About Censern

About Censern or Bean Counter is a book about a new Utopia.

About Censern or Bean Counter is about an island where the old industries and old ways are being replaced by new business that have adopted compassionate capitalism, a system that respects employees, the environment and customers.

Jaysen, a forensic accountant discovers why some of the Censern Island's factories will be closing and why the disruptors will take their place. This is a comment on current business practices and a plea for compassionate corporate capitalism that will help restore humanity to the business world. Cut-throat business is a messy corporate suicide, which everyone ignores.

Michael Fitzalan is an author with three published books. He lives in Tooting, in south-west of London and this is his first satirical look at an ideal society, a Utopia for today.?

?‘About Censern Island Situation’ was a report by Jaysen Blunt this is how it came about and how it turned the fortunes of the island, creating the most successful economy in the world, the highest per capita wealth with the best health care and? highest happiness rating of anywhere in the whole world. We start with numbers as Jaysen is a failed lawyer who became an accountant.?

Visit Number One – The Big Brewery

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At the office of the Dabwasser Brewery, in the town of Fitzalan, in the Bay of St. Michael, there is a smell of malt mashing in the air.?

We arrive at the office of the island’s largest brewery.

The office is spacious, an old factory storeroom, high ceilinged and vast, the huge desk is beside the industrial, factory framed windows and looks dwarfed by the large space. Sitting behind the desk is Sven Boon, Managing Director of Dubwasser Brewery. Jaysen Blunt, chief accountant at Forensic United Chartered Accountants, strides confidently across the room like a prosecuting barrister returning to court to deliver the winning argument.

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Ben: How was your flight?

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He does not rise to meet his guest.

Why would he? He has been taught to, but he considers himself far too important to adopt ‘common courtesy’, the clue is in the common. He is one of those social climbers that believe that captains of industry are not hidebound by convention and frankly he cannot be bothered, he has not slept well since the board tried to limit his bonus at the last annual general meeting.

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Jaysen: The flight was a smooth as silk.

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He ignores the slight, he is used to it, self-important people, in his view, believe that they above all others and can behave like medieval ‘Lords of the Manor’, in the deluded belief that manners do not make man. Jaysen is used to entitlement removing the need for common decency. It is like a badge that allows you to forget any humanity.

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Ben: Brilliant, we’ll be joined by our office manager William Sturgeon. I hope you don’t mind.

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Jaysen: Of course, I know that the Abens-Ruten-Co took over the brewery and brought you in. What line were you in before?

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Ben: I was in the shoe business. Then, three years ago, I was recruited from the mainland to turn increase sales domestically and to improve our export business.?

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Jaysen: Can you talk me through how this led to you falling from the premium brewery on the island to becoming a struggling entity that I am visiting to try to prevent receivership?

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Ben looks like he has just been given an electric shock, he is disturbed by the forensic frankness. His eyes widen and he feels the collar of his shirt seem to get tighter like a noose. His heart hammers and his pulse races but externally, he manages to cover up his consternation with a charming smile and a return to good manners. If he is going to excoriated, he wants everyone to be seated at least, most of all himself so that the trembling in his left leg will not reveal his guilt at taking on the job for financial gain, knowing it was too big a step for his brain.?

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Ben: Of course, the company’s problems started way before I joined.

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Jaysen: Absolutely, I have seen the balance sheets.

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Ben: They show a dip in profits before I joined.

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Jaysen: And a catastrophic collapse after, how long? How long have you been here?

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Ben: Three years, but it was difficult to stop the downward slide, but we have a new strategy.

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Jaysen: Oh, I understand, totally. I’m just trying to get a grip on why this is the third restructuring and why it involves redundancy of key personnel.

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Ben: Take a seat. Are you familiar with our product? It’s billed as the smoothest beer you’ll ever taste.

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Jaysen: Of course, I’ve done my research. These seats are extremely comfortable, I can smell the leather.

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Ben: Thank you, finest Connolly leather with goose down filling, nothing but the best for the boardroom and my office.

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Jaysen: Absolutely and so much more pleasant than plastic. No doubt the refit was tax deductible, and you needed the office revamped when you moved in.?

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Ben: Absolutely, everything needed a refit in here, ?but we’re not profligate. Look the Abens people say we have to save money, so when we replace the carpets in the office we’ll replace the Axminster from the Wiltshire Carpet Agency that exists on the island with the polyester carpet from China.?

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Jaysen: But isn’t polyester toxic and responsible for sick building syndrome.

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Ben: It won’t be in the executive offices just the support staff, the telesales and engineers, mostly, the brewery itself is tiled.?

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Jaysen: What if they find out that you’re systematically poisoning them? Won’t they go on strike or protest in some other way, perhaps? They might be a bit peeved.

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Ben: No matter, they won’t mind? They’re too terrified about losing their jobs to make a fuss. The oil companies have been poisoning people for years. First lead in petrol and then formaldehyde in diesel, no one cares. In fact, the rich people’s switch to diesel is scandalous. They could all afford electric cars, but they don’t care. We are allowed to poison people with impunity. Unemployment is rife on the island, we pay them a pittance. As long as the shareholders are happy and getting a dividend, nothing else matters.

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Jaysen: They won’t be for long with your bottom line.

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Ben: That’s why you’re here.

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Jaysen: I thought so.

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Ben: Someone has to carry the fuel can.

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Jaysen: I suppose you drive electric?

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Ben: Certainly not, I have a farm track to negotiate.

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Jaysen: Of course, you bought that estate in the Dell Ben region, near the mountains, lovely.

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Ben: It’s hilly. So, we need a diesel. Formaldehyde,? acetaldehyde and acrolein, they’re all in there, you be horrified at the terrible toxins that I pump out, but the car has a filter so I’m safe. I’ve no children to worry about. If people worry about particles from diesel getting into people’s brains, lungs and placenta, the oil companies on the island just commission a study that shows particles are present in the air from rubber tyres. People give up even though rubber particles are a lot less harmful than formaldehyde and acetaldehyde in your organs.? See it’s ever so easy. As I say, I have no kids so if I poison a cyclist it doesn’t bother me, one less person whizzing past me on my Sunday walk in the park. No one really cares, kids or not. I certainly don’t, global warming won’t have an effect on me.

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Jaysen: Even if you do have kids, it wouldn’t matter, I saw that detective show on BBC, where the detective drove a BMW X7,? she had a wife who was pregnant, and they still owned a diesel.

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Ben: You could not illustrate my point more clearly.

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Jaysen: That car’s massive and they’re twice the price of an electric car. They were a modern couple, I thought they’ll have an electric car especially with a baby on the way, no they just had to have the biggest car ever.

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Ben: See what I mean. We’ve known diesel is more toxic than petrol for years, but the P.R. people got hold of it, told everyone it was less polluting, and they believed it, even got Gordon Brown in England saying so.

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Jaysen: I thought that, too.

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Ben: Gullible, or what? Have you seen the sooty black clouds coming out of the exhaust when you start the engine. Diesel has been shown to be four times as polluting a petrol. Who cares? So, we’ll save money on the carpets in the offices, Chinese nylon and the Abens people will be pleased.

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Jaysen: That’s very good, sir. Sadly, I read that you sell ninety per cent of your product to the carpet weavers. If everyone does this they’ll be a disaster.

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Ben: Don’t worry, I met the Managing Directors at the Island Industry Conference and they’re all doing it. Standard practise, buy cheap.

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Jaysen: Homegrown jobs just destroyed for the sake of a few hundred quid per office. Your sales will suffer.

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Ben: You shouldn’t be so melodramatic, we’ll get the sales team to get new markets and they’ll make up the same sales we’ve lost in other markets.? All will be well.?

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Jaysen: So why am I here?

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Ben: To give me a reason to sack my office manager, Sturgeon, he should be with us soon.

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Jaysen: That’s not really what my job is, sir.

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Ben: It is now.

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Jaysen: I think you are mistaken about sales, it’s not that easy. Your attitude to everything is for the best is positively Panglossian.?

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Ben: All is for the best in this ‘best all of possible worlds’.

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The intercom on the desk, a small white box, from another era, lights up. Ben presses a button talks into the speaker to invite William Sturgeon into the lion’s den.? They all greet each other, and Will is offered a chair.

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Jaysen: Good morning Mr. Sturgeon, I’m Jaysen from the forensic accountants, we’re here to see what’s going wrong and how we can fix it.

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Will: Good morning, please, call me Will.

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Jaysen: Of course, and you can call me Jay. So how long have you been with the brewery?

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Will: Twenty years. I joined when we made beer.

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Jaysen: And you don’t, now?

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Will: We are no longer brewers but chemists.

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Jaysen: Profitable chemists.

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Will: Not now, if it weren’t for the Carpet Weavers Club, we wouldn’t have many sales at all. The bar is subsidised by the company, and we offer a huge discount to them. It’s almost twenty-five per cent. ?

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Jaysen: That’s your profit on the beer.

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Will: Just about.

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So, what’s gone wrong????

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Will: Let me show you a film from fifteen years ago.?

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Leaning forward,? Will slips a phone from his pocket and stabs a few buttons and miraculously the far wall becomes a white screen, a projector slides from its home in the roof and projects an image of the brewery trade mark of a waterfall inside a pint glass. The logo underneath reads: The most refreshing Beer on the Island of Censern fresh from the brewery in St. Michael. The films starts when Will presses his phone keypad.

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He explains the video was shot when Dubwasser moved to the island. The announcer speaks to the camera as he moves around stainless-steel vessels. Slowly, it dawns on Jaysen that the narrator and guide, in the film, is Will in his late twenties.

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Jaysen: That’s you, Will, you look so young!

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Will: It was ten years ago when I first started to work for the company.

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Announcer: We only use the finest hops and best malt, apart from adding yeast and water those are our main ingredients. We ferment the beer until it reaches five per cent to give it a hit and fuller flavour. It’s a premium price but a premium product. You deserve a decent pint.

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Ben:? the best in this ‘best all of possible worlds’.

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Will on the speaker as the narrator: Your hard-earned cash cannot be better spent if you’re having a beer after work or with friends at the weekend. The film pauses.

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Ben: Young Will was part of a promotional video we put out that some bright spark decided to turn into an advert. In those days we had seventy-five per cent of the island’s market for beer and it was growing.

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Jaysen: You could do with those sort of sales. now!

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Will: We certainly could. But the quality’s not there, now.

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Jaysen: Explain what you mean, that’s interesting.

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Will: Let me take you around the factory.

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Ben: Please limit your brewery tour to the bare minimum, I need Jaysen back for lunch at twelve.

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Will: Shall I send up some beer from the sample room for your lunch?

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Ben: Certainly not, it’s bilge, we have a couple of bottles of Chassagne Montrachet to drink. The sooner you leave, the sooner you’ll be back.

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Will: Thank you, sir.

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Leaving the office, Jaysen and Will walk towards the vertical flow brewery.

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Jaysen: What happens here?

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Will: This is the mash tun area where traditionally malt is boiled to create a mash.

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Jaysen: I can’t smell malt.

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Will: Oh, we add that later as an artificial flavour and we send steam out of a chimney smelling of malt to add to the authenticity. We haven’t used real malt in our brewing for years, the accountants tell us it’s too expensive, so we pick cheaper alternatives.

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Jaysen: What do you use instead?

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Will: Rice and sugar.

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Jaysen: Why?

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Will: It’s cheaper.

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Jaysen: Is that it?

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Will: It’s not for flavour.

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Jaysen : What about your claim to only use only malt and hops? ?

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Will: We no longer talk about malt and hops. We make no claims.

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Jaysen: So, rice is the carbohydrate and protein, the sugar turns it into alcohol.

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Will: You know it, it doesn’t taste the same, but the accountants insist we keep the price the same and make more profit, so we borrowed the idea from the mainland, they’ve been ‘brewing’ like this for many years. They spend millions on advertising and people buy enough of the product to keep the brands going.

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Jaysen: Interesting. I’ve witnessed 300 beer brands disappearing despite local and national adverting campaigns.

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Will: I have to admit that many of the beers we grew up with, or drank as teenagers, have gone.

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Jaysen: And where do you add the hops? I haven’t seen any vessels. I was one told that adding hops?at the beginning of the boil?will create bitterness, the hops added during the middle of the boil will create flavor, and the hops added at the end of the boil will create aroma.

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Will: We don’t add hops at any stage.

Jaysen: What? But beer is made of malt, hops and water. I’m incredulous! You do not add hops to your beer.??

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Will: No, just hop flavour, it comes in a liquid.

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Jaysen: So, no hops at all.

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Will: The flavour of hops goes in, the chemists have formulated a facsimile of what they feel has the same flavour and we add the essence.?

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Jaysen: A beer with hop oil.

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Will: We do add hop pellets at the end, but they get smaller and smaller each year, more like a pill than a pellet. They used to be fuel cap size.

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Jaysen: What yeast do you use?

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Will: We don’t use yeast any more, we ?just use enzymes. This is John Andams our chief chemist.

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John: Pleased to meet you. Don’t let Ben hear you, but we’re basically now just a chemical plant, it’s more chemistry than brewing.???

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Jaysen: So, let me get this right, correct me if I’m wrong. You used to use malt hops, water and yeast to make your product, which created its own carbonation.

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John: Yes, that’s how brewing works, the sugars in the malt turn into alcohol when yeast is added to the wort or liquid and left to ferment, we add hops to balance the flavour of the ale and make it bitter, the yeast works on the sugars in the liquid and converts the maltose into alcohol, but you know all this surely, you’ve visited enough breweries, haven’t you? We make more money if we cut corners.

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Jaysen: I just wanted clarity.? So instead of malt, you use rice and sugar, is that right?

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John: Yes, the accountants told us the malt was too expensive.

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Jaysen: Rice and sugar aren’t on the ingredients.

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John: To be fair, if you look at most beers, they just call themselves beer and technically they are. If they do put the ingredients on the label, they might chuck in a spoonful of malt and a pellet of hops in every batch of 100 barrels – 3,600 gallons or slightly over 12,000 litres. It’s gone in the tank so it’s an ingredient.

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Jaysen: It’s slightly misleading wouldn’t you say.

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John: All industries do it. Stick a Censern flag on a jacket and even though it came from Bangladesh, you can pass it off as finished or even made in Censern.

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Jaysen: Is there any integrity in business anymore??

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John:? Brewing is a complicated process.

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Jaysen: Not according to the craft brewers.

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John: They are often referred to as the reason for our dire sales.

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Jaysen: So why not use cheaper malt?

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John: No such thing. Malt is an expensive commodity. At scale, you have to make sure there are no impurities. Breweries have blown up when that has happened, moving malt in augurs, a stone gets in, a spark and then, boom. Extra care has to be taken. Malt has to be spread on the floor and dampened, left for days.

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Will: John’s right it is very costly to make malt because ?the cereal grain is converted into malt by soaking it in water, allowing it to sprout and then drying it to stop further growth, it takes skill, time and patience.?

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Jaysen: I get that. I understand. So why use rice and sugar, which doesn’t have the sophisticated different flavours or top notes of say a chocolate malt or a pale malt?

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John: Cost cutting. As the administration keeps increasing tax on beer, we have to save money, or the cost of beer will rise.

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Jaysen: That’s madness, the product is meant to be quality.

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John: The consumer doesn’t realise.

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Jaysen: I beg to differ. You are the only lager brewery on the island and yet your sales have dropped. Why?

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John: Maybe people are switching from lager and the craft beers.

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Jaysen: I’ve done research. Your sales have dropped forty per cent. Imports of lager have increased by forty per cent.

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Will: Are you suggesting our customers are switching to imported lager?

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Jaysen: Yes, the figures speak for themselves.

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Will: But the imported beer is more expensive than ours.

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Jaysen: Yes, but it tastes better.

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John: We know that you can’t compete if you don’t use malt, these imports all have eastern European malt in them, much cheaper and it gives a rounder taste. ?

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Jaysen: Yet the product has been shipped miles and is more costly for the consumer. The customer, who you think doesn’t care or can’t tell the difference, is choosing to buy the more expensive beer because it is a better-quality product, and they can tell the difference between your product and the imported beers.?

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Will: I’m sure they can’t .

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Jaysen: They clearly can. What’s your solution?

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John: We can’t change the process, we spent thousands on the new plant to cope with increased production we were anticipating.

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Jaysen: Before you tried to cheat the consumer by changing the product and fobbing them off with an inferior product.

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John: That’s going a bit too far.

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Will: I suppose it’s true.

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Jaysen: You’ve just told me you use rice, sugar and water, enzymes and hop oil instead of proper hops. Your advertising five years ago was based around the purity of your product, and the three main ingredients added to water, which are malt, hops and yeast. Now, you only use water.

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