Guru

How much weight does the British leader carry on the world stage? About 14 stones, Guru would estimate - with most of that making a big bulge in his pocket.

Sadly, that protuberance is 100% cash and not as a result of any illicit Viagra use on the part of our main member, that man David 'justcallmedave' Cameron, who in his role as PM recently urged the Viagra drug company Pfizer to invest more in the UK.

Pfizer's response - to close its R&D dept in Sandwich, Kent, axeing 2,400 jobs in the process - sends a stiff signal to the world of our leader's declining prowess in the bedroom... sorry, boardroom.

Still, stiff upper lip and all that. And being a bit of a flop in the standing up and being counted department wont bother justcallmediv, as he's sure to have plenty of 'wood' to play with when he buys all the land his chum George 'Oh No' Osborne is about to put on the market through the sell-off of the Forestry Commission.

Two shock stories in the national press today highlight the push-me-pull-you nature of management in these straitened times.

First there was the CIPD survey, which revealed that a third of workers are concerned they might lose their jobs and that managers need to show true leadership to overcome this level of demotivation.

Apparently, staff are working like a donkey by working longer hours to ensure they don't lose their jobs, then getting ill because they are working too long, then taking time off thus affecting their performance, thereby putting themselves in line for the old heave ho, on account of not being around much to even be inefficient.

Senior employment adviser at the CIPD, 'Little' Ben Willmott says that "Employers need to find cost-effective ways of equipping their line managers with the people management skills to support employee engagement and wellbeing."

Which is handy, because another survey has also made the link between staff working longer hours, taking more time off sick and generally not performing very well, due to the government's austerity measures. Crucially though, this survey also points out that employee unrest will grow if the situation is not controlled in some way. Now that could be serious as it might lead to union involvement - a red flag for management if ever there was one, and one that might necessitate actually talking to the animals, as it were.

So, to avoid such potentially lengthy meetings with the Marxist throwbacks should managers take their staff aside and explain in soothing terms that they need not worry about their jobs, as the organisation is surely doing all it can to avoid any job losses - perhaps lowering the lighting and supplying large quantities of wine and biscuits to ease their worries?

Yours Truly suggests not, and advocates that managers simply wait to see who takes most time off sick before giving them their marching orders - thereby killing two metaphorical birds with one stone, as anyone left will be seriously motivated to perform better due to being so grateful for keeping their job.

There would also be the added attraction that managers will be celebrated for their clear-sighted cost-cutting measures (ie, losing all those apparently unnecessary salaries) and will no doubt be in line for some kind of bonus. A trip to see Dr Doolittle perhaps - the Rex Harrison version, of course.

With government cuts threatening to cut whacking great chunks out of the police force, and being a believer in law and order and the discriminate use of the truncheon, Guru was heartened to read that a rally is to take place near Downing Street to protest at this proposed bobby bashing.

On the third day of March a march is to be held to support their plight, "because they are worth it", apparently.

Yours Truly immediately envisaged hordes of soft-faced activists putting anti-ageing cream on the road, thereby causing a slippery situation for the slippery folk who inhabit the corridors of power.

Then Disciple Dave pointed out that the 'pigs' the protest was about were the pink and hairy kind with curly tales - the ones who's houses made of straw and twigs were blown away by that nasty Mr Wolf.

Even then, it turns out the protest is not to protect our pigs - even ones wearing make-up - but to ensure that its our pigs that get slaughtered and chopped into meaty chunks and sold in supermarkets.

Now that is something Guru can get behind and he urges everyone - including the Rozzers - to get down and protest on behalf of our sadly not-being-eaten porcine chums, and help to ensure they have a future on a dinner plate near you, even perhaps as 'mini truncheon' bangers in homage to the boys in blue who end up on the dole.

Women. Don't you just love them. Guru certainly does, for even though it's a man's world (it wouldn't be nuthin' without a woman - as James Brown once said). And love them or hate them, you can't live without them. Or can you?

Guru has just been handed a piece of research on women in social housing - the touchy-feely end of the property spectrum, where people are supposed to care about other people's needs, apparently, and then respond by giving them housing. So he naturally thought, what more womanly occupation could there possibly be? Aside from the obvious, oldest one, of course.

But how wrong he was.

Yes, Yours Truly read, the top earner in social housing is, indeed a woman. But it seems that most of the rest of the women are being held down under the glass ceiling - literally confined to the basement that is middle management and below. A paradox of epic proportions considering the number of women working in the sector.

But then as that ol' philosopher James Brown also said: man made the cars, the roads, the lights, the money, the toys... everything basically. And what do women make?

Guru chewed this over while preparing to dunk his digestive in the soon-to-arrive brew and came to the conclusion that women's work is never done - or, at least, it's never done by women. Except when it comes to making the tea that is...

Ever vigilant, Mrs Guru has just stomped out of the room having slung Yours Truly's cuppa at his head.

Russian 'boffins' are halfway through an experiment to test the effects of close confinement on a team of volunteers as preparation for sending a manned flight to Mars.

Three Russians, a Chinaman, Italo-Columbian, and a Frenchman have just 'stepped' onto Mars - a sandpit - after eight months living an isolated existence on a secure double-height train carriage in West Moscow.

Now, while Yours Truly has ventured out of Moscow on a train and can vouch for the tedious and lengthy journeys encountered by our former Red Flag enthusiasts (although it took a mere six days - living in splendid isolation with a Chinaman, a Malteser, two Frenchmen and a Pakistani cricket speculator - to get to Vladivostok in Siberia), he doesn't understand quite why the Russian scientists went to all this trouble and bothered with this pyschological experiment.

Allegedly the aim was to see how the space volunteers would cope doing repetitive tasks every day, confined to living in a small space with little contact with the outside world. Yet it doesn't take a rocket scientist to tell you that 'scientists' are entirely likely to get bored, take it out on each other and generally act in ways predicted by purveyors of second-rate sci-fi the world over - ie, one would go mad and put the mission in jeopardy by killing off the others one by one.

It strikes Guru that it would have been a lot cheaper to simply visit a toilet-making facility in the Mosel Valley, where he witnessed the human workers confined to rubbing down specific edges of pottery toilet bowls each day (1 out of 10 on the excitement scale), while shiny robots took the glamour jobs of actually making the semi-automatic flush lavatory bowls, putting on the handles (excitement value 6 out of 10) and then moving them around the warehouse (8 out of 10 due to amount of physical exertion).

The Turkish Germans involved in all this toilet making seemed happy enough, and would retire each night to the Teutonic equivalent of a Japanese lovehotel, sharing facilities with 42 other people and sleeping in rotas in a space big enough to store several crates of oranges.

Yours Truly recalls they were bribed with beer and fags to keep them going after their lunchtime bratwurst and the quality of the rims suffered accordingly.

However, when he questioned them about their seemingly monotonous jobs, the uneducated Turks were all remarkably cheerful - grateful for the experience and looking forward to another exciting day living on the edge (of the toilet bowl).

So Guru's advice to the Russians is simple. Ditch the experiment and just outsource the recruitment process to a gangmaster who could unearth some poorly educated migrant workers to carry out the tasks on the space flight. In addition to being so docile they could never muster enough energy for mid-space conflict, the workers would also be nicely expendable. And if they did encounter an alien lifeform, they would be too tired to cause any conflict and the universe could continue living in peace. (OK, that last bit is a bit Star Trek, but loyal readers will understand Guru's devotion to peace and understanding.)

Hardworking Brits miffed that prisoners might get the vote after European bureaucrats said not having it was an infringement of their human rights can rest easy.

Yours Truly has just sent word of a solution to David 'just call me Dave' Cameron that ticks all the boxes for the Eurocrats while at the same time leaving the prisoners with their hands tied, as it were.

Simply give them the vote. They won't be able to exercise their right because they are banged up in chokey. And postal votes won't work as they would rely on prison guards actually seeing that something other than illegal contraband gets delivered - highly unlikely given their trafficking record

Of course, they could 'vote with their feet' by instigating a breakout, but that would create more jobs for the rest of society who could be employed as 'returns officers' - as in returning prisons back to the clink (while simultaneously 'spoiling' their voting slip.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder, they say. So managers should have a special soft spot for any staff who have to get a train on a regular basis.

First there were the wrong type of leaves, then the wrong type of rain, then the wrong type of snow, but businesses in the south east were in a state of disbelief yesterday when workers called in to say they were delayed on the 8.15 train from Hastings to London by a seagull.

Apparently, the winged goddess of harassment bore down on the train driver as he walked to the front of the train and pecked him about the head until he could stand it no more and shouted out "No more! No more!"

The packed commuter train remained in a state of anticipation, wondering what on earth was going to happen next - would the driver simply ignore his injuries and get in his cab and continue to London, or would he make the most of the situation and dally for another five minutes?

The air was alive with intrigue - not to mention seagulls - and the tension could be cut with an appropriately sharpened or heated butter knife as several hundred more 'winged sewer rats' arrived and, having purchased platform tickets began harassing as many passengers as they could, in search of the thousands of packed lunches making the journey to the capital.

All hope seemed lost. The signal had turned to red. The train was in danger of being cancelled and businesses in London would have to cope without a significant number of workers - a least until the next train arrived, anyway.

But just then, a caped hero arrived on the scene.

Clad head to toe in navy blue and brandishing a clipboard, shiney new biro and a stack of advice leaflets, Healthandsafetyman leapt into action, swooshing away the leader of the gang to mighty cheers from the commuting masses. The other birds followed swiftly and disappeared into the hazy skies of St Leonards.

Guru admits he may have embellished the tale a little there, but can certainly see the potential for a low-budget Mike Leigh-directed modern adaptation of The Birds. Or perhaps someone should write a play about a group of people trapped in a seemingly eternal cycle of misery, watching their lives drift away as they fail to fulfill their true potential on account of being late all the time, called... um... The Seagull. Or has someone done that already?

Word reached Guru's lughole earlier today that there was a dire shortage of bored women in UK businesses.

This came as no surprise, as Yours Truly has witnessed just how stifling the work environment can be for the female of the species.

After all, tea is usually supplied by outside caterers, and unless the company happens to be a laundry business, there are scant opportunities to do the washing and ironing.

Guru suggests that businesses invest in more kitchens and washrooms and encourage staff to bring their dirty linen into the workplace, where it can be thoroughly aired.

He sees this as the only way to attract more women to remain in the workplace long enough attain senior management status.