Guru

Egg lovers of the world rejoice! News reaches Guru that today is World Egg Day which, as if you didn't already know, is "a unique opportunity to help raise awareness of the benefits of eggs and is celebrated in countries all around the world".

Is this some kind of yolk? Guru finds it very hard to believe that this most special of days is being celebrated across the globe.

What, for example, are employers in the UK doing to mark the occasion? Free eggs in the staff canteen? Complimentary egg cup for the best employees? Egg pelting the senior management in the car park?

According to the International Egg Commission (yes, really), eggs are versatile, high in protein and healthy nutrients. Guru just finds himself sick of all this egg propaganda.

Anyway, the egg-heads at the commission might like to know that 2008 has been deemed by the UN as the International Year of the Potato.

Why just settle for one day when you can celebrate for a whole year? Stick that in your tiny egg cups boys...

Fresh from his success in demanding that the US Senate pass President Bush's $700bn financial bail-out package, CIPD chief beancounter John Philpott now has the Bank of England in his sights.

A jump in calls to the CIPD's legal helpline prompted Philpott to demand a big cut in interest rates to cushion the blow of rising unemployment.

Trouble was, his demands were made public late yesterday afternoon, several hours after the Bank had announced a half point cut in rates.

Guru thinks this means either Philpott's powers are in decline or, more likely, a pre-written press release scheduled to be sent out wasn't corrected.

Next week, Philpott urges Fabio Capello to play Wayne Rooney and Gordon Brown to conduct a cabinet reshuffle.

Continue reading "Jobs crunch confirmed as monkeys work for peanuts" »

Those Masai tribesmen are very well respected in UK business circles these days, and Guru wonders whether they just might have the solution to the credit crunch.

With the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development warning that up to half a million jobs could go in the next year or so, Yours Truly thinks the answer lies in Kenya.

Continue reading "Credit crunch - condoms hold solution" »

Never a huge fan of cabinet reshuffles - except the type that sees empty whisky bottles replaced by full ones - Guru was nonetheless delighted to see that Sion Simon was the new skills minister.

Sion who? I hear you ask. Well, watch this video of Simon mimicking David Cameron and you may well remember him.

The post-Leitch skills debate may be about to get interesting.

News reaches Guru of huge legal developments on the picturesque holiday destination of the Seychelles.

Situated in the western Indian Ocean, where the last big news was independence from Britain in 1976 (Guru still mourns that day), the islands make the Caribbean look like a capitalist empire.

But now the Seychelles government (which is not just one old fat man in a big house) has voted to set up an employment tribunal. The superbly named employment minister, Macsuzy Mondon, said there was a need "to modernise the system and make it more efficient".

Just to give you an idea of how quickly things move on the islands, it has taken the national assembly five years of talks to reach this point.

Guru foresees many disgruntled fishermen, crop pickers, coconut growers and hotel porters rushing to take their employers to tribunal. Or maybe they just won't be bothered.

As they say down the fishing harbour: "Orevwar"

Continue reading "Unlikely times call for unlikely superheroes" »

Continue reading "Tea? Coffee? Hard-hitting industrial action?" »

Guru has uncovered the last bastion of workplace discrimination - again. This time, it's birthday discrimination.

Yep, it seems that employers have been choosing job candidates based on the day of the year they were born on.

Continue reading "Star sign of the times" »