Showing posts with label allegory. Show all posts
Showing posts with label allegory. Show all posts

Thursday, 4 April 2013

A Pint of Froth to Get Ahead

During the economic boom years of the sixties it became apparent that beer-drinking led to health problems, particularly amongst northerners. In the hope of reducing the cost to the health service, research began in the early seventies at Scamford University. There was little publicity at the time as academics were afraid of the power of the northern brewery unions.

Professor Aiam Di’Pindette led the research team which discovered that beer contains mood-changing alchemoids that produce feelings of well-being which in turn encourage further consumption, particularly amongst northerners. The breakthrough came in 1979 when the feel-good alchemoids were isolated by the research team from the less-desirable part of the beer.

It was at first proposed to publish the team’s findings as an academic paper. This had been the conventional pattern of university research work. Discoveries were rapidly published for all to read and academics would receive awards where their work was considered to be of great benefit. This traditional approach did not consider the commercial and economic potential of university research.

A group of public-spirited persons-of-independent-means had formed SCAMRA (Southern Counties Around Middlesex Royal Alchemy) as a self-help-group designed to enhance the natural-order-of-things. They were made aware of Professor Di’Pindette’s breakthrough and offered to finance further research into the commercial potential of his discovery.

It was found, after years of experiments and trials, that the alchemoids responsible for the sensations of well-being, worked best as a thin-film surrounding a bubble of air. If they were allowed to degenerate to the liquid phase of the beer they returned to the base material with all its socially-undesirable side-effects. For many years the research centred on chemicals that would stabilise and enhance the bubble-structure of the froth. This work slowly yielded results but the synthetic viscosifiers and film stabilisers were expensive.

The second great breakthrough in the work came about in 1995 when a young research-fellow from Newleybah sourced naturally-occurring chemicals that had similar properties to the best of the synthetics on trial. Tuht Kanuht was the young man’s name and it was his work that brought Professor Di’Pindette’s discovery to the stage where it could be assessed for commercial production.

The selfless public benefactors of SCAMRA had not been idle during this period of intense and highly-qualified enterprise. They had been able to persuade the lluddites of the northern brewery unions to amalgamate into one large and efficient union with its office in the southern counties. This allowed the delicate negotiations over the introduction of the New Beer to begin.

As the natural viscosity and stability agents had a shorter shelf-life than the expensive synthetic agents, they had to be brought to the production centres as fresh as possible. This meant air-freighting them from low-cost material suppliers in places like Colombia and Afghanistan. The lluddites had never built airports in the north so it was necessary to produce the New Beer in the southern counties.

SCAMRA had quietly explained to the important people that this would not be like a traditional old-style northern industry. As the largest ingredient was air, the New Beer breweries would be very clean and efficient with no pollution. The weight reduction achieved with the New Beer would eliminate the need for heavy-lifting. While there would be a very small influx of northerners to do certain specialised tasks, they would be carefully selected and trained.

The brewery union was told that the old breweries would remain open and a few of their cronies would be offered opportunities to train for jobs in the new southern froth industry. It was an exciting time in the southern counties. With the old heavy industries the making of exports had been something that was better suited to northerners. Now, thanks to a lot of hard and intelligent work, here was a clean product that was cheap and easy to make. It could be exported to foreign parts using the same logistical network that delivered our imports.

A few nay-sayers have talked of the betrayal of an ancient pact with the northerners but this is utter rot. Even if the traditional heavy-beer industry in the north were to collapse, the natural generosity of southerners would ensure that they didn’t starve. You cannot overlook the long-term health benefits to northerners of the New Beer. Every pint they consume will reduce the damage to their body as well as being lighter and easier to lift. The potential for sales to overseas-foreigners should not be under-estimated. With a lot of hard work they could make their own. Yet, should they get into the habit of buying from the enterprising people who have the know-how, it will bring money into the southern counties for many years to come. With our flair for marketing we have reason to be optimistic.

New Beer is the bright frothy future for socially-responsible class-conscious drinkers. Coming soon to a supermarket near you!

Bibliography

Di’Pindette, Aiam; An Inquiry into the Health of Nations; 2007; Scamford University Press, Scamford

Keynes, Markettown; Towards a Conclusion; 1966; Scamford University Press, Scamford

Snatcher, Denee; Like Taking Candy from a Baby; 1975; City Press Group, The City

© Louis Mair 2013

Wednesday, 11 July 2012

The Scenery Watchers

7th July 2012
Once upon a time, long ago and far away, there was a beautiful country with wonderful scenery. The people who lived there liked nothing better than to watch the scenery and they were called the Scenery Watchers.
Now you may think that that sounds very lazy and inefficient. But the Scenery Watchers believed that they were able to think of all kinds of good ideas purely because they took the time to stop work and look around them every now and again. And they were a very inventive people who gave the world some excellent ideas and clever inventions. They liked to give these things away because they feared that developing their ideas in their own country might damage the scenery and leave them worse off in the long run.
There came a time when some of the young Scenery Watchers wanted to turn some little-watched bits of scenery into factories to make electricity. This was agreed to, so long as the electricity was not allowed to accumulate and interfere with the scenery. Arrangements were made to give the electricity to the needy in another country and the scheme went ahead. For year after year the factories produced electricity and the electrical wires took it away so that it couldn’t spoil the view.

                                               Colonial Scotland, 25 miles from Aberdeen; 
                                                the DHL-Scenery-Tax-Free-Zone, as seen from 
                                                the DHL-Scenery-Tax-Zone.
But hard times came to the needy people who received the free electricity. They began to say what a big favour they were doing the Scenery Watchers. It soon came about that the Scenery Watchers began to pay the needy people for the excellent job that they were doing in preventing the scenery from being cluttered up with electricity. Little by little the Scenery Watchers came to feel that it was more important to work long hours so as to pay the needy people than it was to watch the scenery.
“So long as the scenery is still there we can watch it when we have more time,” they said. The harder they worked the less time they had and little by little they became less inventive and distinctive. Tourists still came to see the wonderful scenery but they began to see the Scenery Watchers as fools who did not know that they were living. “If the Scenery Watchers do not appreciate the value of electricity,” said the tourists “then they won’t miss a few oilfields and military bases.”
The tourists began to stay and set themselves up as the masters of the beautiful land. The Scenery Watchers had failed to see themselves and they became servants in their own house.
© Louis Mair 2012