An Irishman's Diary

Imagine the shock of the Irishman's Diary when it read this paper's front-page digest on Monday and saw the following, under the heading of Business News: "The diary processing industry is attempting to get to grips with rising costs and lower profits. One method of coping with falling market supports is to change its mix of products: page 17."

The story was spot on, unfortunately. To quote Bertie Ahern, the reporter's sources were obviously impeccable. But the consternation here at Diary Headquarters was all the worse because we had not yet briefed staff on the crisis, reluctant as we were to alarm them unnecessarily in the run-up to Christmas.

The hope was that we could avert lay-offs by changing our product mix. Jeering at politicians has been our traditional mainstay. But the margins have been squeezed in recent years by low-cost competition on the internet, where many content suppliers have dispensed with such expensive overheads as correct spelling and grammar.

The plan was that the Diary would henceforth offer politicians a private consultancy service, advising them how to avoid ridicule from smart-arsed media commentators. The projected revenue stream would subsidise our other traditional but loss-making lines: art, culture, the exaltation of the human spirit, etc. If the restructuring failed, however, the Diary would have no choice but to let people go, starting with the gardener.

Anyway, we were just about to bash out a press release on Monday, saying that the media "speculation" was "unhelpful" "at this time". Then we turned to page 17 and discovered that the story was not about us at all. It was about Ireland's milk surplus, of all things. To say there was relief in the Diary sector is putting it mildly.

The message in the global marketplace these days is: adapt or die. You'd think that an organisation as venerable as the Swiss army would be free from pressures to change its product mix. But no. According to the Wall Street Journal, the 140,000-strong army (composed mostly of reserves) has responded to criticisms about its relevance by offering leadership courses for business people.

"It's cheaper than going to Harvard," Maj Gen Ulrich Zwygart said of the initiative. Participants in his four-day course suffer sleep deprivation and learn survival skills, including camouflage, as army recruits would. But the point is to teach executives how to think strategically while under pressure. What they learn can be "relevant in a takeover situation too", explained the major-general.

This was perhaps an unfortunate choice of words, because critics have noticed that the Swiss army has not been involved in any takeover situations recently. It last saw combat in 1798. And whether the reluctance of neighbouring countries to invade Switzerland has anything to do with its military reputation is questionable.

The army is best known for its multi-purpose pen-knife, the officer's version of which famously includes a corkscrew. This might be a useful weapon during an occupation of France. But it would hardly discourage an aggressor with designs on Berne.

The most famous Swiss soldiers are the Vatican guards, whose skill at camouflage is legendary. The distinctive blue-and-yellow striped uniform and ostrich-feather helmet allows them to blend seamlessly with the Vatican walls during those short but dangerous periods when they're not being photographed by tourists. Such skills have kept them in the job since 1506.

That contract apart, however, Switzerland's military remains heavily dependent on its core product: the defence of a country that nobody attacks. In a 1989 referendum, 35 per cent voted to abolish the army, and recent spending plans have brought renewed criticism. But at least as it adapts to survive, the army can take inspiration from those pen-knives, the largest of which - at the last count - had 29 different functions.

An even more dramatic example of product mixing comes from Azerbaijan where, according to the International Herald Tribune, entrepreneurs are promoting an alternative use for the crude oil of which that country has so much. Unlike Azerbaijan's offshore oil, the crude found at a place called Naftalan, in the interior, is too heavy to have much commercial value. But at the local petroleum spas, visitors do not put it in their car engines. They have baths in it instead.

At the peak of their popularity, apparently, Naftalan's spas drew 75,000 visitors a year. Then war with Armenia and the collapse of the Soviet Union intervened. Now the health tourist industry is being rebuilt for the free market. Enthusiasts claim that bathing in Naftalan crude "relieves joint pain, cures psoriasis, calms nerves and beautifies the skin". The baths take 10 minutes each (although cleaning the stuff off takes several showers and the help of an assistant with paper towels). A 15-day course costs $450.

The benefits of the oil baths may well be real, for all I know. But I suspect those clever Azerbaijanis have worked out that, next to leadership courses for stressed executives, exotic spa treatments for stressed executives is the big growth area in European business travel.

These people would bathe in anything if they thought it was good for them. Which, incidentally, has given me an exciting idea for dealing with Ireland's milk surplus. I think it could be a winner, for both spa-owners and farmers. But anyone who would like more details should contact me at the Diary processing office. Make sure to ask for "consultancy services".