Innocence

Via thesimpsons

There was a time when hard work, integrity, honesty, diligence and morality were considered as rewards in themselves for any duty, task or employment but in an age when hypocrisy and negligence are essential requirements on the job description for public office, exemption from scrutiny and responsibility are as important as financial rewards. It would seem that dismissal, either fair or unfair, is unthinkable. Resignation from any post as a result of malpractice, maladministration or malfeasance is now a half-forgotten relic of some bygone age. Corruption can expect to be ignored, incompetence attracts reward and being caught red handed on the fiddle can be explained away as a simple human error.

With an elite now in a constant state of denial regarding culpability and trust, it comes as no surprise to find a bang to rights bent England football manager offering “entrapment” as a defence against being greedy, stupid and corrupt. Mercifully, he parts company amicably with a meagre pay off of one million after one game. Similarly, we discover that the world`s best cyclist suffers from asthma

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Twilight`s last gleaming

Way back in 1992, the ubiquity of email was far from established and many employers regarded the internet as the work of the devil that had no place in a productive workplace. Working for one particular Jurassic corporation who ironically shunned all things electrical, some of us lobbied for email access as a vital commercial tool guaranteeing more communication and therefore more business and more profit. We prevailed, of course, and the IT department was expanded to include some glorious, unfathomable eccentrics to make the thing work. It was a joy to meet with them; it was like conversing with extraterrestrials.

Banana split

You might be forgiven for thinking that after 116 years of banging on about how unity is strength; the Labour Party might just have grasped something approaching an understanding of what unity actually is. Now with more than 500,000 members, the Labour Party resembles the universe at about a nanosecond after the Big Bang. There are slightly less than 500,000 bits and pieces moving at slightly less than the speed of light in just about 500,000 different directions. Unity, in Labour`s case, is the strength of a black hole pulling everything towards oblivion.

Follow the leader

Via telegraph.co.uk

Once upon a time long ago, on a management training course organised by an employer determined to waste both time and money, a rather vacuous facilitator explained the difference between leadership and management. Management, it seems, is defined as “doing things right” and leadership is the ability to “do the right thing”. The training day, or Continued Professional Development as this psycho babble is now called, was punctuated by a bland lunch in a bland conference room in a bland chain hotel just off a motorway junction.

This little piggy

It has been merely a year since hilarity, hysteria and abject horror engulfed the British political zeitgeist with lurid tales of strange behaviour at the very pinnacle of government. With the entire world watching the sordid farce unfold; the temptation to pile in at the time with endless references to porcine quadrupeds seemed almost irresistible. However, a more mature and balanced reaction was to adopt the approach of broadcast media especially the BBC by first ignoring it, then doubting it and then playing the whole thing down with talk of “bawdy pranks”, high jinks, undergraduate mischief and “harmless initiation rituals”. After all, what goes on between a future Prime Minister and the severed head of a pig in the privacy of an Oxford dining club is none of our business.