Guru

This week’s guru

Guru: the thinking-man’s Guevara

Disciples, admirers and fully paid-up members of the Guru fan club could
never accuse their hero of arrogance.

Even Guru himself once believed he was wrong, but soon found he was
mistaken.

With these humble inclinations, Guru was shocked to hear that al-Saadi
Gaddafi, son of the Libyan dictator, has started trials with Italian Serie A
football club Perugia.

Previously, Gaddafi was captain and striker of Tripoli football club
al-Ittihad, and the evidence seems to point to a talented and successful
footballer. However, the truth is a little different.

Apparently, 30-year-old Gaddafi had a habit of awarding his team with medals
and trophies regardless of whether they had played any games, let alone won any
tournaments.

As chairman of the Libyan Football Association, he sacked the Libyan coach
who dropped him from the national team, despite the team seeing a dramatic rise
in fortune after he was sidelined.

His strike rate is attributed to opposition players running away rather than
tackling their president’s son.

To Guru, this has strange echoes of Ugandan dictator and all-round nutcase,
Idi Amin, who among other things called himself ‘Conqueror of the British
Empire in Africa’, ‘King of Scotland’ and ‘Lord of All the Beasts on the Land,
and Fish in the Sea’.

Such flagrant exploitation of position must be stopped. Guru wants to hear
about your colleagues and superiors and their abuses of power. All replies will
be kept anonymous.

Guru: one man’s terrorist; another man’s freedom fighter

A fate far worse than European…

To join Europe, or not to join Europe; that is the question. Or so you
thought.

The issue has been settled. Guru has found that the British worker is
quickly becoming… (clap of thunder)… a European.

Surely not, you cry. Well let’s look at the evidence. A survey by the CIPD
has found a third of British companies have sacked staff for misusing e-mail.
The chief abuse: sending porn. That will be the Dutch influence then.

Furthermore, research has established that 63 per cent of staff pulling a
sickie admit hang-overs are the main reason for absence. Here, it is clear the
Germans are asserting their culture on us, as their workers are the laziest in
Europe and take an average of 43 days holiday a year.

What about new findings that say 60-90 minute ‘power-naps’ could
considerably enhance your performance?

As soon as the Spanish get to work, they take time out for a snooze in order
to prepare for the arduous siestas ahead. So, viva Britannia!

Finally, somehow scientists have discovered that moaning staff may be
suffering from post-traumatic embitterment disorder (PTED).

This illness makes staff feel helpless and aggressive and affects daily
performance. Could this be due to pressure from Italy, allegedly the unhappiest
nation on Earth?

Then again, perhaps not. Judging by the amount of whingers around, PTED (or
‘dramatic inability to accept our own shortcomings and responsibilities’),
could have much more sinister ramifications.

We might not be turning into Europeans after all; we could be changing into…
(more claps of thunder followed by lightening, plagues, and flooding of
biblical proportions)É Americans.

Telly icon goes West

…and as if that wasn’t bad enough, another cultural icon has gone Stateside.

Bob the Builder has left for the lucrative industry across the pond under
the guise of ‘Bob the Construction Worker’.

Guru feels something has been lost in the translation and wonders whether
the job description has changed. Moreover, are Bob’s vehicles going to have to
change to left-hand drive?

He has clearly taken on a voice coach too, as he will soon sound far more
like Harrison Ford than Neil Morissey.

Robert (as he’s known to his mother) seems to be going the same way as such
classics as the Lion, the Witch and the Closet, and Dickens’
Cross-Denominational Inclusive Wintertime Carol.