Whistleblowing

You all know what a whistleblower is, right? It’s somebody who reports something their company is doing wrong to either an internal or external authority. Would you do it if you found something amiss in the company you worked in? Would anybody listen to you? Would you be fired?

Remember the film based on a true story, Erin Brockovich? OK, the film wasn’t directly about a whistleblower, but Julia Roberts’ character would not have progressed her case against an energy company if she hadn’t met a whistleblower in a bar. After his information, the case took on a new sense of purpose and was eventually proved, with affected local residents getting large payouts.

Last week, a whistleblower in the company GSK (GlaxoSmithKline) was paid $60 million for informing the US drug authorities that her employer GSK had been producing drugs in a less-than-sterile environment. $60 million – not bad for telling a few tales about your employer.

The problem was that the lady concerned was quite senior in the Quality Control department and despite her reporting that these drugs were not being made to the levels specified by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), nobody listened to her or did anything about the problem.

Exasperated by the issue, which eventually would have been laid at her door had it been noticed, she phoned the company chairman – who put the phone down on her! Her next step was, of course, the FDA who started an inquiry and lo and behold, she was proved correct and under the US laws she was entitled to 8% of the amount the FDA fined GSK - $750 million. As I said earlier, her cut was $60 million.

Not everybody is as 'lucky' as this lady was. One guy, whose company was regulated by the banking authorities contacted the relevant body who messed about with his ‘whistleblowing’ to the point where it was forgotten about, but not by his bosses. His desk was moved into the canteen and he became known to all his work colleagues as ‘the whistleblower . He didn’t last long.

There are whole lists of whistleblowers. There was the guy who warned the UK banking authorities about HBOS (Halifax Bank of Scotland) long before it nearly went bust. He said that the lending it was doing was unsustainable – but nobody listened – and eventually he was sacked.

I don’t think it will be long before somebody ‘shops’ BP or Haliburton about what exactly caused the gulf oil spill and then the big money will start to be paid out, after all BP is still on the rack for fines from the US Government and that may run into billions which means that 8% of billions is ....... quite a lot actually!

Now where's my whistle?

It's A Nightmare !

No. I couldn’t have. Surely I couldn’t have. I tried to look through the misty windows and sure enough I could see the black outline of the gate near to the car, Tan’s gleaming white new VW Tiguan.

I hoped that the crunching sound I’d heard was the tyres running through the gravel washed into a heap by the heavy rain on Monday, or a bit of old oak tree which had fallen and was being crushed under the wheels, but that gate looked awfully close.

I should have stopped but I was late in picking Tan and Angie up from the airport. The windows were all steamed up. Someone had left one of the windows open and there was condensation everywhere. I’d switched on the blower and was sure the windows would be clear by the time I got to the end of the lane but I really should have stopped before going through the gate.

I got out of the car and as I walked around to the passenger side, I hoped against hope that it would all be ok but as soon as I turned the corner I could see the damage – a dent from front to back across all four panels and it wasn’t just a dent. It looked like someone had taken a French can opener to the car – you know the ones – they don’t actually open the can, they just score the metalwork – and boy was it scored. From working in the car industry, I knew as soon as I saw the damage that the car would need four new panels. The bill would run to thousands!

What would I say? He would be ok I was sure but the disappointment in seeing his new car, sorry, Angie’s new car, ravaged from front to back was something I was not going to look forward to. The joy of their 10^th wedding anniversary in Egypt soured by a plonker who couldn’t clear the windows before driving off.

‘Thomas, Thomas. Wake up.’

Ah ha. It was a dream. Boy was I relieved.

‘Thomas – wake up. There’s a dead rat and it’s so big, I can’t open the kitchen door to get my breakfast.’

Nope – I was still dreaming. A dead rat so big she couldn’t open a door! What sort of cheese had I had last night that I was having two extremely realistic, but totally different dreams?

‘Thomas – if you don’t get up now and clear that rat away, I’ll be late for school.’

I rubbed my eyes. Yup – that was Kitty all right. And she was still going on about this dead rat.

Still not sure if I was in a dream or not, I threw some clothes on and went into the lounge and sure enough, there in front of the kitchen door, were the biggest bits of rat body I’ve ever seen. A decapitated head. A tail which would have done a monkey proud. A pile of innards, the likes of which I hope I never see again and a pool of blood which was straight out of the chainsaw scene in the film ‘Scarface’.     

As I started to clear the mess and nearly peuked – I knew the dream was over. I was now in a nightmare! 

Rain, Rain, Rain

The rain clouds arrive

I write this at least once every year – “I’ve never seen rain like it”, and guess what, I’ve never seen rain like we had at the weekend and as I write this on Tuesday afternoon, it’s still chucking it down. I reckon, since it started last Saturday evening, we’ve had about six inches of rain and I’m just so glad we live on a 30 degree slope otherwise we’d be up to our necks in water.

We saw it coming of course on the meteo (weather forecast). We had guests arriving on Thursday (delayed to Friday because of the French strikes) and we had a good look at the incoming weather so we could plan our weekend, but the rain scheduled for Saturday, Sunday and Monday meant that we had to use our time wisely. As it was, a long lunch on the terrace on Friday in blazing sun was a great start to the weekend (Phil even braved the 15 degrees in the pool !) and then lunch just continued into dinner in the kitchen with the patio doors flung open wide.

Although Saturday had been forecast to be rainy, the day started dry albeit with heavy black clouds gathering over ‘Cupples Mountain’. We could see that the coast was in sunshine so we piled into the car and drove down to St Laurent du Var where we had a delicious lunch in the Beach Club but as we headed back to the car, the wind started to blow, always a sign that the rain is not far behind.

We were lucky though in that it started raining just after we’d arrived at a friend’s house for dinner. And it rained and rained and rained, and it’s been raining ever since. And when I say ‘rain’ it’s like tropical rain – big, heavy spots which then join up until it’s literally a wall of water which is coming down. I reckon, we get as much rain here in a year as Glasgow gets – the difference is we get it in a few heavy downpours whereas Glasgow has a 365 day a year drizzle! I’m so unkind to my former city!

Anyway, it rained all Saturday night, and on Sunday morning when J and our guests went to church, it got even heavier. Tan’s pool was rapidly filling up to a point where it would overflow the edges, my gravel path was being washed away and the rain was so heavy I couldn’t get wood for the fire despite the wood store being no more than a few feet from the front porch.

Needless to say Sunday was spent with our guests and some friends in the kitchen eating and partaking of a glass or three of some nice wine whilst we looked at my drainage pipes simply giving up trying to get rid of all the water. When J took Nicky and Phil off to the airport later that afternoon, she returned to say that there had been quite a few landslides with boulders and other debris all over the roads.

Our Usually Dry Stream

On Monday after I retrieved my washed-away gravel and filled in the holes in my drive, I wandered down to our normally ‘dry’ stream and it was a raging torrent (see right). J had said that when she had returned from the airport the previous evening, the stream had actually risen to the point where it was flowing over the road – unbelievable!

The Nice Matin had reports of quite a few houses being affected by floods and landslides and one of our friends whose house sits below a chateau previously owned by Michael Schumacher no less was inundated with water when one of the chateau walls burst. The River Loup was higher than I’ve ever seen it and the roads were still running with streams of water trying to find its way downhill.

The River Loup

No matter – once the clouds go on Wednesday, we’ll be back to normal, having lunch on the terrace and wondering what all the fuss was about.   

A French Dinner Party

Just a picture - not the real dinner !

I can’t recall being to one before. I’ve been to loads of dinners where there were French people present but Saturday night, as far as my memory serves me, was the first time we were hosted by a French family. After eleven years in France, that’s not bad!

Our hosts are probably not typical French people however. She was an English teacher, whilst he worked for an American company and they spent some time in the UK whilst he was on assignment, so they both speak excellent English. We’ve met them quite a few times at a mutual friend’s apartment and we had them over at Le Brin last year when things didn’t quite go to plan as a chair collapsed at dinner and two of my four bottles of best French wine turned out to be corked (read about it here:  http://tomsfrenchblog.blogspot.com/2009/08/abigails-party.html) so it was nice to see them again when we all got together in Cagnes on Saturday night.

Now, before I continue, this is not a criticism of our hosts, merely an attempt at describing the differences between what I assume was a fairly typical French dinner party and what the ‘Brits’ do.

The first thing which struck me was our host offering us port and whisky as aperitifs. He also had kir which most of the ladies chose but it seemed strange that a glass of wine wasn’t on offer. Is this normal?

Then it was the hostess’s turn with the canapés. Whereas we’d normally find a few nuts and various nibbles, possibly even including some foie gras on crackers or toast in a Brit household, not wishing to detract too much from the main meal, the range of appetisers produced was staggering – smoked salmon blinis, duck paté on toast, scallops in a sauce of some kind, minced tuna (I didn’t partake of either of these being a bit of a fish dodger), then it was a sort of cauliflower and egg concoction with crispy bacon bits on top – and this was just the appetisers!

It was at this point that I noted that wine still hadn’t been served and I came to the conclusion that whilst we all associate a French dinner with glasses of the finest French wines washing down the food, it didn’t work out that way – the single glass of whisky, port or kir served as an aperitif ages before was all that was offered in the hour before dinner was presented.

Thereafter, dinner was quite predictable in that a starter (pumpkin soup), main course (duck), cheese and dessert were served as you would expect, but all with very little wine. In fact only two bottles of red were opened (no white was offered despite me taking some) for a total of eight guests which is surely below average? It is compared to Le Brin where a bottle per person seems to indicate the type of guests we have over!

And just as I was trying to digest the last of my food without my usual intake of wine, coffee was provided, and of course no milk was on offer. It seems that our French hosts did not make any allowances for British tastes - the six guests were all British.  

In conclusion, if this was indeed a typical French dinner, then I would much prefer to go to a Brit one every time and not because of the quantity of wine served – it would have been nice to have been offered a choice of white wine somewhere along the way and maybe a digestif at the end and of course, milk with my coffee.

Ah well. Maybe I’m just being picky. But the company was great! 

Callous ?

As I read reports from the inquest into the London 7/7 bombings, it depresses me when I am told that various agencies, e.g. the police, fire and medical services would not perform their duties, or let others perform theirs because of perceived ‘health and safety’ fears.

Last week, it transpired that despite passengers pouring onto Aldgate underground platform with terrible injuries after one of the blasts, police would not let underground staff go to the rescue, or at least the aid of passengers still trapped in the tunnel , because ‘there might have been secondary devices’. Similarly, some fire service personnel wouldn’t go along the tunnels for fear that the electric current hadn’t been turned off despite underground staff actually stepping onto the ‘live’ rails to prove that the current was indeed off. Who knows if earlier medical attention could have saved some lives?

This ‘safety first’ culture really irks me. I’d love to use language which would emphasise my frustration more accurately, but this is a family blog so I’ll stick with ‘irks’.

These people are paid to perform rescues. It’s their job. Do you hear troops in Afghanistan saying that they’re not going on a patrol because there might be a bomb out there somewhere? It’s a farce.

Any day now we’ll read about some firemen who refused to fight a fire ‘because it was too hot’!

And whilst I’m on a roll having a go at the jobsworths and people in supposed positions of authority not doing their jobs ‘because of regulations’ , it also bugs me big time when something happens and the whole city shuts down because “it’s a crime scene” or “it’s unsafe” .... because it’s regulations. Absolute bollocks!

A few years ago when I was travelling into work, a motorist had hit a lamppost at the side of one of the main roads into London. Because the man was injured and the police suspected he had been drinking, this main artery into London was closed as a ‘potential crime scene’. Now it doesn’t take much to bring London to a gridlock situation but in this case the police managed it with staggering efficiency, stopping the flow of traffic into London from the west for several hours whilst they no doubt stood and looked at the bent lamppost studying it for clues! Dumbos.

And this is where I get really callous.

The other day, an unfortunate person was supposedly pushed under a train at Kings Cross underground station. Whatever the situation, the guy died at the scene and a female was arrested. There were several eye witnesses and I’m sure the gruesome CCTV pictures will be on YouTube at some time in the near future. All neat and tidy – solved within hours you’d think. Not a bit of it.

Now I accept that in this situation the police should secure the area, take whatever details they need and then let society get on with its life but no, many hours after the ‘accident’, the body was still on the line. What could they possibly have been doing ‘many hours’ after the crime which meant that the body had to remain where it fell? The fact that this was the main transport link to London’s Heathrow Airport probably never crossed their minds and some of you probably agree that it shouldn’t have.

The point I’m trying to make is that most likely a few thousand people missed their flights from Heathrow on Monday night because some police guru decided that he/she needed several hours to work out what had happened on that platform and therefore had to leave the crime scene undisturbed. I’m all for making sure they have enough evidence to prosecute but I just can’t get my head round the time taken in what appears to be very straightforward cases.

And where is all this callousness and total disregard for the dignity of life, or rather death, coming from? It comes from a comparison of what happens abroad and a situation I came across when J and I were driving back from Venice a few years ago.

On the main road linking Italy and France, there had been a fatal accident and despite a body lying in the middle of the road (covered up I hasten to add), the Italian police were determined to keep the traffic flowing and were judiciously guiding traffic round the ‘obstacle’.

Had this been the UK police, they would have brought the whole of France and Italy to a standstill whilst they ‘looked for clues’ over a period ‘of many hours’.

Rant over!