According to business folklore, ‘if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys’, but gangmasters in Cornwall recently took ignoring the minimum wage to new depths by not even paying pine nuts in a transparent bid to cut their wage bill.
Bulgarian workers were forced to scrabble about on their hands and knees foraging for potatoes and courgettes after their gangmasters decided to deprive them of their pay for 35 days.
Guru would have thought that with a history of being treated badly by those in the West, the nomadic workers would have risen up and revolted, what with being descended from the Hunnish warriors who carved up Europe in centuries past.
It seems the fear of being shipped back to Bulgaria was enough to keep them on their knees. That or the gangmaster paraded around the field carrying a loaded umbrella shouting ‘Georgi Markov’.
Clearly Markov is in no position to help his countrymen, but one man who could help out is top soccer sensation Dimitar Berbatov, currently plying his trade with mid-table specialistas Tottenham Hotspur in the Premier League, who’s just had his pay packet expanded in a bid to keep him out of the clutches of the evil world power that is Manchester United.
One week’s salary should be enough to keep his Bulgarian chums in Cornwall in spudsfor decades.
Whether Berbatov puts his hand in his deep pockets or not, clearly the Thracian hordes have been treated like rubbish.
Quite what top Womble Great Uncle Bulgaria would think is unclear.
Japanese export is total brown stuff
Talking of accumulating rubbish, as Guru was dunking his chocolate digestive (shunning the nation’s so-called favourite, the insipid – yet architecturally interesting – custard cream) a press release landed on his lap from Phil ‘my pockets’ Beswick extolling the virtues of a Japanese ‘tea’ that, he claims, boosts the immune system, increases energy levels and helps beat depression.
Called Cho-Wa, the ‘tea’ has allegedly been used in Japan for centuries, yet strangely failed to emerge from the supertankers of goodies that brought us personal computers, efficient cars, TVs that worked, white goods by the truck load, paper houses, martial arts, and the rest. Until now, that is.
According to ‘Big’ Phil, the ingredients were kept secret until a ‘curious’ biochemist discovered its alleged abilities to promote a sense of wellbeing, increase your sex drive, and cure stomach problems, joint pain and dizzy spells. Grappling with this information (using his martial arts skills accumulated over decades of detailed research into all things Japanese), Guru was expecting to read that Cho-Wa could solve world debt, eradicate poverty and bring peace to the world. Unfortunately, it seems all it is likely to be capable of, once ‘the brown powder’ is mixed with water, is… um… being a brown liquid.
Far from boosting libido, Guru suggests Phil is taking ‘libidees’ and should indulge in a bit of Budo or Bujitsu before irate customers come knocking at his door keen to demonstrate their skills in Aikido, Kendo and Jujutso – not to be confused with Ken Jutso and Jo Jitsu who work in the IT department.
Luckily, Yours Truly is immune to such cod-alchemy nonsense, preferring to stick with the dusky brown hues of the good old British cuppa (made in China, naturally).
Clearly targeting the drips of this world, you’d have to be a right Cho-Wa to fall for Phil’s patter, and Cho-Wa should be filed away for a rainy day – like other less-than-useful items to emerge from the mysterious east, such as the umbrella tube, or the equally pointless subway chin rest.
Guru helps to solve UK’s energy crisis
Speaking of smelling a rat, top boffins at Johns Hopkins University in the US have discovered that they can make super-strong mice even stronger by depriving them of the protein (myostatin) that bulked them up in the first place so that another protein (follistatin) goes ballistic and the mice go green and break out of their cages.
The scientists hope their studies will eventually help people with muscle-wasting diseases.
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However, while Guru is a big fan of animal experiments and applauds this admirable development, he then had his own lightbulb moment. Forget helping the muscle-wasters these super-strong mice could be the way to solve the world’s energy crisis. Simply put thousands of them on treadmills linked to generators, and watch the lights come on. No need for green thinking and no carbon footprint.
Better still, inject the protein into the nation’s work-shy wasters and strap them on to exercise bikes feeding into the national grid, thereby solving the energy and obesity crises in one hit.
