Guru

Disciple Susie has alerted Guru to the latest flight of fantasy to be embarked upon by our Teutonic cousins in their relentless quest for unconquered territory.

Never having been accused of lacking naked ambition, readers may be relieved to hear that this particular German adventure has nothing to do with the Red Baron or Der Luftwaffe, but there is a mysterious 'party' involved – the FKK.

Apparently, this stands for Freikorperkultur, which translates as free body culture. Or more obviously 'nudist Germans'. And from today, our in-the-buff chums will be able to book nudist flights with OssiUrlaub, a company dedicated to providing outings for former East Germans.

"Ear ye, ear ye, ear ye! Yes thet's thee plebians down thar; you, the filthy underbelly of my kingdom, sorry, this great nation of mine, oops... ours. Ahem... One believes thet one has hed enough of this Kendo Livingsore and his tall storeys. One's royally unamused at the carbunclisation of London. It must stop."

Not-so-young Disciple Charles clearly has some issues with Ken Livingstone and the tall buildings of London. Mostly, it seems, on account of them blocking his views of old buildings that he either owns or would like to own.

In a remarkable 'post-modernist' outburst he has basically said 'less is more'. Only he doesn't want Mies van der Rohe buildings shooting up all over the capital, providing jobs for armies of craftsmen and women and making the UK the premier place for City types to make their huge piles. No, Looney Prince Charlie wants us to go back to building our buildings out of poo and straw, with waterwheels, donkeys and a sheep in every garden.

In this multi-media, web 2.0, 24-hour news, all-blogging, all-dancing culture in which Guru is told we now live, Yours Truly has to find an amusing, interesting and topical few words for his disciples every single day. This could present quite a challenge, were it not for the government’s hilarious handling of immigration.

It’s the gift that keeps on giving. Today Guru learnt that after 10 months’ work by a quango called the Commission on Integration and Cohesion, the government is to introduce welcome packs for migrants containing advice to help them feel integrated into British society.

Guru spluttered on his black forest gateaux this afternoon when he saw that he had an e-mail from a company called BJ Services. Quickly pressing the Escape Key and shuffling to cover his screen from Mrs Guru, he was sure that he had given his anonymous Hotmail address for such 'personal' correspondence.

Nethertheless, here was some personnel correspondence, gushing to explain that BJ Services had opened an employee development centre in Aberdeen.

As the nation braces itself for the official government guidelines on how to keep trim and stop eating all those cakes – and claim government cash for doing so – the nation's workforce was slightly demotivated earlier this week by the news that some harmless tossers had been banned from spilling their loads on the streets of a North Yorkshire city.

Several times in Guru’s life he has longed to put a pillow case over his bank manager’s head, stick a gun in his back and throw him in the back of a Ford Transit.

So it was great to see some West Country bank workers after his own heart give their boss Tony Sharp a 40th birthday to remember.

After the pancake debacle in Ripon, the Church of England could have done with a bit of a lie down to retreat back into its bizarre little world and lick its wounds.

But big-hatted, bearded, dress-wearing, God botherer Rowan Williams has made sure his flock cannot move into the barn for a few days and pull the wool over their own eyes.

Placing his dainty, booted foot firmly in his mouth, the Archbishop of Canterbury said that the use of sharia law (roughly translated as 'subjugation for women') in the UK was inevitable.

Guru would like to point out that it's about as inevitable as Jesus turning up to one of Dr Williams' sermons; or pigs flying; or Richard Dawkins turning to God.

Guru was amazed to hear of the three homosexual Welsh men suing Pizza Hut for discrimination because an employee refused to serve them.

Nine gay men and transexuals, some in women's clothing, were allegedly turned away from Blackpool's answer to fine Italian cuisine on the grounds it had "run out of pizza".

After previous forays into the HR related content on YouTube have shown that it had little of interest, or rather entertainment, to offer, Guru has received a trickle of suggestions from disciples interested in video as an art form.

Now disciple Andrew has alerted Yours Truly to a series of rather energetic clips showing the benefits of exercising at work. Facilities and Health & Safety specialists should look away now...

Guru has decided to follow in the footsteps and join the outsourcing revolution. Or rather, Mrs Guru has insisted that Yours Truly gets fully on-song with the latest trend for public service professionals – for clearly, like the BBC, Guru has a public service remit.

Following the news that Dartford Borough Council has become the first to outsource its complete HR function, Yours Truly feels it is only good and proper that he falls into line with this latest trend.

A surprise champion for unsung professionals has emerged from the shadows to save an endangered profession from what would undoubtedly have been a slow and painful death.

Expressing his concern that they were a dying breed – or at the very least, the keepers of a dying art – torturers everywhere can now breath a sigh of relief, safe in the knowledge that good ol' boy George Dubya has endorsed their shady work practices.

Of course, breathing a sigh of relief or anything else is not something that inmates of Guantanamo Bay and other US establishments can expect to do once they are on the 'waterboarding' table.

As befits one with more aural capacity than most, on account of having less follicle matter surrounding his lugholes (see side view above), Guru likes to keep his ear to the ground, as it were, to pick up juicy bits of HR stuff and nonsense.

So when getting his weekly fix of the Personnel Today news podcast, he was a tad alarmed to be rocked out of his slumber by some serious mangling of our great language – a crime against society.

Finally some common sense and a logical idea to exterminate two very troublesome birds with one perfectly aimed, nuclear-tipped stone.

The feathered enemies in question are lack of discipline among today’s youngsters, and problems readjusting to civilian life for those leaving the Armed Forces.

The stone, if the Centre for Policy Studies has its way, would be training for ex servicemen and women to become teachers.

News reaches Guru from Disciple Caroline that two of the nation's beloved un-PC coppers have been behaving very badly indeed.

Rather than taking the customary route of releasing their pent-up agression on the nearest member of the public, it seems two Rozzers in Wales have taken to acting like the Slag Brothers from hit Seventies children's TV show the Wacky Races and have been taking it out on themselves.

And like the cartoon cavemen, they fell out over who should be the driver of their very own 'bouldermobile'.

Being a fan of both charismatic curriculum vitae and ample shirt potatoes, Guru can not see the problem with a job candidate putting down their contact email address as bigboobs@yahoo.com.

However, it seems that 63% of employers have seen inappropriate personal email addresses such as the above and the equally intriguing hotstuff@hotmail.com.

Yesterday's CV writers, of course, appear unaware of spellcheckers, but most people involved in publishing use it wisely, taking full advantage of Microsoft's red squiggles beneath misspelt (or should that be miss-spelled?) words.

This by no means puts a complete end to errors being published for all to see – our great country's all too slack education system has seen to that.

Guru fondly remembers the front page of an essential heating and ventilation magazine being read by his colleagues in facilities, which announced in a subtle size 42 font, that All plumbers are pre-madonnas, presumably suggesting that they qualified before 1983.

Well this time it is Unison that has made a smile slowly appear on Guru's face as he dunked a slice of swiss roll in his afternoon cuppa...

News that a man and his dog getting locked into a branch of HSBC bank failed to set alarm bells ringing at the global finance giant ought to be a bit of a concern for anyone who's money is tied up with this slack operation.

However, Guru's alarm bells were set a-ringing by the eternally worried British public, embodied by Mr Jay Whitmarsh – the trapped man at the Swinton, Manchester branch of the bank – when he said: "The repercussions could have been horrendous if things had turned out differently. What would I have done if there was a fire?"

Did Mr Whitmarsh suddenly find himself transported into an episode of Casualty?

Guru's mystical powers know no bounds, it seems.

No sooner had he speculated on seriously unlikely things that could happen to a man locked in a bank up north, than God Almighty takes an interest to prove Mr Whitmarsh's concerns totally founded by smoting an area oop north with a genuine earthquake.

Let's hope Mr Whitmarsh didn't decide to walk the dog in a quiet Lincolnshire lane in a post-midnight bid to come to terms with his trauma.

Drummers, Guru has long suspected, are the leaders of a superior race, living quietly(ish) among us, waiting for their moment to take over the world.

Surely Ringo Starr knew something we didn’t as he 4/4 beat his way into human consciousness, first with the Beatles, then more prominently with Thomas the Tank Engine.

Happy Leap Day, disciples. Have any of you been down on bended knee to your commitment-phobe boyfriends? How about you, ladies?

Traditionally, of course, 29 February was seen as a day beyond English law, one where anything goes and the impossible became the norm. Looking around today, Guru feels that not much has changed.