a fairy story
Once upon a time there was a newspaper.
We will call it the Lootheramawn.
It was owned by some little old ladies.
Hello, little old ladies, hello.
The little old ladies were very old.
So they called in a pig to run the newspaper for them.
The pig was a gutty Dublin lawyer.
He ran things for a while.
One day he thought to himself: It would be a lot more fun owning a newspaper than working for it.
He devised a plan.
He went to the little old ladies and said he needed to hire a few more experts to help him run the newspaper.
He hired another pig who although formally unqualified to do anything beyond rolling in the mud, was still a practitioner of a very old profession, known officially in Ireland as that of receiver.
It is not as old as prostitution but it is far less honorable.
A receiver is someone whose speciality is selling companies over the heads of their workforces.
A receiver's qualifications are indistinguishable from those of a riverboat gambler.
He produces nothing.
He makes money out of what other people have worked to produce.
He is simply a cardsharp.
The gutty lawyer and the cardsharp ran the company for a while.
Then the lawyer went to the little old ladies again.
He told them he needed to hire someone else to help run the newspaper.
He hired another pig.
This pig was a pissant little accountant.
The three little pigs ran the company for a little while.
Then they went to the little old ladies together.
"We are so important to this company," they said in unison, "that you are now going to have to pay us in company shares as well as our weekly wages."
The little old ladies were fairly innocent.
They could have said: "Gutty lawyers, lowlife cardsharps and pissant accountants are two a penny. Your services are no longer required. You can go and work for somebody else. We shall hire another gutty lawyer, another pissant accountant and another lowlife cardsharp. Thank you for your time."
The little old ladies could then indeed have hired another gutty lawyer, another lowlife cardsharp, and another pissant accountant.
Such people are not hard to find.
But they weren't clever enough little old ladies to do that.
Instead they said: "Ooh that would be lovely dears. How many shares in the newspaper would you like?"
For ten years the three little pigs gave themselves free shares in the company as well as paying themselves a weekly wage.
Sure enough they found it more fun being owners than working for a living.
It is difficult indeed to ascertain if they did any work, aside from chairing shareholders meetings and voting themselves more shares.
They did though gamble against the future of the company by borrowing huge sums of money from the banks and using that money to buy more newspapers.
The money was borrowed against the Lootheramawn and against the future of its employees.
The three little pigs incurred no direct risk themselves.
If the company could not repay their loans, the company would go bust. But the three little pigs would walk away.
Yes, this went on for ten years.
During all this time the journalists at the Lootheramawn were busy stabbing each other in the back for pennies.
At the end of the ten years the three little pigs sold the newspaper to a British company.
The three little pigs now owned one third of the company.
Each pig got ten million quid for himself and trotted off into the sunset oinking merrily.
If you listen sometimes of an evening when the air is cool and warm, it is said you can hear them oinking still across the golf courses of South Kildare.
The journalists got five thousand quid each.
Two months after the takeover, the new owners announced that they were pulling out of the journalists pension fund.
No one was surprised.
The moral of the story is this: There are no prizes for letting pigs turn you into farm animals.
*****************
(First published 30th August 2006.)
We will call it the Lootheramawn.
It was owned by some little old ladies.
Hello, little old ladies, hello.
The little old ladies were very old.
So they called in a pig to run the newspaper for them.
The pig was a gutty Dublin lawyer.
He ran things for a while.
One day he thought to himself: It would be a lot more fun owning a newspaper than working for it.
He devised a plan.
He went to the little old ladies and said he needed to hire a few more experts to help him run the newspaper.
He hired another pig who although formally unqualified to do anything beyond rolling in the mud, was still a practitioner of a very old profession, known officially in Ireland as that of receiver.
It is not as old as prostitution but it is far less honorable.
A receiver is someone whose speciality is selling companies over the heads of their workforces.
A receiver's qualifications are indistinguishable from those of a riverboat gambler.
He produces nothing.
He makes money out of what other people have worked to produce.
He is simply a cardsharp.
The gutty lawyer and the cardsharp ran the company for a while.
Then the lawyer went to the little old ladies again.
He told them he needed to hire someone else to help run the newspaper.
He hired another pig.
This pig was a pissant little accountant.
The three little pigs ran the company for a little while.
Then they went to the little old ladies together.
"We are so important to this company," they said in unison, "that you are now going to have to pay us in company shares as well as our weekly wages."
The little old ladies were fairly innocent.
They could have said: "Gutty lawyers, lowlife cardsharps and pissant accountants are two a penny. Your services are no longer required. You can go and work for somebody else. We shall hire another gutty lawyer, another pissant accountant and another lowlife cardsharp. Thank you for your time."
The little old ladies could then indeed have hired another gutty lawyer, another lowlife cardsharp, and another pissant accountant.
Such people are not hard to find.
But they weren't clever enough little old ladies to do that.
Instead they said: "Ooh that would be lovely dears. How many shares in the newspaper would you like?"
For ten years the three little pigs gave themselves free shares in the company as well as paying themselves a weekly wage.
Sure enough they found it more fun being owners than working for a living.
It is difficult indeed to ascertain if they did any work, aside from chairing shareholders meetings and voting themselves more shares.
They did though gamble against the future of the company by borrowing huge sums of money from the banks and using that money to buy more newspapers.
The money was borrowed against the Lootheramawn and against the future of its employees.
The three little pigs incurred no direct risk themselves.
If the company could not repay their loans, the company would go bust. But the three little pigs would walk away.
Yes, this went on for ten years.
During all this time the journalists at the Lootheramawn were busy stabbing each other in the back for pennies.
At the end of the ten years the three little pigs sold the newspaper to a British company.
The three little pigs now owned one third of the company.
Each pig got ten million quid for himself and trotted off into the sunset oinking merrily.
If you listen sometimes of an evening when the air is cool and warm, it is said you can hear them oinking still across the golf courses of South Kildare.
The journalists got five thousand quid each.
Two months after the takeover, the new owners announced that they were pulling out of the journalists pension fund.
No one was surprised.
The moral of the story is this: There are no prizes for letting pigs turn you into farm animals.
*****************
(First published 30th August 2006.)
posted by heelers | 12:38 AM
5 Comments:
Sad but interesting because of the way you wrote it. I am linking this to my 'WORDS ON RENT' blog( The New and revised Three Little Pigs Story)I hope you approve.
I send free hugs for all the journos.
There aren't many family-owned newspapers left here either. Well, there are some small locally-owned weekly papers, but few dailies. Most are members of newspaper "families". Our own local daily is still family owned, but they bowed out of their pension fund a few years ago which is when I quit working for them. Lots of stress, low wages, no pension -- I was fortunate that my husband was doing well then, and I could just quit.
Chamki, I'm delighted.
Gen, I should have guessed you had worked in journalism.
James
Worked in journalism? Haha. Not exactly.
I started at the paper, hoping that I might have an opportunity eventually to write or be a copy editor or even to work in graphics or layout, but my job was in classified advertising and that's where I stayed. I eventually realized that they rarely allow anyone to jump out of their track.
At any rate, it was a miserable job because we did a lot of telemarketing (telephoning people to beg them to purchase ads.) I am so thankful that I quit.
Writing classified ads was good training in an odd way because I learned to eliminate unnecessary words.
hahaha, great stuff! a sad story indeed but very nicely written. "a receiver's qualifications are indistinguishable from a riverboat gambler". orwell would've been proud...
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