Guru

This week's most pointless research award goes to this gem from Royal Mail and Cary Cooper, professor of organisational psychology and health at Lancaster University Management School.

With an ever-worsening economic situation, Guru agrees that what the country really needs is academic advice on why you shouldn't base all your tough business decisions on what your Dad says (although there is no mention of not paying attention to your Mum).

The research 'reveals' that over a quarter (27%) of the 600-odd small and medium businesses surveyed are turning to Dad for words of wisdom to ride out the economic crisis.

Thanks to disciple Helen who has sent in these pics of herself catching up on the latest HR news while on holiday in Japan.

Here she is in Tokyo Bay in front of a miniature version of New York's Statue of Liberty, and in front of the huge shrine gate on the beautiful island of Miyajima, off the city of Hiroshima - clearly too absorbed to enjoy the views.

If any other disciples have holiday pics of them reading HR's number one publication, then please email guru@personneltoday.com

Yet more suggestions for HR look-a-likes - those great and good from the world of HR who uncannily resemble political, business and showbiz stars. Look and wonder.

This week's pair were spotted in the pages of recent issues of Personnel Today, so keep your eyes peeled for more in this issue. From p2 of the May 12 issue we have Margaret Cheshire, head of people and organisational development at car manufacturer Bentley, who is the spit of the nation's favourite dating quiz supremo Dame Cilla Black.

And from p25 of the following issue (May 19), who should be grinning off the page but comedian Marcus Brigstocke - oh no, it's Greg Bate, senior consultant, HR at Jam Recruitment. Could be twins.

Keep your suggestions coming to guru@personneltoday.com

Back when Guru was a young whippersnapper, one of his greatest sources of entertainment was reading the ads at the back of Father Guru's copy of Private Eye. Brought up in a God-fearing household, Guru never failed to be surprised by the large numbers of people advertising for extra-marital relationships. (Although 'relationship' may be an overly charitable discription of what they were looking for).

Fast forward to 2009 and Guru is slightly less surprised to hear that redundant City types are seeking comfort 'on the side' - and, presumably, in various other positions, too.

The MP who claimed £1,645 on expenses for that indispensable tool of government -   a floating duck island - is to sell it to raise money for charity.

Tory MP for Gosport Sir Peter Viggers told the Portsmouth News he felt "humiliated" after his expense claims were published in the Daily Telegraph.

The £30,000 claim for gardening costs, which Guru considers the highlight of the delicious expenses saga, included the 5ft Stockholm duck house which acts as an island to protect ducks from being attacked by foxes.

Adam Partridge, rent-a-quote auctioneer from TV's Flog It, Bargain Hunt and Cash in the Attic, said he believed the duck house could sell for much higher than its normal value of about £300.

Quackers.

It helps to swot up on current affairs when angling for a job, especially in the highly visible world of politics.

If you think our politicians are out of touch, Guru feels you may be judging them a little harshly by international standards. The Mayor of Zagreb - who is hoping to be re-elected - has called for Freddie Mercury to make a comeback gig in the Croatian capital.

Speaking on national television about his musical preferences, Milan Bandic said he wanted to attract rock legends to the city.

"I would like to see David Bowie play in Zagreb. And Freddie Mercury could come, too," he said.

The poor man seemed shocked to be told that the Queen frontman had died 18 years ago.

Spurious but nevertheless entertaining PR revelation of the week is the much-hyped 'millionth word in the English language' - at least as decided by the Global Language Monitor (GLM), an association that tracks the use of new words (no, Guru has never heard of them before either).

The geeky winner was 'Web 2.0', a term which refers to the second generation of web development, entering the lexicon at 10.22am on June 10 (GLM says a new word is coined every 98 minutes, although most of us get by with an everyday vocabulary of about 14,000 words).

Words previously hotly tipped to hit the coveted million mark included 'defriend' (knock someone off your mySpace/Facebook etc etc friends list) and 'noob' - an uber-nerdy but rather pleasing word in Guru's opinion, which is apparently a derogatory term for those new to the online gaming community. Who knew.

Keeping it super-topical, this week's first HR look-a-likes are the twin craggy features of Suralan-soon-to-be-Lordalan Sugar, and [itals]Carry On icon Sid James.

Sugar looks set to be given a peerage so he can become Gordon Brown's 'enterprise tsar' - in no way a publicity stunt to turn the media focus away from our beleaguered PM. What he ends up being called will be dictated by the strict rules governing titles.

First names are not used, so while he might choose to be Lord Sugar of Hackney, where he was born, he will never actually be 'Lord Alan Sugar'.

Sadly, Conservative pressure is building on the lord of reality TV to step back from his role on 'The Apprentice', with shadow culture secretary Jeremy Hunt branding the job "completely incompatible" with presenting the show. The peerless Suralan, Guru suspects, is likely to carry on regardless.

Our other, entirely untopical uncanny look-a-likies are pop heartthrob Justin Timberlake and [itals]Personnel Today's very own deputy editor Mike Berry - currently sunning himself in blissful ignorance on holiday and therefore unable to prevent Guru publishing this.

More suggestions please to guru@personneltoday.com

The police in the UK like to think they have a hard time - protecting MPs from airborne eggs, dealing with naked pensioners protesting at the loss of their rights - but even a hard-hearted wretch like Guru shudders with sympathy at the plight of the local police force in Gerihun, Sierra Leone.

Their station has been occupied. Not by protestors, but by snakes. (They may be protesting snakes, but only Harry Potter, with his command of snake language Parseltongue, can tell).  And we're not talking about a handful of adders - an estimated 400 snakes, mainly cobras and vipers, are slithering around the station.

But unlike the British police, their Sierra Leone counterparts are not a bunch of whingers. Nor have they called in their unions, or gone on strike. That's not to say that they're not scared, however.

"We constantly hear hisses and weird sounds from the roof and we are always restless," said one police officer, who asked not to be identified.

Fumigation having failed, the authorities are bringing in the sharp-shooters. Guru can but bow in awe of such real men. 

If you're going to resign by flouncing out with maximum drama, tossing barbed comments about your boss over your shoulder, then Guru reckons you should at least stick to your guns and do it properly.

Ex communities secretary Hazel Blears took childish ministerial posturing to new heights last week, timing her high-profile exit to inflict the maximum possible damage on Labour's admittedly already rubbish European and local election prospects.

But the Salford MP now says she regrets mocking the PM's unintentionally hilarious YouTube video in an Observer article in October, and wearing a rather snazzy lapel badge saying "rocking the boat" - fully readable by papparazzi long lenses - as she quit.

A fine example to us all.

It seems UK bosses still haven't got the hang of effective staff motivation. Some fine examples include a charity boss who brought in his hunting rifle and pretended to fire it at staff to make them work harder; a boss who made staff clean toilets because she had sacked the cleaners to save money, and another who cut staff hours and pay while boasting about using his bonus to redecorate his house.

More than half the UK's bosses have got worse at motivating their staff since the recession began, according to a survey of over 1,600 workers by the campaign Keep Britain Working.

The examples thrown up by the survey show the nation's bosses exhibiting classic British behaviour: one in three have resorted to childish petulance, increasing their criticism and blaming of others; nearly a third have gone all ostrichy and hidden themselves away; more than one in four have given in to apathy and simply become indifferent; a quarter have applied the stiff upper lip so beloved of our nation and pretended that nothing's happening, while 17% have started shouting and raging like Guru's idol of snobbish, miserly, xenophobic misanthropy Basil Fawlty.

Makes you proud, eh?

This week's new word is the deeply unpleasant 'Facesquatting' (a term Guru advises not Googling in an open plan office), coined as a result of timewasters' favourite Facebook's decision to let users give their profile pages simple addresses.

Most users simply wanted to bag their own name -  facebook.com/joebloggs for example. But inevitably a lot of poeple with too much time on their hands tried to claim someone else's name as a hilarious prank.  

This may backfire the next time they wnat to go for a new job, as usernames can't be changed once they've been set up. So the bloke who though it was a great idea to tag his Facebook profile with the URL facebook.com/ahmadinejad now has to live with the fact that it will pop up every time a prospective employer Googles his name.

Those who went for 'boner' and 'b*llocks' may also be rueing the decision.

And if anyone has nicked 'guru' there's going to be trouble...

Next Wednesday, a crack HR team - perhaps named Bashful, Doc, Dopey, Grumpy. Happy, Sleepy and Sneezy - will descend upon the magic castle (Disney UK's Hammersmith office, to those of you  not in the know) to weave their magic on the unemployed of London.

Yes, Disneyland Paris is recruiting. Apparently the day's objective is "

This statement has rather piqued Guru's interest. Firstly, what are the cultures of which they speak? Are they looking for workers keen to brush up on their mermaid/ talking animal/ pirate/ tree swinging apeman conversational skills?

And as for the ideal candidate, one can only wonder. Must they be able to sing? Dance? Swing between trees? Breathe underwater?

Most important of all, is there a vacancy for a blue-faced, bald-headed smooth-talking cynic? 

Police forces across the UK have been somewhat beleagured recently. They've been accused of violently quelling protests. They've even been accused of torturing suspects. Questions have been asked about their recruitment procedures. Who are they hiring, and why?

But Guru is delighted to report that one recruit is proving his worth - and then some.

A springer spaniel called Frog is making a name for himself in the world of drugs hauls. What would have taken days if not weeks for plod took the four-footed genius just a couple of hours, when he unearthed £60,000 worth of drugs, despite their being two feet underground.

And it doesn't stop there. Unlike many of his human colleagues, Frog also boasts (perhaps boasts is the wrong word for such a sophisticated creature) a keen intellect, helping his handler PC Steph Barrett with daily games of Scrabble.

Barrett says: "He'll sit and watch and give me tips. He watches and stares quite intently at the board, helping me."

Guru can't help but wonder why the police's dog recruitment techniques are so obviously better than those they use for their human staff. Woof!

Where would Guru be without the police? Few bloggers can boast as glorious and constant a source of inspiration. Nary a day goes by without a disciple sending in a police-related story. And today is certainly no exception. Scottish disciple Hamish has brought to Guru's attention a rare incidence of someone aspiring to be a member of the constabulary.

Stuart Kennedy of Aberdeenshire, a police-themed male stripper (no truncheon or helmet jokes, please) is known on stage as Sergeant Eros. The enterprising Kennedy, for a reason known possibly only to himself, fitted a white strobe light to his car's dashboard and, while in uniform, began stopping cars by the roadside .

Peterhead Sheriff Court was told Kennedy was on his way to a stripping job at the Palace Hotel in Peterhead when the first incident involved. Later the same night he pulled over an off-duty firefighter.

Kennedy denied impersonating a police officer, insisting that he used the strobe light so that other drivers could see him. He also denied claims from one of the drivers he stopped that he pretended to talk into the fake police radio attached to his uniform.

Sgt Eros, sorry, Stuart Kennedy was found guilty of fitting his car with a flashing light, two charges of impersonating a police officer, and of having a police uniform and equipment in hus possession.

While the man is undoubtedly an idiot (and a master of the understated, having said that fitting a strobe light to his car "probably wasn't the best idea"), Guru is excited by the possibilities thrown up by the incident. For instance, have the police thought of blaming some of their recent crimes and misdemeaours on impersonators? That alleged waterboarding incident in London, for a start - might that have been the work of a frustrated male stripper? And as for the G20 violence - suddenly it all makes sense.   

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