Magical Mystery Tour on the Gravy Train

As your Club approaches a critical stage of its journey, it is probably timely to take a more in depth look at where all the money has gone and continues to go.

I think this blog has already done the staff issues to death so let's focus on some of the other costs.

Let me start the ball rolling:

Club Magazine

This is an anachronism in today's world of IT communications and PDF files. God only knows what this costs to produce on glossy paper and post out.How many members read it? One third of the membership is Japanese and we are in Japan ... but not one word of Japanese.

Why hasn't it been done away with? Simple answer is that it is not an arms length relationship.

PR Consultants

US10K per month. What value is this company adding other than to do work the staff should be doing?

Wine Consultant

I see the Club now has a globetrotting wine consultant. Wonder where this line item gets buried??

IT Consultant

US10k per month for one 'high-powered' person on for 4 hours a week.

Equipment

Long printer/photocopiers.In fact there are 27 of these babies at the Club. Again another less-than-arms-length transaction some time back.

Carpets & Curtains

Then there was the US25k spent on a consultant to procure from home. Problem was the stuff didn't meet Japanese fire regulations.

A lot of this stuff is treated a bit like the War on Terror...no longer a conflict of interest.

Feel free to add to the list while your bare foot reporter continues his journey through the swamp...