By Eric Speeves

I never really understood what meetings were until I worked for the British Council. After 16 years of meetings there I discovered their true purpose. Meetings are an opportunity for members of an organisation to interact dynamically, to share their ideas and to feel that they are an important part of an essential organisation at the cutting edge of a dynamic interface, symbiotically streamlining efficiency and honing self-awareness. Or at least that was the last thing I used to hear before nodding off.

But let’s talk about the real world; in the real world of business, people speak a different language, and that language is Business English. The word “business” itself comes from the Anglo-Saxon verb “bisigan”, which meant ‘to worry’ until about the 10^th century when it started to take on its modern meaning.

Worrying is of course a key concept in the cut-throat world of modern commerce, and one thing that is especially worrying is having to learn and keep up to date with all kinds of business jargon; not only the overt meanings but also the hidden ones. So, for those of you in need of a refresher course here are some key business terms explained.

Relocate: sack everybody and move to somewhere cheaper where the workers would sell their grandmothers for a handful of last year’s corn, and believe that unions are a kind of vegetable. (Incidentally I should point out that Nike operate in Vietnam in order to help that country step forward and take its rightful place in the modern world, not because it’s cheaper). If anyone from Nike is reading this I take American Express.

Restructure: nowadays nobody gets the sack. This is not because our political masters have finally sacrificed their champagne breakfasts in order to create full, stable employment so that each individual can fulfil his or her potential, contributing to a more harmonious, balanced, and therefore safer society, but because these days sacking is out and restructuring is instead; which is a damn sight less painful than finding yourself out in the rain without a job, or an umbrella (or in my case a newspaper).

Brainstorming session: let the employees find solutions to the problems that leave us clueless, while at the same time giving the totally fallacious appearance of democratic participation.

Business ethics: the same ethics as everyone else’s but with a team of lawyers that make it harder to get caught with someone else’s pants around your ankles.

Broker: someone who you’ll trust to break you, despite the fact that he can’t even conjugate a verb let alone foresee market trends. (The origin of ‘broker’ was a medieval middleman who ‘broached’ or opened barrels of wine before selling them to a third party, in other words the man who didn’t organise a piss-up in a brewery.)

Symbiosis: all the underpaid, overworked staff discover as if by magic that their heartfelt desires just happen to coincide exactly what the bosses want them to do.

Denial: no it’s not true but if we could get away with it that’s exactly what we’d do.

Firm denial: we think we might just get away with this one.

Discount: the customers laughed in our faces when we tried to charge the price our extraordinarily expensive consultants suggested.

Sales: a rush to buy the stuff that you would normally consider too tacky.

Deregulation: the Conservatives are back in power and will let companies who have made significant contributions to their campaign funds do just about whatever they want.

White products: exactly the same stuff as you find in the expensive tin, the one which wouldn’t even be on the shelves if the same manufacturers didn’t agree to produce the cheaper one.

Industrial espionage: Chinese takeaway.

Office greening: allowing your employees to buy plants with their own money and look after them.

Tax evasion: what’s the point of having a legal department if they don’t earn their pay?

Laissez-faire approach: the government didn’t feel like getting out of bed this legislature, so bugger off!

Loophole: the gap we try to ride our camels through.

Letter of credit: we also own a bank.

Nepotism: who else would employ them?

Outsource: they couldn’t do it any worse than us.

Prototype: I bet this one doesn’t work either.

Upgrade: buy even more expensive software that doesn’t work any better than the last lot.

Work force: people who will only work if you force them to.

Staff: something for the boss to lean on.

Motivation: pieces of paper and metal that you can buy things with in shops.

Delegating responsibility: letting other people lick your envelopes.

Marketing: the last resort before actually being forced to improve the product.

Win-win negotiation: only the customers will get screwed this time.

Power-point presentation: mutton dressed as neon.

Consultant: someone who knows less than you do but has a denser vocabulary.

Shareholders’ Meeting: the sun has gone down and the coffins are creaking open.

It was Churchill who said: “the maxim of the British people is ‘business as usual’”, and Napoleon who described us as “a nation of shopkeepers” just before we saw him off at Waterloo Station. But gone are the days when the great British shopkeeper could be contented if he managed to sell a quarter pound of humbugs and the occasional tin of dog food whilst honing the art form of wanton rudeness to customers.

The word ‘customer’ comes from the Latin “custodia”, meaning keeping or guarding and originally referred only to house-buyers. Shakespeare used it to refer to a prostitute, although it was Gordon Selfridge who finally proclaimed that “the customer is always right”.

According to a recent study, the British worker has to learn that the only way to maintain his present standard of living is to make sacrifices; to be prepared like the Koreans and Vietnamese, to work long hours, have no holidays, live in a flat with rice paper walls and get horrendously drunk in karaoke bars. Only in this way will Britain rise once more to take its rightful place in the sun.

Alternatively we can all win the lottery and piss off to the Bahamas.