Man talk 26th July
They say every girls crazy bout a sharp dressed man - which may account for current turmoil in Greece and the reports that German chancellor Angela Merkyl was not a fan of the the Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis. Could Mrs M's disdain be down to Yanis lack of respect for that staple of the corporate business world, a shirt and tie. Throughout those long hours of the Greek bailout talks the European ministers remained sombrely suited and booted. Whilst across the table their Greek counterparts wore every business fashion faux par imaginable from open neck shirts and T shirts to leather jackets. ( if you could see under the table they were probably wearing shorts and flip flops as well!) and to add insult to injury instead of a limo The Greek finance minister arrived at the meetings on a motor bike with his wife on the back! It was the equivalent of Del Boy and his three wheeler turning up to negotiate the Uk's terms for remaining in the EU
Business has it's etiquette and a suit and tie combo is part of it, perhaps that's where the Greeks found it so difficult to convince everyone they were serious. I see the cool bravado dress sense of Richard Branson at work here. His approach to business dress might apply if your trying to get a boy band a record deal. But when your trying to persuade a hostile partner to lend you billions and billions of Euros. First rule is if you look sharp, at least people will think you mean business. The exception to this shirt and tie rule is of course Richard Branson. Like all those Greek temples there Casually dressed negotiating tactic has ended up in ruins. And it's back to the beach for Yanis. The Greeks have learned the hard way that the Virgin approach to business doesn't work for everyone, but I bet if you asked Richard Branson about business etiquette he'd tell you it's always been all Greek to him anyway.
It was sad day for Scottish national pride this week, when The chip shop who's claim to fame was that it was the birthplace of the deep fried mars bar was ordered to take down its sign. No wonder the scots want independence.
More Scottish news this week - There's a bridge in Dumbarton that has been dubbed the dog suicide bridge. It's claimed that over 500 dogs have gone their and then jumped off the bridge at Overtoun House. - probably because they couldn't get their deep fried mars bars - Bow wow wow!
Queue the music - I bet it It was like a geeky Top of the Pops countdown when the top 10 supercomputers in the world was revealed at a convention in Frankfurt last week. Straight in at number 1 was Tianhe2 from china. Imagine a computer literate Jeremy Clarkson reading out the stats and salivating over this bad boys performance figures. It can manage 33.86 petaflops per second yes you heard me a 'Petaflop' and in case you didnt know one petaflops is equal to one quadrillion equations which simplified again means it would take you or me 32000 years to do one quadrillion equations. Maybe it's rapture for computer nerds, but my brain hurts just thinking about it.
