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Economics, government & businessLearning & developmentSkills shortages

Pledge revenge on Leitch Review skills commitment

by Personnel Today 29 May 2007
by Personnel Today 29 May 2007

All the grumbling about the Leitch Skills Pledge got Guru thinking. Rather than just moaning about the government’s call for firms to commit to training all their staff in basic skills, perhaps it is time employers struck back. Why not come up with a ‘pledge’ of their own, for MPs to sign?

Employers could commission someone to go off somewhere and think about it for two years, and then hold a nice little press conference in central London, where they could declare that all politicians in the country should sign their yet-to-be seen document.

But what should they be committing to? It would need to be something time-consuming, strictly measured and of limited immediate practical value, but for the greater good of the country. Perhaps they could sign a pledge to speak only in Chinese on Wednesdays.

Now Guru admits that this article began without much direction as a speculative effort to use up a few lines before getting to the third story, but be patient, for Guru is starting to warm up on this subject now.

Surely, as China takes over the running of the brave new world, the UK is doomed from 2020 unless MPs agree to master this language. And how else would we, the honest citizens of this great country, be able to measure their new skills, unless the MPs take a day off each week to demonstrate them?

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Obviously, being humble voters, we would need translators to understand them, but this additional cost should not be a problem for the small businesses that are our MPs.

Well there are probably lots more details that need ironing out to make this a realistic pledge rather than an aspirational document – but, going by example, there is no need to worry about that for the first six months at least.

Personnel Today

Personnel Today articles are written by an expert team of award-winning journalists who have been covering HR and L&D for many years. Some of our content is attributed to "Personnel Today" for a number of reasons, including: when numerous authors are associated with writing or editing a piece; or when the author is unknown (particularly for older articles).

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