UPDATE ON SHEEP ENTREPRENEUR APPRENTICESHIP SCHEME IN THE UK
From: Leonora Soculitherz – a cave in the Yukon (just a precaution fans)
Sunday, January 24th 2010
Dear Fans and Followers,
I received a letter from my hapless and hopeless UK agent, Tony Robinson (TR), today. I'd like to share it with you as it shows that nothing much has changed for the better in the UK since I left last summer, apart from, of course, that Stripping for Freedom 2nd edition was published there this month.
A word of explanation. As my readers will know, TR is not only a hopeless agent, an uncoordinated danger (to hair and frocks) at dinners, parties and receptions but he is also a past master at mangling the English language. I'm sure that no-one has understood what he's said for years. This makes it all the stranger that he acts as a consultant to Oxbridge educated, well dressed, London based, senior civil servants. I've always suspected that they write his reports and recommendations to themselves and of course he's dirt cheap – enough money for a cinder toffee ice cream and a pint of Black Sheep and he's anybody's.
Talking of sheep that is why he wrote to me. He was seeking my advice. Why he expects to me know anything about sheep puzzles me but my best guess is that he confuses Canadians, like me, with New Zealanders. As he will never visit either place, has no spatial awareness and a pathetic grasp of what inhabits planet earth it is unlikely he will appreciate that there is a difference in size between the two countries, some distance between them and that the Arctic polar bear is unlikely to be found in Christchurch or the kiwi in Toronto.
The reason he was seeking my advice on sheep is that he has set up a 'School for Entrepreneurial Sheep' near Goathland (he probably thought this sounded appropriate) on the N. Yorkshire Moors. How he came to win this government funded contract to train enterprise skills and know how to sheep may be surprising to you but it is not surprising to me.
Apparently some government departments had an underspend (amazing really after all the £billions they've used up supporting big companies in handouts, training and the Private Finance Initiative schemes). The priorities like expense/allowance claims, second homes, pensions, city bonuses, ex Ministers top 500 consultancies and Iraq damage limitation inquiries had all been dealt with and so some speculative new programmes could now be funded.
TR had been to see them about enterprise apprenticeships in the land-based industries. I suspect he'd been interested in farmers' sons and daughters setting up micro breweries but as usual his inability to speak English completely confused his potential clients. What he left the meeting with was a short term contract, to be completed this financial year (March 31st), to pilot an enterprise academy for farm animals, starting with sheep.
Apparently, when TR had, probably hopefully, thrown the words 'supply chain' into the conversation the civil servants thought he'd come up with a novel idea of a reverse supply chain. Simply put this would get the animals which provide the end products (wool, beef, bacon, milk, eggs, turkey) to gain more entrepreneurial skills and then teach these skills up line to the farmer, and the farmer to the abattoir manager, and so on, eventually reaching the Tesco and McDonalds directors and finally Government Ministers. Who would know more about innovation, risk taking, increasing productivity and better value for money for customers than the animal itself? Here's TR's letter to me:
A School - somewhere in North Yorkshire - Thursday 21st January 2010
Dear Leonora,
My first sheeprentices have arrived but I'm not convinced they quite have the right attitude for entrepreneurship - sheepish isn't the kind of outgoing behaviour we were looking for. The little lambs seem to have more get up and go – but they've gone and I don't know where. Anyway, any advice you can give would be welcome as Ofsted are inspecting in a week's time. Hopefully, by then, they'll at least have learned to sit still at their desks.
They look startled all the time - is that normal? They seem to only know the first two letters of the alphabet and in the reverse order. It's going to be a long job to get them ready to do their pitch on Dragons' Den and I'm not even going to mention the word dragon at this stage. Sir Alan Sugar will be a bit frustrated with them, on his show, as even when you split them up into different teams they all go off together and intermingle. No obvious leaders up to now.
I've taken the advice of a local farmer to try to keep them in line with the threat of mint sauce and a salsa dip but as I can't understand much of his Yorkshire accent, this far North in Yorkshire, I've no idea why. I don't think my dream of becoming the Farm Animal Enterprise Tsar is going to happen. My brief was a bit woolly from the start and I wasn't sure about the local Business Link diagnostic to select the candidates.
Any help will be greatly appreciated
Your faithful, and honoured, literary agent,
Tony Robinson OBE
