Friday 17 September 2010

Sometimes a cut too far?

Following on from travel bans, dust clouds and general cut-backs, NAMs and KAMs may have been forced to consider the budget airlines alternative. Here the search for cheap-flights will have revealed a culture more akin to their dealings with some major customers.
This has led the budget airlines to consider 'standing-room only', replacement of co-pilots with suitably-trained stewardesses (could help by making the tea between crises) and shorter-seats, apart from the obvious 'paying a pound to spend a penny'.
Incidentally, it may not be well-known that  airline-chiefs can have outside interests such as classical music that may benefit from their attentions using a  similar approach to cost-cutting.
Pls see the following letter allegedly written by a high profile CEO....
Schubert’s No.8 in B Minor

To the Chairman, The London Symphony Orchestra

After attending a rehearsal of this work, we make the following recommendations

1 We note that the twelve first violins were playing identical notes, as were the second violins. Three violins in each section, suitably amplified, would seem to us to be adequate.

2 Much unnecessary labour is involved in the number of demisemiquavers in this work. We suggest that many of these could be rounded up to the nearest semiquaver, thus saving practice time for the individual player and rehearsal time for the entire ensemble. This simplification would also make more use of trainee and less-skilled players with only marginal loss of precision.

3 We could find no productivity value in string passages being repeated by the horns; all tutti repeats could also be eliminated without any reduction in efficiency.

4 In so labour-intensive an undertaking as a symphony, we regard the long oboe tacet passages to be extremely wasteful. What notes this instrument is required to play, could, subject to a satisfactory demarcation conference with the Musicians’ Union, be shared out equitably with the other instruments.

Conclusion
If the above recommendations are implemented, the piece under consideration could be played through in less than half an hour, with concomitant savings in lighting, heating and overtime, wear and tear on the instruments and hall rental fees. Also had the composer been aware of modern cost-effective procedures, he might well have finished this work…

Seriously, budget airlines, in response to market demand are simply trying to cut to the bone, and are offering the customer what they want to pay for.
Being criticised by their customers for the resulting cut-down package is unfair when they are simply delivering a slightly more abrupt version of the indifference provided by mainstream airlines…

Have a high-value weekend, from the Namnews Team!

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