On paper Mone seems like the ideal person for the job; her narrative of growing up in a slum tenement in the East End of Glasgow, leaving school at 15 with no qualifications and working hard to build up a business is inspirational to say the least. It is also a load of shite. Let's start off with the slum tenement. When I was wee my family lived in a crumbling, old tenement on Castle St, with no bathroom and a shared cludgie on the stairhead. My grandparents also lived in a similar tenement on Baird St, and my auntie and uncle lived in one just off Royston Road. Another auntie and uncle lived downstairs from us and there were other relatives scattered around Royston and Roystonhill. In the mid-Sixties we were all moved to better housing; we went to Castlemilk, my granny and granda moved to Sighthill and other relatives went to the new high-rise flats in Roystonhill. By the end of the decade all our old tenements had been cleared away.
It was the same in other areas, so by the time Michelle Mone was born, in 1971, there were very, very few of these types of tenements left. I find it hard to believe that she grew up in a tenement with no bathroom; unless her parents actively went out and sought one! Being born in 1971 also had certain advantages, or disadvantages, depending on your point of view. In 1973 the school leaving age was raised from 15 to 16. I was born a full ten years before Ms Mone and I certainly couldn't leave at the age of 15. I stayed on for Fifth Year and there were quite a few folk that were forced to stay at school until Christmas because their sixteenth birthday fell too late. How Michelle Mone managed to leave at fifteen, then, is beyond me. If anything she would have been one of the ones forced to do half a Fifth Year, her birthday falling in October.
It's all just part of the narrative to make Mone's rise seem more spectacular than it was. The way her story is projected it's as if she grew up in the 30s and 40s instead of the 70s and 80s. So, anyway, she left school with no qualifications, ended up pregnant, got married and then struggled and strived until her innate entrepreneurial spirit kicked in; right? Wrong! Yes, she became pregnant when she was 18 and got married. Her husband was the son of an anaesthetist and would not be short of a bob or two. On a side note, her husband was a Catholic so Mone converted to Catholicism. Rather patronisingly, her support of Celtic dates from that time; because that's what Catholics do, isn't it? And so she settled down to domestic bliss.
In her twenties, Mone decided to enter the world of work for the first time. Having left school with no qualifications, she lied on her CV to make herself look educated. She landed a marketing job with Labatt, the brewer; the interviewers were no doubt impressed when she turned up in person, all teeth and tits. Marketing is one of those jobs where you don't really need a lot of skills; just a ruthless streak. Anyone that has watched 'The Apprentice' will know that, essentially, it's all about taking all the credit when things go right and pinning the blame on somebody else when it all goes wrong. Mone must have been more ruthless than most as she ended up the head of Labatt's marketing in Scotland after just two years. Her success in this job is evident from the fact that we all now drink nothing but Labatt beer. Er...no. In fact, she ended up being made redundant.
She then had one of those famous moments when an idea struck her; a bit like James Watt and his kettle. She started up a company to design and make a new, more comfortable but figure-enhancing bra. Again, this has been mythologised as a wee wifie sitting at home, needle and thread in hand, struggling to make a prototype. The truth is probably more prosaic and there would have been a team working on the design. The rest, as they say, is history, and Mone became a successful businesswoman, with the story always being that she did it all on her own. Her autobiography reinforces this, with the added tale of a controlling husband, even though it is doubtful she would have got anywhere without him. In 2010 she was awarded an OBE, which, in most cases, stands for 'Other Buggers' Efforts'. The myth, however, has stayed intact and Mone even makes money giving 'motivational speeches'.
She is quoted as saying, "My philosophy is that it does not matter where you are from, what education you have, or if you are from an affluent background or not, you can make it if you work hard, set your goals and never give up." It also probably helps to have a good pair of tits, with which you can get yourself a husband with money to make it all possible!
Sycophantic Unionists are falling over themselves to congratulate Mone on her new appointment, saying how wonderful she is and how she is going to have a huge impact on all the deprived areas of the UK. The narrative now is that Mone was chased out of Scotland by 'envious' SNP supporters, who can't stand to see anyone succeed in life. One comment in the Scotsman stands out:
"Mone creates jobs and wealth for a country. Sturgeon puts business out of business and costs you your job. Michelle creates a taxable wealth, Sturgeon creates a wealth of taxes!"
Precisely how Mone 'creates jobs and wealth' for Scotland is a hard one to fathom since all her manufacturing is outsourced to China. Even if the stories of her lingerie being made in sweatshops by underpaid and badly-treated workers are untrue, the fact remains that Mone is not providing jobs for anyone in the UK, let alone in Scotland. Nor is she remotely interested in doing so. Like every businessman or woman she is only interested in making money for herself. Fair enough, and good luck to her, but please spare us the lie that she is some kind of philanthropist!
There was a review of Mone's autobiography by Lianne Gutcher in the National. Ms Gutcher says:
"However, the book is somewhat light on the nitty-gritty of running a business. When the firm nearly goes under because the factory in Portugal cannot keep up with demand, a manufacturing expert comes in and moves production to Hong Kong. But the reader gets no insight into how supply chains work or the financials behind that move."
I would imagine that the book is 'somewhat light' on these matters because Ms Mone has no understanding of them. She might bleat that being an entrepreneur is the 'loneliest job in the world' but the fact is that she was not on her own. Her husband was intimately involved in the business, but his contribution is played down completely as part of the myth. When things were going wrong, Mone had to call in an expert and it would be interesting to discover how many other people were responsible for actually getting the business up and running. We only ever get to hear one side of the story; Mone's.
I remember at my school back in 1977 a girl wanted to do Higher Physics. The teachers weren't having it; Physics was a 'boys' subject'. Her parents had to fight tooth-and-nail with the education department to get her into the Higher Physics class, but she got to do it. That story should be an inspiration to girls, as should the stories of other girls around the world that have struggled to gain a decent education. Michelle Mone, on the other hand, offers a different kind of message to girls in deprived areas: forget brains, education and qualifications - blond hair, a pretty face and a big pair of tits are the real stepping-stones to success.
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