Guru

Moobs: better than 2.5% off VAT

2008-12-02T06:29:33Z

While lily-livered consumers everywhere drag this great country into recession with their reluctance to open their wallets, one band of heroes is keeping the nation afloat with its big-hearted, big-natured, big, er, breasted spending.

Yes, despite the so-called economic crisis, the number of men having breast reduction surgery is rising.

]]> Raj Ragoowansi, a consultant plastic surgeon at St Bartholomew's Hospital in east London, said he had seen a big increase in the number of men with the condition asking for surgery in the last three months.

"This is a problem which should be taken very seriously," he said of the very seriously taken condition Gynaecomastia, commonly known as moobs. Apparently, it is a medical condition that causes tissue in the chest area to develop like a female breast.

Guru will not comment on the size of his own blue love pillows, but surely all these operations ar enot takin gplace on the NHS, so Guru does wish to put on record his gratitude for the men brave enough to keep at least one load of UK employees very busy.

One sufferer told BBC's Newsbeat: "Whenever I took my T-shirt off I had a proper set of boobs. They were massive, they were noticeable from every angle. I definitely would have passed for a woman.

"I wouldn't have gone swimming - not a chance. Going on a foreign holiday, I wouldn't have taken my top off

until I was on my own. I was very self-conscious, very embarrassed."

Suffer in silence no more, disciples. Moobs, Guru salutes you.

Christmas party fighting shocker

2008-12-01T11:23:06Z

This credit crunch really does threaten to ruin Guru's Christmas.

Yours Truly had already been forced to promised Her Indoors he will halve his mince pie budget to £100, and only attend three Midnight Masses to cut down on petrol, and now those killjoy lawyers have made the annual office parties almost pointless.

]]> Tom Potbury, senior associate in the employment team at law firm Pinsent Masons, said "drunken brawling" - surely a mainstay of festive bashes everywhere - was inadvisable.

"One result of the credit crunch is that many businesses are currently looking to make redundancies," he sagely warned.

Glad you cleared that up, Tom. There was Guru naively thinking this was a period of non-stop hiring and pay rises. But wait - there's more.

"In deciding who stays and who goes, one criterion that is often considered is the disciplinary record of each employee. Now more than ever it is therefore advisable to avoid drunken brawling or other misdemeanours at the office Christmas party."

Hang on a minute - "any other misdemeanours"? So, let's get this straight. Your mortgage payments have gone up, your job is on the line, fuel costs more than gold, it's freezing cold, there are about five hours of daylight every 24 hours, you can't afford a turkey at Christmas but - whatever you do - don't indulge in any misdemeanours at the Christmas party.

It all makes Guru want to drink eight bottles of mulled wine and sit on a photocopier before punching his boss and passing out naked with Tracey from reception.

Mr Christmas faces credit crunch cutbacks

2008-11-26T07:42:21Z

First there were the falling house prices, then the redundancies - and now the credit crunch has really hit home with a sickening blow.

The man who has celebrated Christmas every day for more than 14 years is scaling back his bumper Christmas Day Christmas Day because of the economic crisis, it has been reported.

]]> Guru almost put down his morning sherry and mince pie in disgust as he read that Andy Park - imaginatively nicknamed Mr Christmas - was making cutbacks this December.

Park has had a full roast dinner, champagne and presents every day since July 14, 1994 will not have the usual flambouyant 25 December this year.

He is down to one Christmas tree, a 9lb turkey and half a bottle of Moet champagne.

"The credit crunch is getting to me big time," he told The Daily Mail.

Guru wonders if big-hearted HR directors could convince their accounts departments of the CSR (not to mention PR) benefits of inviting Park to join in with employer Christmas parties throughout the festive season. That way the great man could save on his own turkey, sprouts and crackers, allowing him to bump up his 25 December budget.

Just think of the economic gloom-defying morale boost to staff of being entertained by Mr Christmas himself at their annual bash.

Guru feels a campaign coming on. But first, here are a few festive facts about Andy 'hero' Park.

* He started to celebrate Christmas every day because he was bored. "I'll never forget the day it started," he said. "The sun was shining, but I was just feeling fed up and bored, so I went home and put the decorations up. Suddenly I was happy. I thought, this is fun. So I did it again the next day, and the day after that."

* Since that day, he has munched his way through 117,600 sprouts, quaffed 5,110 bottles of Moet, and sent himself more than 230,000 Christmas cards.

* He has a job. Yep, 44-year-old Andy works as an electrician in Wiltshire.

* He is divorced. No really.

* He has worn out 37 electric ovens and 23 video recorders, as well as sending himself 235,206 Christmas cards.

* He has a full roast with all the trimmings and alcohol every day, costing in excess of £150 a week.

* He once bought himself a Mercedes for Christmas. This December 25 he will be buying himself a new suit.

* He has been quoted £70,000 by an undertaker for a Christmas themed funeral, complete with mourners dressed as Father Christmas, the Queen's Speech on a giant screen, and a coffin full of Brussels sprouts. Noddy Holder, of Slade, will also be asked to sing the band's famous festive hit, Merry Christmas Everybody.

"People do think I'm crackers, but I enjoy treating myself and I'm the only one in the world who does it. Others have tried to copy me, but they can't last," said Park. "When people come to my house it turns a sad face into a smiling one, and the happiness stays with them."

Cameron Strictly off his rocker

2008-11-25T07:34:48Z

Great to see that leader of the opposition David Cameron took his big opportunity last week to distance himself and the Tory party from the reality TV nonsense that has overtaken the government.

With the world facing both financial and climatic meltdown, Cameron took the opportunity to speak to voters on an issue that really mattered - John Sergeant's exit from reality TV show Strictly Come Dancing.

"Along with the rest of the country I am devastated," said Dave. "Strictly will not be the same without him."

What next? A Gordon Brown versus David Cameron dance-off for prime minister?

CIPD man on BNP list denies membership

2008-11-24T12:16:13Z

Guru understands that the CIPD member named on a leaked list of BNP activists was vigorously denying the claim this weekend.

Word has it that the individual loudly insisted he was in no way a member of the much-criticised organisation.

Guru assumes, however, that he was happy to admit to being a member of the BNP.

]]> Legal note: Guru should point out that the individual in fact denied being a current member of the BNP, and that Guru's own views of the CIPD are not representative of any of the institute's members except all those he has spoken to.

World Toilet Day - words of wisdom

2008-11-19T06:34:05Z

Fittingly, to mark World Toilet Day - yep, World Toilet Day - comes the latest contender for the 'No s**t, Sherlock' comment of the year.

Tony Smith, chief executive of the Consumer Council for Water, cleared his throat and gave this golden nugget of wisdom to the world: "Having your home flooded with sewage," he announced, "is very unpleasant."

]]> Guru is glad Smith pointed this out. He would otherwise have been off to see what he could do to get his home flooded with sewage. Telling Mrs Guru not to flood the home with sewage should do the trick.

Apparently, three in four sewer blockages are caused by people putting things they shouldn't down the toilet - which makes Guru wonder what the other one in four are caused by.

Perhaps the nervous bowel movements of employees facing redundancy are partly to blame. Or could it be that HR professionals are filling toilets with vomit at the latest messages from their tanned and relaxed chief executives that "we are all in this recession together..."?

Jamie Oliver swearing c***-up

2008-11-18T07:10:29Z

It is surely the letter that everyone who has ever worked in customer service has wanted to write.

When a retired teacher sent an email to TV chef and barber-dodger Jamie Oliver complaining about his incessant swearing, he received an abrupt response from Oliver's team.

]]> It read: "What do you think I should write back, apart from "F*** off you ****."

According to the Daily Mail, the email was written by Kris Boobyer, 25, from Oliver's enquiry team, and had been intended as an internal joke between him and the chef's publicist Peter Berry, but was accidentally copied into the formal response.

Boobyer said: "I deeply regret making such pointless and tasteless comments. I would like to apologise wholeheartedly."

It all reminds Guru of the time in his youth when he sen a carrier pidgeon with a note boasting of his success on a lads' night out to his girlfriend of the time. In retrospect, perhaps it was Mr Boobyer who replied.

Mandelson in Strictly Come Dancing madness

2008-11-17T11:30:40Z

If there is one thing that keeps Guru getting up and going to the office every morning - the office being a well insulated and fully kitted out basement of his ex-directory secret residence - it is that no matter how much he dislikes work, he dislikes being at home more.

Being at home these days is pretty much like watching an endless stream of brain-numbing, spirit-crushing reality TV shows. That's largely because it consists entirely of watching an endless stream of brain-numbing, spirit-crushing reality TV shows.

]]> If Mrs Guru isn't watching X Factor, she's watching I'm a Celebrity Get Me out of Here. If it isn't Come Dine With Me, it's X Factor again, on ITV2, when the results are already known and it is even more pointless than when it was on originally, and she watched every minute of it then anyway so, honestly, what on Earth is the point?

Anyway, Guru is relieved to lower the trapdoor to his bunker every morning, pour a cup of tea and read the newspapers in peace.

This morning, however, Yours Truly almost suffocated himself with the business section of the Telegraph when he heard that the UK's business secretary wished to use his time not to tackle the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, but to prance about on Strictly Come Dancing.

Yep Peter Mandelson told the BBC this morning that he would be delighted to go on its news programme - that's 'news'not 'celebrity twaddle'- and demonstrate his ballroom dancing.

Mandelson - who has threatened to cancel a planned extension of the right to request flexible working because times are so tough - told BBC Breakfast: "I was cheering for John Sergeant on Saturday with, I have to say, a degree of... envy."

Asked if he would star on the BBC show he joked: "It would be nice to be asked."

Offered the chance to show off his moves, Mandelson astonishingly quipped: "Not this morning, because it's too serious, but another day invite me back and I will show you what I can do."

Guru wonders if maybe prime minister Gordon Brown should just launch Celebrity We're In A Recession, Get Us Out Of Here and be done with it.

10 sure-fire signs you're about to be made redundant

2008-11-14T12:47:40Z

Redundancies happen in much the same way as various other horrible things happen. Without swearing on a family blog, excrement happens.You have to accept that sooner or later, and the BBC's doom editor Robert Peston would no doubt delight in explaining it to you, your own little business bubble is probably going to burst.

No matter, however, how dire a business's finances become, no matter how astonishingly untenable a department becomes, no matter how many thousands of jobs are lost at your main competitors, there are always some people who manage to be completely taken aback by the news. They fail to spot the tell-tale clues.

Particularly for those relative youngsters who have yet to live through some hard times, Yours Truly presents his list, in reverse order of impending doom, of 10 signs that you, or if you're lucky just some of your colleagues, are about to receive "some bad news".

Guru wholeheartedly recommends to his HR disciples that they in no way attempt to interfere with this predictable process as it will only serve to cause confusion among the workforce...

]]> 10 Atmospheric change
The confidence, commitment and jolliness on the team is deemed complacent. Strange decisions from on high start filtering down to staff. You arrive at work to find your boss, who usually arrives at about the same time as you, coming out of what has clearly been a long, serious meeting.

9 Closed doors
Management start holding all meetings with the door is closed. They answer telephones but get up to close the door before talking. There are more meetings than usual with folk in accounts and other senior staff.

8 Pointless cost-cutting
The office newspaper is cancelled saving £4 per week. Toilet paper is replaced with tracing paper. There's a "green" push for people to walk rather than drive to the company's other site a mile away.

7 Tighten up on expenses
You attend the annual industry exhibition, which is quieter than usual. Usually the whole team goes but this year it's just you and a colleague. Your boss asks you to try and eat as many free vol-au-vents as possible rather than claiming for a meal. You have to share a room with said colleague.

6 Recruitment freeze
A high-performing colleague announces she's leaving for another job and your boss's boss is seen to smile on hearing the news. Colleagues can't understand why she won't be replaced; the boss's boss can't understand why everyone can't understand.

5 Redundancies elsewhere
Now things really start to hot up. As a man in Houston, Texas might say, "T minus 5 weeks [or so] and counting". Your team hears news of the R word at a similar department to yours, at a competitor or at your biggest client. Office gossips are in their element, some even start to talk like Robert Peston.

4 Reassurance about people's jobs
Management unconvincingly communicate, largely through rumour, that while the economic climate is bad, and that competitors/suppliers/clients are finding it tough, your business, under their capable leadership, is made of sterner stuff and will be largely unaffected. Bosses fail to hear difficult questions and change the subject.

3 Calm before the storm
After all the above, suddenly everything seems to be okay. Your team is lulled into a false sense of security. People are almost upbeat. A big new contract is signed and another is in the pipeline.

3 The everyone-must-attend, unscheduled meeting
Your boss asks everyone to convene on the hour in the large room where the directors usually hold big meetings.

2 Unidentified executives and HR people
Your boss's boss, or possibly a bigger boss than that, - one you have only heard of but never actually had the pleasure of seeing for yourself his slightly scary, recently acquired Caribbean tan - assemble at the front of the room along with someone you vaguely recognise from HR, and someone else who no one knows.

1 The delivery
One of the following phrases will be delivered by one of those people, shortly after a silence finally fills the room:

"Many of you will be aware..."
"There's no easy way..."
"Times are tough..."

CIPD name change shock!

2008-11-14T08:25:00Z

Guru can exclusively reveal that the CIPD has changed its name to the CILD.

A press release pinged into Guru's inbox revealed a report on the role of training and learning has been launched by the Chartered Institute of Learning and Development.

Guru wonders whether the institute's members have been consulted over the name change? Surely such a a big decision would not have been made without much hand-wringing but the institute's top brass?

Sadly, the truth is likely to be something much duller, nothing more than a simple mistake on the press release. But it does emphasise the value of proofing copy before you publish or send it out - something Gruu nose all to well...

However, it got Yours Truly thinking about what acronym would be best reflect the institute in the future. What about CRUD? Guru has no clue as to what it might stand for but feels it accurately reflects its current standing among the profession.

BBC in racism row

2008-11-13T15:01:43Z

As Guru was eating a lasagne served to by a non-Italian waiter, and reading news about Barack Obama's election in a newspaper article written by a white journalist, he heard that a BBC Radio presenter had been sacked after calling a taxi firm to requested a non-Asian driver.

Ex glamour girl Sam Mason, 40, reportedly told the operator that a guy with a turban would 'freak her daughter out'.

]]> Well, if Guru had been on the other end of the phone, he would have known exactly what to say.

Yours Truly would have said the firm would send a non-Asian driver - when he could be presented with a non-ignorant glamour girl and a non-annoying local radio presenter.

Tory tax plans: Philpott calls it again

2008-11-12T08:21:21Z

Could it be that leading politicians really are taking their cues from Guru's favourite HR pundit John Philpott?

After the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development's chief economist called for the US Senate to pass President Bush's $700bn bailout package, and for the Bank of England to slash interest rates, he most recently moved on to demand employer national insurance holidays to help tackle unemployment.

]]> Philpott told Personnel Today earlier this month that there should be "a time-limited cut in employer National Insurance contributions, targeted at employers in the private or voluntary sectors to enable them to retain, and to provide training for, any member of staff who would otherwise be made redundant because of short-term trading difficulties."

Now Guru has been fairly mocking of Philpott's demands up to this point, so imagine Guru's open-mouthed, cornflake-spitting surprise this morning when he saw none other than Tory leader David Cameron outlining almost exactly the same plan.

Cameron said that the Tories would slash firms' National Insurance bills if they took on staff who had been jobless for three months.

Unbelievable. Guru is off to phone Philpott and ask him who he reckons should win next year's Grand National.

Crouching worker hidden benefit

2008-11-11T08:35:19Z

If Guru was to ask disciples which nation was the most likely to invent bionic legs for workers of the future, then Japan would probably be top guess.

And you'd be right. Yes, the country which brought the rest of the world robot dogs, Asimo the robot conductor, robot bartenders and the unicycle riding robot, has done it again. The BBC website has some brilliant footage of the robot legs in action, being worn (can you wear a pair of legs?) by a suitably unimpressed demonstrator.

Car maker Honda has unveiled the robot legs and says they will help workers in factories. The device is designed to help people "who work standing or in a crouching position for a long time", according to the company.

]]> Guru wonders who actually works in a crouching position? Wicketkeepers, undercover agents, those with stomach complaints? Surely if you are crouching for a long time then a chair or stool to sit on would be helpful, not a pair of crazy metallic legs.

No doubt the unions would have something to say about their members being forced to don such contraptions so they could then work longer hours in the factory. Why stop at legs? Why not robot arms as well?

Thinking of the practicalities, what would employees do if you needed to, ahem, pay a visit, if you get my meaning? Guru is sure the super-brains at Honda have thought about the problem. If not, he is happy to licence his patented adult sized 'work-o-nappies', meaning staff never have to take a toilet break - they can just do it where they sit, or in this case, stand.

Gender pay gap - the wait is over

2008-11-10T16:51:55Z

Well, would you believe it, the answer to the age-old gender pay gap was right under our noses - or finger tips.

Yes Esther Guys - not a US college hockey team but a mother-of-three from Surrey - is about to allow women to finally have it all.

She has created a social networking website for school children and their parents.

]]> The site - www.schooltogethernow.com - aims to connect children as young as five and their parents to their local schools, creating an online community similar to the one you might get if you - whisper it quietly - actually did the school run.

Guys said: "There must be thousands of parents like me all over the country who struggle with full time work and commitments to their kids.

"I have a 90-mile round trip to work every single day, and it means I miss out on the school run and on meeting other mums and dads at my girls' schools.

"I decided to launch this website because due to the limitations on my time I struggled to build a rapport with the other mums in the playground."

Limitations on her time? She managed to set up a blooming social networking site for five-year-olds and then bombard our ears with it didn't she? Perhaps if she had spent that time asking her kids how their days were she would have known a bit more about the local community.

Ah well, at least we can forget the debate about whether women are unfairly discriminated against in the workplace. All they need to do is get up at 5am, prepare their kids for school, drive 50 miles to work, have pointless back-to-back meetings all day, drive back, cook dinner, clean the house and then log on to their computers to find out what their little ones did at school.

Meanwhile, Guru will be in the living room trying to watch TV and telling them to turn that social networking racket off. The age of equality is upon us.

Guru faces identity crisis

2008-11-07T12:04:33Z

To borrow dialogue from the classic Tarantino film Pulp Fiction; What does Guru look like? Describe what Guru looks like. Does he look like a b*tch?

Regardless of what you might think Guru looks like, Yours Truly certainly bears little resemblance to this gentleman, does he?

So why then does this bloke Richard Denny insist on calling himself Guru?

For as we all know (to borrow another movie catchphrase): There can be only one.

Self-styled "motivational entrepreneur" Denny has launched a business advice website www.guruonline.tv, where viewers can hear his thoughts on training, recruitment and other HR stuff - "straight from the Guru's mouth".

He's modest as well, calling himself "the most inspirational business speaker in the UK". Trumpet blowing extraordinaire, me thinks.

Guru (original) did once consider launching his own advice website with Gurucam facility, allowing users to benefit from real workplace wisdom. Problem was that Yours Truly dispenses all his best musings from his very own throne under the stairs, and that would not make for pleasant viewing.