Consideration Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Consideration - Case Study Example The discussion of this case study aims to provide the course of action for Nigella in regard to the legal position of this case. This case study presents the contractual matter between the Nigella and Ramsay. There was a valid agreement between the two parties, and consideration for Nigella to Ramsay was the teaching services she promised to offer to him. On the other hand, Ramsay’s promise to pay for the services constituted consideration of Ramsay to Nigella. When parties are in agreement they all have to discharge the obligations they owe each other until the end of the agreement. This implies that Ramsay was entitled to receive services from Nigella until the end of the agreement. However, this appears to carry periodic payments and the imposition of new prices by Nigella to Ramsay resulted to new conditions and that was tantamount to forming a fresh agreement. This implies that Ramsay was bound by the agreement since he agreed to pay even though he would refuse to pay if the examination was near. It is immaterial for Ramsay to decline to pay the additional charges for the services already offered. In Central London Property Trust v High Trees House [1947] KB 130 High Court, the High Trees had rented property from Central London Property (CLP) at a cost of  £2,500 in 1937. However, during the world war the landlord was unable to let out all the houses and decided to reduce their value in order to attract new occupants. This compelled the defendant to lower the price of the houses by half in 1940 because there was no sign that the situation prevailing at that time was going to improve in the foreseeable future. By the start of 1941, the claimant started paying the reduced rental charges. However, when the war came to a halt the demand for houses increased hence the landlord reverted to the original rental charges. The case was presented to court, and

Case Study analysis in Strategic Management Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Analysis in Strategic Management - Case Study Example In recent years they acquired 'Grupo Empresarial Bavaria.' Today SABMiller is present in various high growth markets like Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America and Africa. It has also maintained presence in matured markets like USA and Western Europe. Its brand portfolio includes Castle, Miller Lite, Miller Genuine Draft, Snow, Peroni Nastro Azzurro and Pilsner Urquell. The first part of this report explains the strategic positioning SABMiller is in different markets like South Africa, Asia, Eastern & Western Europe, USA, Latin America and Africa. It discusses the core competencies and capabilities of SABMiller and also the stakeholder's expectations. The second part looks at the future implications of its strategy .In the last part various tools used for analysis of this case study have been discussed. Corporate strategy refers to the overarching strategy of the diversified firm. Such a corporate strategy answers the questions of the business the firm should operate in and how does this business helps in improving the core competencies of the firm as a whole. (David, 1989)It is the sum total of a company's goals, objectives and its plan for pursuing those purposes. (R, 2008)From these definations we can conclude that we need to analyse SABMiller's business environment , core competancies & capabilities and stakeholder expectations to identify it's strategic position. (KR, 1971) Business Environmental Analysis Using PESTEL , Porter's Five forces and SWOT In 2009 , SABMiller has been operating world wide.It has its presence in both developing and mature markets.Due to its presence in such varied markets ,its strategy in different markets has been analysed differently. South Africa South African market has been a monopoly of SABMiller. (SABMiller, 2009)Although this market is maturing with little growth potential but the customers are moving towards more premium brands thus increasing the profitability of the firm.HIV/AIDS poses a great threat in South African market.It is a huge threat in terms of avalability of work force but the greater threat is that the disposable income of the people is likely to decrease which in turn will effect SABMiller's sales and its profitability. Africa(exclusing South Africa) SABMiller has its presence in Tanzania , Zambia , Mozambique , Angola , Bostwana and Uganda.There is huge potential for growth is these areas propelled by broader distribution and clear segmentation strategy.However the political landscape in these areas is not idle.They also trade in soft currencies thus increasing the business risk as seen in Bostwana.African market is perceived by many as a lot of risk in the Portfolio of SABMiller and might lead to lose of confidence from the company's stakeholders. Asia and Eastern Europe Both these markets are highly fragmented and developing.People have found their disposable incomes to be rising which gives SABMiller a great incentive and great opportunity in these markets.The

Management And Leadership Across Culture Management Essay

Management And Leadership Across Culture Management Essay Leadership and motivation has been very important relating to achieving company goals . We can find lots of theories in leadership and motivation. The main purpose of the study is to critically evaluate theories of leadership and motivation and how this is related to managing cultural diversity and how the organization apply the techniques of leadership and motivation in organization . These days hospitality and tourism has been recognised as a social phenomenon with a variety of social-cultural impacts at both the individual and global levels, and has been a diverse and momentous reality that all social sciences think. The study of tourism and its changes reflect the arrival of new approaches and ways of thinking in modern society as the changes in tourism reflect the changes from modern society to postmodern society. The organisational challenges of tourism are discussed contextualizing the analysis within the concepts of leadership, motivation, work performance, ethics, personality, and rewards. (www.environmental challenges tourism). Most of business organisations were able to achieve their business goals and objectives by incorporating creative leadership and motivating staff. There are observations which claim that companies are constantly challenge by the fact that the control and creative aspect of business are diametrically opposed. As such, effective planning, control, organisation, and coordination within hospitality and tourism industry must be clear from the efficiency and effectiveness of the services offered.  Business leadership and management characterises the process of leading and directing the systems within an organisation by shattering available resources widely so as to achieve the objectives of the business operation. It most of the time includes the conceptualization of business plans and monitoring its execution for assessment and evaluation of the efficiency and effectiveness of the business transactions. Good leadership help in effectively meeting job-related demands, co ordinations, com mitment, in creating higher-performing teams, in fostering renewed loyalty and commitment, in increasing motivational level and in reducing absence and turnover of employees. Effective leadership and employee motivation is very essential and crucial to the survival and continued existence of service industry. It is such an important and wide field of study, and thus has enjoyed contributions from a host of authors and scholars. This research attempts an overview of some of the most insightful theories within the field of workplace motivation and leadership (Meyer and Allen, 1997). The very nature of this topic resides on the crossover between psychology and management, and concepts from these two genres will be investigated with a view to setting this research project against some kind of meaningful context. It is hard to cover all aspect of that influence in the success of hospitality and tourism industry but in this assay author tried to explore leadership and motivation of employ ees factors. Chapter 2: Reviewing theories of Leadership and Motivation The effective leader should think and act about his own Leadership style, strengths, and development needs. Team leader should make the individuals, feel proud to be part of the team then people will work harder and achieve more. Goals of the organisation achieved or not depended on how effective the Leader was. So leadership play important role in the organisation. Leadership is the heart and soul of organisations, and quality communication is the avenue by which leaders clarify their visions and foster participative management within organisations, no matter which approach best describes their leadership styles Management and leadership across cultures The international nature of the hospitality and tourism industry requires managers of the future to be aware of many different issues relating to leading people. They need the knowledge and skills necessary to lead and motivate workforces across many different cultural backgrounds. This issue is one of great importance and very relevant to effective management of organisations in a global setting. Indicative content Leadership in organisations Culture and leadership Theories of motivation Managing diversity According to Wright Taylor (1994), Leadership is an activity which influenced the Behaviour, beliefs and feelings of other group members in an intended direction. Influence may take place at a distance without any personal interaction between the people concerned .Leader can acquisitive the interpersonal skills through practice with feedback and guidance. According to Vecchio (1997) view Leadership is a sense-making heuristic to account for organisational performance and is important primarily for its symbolic role in organisations. Zaccaro (2001) said Leadership is a process of giving purpose to collective effort, and causing willing effort to be expended to achieve purpose The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between the two, the leader must become a servant and a debtor. That sums up the progress of an artful leader Concept, ideas of leadership and leadership practices are the subject of much thought, discussion, writing, teaching, and learning. True leaders are sought after and cultivated. Leadership is not an easy subject to explain. A friend of mine characterizes leaders simply like this: Leaders don`t inflict pain; they bear pain. TRAIT APPROACHES KONOPASKE (2008) said thinking and discussion about leadership evolved from a trait-based approach to the concept of teams without bosses. Trait approach is an attempt to identify specific characteristics (physical, mental, personality) associated with leadership success. Trait theory of leadership is based on intelligence, personality, physical characteristics and supervisory ability. In trait approach leaders are born, not made because some people are born with their charisma and other personality traits, seems to be natural born leaders whom others will follow automatically. People possessing charismatic traits need to learn to use and develop those leadership traits consciously. Many successful leaders do not possess a common body of personality traits which explain their leadership abilities. In fact, many great Quality leadership depends neither on charisma nor on personality traits (www.1). Surveys of early trait research by stodgily (1948) and Mann (1959) reported that many studies identified personality characteristics that appear to differentiate leaders from followers (www.2). Peter Wright (1996) has commented, others found no differences between leaders and followers with respect to these characteristics, or even found people who possessed them were less likely to become leaders Central to effective leadership. BEHAVIOURAL APPROACH According to Taylor (1994) behavioural approach of leadership concerned with the behaviour, rather than personality traits. Behavioural theories concerned with the leader in the context of organisation and identify behaviours exhibited by leaders that increase the effectiveness of the organisation. In mastering the role of leadership, leaders must discern between behaviour modification and attitude modification. Behaviour modification implies that people change their outward actions, while their attitudes, beliefs, feelings, and opinions remain the same. Attitude modification implies that followers change their inward thinking; hence, their attitudes, feelings, and opinions are brought into line with those of the leader. It is clear that attitude modification is more important to effect lasting change than behaviour modification (www.3). Two sub-categories: Examines how managers spend their time and the typical pattern of activities, responsibilities, and functions of managerial jobs Leadership effectiveness depends in part on how well a manager resolves role conflicts, copes with demands, recognizes opportunities, and overcomes constraints 2) Identifying effective leadership behaviour Purpose of Leadership Leadership is involves making employees into group and being accountable, responsible for focusing and motivating to achieve goals. A leader should: provide continuity and momentum be flexible in allowing changes of direction Ideally, a leader should be a few steps ahead of their team, but not too far for the team to be able to understand and follow them. a. Skills needed b. Different Ideas of Leadership Skills Needed Leaders must have a wide range of skills, techniques and strategies. These include: Planning Communication skills Organisation Awareness of the wider environment As hospitality and tourism industry based entirely on service quality so manager need to use their communication skill as there are customers and employees from all over the world they have different language background so it is important to use effective communication skill also aware of wider environment. Different Ideas of Leadership Leadership should be concentrated in one person or distributed among members of the team. Leader was appointed by more senior levels of management or elected by the group. This technique relies on the assumption that one single person has all the strengths required. [www.5] Olmsyead (2000) said directing the team is critical tests of leadership skills because it is a growing and shifting relationship between the two people. According to Olmsyead (2000) directing the team is motivating the subordinates Motivation means Cause (person) to act in a particular way; stimulate interest of (person in activity) [www.3]. The effective leader should think and act about his own Leadership style, strengths, and development needs. Team leader should make the individuals, feel proud to be part of the team then people will work harder and achieve more. Goals of the organisation achieved or not depended on how effective the Leader was. So leadership play important role in the organisation. Leadership is the heart and soul of organisations, and quality communication is the avenue by which leaders clarify their visions and foster participative management within organisations, no matter which approach best describes their leadership styles Motivation Hospitality industry is a big industry in the world and the worlds largest employer. It is a labour intensive Industry. Wherever you need human input, motivation is crucial for success, especially for service industry. People are the part of the product in delivery service. If employees are not motivated, their performance will drop or customers will know and complain. The question for hospitality industry businesses is how to get the best from employees, how to encourage and persuade them to do what they are supposed to be doing to the best of their ability all the time. So that, it is strongly proved that motivating the employees is essential key to increase the competitiveness in the organisation environment. Motivation is the key for employees to run the hospitality industry successfully, if the industry does not possess the ability to motivate its employees, the knowledge within the organisation is not practically used to a maximum. Therefore, it becomes the aim of every successful learning hotel industry to find the factors that enable it to motivate its employees to continuous learning and to take advantage of this knowledge to ensure its living. Many motivational theories have been constructed to find these motivational factors, but the values of the employees in the specific organisation like tourism are seldom included in the theories. Since a suitable combination of motivational factors only can be created through an understanding of the values in the measured object (i.e. employees), this can be seen as a risk for validity problems in the measuring instrument. Significance of Motivation in Hospitality and Tourism Industry: Motivation refers to the reason why we do things. A dictionary defines motivation as: The psychological feature that arouses an organism to action towards a desired goal, the reason for that action. (Source: Dictionary.com) A simple definition of motivation is the ability to change behaviour. It is a drive that compels one to act because human behaviour is directed toward some goal. . Motivation is internal; it comes from within based on personal interests, desires, and need for fulfilment. However, external factors such as rewards, praise, and promotions also influence motivation. As defined by Daft (1997), motivation refers to the forces either within or external to a person that arouse enthusiasm and persistence to pursue a certain course of action. Here is the particular importance with the motivation, because the organisations always expect a high quality performance. All the time it is not possible to the employees, so that the training needs and motivation is essential to the employees. Motivation can do such things as they are 1. Direct behaviour towards to particular goals. 2. Its lead to increase effort and energy. 3. Increase their initiation, persistence and activities. 4. Enhance the cognitive processing. 5. Determine what consequences are reinforcing. 6. Lead to improve their performance. The persons in their employment they usually try to motivate themselves, even though organisation can maintain the crucial role to motivate the employees. MOTIVATION FACTORS: The employees can be motivated by different factors in a learning organisation, such they are The works itself that many people believe in their work and feel they are making a difference. that is enough to motivate them Recognition being recognised for the contribution that you are making is something that many of us want and need Achievement seeing the results of what we do and knowing that we had a part in that result Responsibility being given responsibility is something that people enjoy, they respond to being given responsibility Advancement and personal growth part of recognition is the opportunity to be able to advance yourself to be given more challenging tasks and be seen as being capable of doing such tasks. MOTIVATION THEORIES: The employees who are committed to achieving organisational objectives generally outperform those who are not committed. Those who are intrinsically rewarded by accomplishments in the workplace are satisfied with their jobs and are individuals with high self-esteem. Therefore, an important part of management is to help make work more satisfying and rewarding for employees and to keep employee motivation consistent with organisational objectives. With the diversity of contemporary workplaces, this is a complex task. Many factors, including the influences of different cultures, affect what people value and what is rewarding to them. From a managers perspective, it is important to understand what prompts people, what influences them, and why they persist in particular actions. Quick (1985) presented these four underlying principles that are important to understanding motivation: People have reasons for everything they do. Whatever people choose as a goal is something they believe is good for them. The goal people choose must be seen as attainable. The conditions under which the work is done can affect its value to the employee and his or her perceptions of attainability or success. PROCESS THEORIES: Process theories help to explain how individuals motivation of an employee to select particular behaviours and how individuals determine if these behaviours meet their needs. Because these theories involve rational selection, concepts of cognition are employed. Cognition, according to Petri (1996), is generally used to describe those intellectual or perceptual processes occurring within us when we analyze and interpret both the world around us and our own thoughts and actions. The expectancy theory is based on an individuals effort and performance, as well as the desirability of outcomes associated with high performance. The value of or preference for a particular outcome is called valence. To determine valence, people will ask themselves whether or not they can accomplish a goal, how important is the goal to them (in the immediate as well as the long term), and what course of action will provide the greatest reward. An individuals expectation of actually achieving the outcome is crucial to success, and many factors influence this. The expectancy theory says that individuals have different sets of goals and can be motivated if they believe that: There is a positive correlation between efforts and performance, Favourable performance will result in a desirable reward, The reward will satisfy an important need, The desire to satisfy the need is strong enough to make the effort worthwhile. Valence refers to the emotional orientations people hold with respect to outcomes like rewards. The depth of the want of an employee for extrinsic money, promotion, time-off, benefits or basic satisfaction rewards. Management must discover what employees value. Expectancy Employees have different expectations and levels of confidence about what they are capable of doing. Management must discover what resources, training, or supervision employees need. Instrumentality The awareness of employees whether they will actually get what they desire even if it has been promised by a manager. Management must ensure that promises of rewards are fulfilled and that employees are aware of that The expectancy theory can be applied through incentive systems that identify desired outcomes and give all workers the same opportunities to achieve rewards, such as stock ownership or other recognition for achievement. Given that communication satisfaction plays an influential role in motivating employees, it would be important for hotel managers to pay attention to communicating with employees. In this regard, it would be beneficial for hotel managers to understand how well satisfied employees are with communication. managers needs to be open to new ideas; managers listen and pay attention to employee; managers communications with employee to make them feel an important part of hotel also offers guidance for solving job-related problems and receive on-time information needed to do job. Conflicts are handled appropriately through proper communication channels; managements communications with employees are accurate and organised; managers know and understand the problems faced by emp loyees. Overall, managers are willing to listen to employees and accept ideas from employees, so employees feel they are part of the organisation. Other issue employees may face is whose first language is not English work in the hotel industry. Here, communication might play a more important role in motivating employees. Managers should respect employees and understand cultural differences. In particular, managers should give clear and precise instructions to let employees know their job description, performance evaluation, service quality, and hotel values. Always providing prompt feedback, encouraging job involvement, and truly caring for employees make communication successful. The equity theory focuses on individuals perceptions of how fairly they are treated in comparison to others. The equity exists when people consider their compensation equal to the compensation of others who perform similar work. People judge equity by comparing inputs (such as education, experience, effort, and ability) to outputs (such as pay, recognition, benefits, and promotion). REINFORCEMENT THEORIES: A theory of reinforcement explains employee should have time maintenance as well the motivation structured by management. This theory based not on need but on the relationship between behaviour and its consequences. In the workplace, these theories can be applied to change or modify on-the-job behaviour through rewards and punishments. This theory takes into consideration both motivation and the environment, focusing on stimulus and response relationships. Through his research, Skinner noted that a stimulus will initiate behaviour; thus, the stimulus is an antecedent to behaviour. The behaviour will generate a result; therefore, results are consequences of behaviour.(McCoy, 1992) The four types of reinforcement are the following: Positive reinforcement: The application of a pleasant and rewarding consequence following a desired behaviour, such as giving praise. Negative reinforcement: The removal of an unpleasant consequence following a desired behaviour, such as a manager no longer reminding a worker about a weekly deadline when the worker meets the deadline. This reinforcement is also called avoidance. Punishment: The application of an unpleasant outcome when an undesirable behaviour occurs to reduce the likelihood of that behaviour happening again. This form of reinforcement does not indicate a correct behaviour, so its use in business is not usually appropriate. Extinction: The withdrawal of a positive reward. If the behaviour is no longer positively reinforced, then it is less likely to occur in the future and it will gradually disappear. From the argument clearly conclude that motivation is the essential need to the employees to enhance their abilities, it is also important to the management, to provide the training needs to motivate the persons and involve them particularly in socio cultural things. Chapter 3 :A Case of Leadership and Motivation in Hilton Manchester Deansgate The management and leadership method of Hilton Manchester Deansgate has a huge effect on its working atmosphere and the employees inspiration. The progress of a finest leadership style and executive skills that is the most proper to an organization is vital, having a key effect on its life duration. Hiltons Managers world class leadership style helps the hotel to attain its goals . There are two types of leadership styles, one that is task-oriented and the other that is employee-oriented. A manager with a task-oriented style will have work results as his major concerns; and therefore, he will enlarge rigid policy that would lead the subordinates into working their errands to reach his preferred results. Case Study The purpose of this study was to explore the similarities and differences in motivation and organisational commitment of employees and employee motivation and their level of organizational commitment. Interviews are taken from the basic stage of work group in Hilton hotel. Those interviews are in the form of face to face interviews, direct interviews. Interview questions in the form of multiple options with agree, strongly agree, disagree, strongly disagree and not applicable. So that involving employees can express their views by choosing the options, in this survey, over 25 employees from Manchester, involved and responded for the following 16 questions. It gives the view of leadership and employee motivation level in organisation. 1Q:- My work gives me feeling of personal success. A: Organizational success is ultimately depends on employee motivation and participation. Every job design will define the employee responsibilities, most of the employees feel that they are giving a good performance.25 employees responded, in that 19 employees agreed, 2 strongly agreed, 4 disagreed. 2Q:- I like the kind of work I do A: organisation responsibility to create the likely environment, so that all the employees can like to work. 25 employees responded in that 21 agreed, 2 strongly agreed, 2 disagreed. 3Q:- I know how my work relates to organisation mission and goals A: management needs to make aware their employees of organisation vision, mission, and goals. Employees should need to know what the goal of organisation is so that performs their work towards to organisation goals. 17 employees responded as agreed, 1 strongly agreed, 7 disagreed, 4Q:- I do give importance for my work A: it describes the organisation attitude and having impacts on outcomes. If employees feel their job is much important to them, than they can involve with much effectively. In higher range 23 employees agreed and 2 employees are disagreed. 5Q:- I feel my department gets support and teamwork from other areas within the Company. A: organisational development depends on employee training and development. Employees need proper training according to their jobs, to effective involvement. 18 agreed, 2 strongly agreed, 5 disagreed. 6Q:- Overall I am very much satisfied with my job at organisation. A: satisfaction does cost much in organisation. It effects on employee performance. 22 employees were agreed, , 3 disagreed,. 7Q:- My manager clearly defines my job responsibilities. A: job enrichment is the key factor to feel employees more responsible. Employees need to know their job responsibilities, management need to assign tasks to their employees. 24 employees responded as agreed only one employee disagrees with this issue. 8Q:-My manager/supervisor encourages high achievement by reducing the fear of failure. A: employees need motivation, encouragement to produce effective performance. 25 employees responded as agreed. 9Q:- My manager/supervisor takes responsibility for shaping the attitudes and relationships within our department. A: employee relations key task in organisation run successful for managers, they need maintain a good relation with employees, so that they can easily shape their attitude. 20 employees agreed 5 disagreed. 10Q:- My manager/supervisor clearly communicates what is expected of me. A: Employee communications mechanisms involve the provision and exchange of information and instructions, which enables an organisation to function effectively and its employees to be properly informed about developments. 24 employees responded agreed, 1disagreed. 11Q:- My manager/supervisor provides me with continuous feedback to help me achieve. A: every organisation need to provide the feedback so that employee can improve his performance to achieve organisation goals. 14 employees responded as agreed, 1 strongly agreed, 10 disagreed. 12Q:- Employees have a feeling of personal empowerment and ownership of work processes. A: empowerment gives to employees having autonomous decision-making capabilities and acting as partners in the business. 16 employees responded as agreed, 6 disagreed, 3 strongly disagreed. 13Q:- Satisfaction with involvement in decisions that affect work A: Employee satisfaction is an emotional state resulting from the experiences an employee feels at work. 17 employees responded as agreed, 1 employee strongly agreed, 7 employees disagreed with a kind of disappointment. 14Q:- I have a high level of respect for my organisations senior leaders and my colleagues. A: organisations values give feel employees to be respectful, so that everyone respectable with another. 24 employees responded as agreed, 1 employee disagreed. 15Q:- In the last 3 weeks, I received recognition or praise for doing good work? A: Performance appraisals have a great impact on employee performance. Performance review can give clear indication to employees performance recognition and opportunity to increase performance. 18 employees responded as agreed, 7 employees responded as disagreed. 16Q: Since a year, I got more opportunities to learn and grow my skills. A: employee involvement and participation is a key task to organisation. For high involvement practices, employee needs to get proper training and development. 12 employees responded as agreed, 10 disagreed and 3 employees strongly disagreed. Summary of findings Survey finds out that how organisation motivates their employees to effect on their success. Questionnaire pointed out the key factors such like employee involvement, organisational success, job responsibility, how organisation determine the vision includes within the employees, organisation culture, employee development towards to organisation development, job enrichment, performance appraisal, empowerment levels, employee satisfaction, and communications. Employees at the Hilton hotel most of them are aware of what the organisation expecting from them, and they felt they are satisfactory with their organisation. Quantitative data of survey providing the entire descriptions, Job satisfaction at there was, 80% employees satisfied with their job, least 20% having unsatisfied. It shows that organisation need to evolve more strategies to make the job interesting and create healthy environmental at work. Organisational success also higher at Hilton, they prefer their employees as a key assets, it is quite interesting about only 60% employees satisfied with organisational strategies. It means that the company needs to reach more employees in order to get more success. Training and development procedures at higher rate and should leading as example to others, overall 89% employees satisfied with their procedures and low level group of employees strongly argued that they are not really affecting their work. It explains that management needs more attention to develop their training strategies useful to all the employees. Communications among different role of employees were too poor, 45% people satisf ied and 55% employees strongly disagreed with their superiors communications, it indicates that there is a no perfect communication systems are following, so organisation needs to develop more communication and employee relation strategies The research of Marchington et al (2001) demonstrated that employers in the 18 organisations they studied valued the voice of the employee in contributing to management decision making because they believed it contributed to business performance. Chapter 4: Recommendations and Conclusion Employee motivation is essential to the success of organisations. A lack of employee motivation may cause organizational problems in turnover and retention, morale, and poor productivity. Hotel industry is not unfamiliar with these human resource issues, however, many restaurants choose to accept these issues as part of the business or utilize ineffective, outdated motivation techniques. Recognition of the problem of employee motivation is the first step a restaurant. Organisation may choose to tackle the problem Today most of the organisations turning into employee voluntary programs such as a key strategy to increase their business goals while positively involving their employees to meet the needs of the organisation. Management should ensure that, employees are committed about getting involved, it is important to find most satisfactory way for them to participate so that their efforts can really make a difference to organisation. Having a number of perspectives, it is clear that employee motivation is central to the modern organisational practices. Moreover, the benefits of employee motivation and effective leadership are more if company implement effectively. In implementing employee motivation theories in practices, a number of general principl

James Joyces Araby - The Symbol of the Church in Araby Essay -- Joyce

James Joyce's Dubliners - The Symbol of the Church in Araby Joyce's short story "Araby" is filled with symbolic images of a church. It opens and closes with strong symbols, and in the body of the story, the images are shaped by the young), Irish narrator's impressions of the effect the Church of Ireland has upon the people of Ire-land. The boy is fiercely determined to invest in someone within this Church the holiness he feels should be the natural state of all within it, but a succession of experiences forces him to see that his determination is in vain. At the climax of the story, when he realizes that his dreams of holiness and love are inconsistent with the actual world, his anger and anguish are directed, not toward the Church, but to-ward himself as "a creature driven by vanity." In addition to the images in the story that are symbolic of the Church and its effect upon the people who belong to it, there are descriptive words and phrases that add to this representational meaning. The story opens with a description of the Dublin neighborhood where the boy lives. Strikingly suggestive of a church, the image shows the ineffectuality of the Church as a vital force in the lives of the inhabitants of the neighborhood-the faithful within the Church. North Richmond Street is composed of two rows of houses with â€Å"brown imperturbable faces" (the pews) leading down to the tall "un-inhabited house" (the empty altar). The boy's own home is set in a garden the natural state of which would be like Paradise, since it contains a "central apple tree"; however, those who should have cared for it have allowed it to become desolate, and the central tree stands alone amid "a few straggling bushes." At dusk when the boy and his companions... ... like Mangan's sister-her words are trivial and worldly. In a sudden flash of insight the boy sees that his faith and his passion have been blind. He sees in the "two men counting money on a salver" a symbol of the moneylenders in the temple. He allows the pennies to fall in his pocket. The lights in the hall go out; his "church" is in darkness. Tears fill his eyes as he sees himself a "creature driven and derided by vanity, â€Å"whose "foolish blood" made him see secular desires as symbols of true faith. In this moment of disillusionment he feels that he himself is at fault for being so bemused by his ideals that he failed completely to see the world as it is. He has discovered in his Church and in love (both traditional symbols of ineffably sacred loveliness) only a shoddy imitation of true beauty. Understandably his disillusionment causes him "anguish and anger."   

Globalization and genocide Essay

The twentieth century has seen a lot of inventions come into being, from the invention of the engine, to the manufacturing of airplanes. Then there came the aspect of globalization. The world that was so large started shrinking on a daily basis until finally, borders seemed to have evaporated into thin air even between continents. Today, a person may be in London in the morning and in the evening he is in Washington. Communication has also been made easier and more efficient in such a way that you can talk to a person who is thousands of miles away, as if you are talking to the person next door. The world has become a small community. Successes and failures However, there are shortcomings that have come with globalization. Lechner and Boli (2004) in their book The Globalization Reader argues that while there has been shortcoming of globalization because of the strain it has exerted on the environment thereby degrading it. While the countries all over the world have been working to see their economies develop, this has been at the expense of the environment. One of these causes of environmental degradation according to their argument is the destroying of the natural environment. Large tracts of forest covered land are destroyed each year leaving the land bare and in a few years no longer unproductive. This, they argue, is not the only cause of environmental degradation. Another cause is the releasing of harmful chemicals into the environment. Example is the Chernobyl nuclear accident. After this accident, there were many nuclear substances that were released into the environment and over the years have caused cancer. Fossil fuels have also contributed greatly to the destruction of the environment. While these have provided fuel for industries, carbon dioxide emissions has been on the rise thereby causing global warming. Are there ways and means to reverse the current trends of environmental degradation in order to make secure our future? However, despite all this destruction, there has been an effort to try and slow down if not to completely stop the rate at which the environment is destroyed. Whereas the governments have not been keen enough to conserve the environment, Lechner and Boli (2004) argue that there are environmentalists who have rallied for conservation of this precious environment. In 1992, Rio de Janeiro Declaration on Environment and Development proposed that, for a meaningful development to be achieved, environment conservation must come first. There are also who have argued that for environment to be conserved especially in poor nations, the rich nations must cancel their debts since the small governments spend all their earnings paying debts at the expense of local development, thus forcing it people to solely rely on an already deprived land hence furthering the effects of environmental destruction. Others have used all their minerals on debts without caring much on the effects this has on the environment. There are also organizations that were formed to champion for the protection of the environment. Their call is on the political class to make their priorities right by spending less on military and more on environment protection, not just for this generation but also for future generation. Issues of poverty have been cited as the biggest enemy to the protection of the environment. An example is of Mau forest in Kenya. While this forest has been the water catchments and the source of many rivers in Kenya, it faces the danger of being destroyed because of human activities. At the moment, part of the forest has been inhabited by people who are poor and therefore not willing to move out. The government of Kenya on the other hand is also unable to settle these people elsewhere since it doesn’t have resources. The neighboring nations namely Uganda and Tanzania face the same plight as Kenya and cannot help the Kenyan government yet these rivers drain in Lake Victoria which is shared among them. These activities that have affected a nation environmentally do not affect just one person. The Mau forest in Kenya is a good example. If the future of Mau forest is not solved, eventually, Egypt which doesn’t even border Kenya will be affected since it depends on water from Lake Victoria through river Nile for its irrigation. Human beings faced the danger of extinction on a daily, more so from environmental degradation. Nevertheless, it is possible to have a better world. A world where pollution is controlled and excellent environment that is not contaminated is the ultimate choice for everyone. There have been meetings called by different people all over the world to fight for the right to live in a non polluted environment. An urge to have those that are considered the minority in the society to participate in the process of policy making has been on the rise. Is it possible, when we are united together as a people, to fight for our environment? Genocide The effects of globalization have not been felt in the environmental circle alone. Social life in many places throughout the world has been altered because of globalization. According to Gellately and Kiernan (2003) examines the atrocities that have been committed against humanity, some among them committed by the ‘civilized’ as they championed for globalization. For example, there were mass murders that were committed at Guatemala, sponsored by the US government. In this revolution, the Mayan community was massacred and the world kept mum. Even when as a commission to investigate these events was setup, their report did not reveal the motives behind these killings, and the people behind it. The Mayan people are not the only ones that have been affected. Yugoslavia in 1991 faced genocide whereby a minority group was targeted and massacred. Politics and cruelty has been the order of the day. Politicians have been known to use people to get into position and then turn against these people. These acts of brutality are yet to end. Societies throughout the world still experience mass murders in their midst. Technology, which is supposed to ease the way life, is now being used against people. US is not spared either. September 11 attacks proved that people are willing to go all the way to destroy others. While we may toy around with the idea of whether to reevaluate our stand towards globalization or not, we must always remember that a time is coming when we shall not enjoy the relaxation our beaches offer us as we do today. At that time, there will be no trees for our wildlife and therefore no rain. For countries in Sub Saharan Africa, this will mean that there will be no food since these communities have always depended on rain for their agricultural activities. Just as a reminder, that time is already at hand. We are already seeing the effects of globalization on our environment. Yet, the question we ask ourselves is, ‘Are we ready to shove the idea of globalization beneath the carpet and look for a new alternative? ’ Some of the greatest crimes against humanity were committed at a time when we considered the world to be on a highway to becoming one community with no barriers. That was in the mid 1990s, a genocide that left many dead with many other maimed. Yet, the global community never spoke a single word until it was all over. According to Gellately and Kiernan (2003), these acts of brutality have often been sparked by oppression through the years by those who are powerful. After many years of oppression, those who have been oppressed pour their anger on those who are helpless and vulnerable and therefore cannot defend themselves. In the end, we witness the kind of crimes like those that happened in Rwanda (p 375). We cannot also ignore the fact that technological advances in warfare have also been the cause of genocides in our communities. Cases in point are the Nazis in Germany; the use of poisonous gases against the Kurds in Iraq; the September 11 attacks on US soil. These have all employed the use of technology to perpetrate crime. Thus, the globalization that was supposed to bring us together has also been the source of death and segregation in our communities. Are we as human being going through a transition that is changing us for the worse i. e. turning us against each other? Is globalization therefore the cause of genocide or a solution to eradicating genocide in the current world? Are we our own enemies? References Lechner, F & Boli, J. (2004). The globalization reader. New Jersey, USA: Published by Wiley-Blackwell. Gellately, R. & Kiernan, B. (2003). The specter of genocide: mass murder in historical perspective. Cambridge, UK: Published by Cambridge University Press.

Part Two Chapter VII

VII Once the first impulse of spite had worn off, Samantha bitterly regretted inviting Gavin and Kay to dinner. She spent Friday morning joking with her assistant about the dreadful evening she was bound to have, but her mood plummeted once she had left Carly in charge of Over the Shoulder Boulder Holders (a name that had made Howard laugh so hard the first time he had heard it that it had brought on an asthma attack, and which made Shirley scowl whenever it was spoken in her presence). Driving back to Pagford ahead of the rush hour, so that she could shop for ingredients and start cooking, Samantha tried to cheer herself up by thinking of nasty questions to ask Gavin. Perhaps she might wonder aloud why Kay had not moved in with him: that would be a good one. Walking home from the Square with bulging Mollison and Lowe carrier bags in each hand, she came across Mary Fairbrother beside the cash-point machine in the wall of Barry's bank. ‘Mary, hi †¦ how are you?' Mary was thin and pale, with grey patches around her eyes. Their conversation was stilted and strange. They had not spoken since the journey in the ambulance, barring brief, awkward condolences at the funeral. ‘I've been meaning to drop in,' Mary said, ‘you were so kind – and I wanted to thank Miles – ‘ ‘No need,' Samantha said awkwardly. ‘Oh, but I'd like – ‘ ‘Oh, but then, please do – ‘ After Mary had walked away, Samantha had the awful feeling that she might have given the impression that that evening would be a perfect time for Mary to come round. Once home, she dropped the bags in the hall and telephoned Miles at work to tell him what she had done, but he displayed an infuriating equanimity about the prospect of adding a newly widowed woman to their foursome. ‘I can't see what the problem is, really,' he said. ‘Nice for Mary to get out.' ‘But I didn't say we were having Gavin and Kay over – ‘ ‘Mary likes Gav,' said Miles. ‘I wouldn't worry about it.' He was, Samantha thought, being deliberately obtuse, no doubt in retaliation for her refusal to go to Sweetlove House. After she had hung up, she wondered whether to call Mary to tell her not to come that evening, but she was afraid of sounding rude, and settled for hoping that Mary would find herself unequal to calling in after all. Stalking into the sitting room, she put on Libby's boy band DVD at full volume so that she would be able to hear it in the kitchen, then carried the bags through and set to work preparing a casserole and her fall-back pudding, Mississippi mud pie. She would have liked to buy one of Mollison and Lowe's large gateaux, to save herself some work, but it would have got straight back to Shirley, who frequently intimated that Samantha was over-reliant on frozen food and ready meals. Samantha knew the boy band DVD so well by now that she was able to visualize the images matching the music blaring through to the kitchen. Several times that week, while Miles was upstairs in his home study or on the telephone to Howard, she had watched it again. When she heard the opening bars of the track where the muscular boy walked, with his shirt flapping open, along the beach, she went through to watch in her apron, absent-mindedly sucking her chocolatey fingers. She had planned on having a long shower while Miles laid the table, forgetting that he would be late home, because he had to drive into Yarvil to pick up the girls from St Anne's. When Samantha realized why he had not returned, and that their daughters would be with him when he did, she had to fly around to organize the dining room herself, then find something to feed Lexie and Libby before the guests arrived. Miles found his wife in her work clothes at half-past seven, sweaty, cross and inclined to blame him for what had been her own idea. Fourteen-year-old Libby marched into the sitting room without greeting Samantha and removed the disc from the DVD player. ‘Oh, good, I was wondering what I'd done with that,' she said. ‘Why's the TV on? Have you been playing it?' Sometimes, Samantha thought that her younger daughter had a look of Shirley about her. ‘I was watching the news, Libby. I haven't got time to watch DVDs. Come through, your pizza's ready. We've got people coming round.' ‘Frozen pizza again?' ‘Miles! I need to change. Can you mash the potatoes for me? Miles?' But he had disappeared upstairs, so Samantha pounded the potatoes herself, while her daughters ate at the island in the middle of the kitchen. Libby had propped the DVD cover against her glass of Diet Pepsi, and was ogling it. ‘Mikey's so lush,' she said, with a carnal groan that took Samantha aback; but the muscular boy was called Jake. Samantha was glad they did not like the same one. Loud and confident Lexie was jabbering about school; a machine-gun torrent of information about girls whom Samantha did not know, with whose antics and feuds and regroupings she could not keep up. ‘All right, you two, I've got to change. Clear away when you're done, all right?' She turned down the heat under the casserole and hurried upstairs. Miles was buttoning up his shirt in the bedroom, watching himself in the wardrobe mirror. The whole room smelt of soap and aftershave. ‘Everything under control, hon?' ‘Yes, thanks. So glad you've had time to shower,' spat Samantha, pulling out her favourite long skirt and top, slamming the wardrobe door. ‘You could have one now.' ‘They'll be here in ten minutes; I won't have time to dry my hair and put on make-up.' She kicked off her shoes; one of them hit the radiator with a loud clang. ‘When you've finished preening, could you please go downstairs and sort out drinks?' After Miles had left the room, she tried to untangle her thick hair and repair her make-up. She looked awful. Only when she had changed did she realize that she was wearing the wrong bra for her clinging top. After a frantic search, she remembered that the right one was drying in the utility room; she hurried out onto the landing but the doorbell rang. Swearing, she scuttled back to the bedroom. The boy band's music was blaring out of Libby's room. Gavin and Kay had arrived on the dot of eight because Gavin was afraid of what Samantha might say if they turned up late; he could imagine her suggesting that they had lost track of time because they were shagging or that they must have had a row. She seemed to think that one of the perks of marriage was that it gave you rights of comment and intrusion over single people's love lives. She also thought that her crass, uninhibited way of talking, especially when drunk, constituted trenchant humour. ‘Hello-ello-ello,' said Miles, moving back to let Gavin and Kay inside. ‘Come in, come in. Welcome to Casa Mollison.' He kissed Kay on both cheeks and relieved her of the chocolates she was holding. ‘For us? Thanks very much. Lovely to meet you properly at last. Gav's been keeping you under wraps for far too long.' Miles shook the wine out of Gavin's hand, then clapped him on the back, which Gavin resented. ‘Come on through, Sam'll be down in a mo. What'll you have to drink?' Kay would ordinarily have found Miles rather smooth and over-familiar, but she was determined to suspend judgement. Couples had to mix with each other's circles, and manage to get along in them. This evening represented significant progress in her quest to infiltrate the layers of his life to which Gavin had never admitted her, and she wanted to show him that she was at home in the Mollisons' big, smug house, that there was no need to exclude her any more. So she smiled at Miles, asked for a red wine, and admired the spacious room with its stripped pine floorboards, its over-cushioned sofa and its framed prints. ‘Been here for, ooh, getting on for fourteen years,' said Miles, busy with the corkscrew. ‘You're down in Hope Street, aren't you? Nice little houses, some great fixer-upper opportunities down there.' Samantha appeared, smiling without warmth. Kay, who had previously seen her only in an overcoat, noted the tightness of her orange top, beneath which every detail of her lacy bra was clearly visible. Her face was even darker than her leathery chest; her eye make-up was thick and unflattering and her jangling gold earrings and high-heeled golden mules were, in Kay's opinion, tarty. Samantha struck her as the kind of woman who would have raucous girls' nights out, and find stripograms hilarious, and flirt drunkenly with everyone else's partner at parties. ‘Hi there,' said Samantha. She kissed Gavin and smiled at Kay. ‘Great, you've got drinks. I'll have the same as Kay, Miles.' She turned away to sit down, having already taken stock of the other woman's appearance: Kay was small-breasted and heavy-hipped, and had certainly chosen her black trousers to minimize the size of her bottom. She would have done better, in Samantha's opinion, to wear heels, given the shortness of her legs. Her face was attractive enough, with even-toned olive skin, large dark eyes and a generous mouth; but the closely cropped boy's hair and the resolutely flat shoes were undoubtedly pointers to certain sacrosanct Beliefs. Gavin had done it again: he had gone and picked another humourless, domineering woman who would make his life a misery. ‘So!' said Samantha brightly, raising her glass. ‘Gavin-and-Kay!' She saw, with satisfaction, Gavin's hangdog wince of a smile; but before she could make him squirm more or weasel private information out of them both to dangle over Shirley's and Maureen's heads, the doorbell rang again. Mary appeared fragile and angular, especially beside Miles, who ushered her into the room. Her T-shirt hung from protruding collarbones. ‘Oh,' she said, coming to a startled halt on the threshold. ‘I didn't realize you were having – ‘ ‘Gavin and Kay just dropped in,' said Samantha a little wildly. ‘Come in, Mary, please †¦ have a drink †¦' ‘Mary, this is Kay,' said Miles. ‘Kay, this is Mary Fairbrother.' ‘Oh,' said Kay, thrown; she had thought that it would only be the four of them. ‘Yes, hello.' Gavin, who could tell that Mary had not meant to drop in on a dinner party and was on the point of walking straight back out again, patted the sofa beside him; Mary sat down with a weak smile. He was overjoyed to see her. Here was his buffer; even Samantha must realize that her particular brand of prurience would be inappropriate in front of a bereaved woman; plus, the constrictive symmetry of a foursome had been broken up. ‘How are you?' he said quietly. ‘I was going to give you a ring, actually †¦ there've been developments with the insurance †¦' ‘Haven't we got any nibbles, Sam?' asked Miles. Samantha walked from the room, seething at Miles. The smell of scorched meat met her as she opened the kitchen door. ‘Oh shit, shit, shit †¦' She had completely forgotten the casserole, which had dried out. Desiccated chunks of meat and vegetables sat, forlorn survivors of the catastrophe, on the singed bottom of the pot. Samantha sloshed in wine and stock, chiselling the adhering bits off the pan with her spoon, stirring vigorously, sweating in the heat. Miles' high-pitched laugh rang out from the sitting room. Samantha put on long-stemmed broccoli to steam, drained her glass of wine, ripped open a bag of tortilla chips and a tub of hummus, and upended them into bowls. Mary and Gavin were still conversing quietly on the sofa when she returned to the sitting room, while Miles was showing Kay a framed aerial photograph of Pagford, and giving her a lesson in the town's history. Samantha set down the bowls on the coffee table, poured herself another drink and settled into the armchair, making no effort to join either conversation. It was awfully uncomfortable to have Mary there; with her grief hanging so heavily around her she might as well have walked in trailing a shroud. Surely, though, she would leave before dinner. Gavin was determined that Mary should stay. As they discussed the latest developments in their ongoing battle with the insurance company, he felt much more relaxed and in control than he usually did in Miles and Samantha's presence. Nobody was chipping away at him, or patronizing him, and Miles was absolving him temporarily of all responsibility for Kay. ‘†¦ and just here, just out of sight,' Miles was saying, pointing to a spot two inches past the frame of the picture, ‘you've got Sweetlove House, the Fawley place. Big Queen Anne manor house, dormers, stone quoins †¦ stunning, you should visit, it's open to the public on Sundays in the summer. Important family locally, the Fawleys.' ‘Stone quoins?' ‘Important family, locally?' God, you are an arse, Miles. Samantha hoisted herself out of her armchair and returned to the kitchen. Though the casserole was watery, the burnt flavour dominated. The broccoli was flaccid and tasteless; the mashed potato cool and dry. Past caring, she decanted it all into dishes and slammed it down on the circular dining-room table. ‘Dinner's ready!' she called at the sitting-room door. ‘Oh, I must go,' said Mary, jumping up. ‘I didn't mean – ‘ ‘No, no, no!' said Gavin, in a tone that Kay had never heard before: kindly and cajoling. ‘It'll do you good to eat – kids'll be all right for an hour.' Miles added his support and Mary looked uncertainly towards Samantha, who was forced to add her voice to theirs, then dashed back through into the dining room to lay another setting. She invited Mary to sit between Gavin and Miles, because placing her next to a woman seemed to emphasize her husband's absence. Kay and Miles had moved on to discussing social work. ‘I don't envy you,' he said, serving Kay a large ladle full of casserole; Samantha could see black, scorched flecks in the sauce spreading across the white plate. ‘Bloody difficult job.' ‘Well, we're perennially under-resourced,' said Kay, ‘but it can be satisfying, especially when you can feel you're making a difference.' And she thought of the Weedons. Terri's urine sample had tested negative at the clinic yesterday and Robbie had had a full week in nursery. The recollection cheered her, counterbalancing her slight irritation that Gavin's attention was still focused entirely on Mary; that he was doing nothing to help ease her conversation with his friends. ‘You've got a daughter, haven't you, Kay?' ‘That's right: Gaia. She's sixteen.' ‘Same age as Lexie; we should get them together,' said Miles. ‘Divorced?' asked Samantha delicately. ‘No,' said Kay. ‘We weren't married. He was a university boyfriend and we split up not long after she was born.' ‘Yeah, Miles and I had barely left university ourselves,' said Samantha. Kay did not know whether Samantha meant to draw a distinction between herself, who had married the big smug father of her children, and Kay, who had been left †¦ not that Samantha could know that Brendan had left her †¦ ‘Gaia's taken a Saturday job with your father, actually,' Kay told Miles. ‘At the new cafe.' Miles was delighted. He took enormous pleasure in the idea that he and Howard were so much part of the fabric of the place that everybody in Pagford was connected to them, whether as friend or client, customer or employee. Gavin, who was chewing and chewing on a bit of rubbery meat that was refusing to yield to his teeth, experienced a further lowering in the pit of his stomach. It was news to him that Gaia had taken a job with Miles' father. Somehow he had forgotten that Kay possessed in Gaia another powerful device for anchoring herself to Pagford. When not in the immediate vicinity of her slamming doors, her vicious looks and caustic asides, Gavin tended to forget that Gaia had any independent existence at all; that she was not simply part of the uncomfortable backdrop of stale sheets, bad cooking and festering grudges against which his relationship with Kay staggered on. ‘Does Gaia like Pagford?' Samantha asked. ‘Well, it's a bit quiet compared to Hackney,' said Kay, ‘but she's settling in well.' She took a large gulp of wine to wash out her mouth after disgorging the enormous lie. There had been yet another row before leaving tonight. (‘What's the matter with you?' Kay had asked, while Gaia sat at the kitchen table, hunched over her laptop, wearing a dressing gown over her clothes. Four or five boxes of dialogue were open on the screen. Kay knew that Gaia was communicating online with the friends she had left behind in Hackney, friends she had had, in most cases, since she had been in primary school. ‘Gaia?' Refusal to answer was new and ominous. Kay was used to explosions of bile and rage against herself and, particularly, Gavin. ‘Gaia, I'm talking to you.' ‘I know, I can hear you.' ‘Then kindly have the courtesy to answer me back.' Black dialogue jerked upwards in the boxes on the screen, funny little icons, blinking and waggling. ‘Gaia, please will you answer me?' ‘What? What do you want?' ‘I'm trying to ask about your day.' ‘My day was shit. Yesterday was shit. Tomorrow will be shit as well.' ‘When did you get home?' ‘The same time I always get home.' Sometimes, even after all these years, Gaia displayed resentment at having to let herself in, at Kay not being at home to meet her like a storybook mother. ‘Do you want to tell me why your day was shit?' ‘Because you dragged me to live in a shithole.' Kay willed herself not to shout. Lately there had been screaming matches that she was sure the whole street had heard. ‘You know that I'm going out with Gavin tonight?' Gaia muttered something Kay did not catch. ‘What?' ‘I said, I didn't think he liked taking you out.' ‘What's that supposed to mean?' But Gaia did not answer; she simply typed a response into one of the scrolling conversations on the screen. Kay vacillated, both wanting to press her and afraid of what she might hear. ‘We'll be back around midnight, I expect.' Gaia had not responded. Kay had gone to wait for Gavin in the hall.) ‘Gaia's made friends,' Kay told Miles, ‘with a girl who lives in this street; what's her name – Narinder?' ‘Sukhvinder,' said Miles and Samantha together. ‘She's a nice girl,' said Mary. ‘Have you met her father?' Samantha asked Kay. ‘No,' said Kay. ‘He's a heart surgeon,' said Samantha, who was on her fourth glass of wine. ‘Absolutely bloody gorgeous.' ‘Oh,' said Kay. ‘Like a Bollywood film star.' None of them, Samantha reflected, had bothered to tell her that dinner was tasty, which would have been simple politeness, even though it was awful. If she wasn't allowed to torment Gavin, she ought at least to be able to needle Miles. ‘Vikram's the only good thing about living in this godforsaken town, I can tell you,' said Samantha. ‘Sex on legs.' ‘And his wife's our local GP,' said Miles, ‘and a parish councillor. You'll be employed by Yarvil District Council, Kay, are you?' ‘That's right,' said Kay. ‘But I spend most of my time in the Fields. They're technically in Pagford Parish, aren't they?' Not the Fields, thought Samantha, Oh, don't mention the bloody Fields. ‘Ah,' said Miles, with a meaningful smile. ‘Yes, well, the Fields do belong to Pagford, technically. Technically, they do. Painful subject, Kay.' ‘Really? Why?' asked Kay, hoping to make conversation general, because Gavin was still talking in an undertone to the widow. ‘Well, you see – this is back in the fifties.' Miles seemed to be embarking on a well-rehearsed speech. ‘Yarvil wanted to expand the Cantermill Estate, and instead of building out to the west, where the bypass is now – ‘ ‘Gavin? Mary? More wine?' Samantha called over Miles. ‘ – they were a little bit duplicitous; land was bought without it being very clear what they wanted it for, and then they went and expanded the estate over the border into Pagford Parish.' ‘Why aren't you mentioning Old Aubrey Fawley, Miles?' asked Samantha. She had, at last, reached that delicious point of intoxication where her tongue became wicked and she became disengaged from fear of consequences, eager to provoke and to irritate, seeking nothing but her own amusement. ‘The truth is that Old Aubrey Fawley, who used to own all those lovely stone quoits, or whatever Miles was telling you about, did a deal behind everyone's backs – ‘ ‘That's not fair, Sam,' said Miles, but she talked over him again. ‘ – he flogged off the land where the Fields are built, pocketed, I don't know, must have been a quarter of a mill or so – ‘ ‘Don't talk rubbish, Sam, back in the fifties?' ‘ – but then, once he realized everyone was pissed off with him, he pretended he hadn't known it would cause trouble. Upper-class twit. And a drunk,' added Samantha. ‘Simply not true, I'm afraid,' Miles said firmly. ‘To fully understand the problem, Kay, you need to appreciate a bit of local history.' Samantha, holding her chin in her hand, pretended to slide her elbow off the table in boredom. Though she could not like Samantha, Kay laughed, and Gavin and Mary broke off their quiet conversation. ‘We're talking about the Fields,' said Kay, in a tone intended to remind Gavin that she was there; that he ought to be giving her moral support. Miles, Samantha and Gavin realized simultaneously that the Fields was a most tactless subject to raise in front of Mary, when they had been such a bone of contention between Barry and Howard. ‘Apparently they're a bit of a sore subject locally,' said Kay, wanting to force Gavin to express a view, to rope him in. ‘Mmm,' he replied, and turning back to Mary, he said, ‘So how's Declan's football coming on?' Kay experienced a powerful stab of fury: Mary might be recently bereaved, but Gavin's solicitousness seemed unnecessarily pointed. She had imagined this evening quite differently: a foursome in which Gavin would have to acknowledge that they really were a couple; yet nobody looking on would imagine that they enjoyed a closer relationship than acquaintanceship. Also, the food was horrible. Kay put her knife and fork together with three-quarters of her helping untouched – an act that was not lost on Samantha – and addressed Miles again. ‘Did you grow up in Pagford?' ‘Afraid so,' said Miles, smiling complacently. ‘Born in the old Kelland Hospital along the road. They closed it in the eighties.' ‘And you? – ‘ Kay asked Samantha, who cut across her. ‘God, no. I'm here by accident.' ‘Sorry, I don't know what you do, Samantha?' asked Kay. ‘I've got my own busi – ‘ ‘She sells outsize bras,' said Miles. Samantha got up abruptly and went to fetch another bottle of wine. When she returned to the table, Miles was telling Kay the humorous anecdote, doubtless intended to illustrate how everyone knew everyone in Pagford, of how he had been pulled over in the car one night by a policeman who turned out to be a friend he had known since primary school. The blow-by-blow re-enactment of the banter between himself and Steve Edwards was tediously familiar to Samantha. As she moved around the table replenishing all the glasses, she watched Kay's austere expression; evidently, Kay did not find drink-driving a laughing matter. ‘†¦ so Steve's holding out the breathalyser, and I'm about to blow in it, and out of nowhere we both start cracking up. His partner's got no idea what the hell's going on; he's like this' – Miles mimed a man turning his head from side to side in astonishment – ‘and Steve's bent double, pissing himself, because all we can think of is the last time he was holding something steady for me to blow into, which was nigh on twenty years ago, and – ‘ ‘It was a blow-up doll,' said Samantha, unsmiling, dropping back into her seat beside Miles. ‘Miles and Steve put it in their friend Ian's parents' bed, during Ian's eighteenth-birthday party. Anyway, in the end Miles was fined a grand and got three points on his licence, because it was the second time he'd been caught over the limit. So that was hysterically funny.' Miles' grin remained foolishly in place, like a limp balloon forgotten after a party. A stiff little chill seemed to blow through the temporarily silent room. Though Miles struck her as an almighty bore, Kay was on his side: he was the only one at the table who seemed remotely inclined to ease her passage into Pagford social life. ‘I must say, the Fields are pretty rough,' she said, reverting to the subject with which Miles seemed most comfortable, and still ignorant that it was in any way inauspicious within Mary's vicinity. ‘I've worked in the inner cities; I didn't expect to see that kind of deprivation in a rural area, but it's not all that different from London. Less of an ethnic mix, of course.' ‘Oh, yes, we've got our share of addicts and wasters,' said Miles. ‘I think that's about all I can manage, Sam,' he added, pushing his plate away from him with a sizeable amount of food still on it. Samantha started to clear the table; Mary got up to help. ‘No, no, it's fine, Mary, you relax,' Samantha said. To Kay's annoyance, Gavin jumped up too, chivalrously insisting on Mary's sitting back down, but Mary insisted too. ‘That was lovely, Sam,' said Mary, in the kitchen, as they scraped most of the food into the bin. ‘No, it wasn't, it was horrible,' said Samantha, who was only appreciating how drunk she was now that she was on her feet. ‘What do you think of Kay?' ‘I don't know. She's not what I expected,' said Mary. ‘She's exactly what I expected,' said Samantha, taking out plates for pudding. ‘She's another Lisa, if you ask me.' ‘Oh, no, don't say that,' said Mary. ‘He deserves someone nice this time.' This was a most novel point of view to Samantha, who was of the opinion that Gavin's wetness merited constant punishment. They returned to the dining room to find an animated conversation in progress between Kay and Miles, while Gavin sat in silence. ‘†¦ offload responsibility for them, which seems to me to be a pretty self-centred and self-satisfied – ‘ ‘Well, I think it's interesting that you use the word â€Å"responsibility†,' said Miles, ‘because I think that goes to the very heart of the problem, doesn't it? The question is, where exactly do we draw the line?' ‘Beyond the Fields, apparently.' Kay laughed, with condescension. ‘You want to draw a line neatly between the home-owning middle classes and the lower – ‘ ‘Pagford's full of working-class people, Kay; the difference is, most of them work. D'you know what proportion of the Fields lives off benefits? Responsibility, you say: what happened to personal responsibility? We've had them through the local school for years: kids who haven't got a single worker in the family; the concept of earning a living is completely foreign to them; generations of non-workers, and we're expected to subsidize them – ‘ ‘So your solution is to shunt off the problem onto Yarvil,' said Kay, ‘not to engage with any of the underlying – ‘ ‘Mississippi mud pie?' called Samantha. Gavin and Mary took slices with thanks; Kay, to Samantha's fury, simply held out her plate as though Samantha were a waitress, her attention all on Miles. ‘†¦ the addiction clinic, which is absolutely crucial, and which certain people are apparently lobbying to close – ‘ ‘Oh, well, if you're talking about Bellchapel,' said Miles, shaking his head and smirking, ‘I hope you've mugged up on what the success rates are, Kay. Pathetic, frankly, absolutely pathetic. I've seen the figures, I was going through them this morning, and I won't lie to you, the sooner they close – ‘ ‘And the figures you're talking about are †¦?' ‘Success rates, Kay, exactly what I said: the number of people who have actually stopped using drugs, gone clean – ‘ ‘I'm sorry, but that's a very naive point of view; if you're going to judge success purely – ‘ ‘But how on earth else are we supposed to judge an addiction clinic's success?' demanded Miles, incredulous. ‘As far as I can tell, all they do at Bellchapel is dole out methadone, which half of their clients use alongside heroin anyway.' ‘The whole problem of addiction is immensely complicated,' said Kay, ‘and it's naive and simplistic to put the problem purely in terms of users and non †¦' But Miles was shaking his head, smiling; Kay, who had been enjoying her verbal duel with this self-satisfied lawyer, was suddenly angry. ‘Well, I can give you a very concrete example of what Bellchapel's doing: one family I'm working with – mother, teenage daughter and small son – if the mother wasn't on methadone, she'd be on the streets trying to pay for her habit; the kids are immeasurably better off – ‘ ‘They'd be better off away from their mother, by the sound of it,' said Miles. ‘And where exactly would you propose they go?' ‘A decent foster home would be a good start,' said Miles. ‘Do you know how many foster homes there are, against how many kids needing them?' asked Kay. ‘The best solution would have been to have them adopted at birth – ‘ ‘Fabulous. I'll hop in my time machine,' retorted Kay. ‘Well, we know a couple who were desperate to adopt,' said Samantha, unexpectedly throwing her weight behind Miles. She would not forgive Kay for the rude outstretched plate; the woman was bolshy and patronizing, exactly like Lisa, who had monopolized every get-together with her political views and her job in family law, despising Samantha for owning a bra shop. ‘Adam and Janice,' she reminded Miles in parenthesis, who nodded; ‘and they couldn't get a baby for love nor money, could they?' ‘Yes, a baby,' said Kay, rolling her eyes, ‘everybody wants a baby. Robbie's nearly four. He's not potty-trained, he's developmentally behind for his age and he's almost certainly had inappropriate exposure to sexual behaviour. Would your friends like to adopt him?' ‘But the point is, if he'd been taken from his mother at birth – ‘ ‘She was off the drugs when he was born, and making good progress,' said Kay. ‘She loved him and wanted to keep him, and she was meeting his needs at the time. She'd already raised Krystal, with some family support – ‘ ‘Krystal!' shrieked Samantha. ‘Oh my God, are we talking about the Weedons?' Kay was horrified that she had used names; it had never mattered in London, but everyone truly did know everyone in Pagford, it seemed. ‘I shouldn't have – ‘ But Miles and Samantha were laughing, and Mary looked tense. Kay, who had not touched her pie, and had managed very little of the first course, realized that she had drunk too much; she had been sipping wine steadily out of nerves, and now she had committed a prime indiscretion. Still, it was too late to undo that; anger overrode every other consideration. ‘Krystal Weedon is no advert for that woman's mothering skills,' said Miles. ‘Krystal's trying her damnedest to hold her family together,' said Kay. ‘She loves her little brother very much; she's terrified he'll be taken away – ‘ ‘I wouldn't trust Krystal Weedon to look after a boiling egg,' said Miles, and Samantha laughed again. ‘Oh, look, it's to her credit she loves her brother, but he isn't a cuddly toy – ‘ ‘Yes, I know that,' snapped Kay, remembering Robbie's shitty, crusted bottom, ‘but he's still loved.' ‘Krystal bullied our daughter Lexie,' said Samantha, ‘so we've seen a different side of her to the one I'm sure she shows you.' ‘Look, we all know Krystal's had a rough deal,' said Miles, ‘nobody's denying that. It's the drug-addled mother I've got an issue with.' ‘As a matter of fact, she's doing very well on the Bellchapel programme at the moment.' ‘But with her history,' said Miles, ‘it isn't rocket science, is it, to guess that she'll relapse?' ‘If you apply that rule across the board, you ought not to have a driving licence, because with your history you're bound to drink and drive again.' Miles was temporarily baffled, but Samantha said coldly, ‘I think that's a rather different thing.' ‘Do you?' said Kay. ‘It's the same principle.' ‘Yes, well, principles are sometimes the problem, if you ask me,' said Miles. ‘Often what's needed is a bit of common sense.' ‘Which is the name people usually give to their prejudices,' rejoined Kay. ‘According to Nietzsche,' said a sharp new voice, making them all jump, ‘philosophy is the biography of the philosopher.' A miniature Samantha stood at the door into the hall, a busty girl of around sixteen in tight jeans and a T-shirt; she was eating a handful of grapes and looking rather pleased with herself. ‘Everyone meet Lexie,' said Miles proudly. ‘Thank you for that, genius.' ‘You're welcome,' said Lexie pertly, and she swept off upstairs. A heavy silence sank over the table. Without really knowing why, Samantha, Miles and Kay all glanced towards Mary, who looked as though she might be on the verge of tears. ‘Coffee,' said Samantha, lurching to her feet. Mary disappeared into the bathroom. ‘Let's go and sit through,' said Miles, conscious that the atmosphere was somewhat charged, but confident that he could, with a few jokes and his habitual bonhomie, steer everyone back into charity with each other. ‘Bring your glasses.' His inner certainties had been no more rearranged by Kay's arguments than a breeze can move a boulder; yet his feeling towards her was not unkind, but rather pitying. He was the least intoxicated by the constant refilling of glasses, but on reaching the sitting room he realized how very full his bladder was. ‘Whack on some music, Gav, and I'll go and get those choccies.' But Gavin made no move towards the vertical stacks of CDs in their sleek Perspex stands. He seemed to be waiting for Kay to start on him. Sure enough, as soon as Miles had vanished from sight, Kay said, ‘Well, thank you very much, Gav. Thanks for all the support.' Gavin had drunk even more greedily than Kay throughout dinner, enjoying his own private celebration that he had not, after all, been offered up as a sacrifice to Samantha's gladiatorial bullying. He faced Kay squarely, full of a courage born not only of wine but because he had been treated for an hour as somebody important, knowledgeable and supportive, by Mary. ‘You seemed to be doing OK on your own,' he said. Indeed, the little he had permitted himself to hear of Kay and Miles' argument had given him a pronounced sense of deja vu; if he had not had Mary to distract him, he might have fancied himself back on that famous evening, in the identical dining room, when Lisa had told Miles that he epitomized all that was wrong with society, and Miles had laughed in her face, and Lisa had lost her temper and refused to stay for coffee. It was not very long after, that Lisa had admitted that she was sleeping with an associate partner at her firm and advised Gavin to get tested for chlamydia. ‘I don't know any of these people,' said Kay, ‘and you haven't done one damn thing to make it any easier for me, have you?' ‘What did you want me to do?' asked Gavin. He was wonderfully calm, insulated by the imminent returns of the Mollisons and Mary, and by the copious amounts of Chianti he had consumed. ‘I didn't want an argument about the Fields. I don't give a monkey's about the Fields. Plus,' he added, ‘it's a touchy subject around Mary; Barry was fighting on the council to keep the Fields part of Pagford.' ‘Well, then, why couldn't you have told me – given me a hint?' He laughed, exactly as Miles had laughed at her. Before she could retort, the others returned like the Magi bearing gifts: Samantha carrying a tray of cups, followed by Mary holding the cafetiere, and Miles, with Kay's chocolates. Kay saw the flamboyant gold ribbon on the box and remembered how optimistic she had been about tonight when she had bought them. She turned her face away, trying to hide her anger, frantic with the desire to shout at Gavin, and also with a sudden, shocking urge to cry. ‘It's been so nice,' she heard Mary say, in a thick voice that suggested she, too, might have been crying, ‘but I won't stay for coffee, I don't want to be late back; Declan's a bit †¦ a bit unsettled at the moment. Thanks so much, Sam, Miles, it's been good to, you know †¦ well, get out for a bit.' ‘I'll walk you up the – ‘ Miles began, but Gavin was talking firmly over him. ‘You stay here, Miles; I'll see Mary back. I'll walk you up the road, Mary. It'll only take five minutes. It's dark up the top there.' Kay was barely breathing; all her being was concentrated in loathing of complacent Miles, tarty Samantha and fragile, drooping Mary, but most of all of Gavin himself. ‘Oh, yes,' she heard herself saying, as everybody seemed to look towards her for permission, ‘yep, you see Mary home, Gav.' She heard the front door close and Gavin had gone. Miles was pouring Kay's coffee. She watched the stream of hot black liquid fall, and felt suddenly, painfully alive to what she had risked in overthrowing her life for the man walking away into the night with another woman.