Hooptedoodle #329 - The Ascent of Schlimm - Part (2) of an occasional series

The Grand Duke yawned, and as he did so he realised that he had actually dozed off for a moment. It was very warm in the room. He opened his eyes and jumped with fright - there, on the other side of his enormous desk, stood his Minister of Finance, young Edelbert Schlimm.

"What a fright you gave me, Schlimm! - I was pondering the matter of the floral theme for this year's Watchmakers' Guild Festival. I thought perhaps daffodils?"

"Highness, we did daffodils last year. In fact, I believe it has been daffodils every year for the last eleven festivals - something to do with avoiding the cost of repainting the floats."

"Ah yes - as I recall there was only one float involved last year, with the Schweinheim Children's Choir - what happened to the rest of the processional vehicles?"

"The festival has been downsized, Highness, since there are no longer any watchmakers and only 27 people attended the last one, including the parents of the choir."

"Yes - now I remember. All right - why don't we go for daffodils this year?"

"Excellent idea, Highness."

The Grand Duke stared at his Minister, musing over the remarkable change in his appearance in recent months. He was impeccably suited and groomed, his shirt and his shoes were hand-made, in his lapel he wore the scarlet and white silk ribbon of the Grand Knight's Cross of the Order of Sankt Tobias and - the Grand Duke winced to observe - he had a discreet diamond stud in his left ear. He was also surprisingly suntanned, considering it was only April and the fog and rain of what passed for Spring in the Duchy did not usually cause sunburn.

"Reminds me - I sent for you. Where have you been?"

"I'm sorry, Highness, I have been very busy."

The Grand Duke frowned.

"But I sent for you over a week ago, where have you been?"

Schlimm was impassive.

"Complicated - mostly I've been in Dubai, I think. Yes - mostly Dubai. What was it you wanted?"

"A number of things I was concerned about - if you hold on a moment, I have a written note here somewhere."

Pushing his reading glasses back up his nose with his index finger, the Grand Duke scrabbled around among the chaos on his desk for a few seconds, and produced a crumpled scrap of paper, which he smoothed out and studied for a little while.

"Right," he said, "for a start, who are all these foreigners wandering about the castle? They are frightening the kitchen staff, and last week a couple of them walked in here and started measuring things. Never said anything, just wrote down some notes and sketched drawings in an exercise book. I was trying to watch TV. Are they here to redecorate?"

"No, Highness - they are here in connection with the sale and lease-back agreement I told you about."

"You never told me any such thing, not that I remember - also these fellows don't speak any German - they're English, I think. What's going on?"

"I apologise, Highness, I was sure we had discussed the matter. The castle is far too big for the needs of your family; the idea is that we sell the place for redevelopment - you and the Ducal Family and your immediate entourage will live in a modern apartment in the West Wing, with a nice view across the swamp."

"But my family have lived here for many centuries, Schlimm - what is to happen to the place? - and what about all the paintings, and the furniture, and the collection of ceremonial armour, and the stuffed animals, and everything else? This is my personal history, our glorious heritage."

Schlimm bowed slightly.

"With respect, Highness, personal history is a luxury appropriate only to those who can afford it. I am expecting a report from the preliminary survey shortly, so we may discuss it then, if that suits you. The current suggestion is that the remainder of the castle buildings will be developed as luxury apartments. The architects are very interested in the paintings and the other artifacts - if there is anything they can't use they have offered to sell it for us on eBay. There are various ideas for the use of the Great Park - I am trying to retain a small garden for you and the Duchess. They may even stretch to a greenhouse."

The Grand Duke passed a shaking hand over his haggard face.

"A greenhouse? I remember none of this, Graf Edelbert. Have you mentioned it to the Duchess? Is she in favour of these plans?"

"The Duchess has been away skiing since before the discussions started, Highness - I had hoped you might raise the matter with her when she returns? There are also some interesting ideas involving the sale of her hunting lodges to an American hotel chain. The concept is that they would make very attractive health spas."

The Grand Duke removed his glasses and closed his eyes - he really did not feel well at all.

"Schlimm, I think I'm going to have to rest for a while. Before you leave, can I just mention the subject of beer?"

"Beer, Highness? - shall I get you a beer?"

"No, Schlimm, I just need you to explain something to me. Recently I suddenly fancied a beer - haven't had one for a while - and asked old Tauber to bring me a bottle of the Alter Drosselberger, my favourite. It was horrible - like horse urine. Also, the label was in English. I was so upset I rang a phone number which was printed on the label, and I got through to a helpdesk which I think was in India."

"Well, Highness, the Alter Drosselberger is selling very well, the brewing company is one of our more successful enterprises. I am sorry if you received a bad bottle."

"But we used to make the finest beer in Europe, one of the few things of which we could still be proud - it won international medals and everything. Good God, Schlimm, I own this brewery - my family has owned it since the 17th Century. I am going to visit the place and find out what's going on - I shall sort them out, you'll see - tradition still counts for something!"

Schlimm stared at his immaculate shoes, and aligned the crease in his Italian trousers.

"In fact, Highness, you are not strictly the owner of the brewing firm these days. You do retain a minority stake in the company, but you have only 15% of the voting shares. My brother and I have 80% between us. The actual Blickhof brewery is long gone - it is now a shopping mall and an indoor swimming pool and sports centre. The recipe for the beer was updated to cater for modern tastes, and the contract for production of the stuff is the subject of a tender every two years. Recently there has been a change - for a while the beer was being made and bottled in Burton on Trent, but it has now moved to a firm in Turda, Romania. No doubt it will move again if we get a more competitive offer."

There was a silence. The Grand Duke sat with his eyes closed for a while, and Schlimm was beginning to wonder if he had fallen asleep again when he eventually spoke, slowly and without any discernible emotion.

"I really do not understand. The fact that we made the best beer in Europe was crucially important - it was a source of national pride, and it was a noble tradition. This is not just a matter of revenue or earnings yields, it is a question of self-respect, and of ethics. If we can get our beer made more cheaply elsewhere, so that you and your brother make even more money, then I congratulate you, but I think you have missed the point. If I phone up to complain about the horse urine beer, I speak to a man in India and we cannot understand each other. That sums up exactly how much we have come to care about our customers and our traditions. I am appalled."

Schlimm smiled condescendingly, but the old man did not see him because his eyes were still shut.

"Your ideas, Highness, are as traditional and as outmoded as is much else about the Duchy and the way it runs. 'Pride in our product' is a very old-fashioned philosophy. Nowadays commercial ventures exist only to make as much money as possible for their owners. That is their primary - arguably their only - function. If our beer really tastes like horse urine then we will sell less of it, and we will make less money - that's when we know we have to do something about it. That is how it works nowadays. Your ideas of quality and pride are worthy and they do you credit, but, like the dinosaurs, they are things of the past. If you can get no help from our helpdesk number, then you should be delighted that you are dealing with a company which wastes as little money as possible on such matters..."

He broke off here, his voice ending on something of a squeak, because the Grand Duke had taken an old army revolver from his desk drawer, and was very deliberately taking aim at him.

The redevelopers are here

Hooptedoodle #324 - Schlimm's Big Idea - Part 1 of an occasional series

The Grand Duke sat slumped in his chair, glowering at the papers on his desk. His breakfast tray had been pushed to one side, where a silver egg-cup caught the reflection of the small fire in the grate. He scratched his ear absent-mindedly, clearing his throat, and then re-tied the sash on his silk dressing gown.

There was a tap at the door of the study - the Grand Duke uttered a deep, meaningless grunt, and the door opened to admit a nervous-looking, thin young man, with round spectacles à la Schubert, and unruly, thinning hair. He carried a pile of workbooks and folders; he walked around to stand in front of the desk, blinking.

The Grand Duke growled at him.

"These accounts - I've read them through. We can't let anyone see these - there must be mistakes here? According to your figures," the word 'your' was stressed, "we are bankrupt. If the Hörwitzes or the Von Schiels get a whiff of this they'll be jumping up and down, not to mention queuing up here to pinch our furniture and the Grande-Ma'am's jewels to repay the loans!"

"Er - well, Highness, I would not use the word bankrupt. There is what I would term a temporary dip in liquidity. The Grand Duchy still has plenty of wealth, but it is in places where we cannot use it readily to fund our debts, or..."

He paused.

"Or buy things, or pay the workers," the Grand Duke finished off, helpfully. "Yes, I read that a great deal of our resources are concentrated in the new Deer Park project, for example - when will that be finished, by the way? - and the Duchess is going to have to cut down on her hunting lodges; at least some of them could manage without a full staff for part of the year?"

He shook his head slowly.

"What do we do now? I am required to issue a statement of the Duchy's financial situation by St Boniface's Day, as always - which gives us three weeks. If this gets out there will be riots - we already owe the tin miners six months' wages. What can we do? - you're supposed to be the ideas man, Schlimm - what can we do? I am told by the Burgermeister of Pronkendorf that there are women with babies, begging in the streets - he has had to make donations of bread and soup to the families of the men who were laid off when we closed down the Ducal Wurst factory. They will cut my head off."

"Highness - we have been through that again and again - it is far cheaper to have the sausages made in Bangladesh - the figures are in my report..."

The Grand Duke raised his right hand, and the accountant trailed off into silence.

"We have a problem, Schlimm - in fact, you have a problem. The sausage makers used to buy their bread from the state's bakers, and buy their work clothes from our state-owned suppliers, so they are feeling the pinch as well - you didn't tell me about that. What shall we do?"

Schlimm seemed unwilling to speak; he fidgeted with the collar of his jacket. Eventually he stood up a little straighter, and half closed his eyes.

"Well, Highness, we could lie a little - creative presentation, so to speak."

"Creative presentation? - what kind of presentation will mask the fact that we have a complete generation of young people with no prospect of ever working or making any money? Three hundred and fifty thousand of them, to be exact, it says here."

"Ah - yes - I was going to get to that. Let us reclassify things a little, so that most of our young people are described as 'full-time students', and we'll remove them from the totals."

"But they aren't students - we have no colleges for them to study at, for one thing, and we have no-one qualified to teach them. Anyway, we couldn't afford to do this."

"No - we aren't really going to teach them anything - we are going to pretend."

"Go on..."

"We will create a complete network of centres of education. There is already the University of Drossel, of course - we could make a great many people long-distance pupils of the university.  We don't have to teach them anything, just get them to sign a piece of paper. It gets better - we could charge them a very large amount of money to enroll. There's not just the old University, we could rope in the seminary colleges, anyone who runs some kind of vague apprenticeship, every half-baked evening class for flower arrangement or embroidery - they will all be students - they will embrace their new universities, and they will be happy to pay for the privilege. And you, Highness, will have a new industry - education - which will employ a great many people, who will sing your praises and the National Hymn, and will pay taxes and yet more taxes, and they will aspire to send their own children to the new universities."

"You can't offer a university degree course in flower-arranging, can you?"

"Why not? People would rather be fake university students than unemployed dead-beats. They can study anything  they like - who cares? - they won't be required to use their skills on anything. All we need is to balance the books over the next few years."

"I have to say that balancing the books is just the problem I was thinking about - no-one has any money to pay for such an education, to join up for such courses."

"We shall lend them the money. We shall lend it at a very high interest rate. We'll get a lot of it back straight away in the state university fees, and then we can set up accommodation in the university towns, require students to live on-campus and charge high rents. That should catch most of the rest of it"

"Let me get this straight - we will lend the unemployed money so that they can pay exorbitant fees to enroll for worthless further education courses, most of this money will come back to us directly through fees and accommodation, and we will charge interest on what we have lent them? And we can delete these people from our unemployed lists, thus boosting our economic outlook?"

"Correct - and we'll create a whole industry of educators and cleaners and transport drivers and caterers and administrators, who will all pay taxes too. The people in the industry don't need to be skilled or anything - no-one is going to be able to tell the difference anyway - the universities themselves will carry out the assessment of the results. All you need to get this started is to get back to old Hörwitz and see if he can lend you some money - rather a lot of money, in fact - I've prepared some figures so you can see how this will work, and a prospectus for our investors..."

"Good God - I'll look at the numbers later. I underestimated you, Schlimm - I certainly underestimated you. But tell me - in the longer term, this cannot possibly work out - how do we pay back the capital, if no-one gets any actual skills or earnings expectation out of the education system?"

"I have prepared another document here, Highness - the plan is that within 10 years you will have disappeared - you will be living under an assumed name, on a very large private wine-making estate in Tuscany. I have some brochures here, to give an idea, and some rough estimates."

The Grand Duke sat back in his chair and waved his hand again, his head spinning.

"I see - good God. Well, Schlimm, you may leave me now - we must talk about this again. You are sure it will work?"

"Absolutely - that nice Russian chap assured me it could not fail."