On the Make America. Again!

On The Make America, Again!!

Posh neighbourhood - awful roads

Most people have a sunny image of America thanks to watching films and TV series.  It usually displays wealth and sunshine.  People are usually well groomed and mostly friendly.  Americans are certainly friendly but mostly to those whose money they depend on.

4 Northsiders in the desert

I spent a week in California and Nevada recently (catching U2 in the Sphere if you must know) and was struck by the sheer cost of things and the sheer nakedness of the upselling.

‘Would you like to go for our breakfast special today - only $34?’ 

‘Would you like to upgrade your room - only $250?’

‘Would you like to go for a bigger car today Sir?’

We Europeans find the tipping culture in America pretty shocking.  People who do their job for which they are paid also expect - nay demand - that you also tip them between 17 and 25% on top of that and the local state taxes for doing that job.   This makes dining or drinking out in the US very pricey - even for those of us who are used to London and Dublin prices.  The price of a draught beer in LA is usually above $10 and wine, which is picked off the vine a mere hour or so away, usually $12 a glass.  Add in the expected tip for the strenuous task of taking the lid off the bottle and it soon reaches the equivalent of €15 for a modest quality drink.

Peggy Sue’s diner off the Freeway to Las Vegas

This makes an average meal very expensive for most people and that includes Americans who by my calculation, would need to earn $100,000 before tax to maintain a distinctly normal lifestyle in CA or NV.  BTW Rents in LA make Dublin/London look affordable.

Now I know that many people in the hospitality sector work incredibly hard and many deserve their tips. But countless numbers do not and yet get them anyway on top of their state minimum wage of $12 an hour. And it is that sense of entitlement which irks.  The fact that if you don't tip the barman for the first drink, he or she will simply not come back to you again.

Excalibur hotel in Vegas

Or take the shop in Vegas in which I wanted to buy a T-shirt as a memento of my trip.  For a piece of black material with a tiny piece of artwork on it, they wanted $50.  I picked it off the shelf, brought it to the till where it was scanned, state tax added and then the card machine swivelled around in expectation that I would tip 20% ($11) on top of that again.  I had to seek out ‘Custom’ with the small font.  

When I first came to the US in 2000, the tip was in cash and usually around 12%.  But it is now around 20%.  Where does that sense of entitlement end?  40%?  50%?  At what point do Americans themselves say enough is enough?

One of our travelling companions flew on to Nashville in Tennessee and said the price of food and drink there was appreciably lower than California.

That suggests that the borderless market is alive and well and driving down prices in the ‘Red states’ at least.  But the rents and wages are also appreciably lower.

The Warner Bros studios in LA

And it’s not just in hospitality that the constant upselling goes on.  We went on a Warner Bros studio tour ($75 per person) and the final hour of it was a wonderful museum - tainted by the fact that all the way along the organisers were trying to get you to pay for photos they had taken of you beside movie memorabilia along the way.

The Bat Bike

Meanwhile the quality of the roads in the US are rapidly deteriorating which suggests to me that money which might have gone on taxes is now going into pockets for personal aggrandisement as everyone kicks the can of public space improvement down the road.

I’m not saying i prefer the gruff directness of German department store staff or Finnish barmen ahead of faux smiles from Americans but maybe we have the right mix here in Ireland where people are friendly, motorways are smooth(ish) and no one expects a 20% tip for doing their job.

Maybe - just maybe - the grass is not always greener on the other side (of the Atlantic.

Automated on the Atlantic by Joe Lynam - Newstalk business editor

https://www.newstalk.com/podcasts/breakfast-business/autonomous-cars-in-ireland 

A stripped back Land Rover

Just as you should never judge a book by the cover, you should never judge modernity by the remoteness of the town. Shannon was created out of marshland 6 decades ago and was supposed to be a new type of Irish urban dwelling . The airport became a vital hub for transport communications and tourism but it fell out of favour in the 1990s, as all the technology companies wanted to be close to Intel and the capital city on the east coast.

Rather than managing, decline, the city, fathers and mothers reinvented Shannon and those concrete warehouses were slowly, but surely replaced with far more modern and energy-efficient buildings to attract international companies.

JLR in Shannon

Into this mix in the last five years has come Jaguar Land Rover. The British classic car-maker decided to send its brightest software engineers to Shannon to work on how the cars of the 2020s and even the 2030s should be controlled.

It is here in the Shannon free zone that Jaguar Land Rover – now owned by the Indian conglomerate Tata motors – is testing self-driving cars known as automated vehicles. It’s also here that it is quite obvious that the law and especially the insurance industry has a lot of catching up to do to meet the speed with which automated and semi autonomous vehicles are progressing. It’s probably not a stretch to say that children born from 2020 onwards may not ever need to own a car nor even a driving license if the law will allow them to get behind an autonomous vehicle and propel them from A to B.

John Cormican,General Manager of Vehicle Engineering JLR Shannon & Portland USA

The amiable Limerick born boss of JLR in Shannon - John Cormican - brings me to an all but empty yet brand new building adjacent to where most of his colleagues work in the Shannon Free Zone.

The cleaner greets us but there’s no one there milling around at the entrance because many of the staff can work their software magic in the comfort of their own kitchen.

Inside a large hall, Cormican shows me a silver cage which is called ‘a rig’.  It looks like something you'd store computer servers in but at a cost of €2m it’s roped off from the hoi polloi like me.

A stripped down Land Rover upon which new software is tested

The rig is how software which is designed in Shannon is tested on the Range & Land Rovers of the future.

Beside the rig is a gleaming Land Rover in which 2 engineers stare at laptops digesting data from the last test run.

Back in Dublin, my Newstalk colleagues commented how they had no idea that such bleeding edge technology was being piloted on the western seaboard of Europe.  And I get a sense that JLR is happy to keep its little secret under the radar.

What started off with a handful of software boffins in 2017 has mushroomed into 300+ staff dreaming up and implementing software applications which the cars can pull down from the cloud without even stopping to order a ‘skimmed oatmilk Mugachino’

I wondered whether it’s a tough ask to attract talented engineers to Shannon as opposed to more cosmopolitan parts of Europe?

“It's quite a big recruitment drive we've been on since we opened up in 2017. I wouldn't classify it as being remote,” according to John Cormican. 

“I mean, we live in the west of Ireland. It's one of the most beautiful places in the world. We're in between two major cities, Galway and Limerick. 

We have a flexible working environment. We attract engineers from all over Ireland. Um, we embrace flexible working and working from home.” 

JLR is also keen for the physical and legal infrastructure to improve in Ireland which lags way behind many of its European neighbours in terms of charging points.  On top of that, no autonomous car is permitted to be even tested on Irish public roads, so that’s why JLR needs its own test track.

When asked what one or two things he’d like to see changed to speed up the automation and testing side of self driving cars, Cormican is clear:

“I think accelerating more technology courses in those universities and colleges is important. But one thing that's quite specific is legislation for the testing of autonomous vehicles on Irish public roads under very strict safety guidelines is something we've been asking for quite some time.”

If Cormican gets his way there might be phantom drivers cruising around the west of Ireland in gleaming SUVs in the very near future.

Trapping Graft in Strasbourg parliament

Joe Lynam - Newstalk Business Editor  

It’s been written before but there is no city as beautiful and yet as inaccessible as Strasbourg.  They picked it because the French and Germans had gone to war over it three times and it’s a symbol of the (hopefully) permanent peace between the two neighbours. France got to keep a place with German names, German architecture and on the German border.

But Berlin and Paris must have been relieved that - so far - none of their nationals have been implicated, arrested, searched or charged with anything to do with ‘Qatargate’.

Instead it's Athens and Rome who fret as Italian and Greek surnames appear all over this enveloping scandal.  Four people linked to those nations have been arrested and some already charged by the Belgian authorities.  Eva Kaili is in a Brussels prison but has said she broke no rules.  A court service strike has delayed her appearance before a Belgian judge. But her workplace - the European Parliament  - has already stripped her of her role as vice president and her political party - Pasok (home to the Papandreou political ascendancy)-  has fired her.  

So the mood was as icy last week as the weather when hundreds of MEPs made their way to the Alsatian capital.  So did I, in a travel odyssey that could feature in any remake of Planes, Trains and Automobiles - without the comedy.

I had pre booked and confirmed an interview with the president of the EU Parliament Roberta Metsola a week in advance but I was not shocked when she cancelled on Monday night as I was sitting on a bus from Frankfurt to Strasbourg with a bunch of MEPs - scrambling around on mobiles to find any new morsel of information about the institution of which they are the face.

I watched with them Ms Metsola’s incandescent speech (and her first public pronouncement) on the scandal on Monday evening - some of which was confected but most of which was white hot anger that her well laid legislative plans were set to be benched and overshadowed by the filthy caravan of bribery and graft that had wheeled into town and parked in her driveway.

All other votes and proposals were rendered irrelevant over the next few days.  The brave Ukrainian emergency workers who received the Sakharov peace prize, the latest package of sanctions on Russia - even the looming trade war with the USA over state aid had had to step aside as the bright halogen light of MEPs accepting suitcases of cash for diluting any criticism of the oil rich World Cup hosts- blinded all other stories.

I started and ended the two shows that we broadcast live from the gleaming radio studios within the belly of the Parliament, with Qatargate.  I didn't want to but I had to. I spoke to many MEPs and former MEPs including Commissioner Mairead McGuinness about the black brush which was tarring the entire institution. 

And then as I queued up for lunch in what is probably the worst laid out building in Christendom, my phone vibrated with a message from the head of comms of the President. 

Would I be able to come right now to her office for an interview?    My heart raced.  Ms Metsola had eschewed all other planned one-on-one interviews, keeping her powder dry for big speeches before her Plenary peers. 

I said I'd gladly do the interview but only on the condition that she answered questions about bribery as well. She agreed and I was brought to the 15th floor presidential suite overlooking the snow capped European quarter of Strasbourg and including the ‘talking shop’ of the Council of Europe - now denuded of Russian membership.

Roberta Metsola is a ‘young’ president. Unlike her three predecessors, she abounds with energy and purpose.  Her term is for less than three years and so she needs to make a mark on European legislation in that time.  This graft crisis ensures that she may now become better known than all her predecessors - ironic given she’s from the EU’s smallest member state, Malta.

She arrives in the reception area of her own President zone at around 2.25pm -nibbling on a pretzel - not exactly the lunch of kings or queens - but something to tide her over as she moves (at a fair pace) from meetings, to awards ceremonies, to chairing plenary sessions, press conferences and now media interviews - though she only did one: mine. 

She speaks in French to the formally dressed and silver-chain-wearing custodians of the parliament, English to her staff, Italian and Maltese in her home country and she probably has picked up Finnish from her husband.

I start our interview by asking how she’ll vote on the amendment to suspend the open skies agreement signed last year between the EU and Qatar.  And agreement which appears to benefit only one airline: Qatar Airways.

Then I raise the fact that MEPs can hire whoever they want and no one gets sanctioned if they don't declare meetings with lobbyists etc.  She remains unflustered as you will hear and remains chatty and engaging afterwards.  Even though I was told I'd get only 8mins, I was still in her company 26 mins after the 1st handshake.  

Pleasantries aside, she will have some job reforming an institution which has resisted reform and true transparency for decades. A kind of Orange Order with better offices. 

And she’ll be under pressure to do so from the two other major EU institutions:  the Commission and the Council.  That’s because the latter two - although not directly affected by this brewing scandal- know that they too will be tarred with its putrid graft-imbued brush.  If Metsola can't clean up her own house, the garbage will spill out all over the neighbourhood.