There’s no such thing as a typical IoD member, don’t you know. Well that’s what the bumph for the Institute of Directors’ ‘New Look Visa Gold Card’ is claiming.
Guru would beg to differ, having been to several IoD conferences, where the words male, pale and stale tended to spring to mind with alarming regularity.
Is it really wise for the IoD to be offering gold cards to its members? Even the lowliest union activist has a gold card these days. You’d think the IoD would be aiming to offer a platinum card, one of those black cards, or perhaps some kind of diamond-encrusted, twinkling card.
There would also need to be some good security precautions attached if the IoD doesn’t want to fall foul of unscrupulous execs. For starters, after all the fat-cat scandals, they’d better watch out for directors ‘swiping’ cards – especially as the credit limit can go up to £25,000.
It occurs to the ever-cerebral Guru that credit cards are something that HR could make more use of. Why not give every member of staff a card loaded with the amount of holiday they have and any other benefits they might deserve. Like any good credit company, you could regularly re-assess their credit rating and adjust it appropriately. In this case, if their work wasn’t up to scratch, you could dock holidays or lunch breaks, for example.
If they can’t keep up with the stipulations of their contract, then you could once again follow good credit practice and simply repossess their house. Then they would have no choice but to stay at work all the time.
Chimps down tools over unfair reward
Guru has come across some re-search that he feels proves that HR has, or at least should have, existed since the first organism crawled out of the primeval ooze.
A study by the Yerkes National Primate Research Centre in Atlanta, US, found that chimpanzees given the same tasks to perform reacted angrily when they were rewarded differently. Scientists – clearly with nothing much else to do – discovered that one chimp downed tools and refused to work after being given a cucumber when its ‘colleague’ was given a banana for performing the same task.
This explains why so many people are trying to get into HR – it is a primal instinct to ensure fair play among your fellow human beings. More importantly, the question arises of whether union activists could be placated with the gift of a banana.
It’s worth a shot, at least…
Work minister gets caught bunking off
Sitting there in your nice cosy office, you might be having a bit of a laugh at the victims of Guru’s ire. However, you probably respect the Blue Yin (as Guru’s Glaswegian disciples call him).
Sadly, this cannot be said of everyone. Take the minister for work, Jane Kennedy, who gave the keynote address at a diversity conference that shall remain anonymous so as to protect the innocent.
The minister kindly spoke for 20 minutes in the centre of London about how great the government was at promoting diversity and all the wonderful initiatives that are going on. How nice. But then it came to the question and answer session at the end, where delegates – who had probably paid a fair whack to be there – could grill Ms Kennedy about their concerns
Well, at least that’s how it was supposed to happen. Instead, Ms Kennedy made a rather half-hearted joke about time management, said she had just been reminded that she hadn’t had any lunch, and left, leaving any queries unanswered.
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Perhaps she really was too busy which prompted her to make a gag, forgetting that politicians should never, ever make jokes in public – it doesn’t suit them. However, this doesn’t explain why five minutes later, when Guru went down to the conference centre foyer, she was still there chatting away to her cronies.
Minister for work? Now there’s a gag.
