The Best Laid Plans
One of my memories of life back in the United Kingdom when I was growing up in the 1960′s revolves around the fact that the Sunday newspapers started issuing “colour supplements”. (These were attractive magazines, printed in colour – hence the name – and distributed free of charge with the newspaper.)
The idea of Magazine supplements had been pioneered in the States by the New York Times and in 1962 the idea crossed the Atlantic Ocean and the Sunday Times launched the first such magazine, to be quickly followed by other “broadsheets”, (or “quality papers”), such as the Observer and The Sunday Telegraph, and later the idea was taken up most of Fleet Street. These magazines helped to fill a gap in the market created by the demise of weekly news magazines as a result of the rise in the availability and popularity of Television. They were able to take advantage of cheaper and much improved colour film and by the end of the decade the “supplements” had established them as part of a way of life. Sunday morning was for sitting and leisurely reading the Sunday papers, if not from cover to cover to cover, then at least in far more detail than you would have spent on ordinary weekday.
The supplements helped to transform the traditional newspaper in the face of the challenges presented by Television – and were able to exploit the advantages of print over broadcast media … for example: it can be taken with you and can be read anywhere: in an armchair, lying in bed, on a journey on a train or a plane, it doesn’t require special equipment; the reader is in charge and can take the material at their own pace – it is possible to pause, for example to re-read a passage and think about it, and to even be interrupted then continue from where you left off; it is possible for the author to delve deeper into a topic and easier to provide background and analysis. Although video reports can be immediate and dramatic, they are not always the most appropriate media for conveying information.
The supplements also helped to change the public perception of journalism. By the end of the decade they, and the Sunday Times Magazine in particular, had become identified with stylish photography, and willing to spend lavishly in pursuit of stories from the Beatles to the Six Day War.
It was a good marketing ploy on the part of the Sunday Times … as shown by the fact that all their competitors rushed to follow suit. Even we, as a family, subscribed to the newspaper in order to receive the magazine, (and we were by no means typical readers of such newspapers), and they helped to form and inform me, my opinions and outlook. Later, at University and when I started work, I took not just one but two weekly newspapers complete with four, five or six sections – and the colour supplement – and when I do go back to Britain for a visit … I buy yet a third each weekend and while away my “lazy” Sunday
I sometimes get to see the occasional edition here in Kyrgyzstan. Many of our visitors to Kyrgyzstan, (especially those who know how hard it is to get printed materials in English here in Bishkek), are thoughtful and bring magazines and/or newspapers with them to read on the flight and instead of leaving them on the plane, they bring them to us in the hotel. To be honest, I although I can’t honestly say that I devour them with the same devotion and commitment as I did when I was younger, but I still take great care to go through them carefully, before leaving them lying around for the next person to pick them up.
I used to out articles to keep, a habit which I still have although I don’t have the articles as I cull them from time to time and all the old ones which were so fascinating at the time I have long since disposed of. I remember one article was about the Vietnam War and although I can only recall the general impression, I do remember vividly the headline: “How America’s Best Started Its Worst War”.
That headline made an impression on me … and was brought to the forefront of my mind when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in the 1970′s … and again when the American and British led coalition invaded Iraq … but that’s another story. I won’t go into how “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”.
“How America’s Best Generals Started Its Worst War” is probably a good example of Murphy’s Law at work … “If anything can go wrong, it will!”.
No matter how clever you are, no matter how thoroughly you plan, it is important to remember that you are NOT master of your own fate and something will occur to frustrate your objective, and events could turn drastically wrong so that you end up in an even worse situation than when you started.
This is such a universally accepted adage that it crops up in different variations all over the world and in different walks of life. One commonly quoted example is: “The Toast always falls butter side down” – and, apparently, there has been some scientific research which shows that is really true. In Russian the equivalent is “Zakon Polostiy”, or Sod’s Law! There is even a website devoted to Murphy’s law in its many different guises, with its extensions and corollaries, and outlining a brief history: www.murphys-laws.com.
I suppose the classic literary expression of Murphy’s law was by the Scottish Poet, Robert Burns, in his poem, “To a Mouse” when he penned the lines:
The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men
Gang aft a-gley.
Basically: Things rarely ever go according to plan.
That sound’s like cynicism, but it seems more than that to me – it’s plain common sense. The Cynic will accept the veracity of Murphy’s Law and assume that things WILL always go wrong … but in reality life is not that simple, or predictable … the classic expression of Murphy’s Law is simplistic. Not everything goes wrong … but a sensible person recognizes that things “rarely ever go according to plan”, and as a result is in a better position to deal with problems and misfortunes when they do arise.
I wish this concept of uncertainty and the fallibility of plans had seeped through to the Soviet Union. One definition of a plan is: a set of intended actions used to achieve an objective or goal. Unfortunately, here, the word “plan” can also have another, more specific, meaning, referring not to intended “actions”, but to “results”.
This derives from the Soviet period – when everything was done according to a plan … In the Soviet Union, everything ran according to a plan. There were thirteen Five Year Plan’s, and even “Seven Year” and “Twelve Year”, drawn up by GosPlan, the Government Planning Department, for the economic development of the country. Factories were given a plan outlining their own quota of production to meet. Fulfilling the plan became the watchword of Soviet bureaucracy. The plan was sacrosanct … it had to be met … and it usually was met – even exceeded – by hook or by crook.
There is a nice cameo about the “plan” in Chinghiz Aitmatov’s novel, “The Place of the Skull”. The Five Year Plan calls for the collective farms on the Kazakh steppes to provide a certain quota of meat production … but as the five years draw to a close the authorities realize that they are not going to make the targets, so they look around for a way out of their predicament. They realize that roaming the steppes are some herds of wild animals and so decide to send out hunters in helicopters to cull the herds … and thus provide the meat needed to fill the shortfall.
Recently there was a case of a plan NOT being met … The largest reservoir in the country is behind the Toktogul Dam which controls the flow of the Naryn River and generates much of the country’s electricity output. Unfortunately, in recent years the level of water in the reservoir has been falling, and this was made worse by the very cold winter in 2007, which led to a over the last winter (2008/9) there wasn’t enough water in order to maintain production art the sort of levels the country needed. It was clear there was a serious problem fairly early on because there was an official announcement that the “plan” for replenishing the water levels in the reservoir hadn’t been fulfilled. An official announcement that it hadn’t was quite an admission – and shows how serious the situation had become.
The Tax authority is given “plans” of revenues it is expected to raise for the budget. That seems reasonable – they have to plan their activities and their expenditure in line with their revenue … that what every businessman has to do. There is a problem however, in that the plans are not always realistic – and the local “mentality” does not make allowances for the operation of Murphy’s law … For example, we were once called by the tax authority and the conversation went something like this:
- Why aren’t you meeting your plan? …
- What plan? …
- We have to raise “x-million” som in hotel tax and your share is …
- Wait a minute, sales tax depends on the level of sales and some months they are up and some months they are down, some months they are better than expected but other months they are worse than expected, (for all sorts of reasons). The tax due depends on sales – we calculate what has to be paid and pay it … we are not responsible for your “plans” … nor for fulfilling them.
As it happens, the “x-million” was grossly unreasonable – implying far more hotel rooms in Bishkek, and far more income from them, than exist.
Again, there is a new law which decrees that we, as a tour company, have to give the authorities, by November each year, a “plan” of financial results for the coming year, and they have to check it during the course of the year for “correctness”. Notice it is called a “plan”, not a prognosis or a statement of expected results.
We are going to have a basic problem in fulfilling the requirements of this law: we don’t know how many tours, tourists and income we are going to have in the following year … not by November. We may have some preliminary orders and a variety of enquiries, but they all represent “potential” rather than “confirmed” or even, (for want of a better term), “planned” figures. The trouble is that most tours are only confirmed about a month before they are actually due to start … even preliminary orders are subject to cancellation – and a surprisingly large number are cancelled! On the other hand, a large amount of our business arises during the course of the year … last minute or late enquiries, people “dropping in” to the office – on the “off chance” … that sort of thing. Of course, like every business, we have to plan ahead … and we can make estimates, based on the experience of previous years but, as the financial services sector tells us: “Past performance is no guarantee of future results”. I do understand the reasons for the measure – but would feel happier if we were being asked for a prognosis rather than a “plan”, or if there hadn’t been the the emphasis on the authorities checking its “correctness”.
As Oscar Wilde said: “To expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern intellect.”
Bishkek