheezes Fly man, as we head round the final lap. ‘I spent €3,000 on my bike but in the end, that’s not what matters. It all comes down to you,’ he says, without a hint of irony in his voice. ‘Sure,’ I think to myself. Money may not be able to buy you a winner’s medal, but it does buy you race entry, luxury training camps in the Algarve, time off work and padded bike seats that massage your glutes while you pedal. The final straight I occupy myself my thinking of the funniest line I could say whilst crossing the approaching finish line. 

‘Allah Akbhar’ I bellow as I cross the line, but my exhortations are drowned out by the sound of 2,000 grown men masturbating furiously over their bicycles.

They've bloody done it! (Ironman Part 1)

From the generation that brought you the housing crisis, the mortgage meltdown, the financial crisis & the destruction of global warming comes… Ironman.

As I arrive at the registration venue, a chirpy young girl dressed in bright yellow and plastered with Powerbar logos runs out to me and thrusts an energy bar into my hand. ‘It’s Isotonic’ she says. I look back at her blankly. ‘It’ll give you that winning feeling on race day’. I nod obligingly. Apparently Powerbar were attendees at the PwC school of indoctrination.

Soldiering on through the maze of overpriced sporting goods being flogged, I wind myself toward the registration desk whilst valiantly trying to averting the glares of the corporate vultures looking to fleece me out of more money, as if the €300 entrance fee wasn’t enough. An obsequious young man with slicked back hair and a smile that says ‘I’ve done more push ups than you today’ beckons me toward various fluorescent concoctions he has waiting for me, but I politely decline his offer. Not after Jonestown.

Some hours later, and I am within touching distance of the pearly gates of the registration desk. Only one man obstructs my passage; his passport says Kuwait, and I assume from his expensive looking clothing that the West’s deadly dependence on Middle Eastern fossil fuels has had a significant role in bringing him to Ireland.
‘Is this your first ironman?’ the naive young girl asks him, while his partner looks deferentially at the floor. ‘Of course!’ the man barks back. ‘...I love Ironman, I do every one’ he continues, adopting a more reconciliatory tone. The girl nods meekly before making the mistake of looking up at the Sheik. He fixes her gaze with narrowed eyes. ‘Every. One’.

The journey back out of registration is an treacherous as the journey in. I am reminded how, when climbing Mount Everest, you are more likely to die on the descent than in actually climbing the damn thing. 

I stop to ponder the need anyone could have for one of the ‘reduced price’ €100 pairs of running socks dangling across the thoroughfare. Before I have time to complete my train of thought, I have an unsolicited answer. ‘Compression socks’ the sales rep interjects, smugly. Ah, of course. I’m beginning to hope this is some some of test, whereby anybody stupid enough to buy said socks is rounded up and shipped off to be used as target practice in Syria on the basis that Mammon worship has turned their brains into useless goo. 
‘No thanks, I’m fine with these’ I say, pointing the worn old Adidas socks poking through the holes in my trainers. ‘Oh no, you cannot run in those’ he retorts, seemingly offended by the sheer notion of it. ‘I’m pretty sure people have been running just fine for hundreds of years without -’ I start, before realising the futility of my attempts. Pick your battles, I remind myself, before abandoning the sales rep, presumably to the red-hot gates of Hades where he belongs.

Having navigated what will soon turn out to be the most arduous challenge of the weekend, I take my registration bag and head off in search of somewhere I can find a cheap sandwich and a hot chocolate, and return to my book on urban guerilla warfare. I’m starting to feel like some of its pointers may come in useful over this weekend. ‘Don’t forget to Carb up’ someone shouts at me as I leave the Ironman Marquee and return to the real world. Luckily for me, there are plenty of carbs in hot chocolate.

After mistakenly choosing to have my fill of liquid carbohydrates at a toilet-less eatery, I head into the city centre to satiate my now pressing desire to go to the toilet. Unfortunately, as anyone who has been to a major Western city in the last few years has found, public toilets are becoming something of a dying breed. And apparently Dubliners are not satisfied with simply forcing you to buy something to use a toilet, so they’ve gone ahead and put codes on the doors, thwarting my attempts for a sneaky piss in a starbucks. The gormless drone behind the counter tells me that the code can only be released to paying customers. When I explain that I just need to use the toilet and will be finished in no time, she rebukes me for failing to contribute to the nation’s stagnating GDP growth.
‘You’re the reason interest rates are at all time lows!’ She hollers at me, as I am whisked out the door by the four horseman of the apocalypse.

Haggard and dispirited, I find a deserted back-alleyway where I can relieve myself. ‘The spirit of James Joyce lives on’ I chuckle, my wistful remarks being carried off into the cool night’s breeze by the tumultuous winds of change.

I go in search for bench, or indeed any edifice sufficiently accommodating to my weary buttocks, on which I can sit and watch the world go by, or read up on the latest techniques for forging homemade Molotov cocktails, but alas, my search is in vain. Sitting is clearly not economically productive enough for our corporate overlords and city planners, so it seems my only option for seating is to succumb to the machine and pay for a seat at an overpriced eatery. Filled with revolutionary zeal, I march defiantly back to my hostel, lamenting to some faceless deity in the sky; ‘they’ve done, they’ve bloody done it! They’ve only gone and commercialised sitting down! First it was running, then it was pissing, now they’re fucking charging us to sit!’