Monthly Archives: March 2008

The government’s latest brilliant idea is to ban shops from displaying cigarettes so that children are not encouraged to take up smoking. Today, my wife came up with a much cheaper, simpler and probably more effective plan. Gordon Brown should take up smoking. For … Continue reading →

It’s not often that a blog post makes me laugh out loud but this one did. Guru has decided to pick a fight with executive coach David Adams. In a post entitled The Cringe of Coaching, he had a go at … Continue reading →

Over the last couple of days, the newspapers have been full of stories about sick-note Britain. Apparently, the government wants us all to stop lounging around at home and get back to work. It is concerned that absenteeism and long-term sickness … Continue reading →

This is the problem with blogging about the world of work – sometimes you have to work rather than blog. Sorry for the silence, dear readers, if there are any of you still out there, but over the past week … Continue reading →

Saturday’s Guardian had a free supplement containing extracts from Claire Fay’s  The Doodle Notebook – How to Waste Time in the Office. Apparently, the book, a guide to drawing rude cartoons about your colleagues, has taken Ms Fay’s native France by … Continue reading →

The BBC’s documentary The Poles Are Coming, which is due to be shown next week, may already be out of date. Recent evidence shows that the Poles are going or, at least, not coming in the numbers they were a … Continue reading →

I was surprised to read about the £36,000 compensation settlement given to a social worker who lost her job due to a bad reference from her former employer. I didn’t think people set much store by references these days and … Continue reading →

Here’s another one of those measures that looks like a good idea but probably isn’t. Hospitals in Wales are to abolish car parking charges. That’s bound to be popular with the voters and good publicity for the members of the Welsh … Continue reading →

Laurie Ruettiman has written an humourous post about dress codes and casual Fridays. It’s a perennial issue which is both a source of humour and of stress in many workplaces. I was working in the City when dress-down Fridays came in. … Continue reading →

I have been  enjoying the new BBC drama The Last Enemy. It is set in a hypothetical Britain of the near future, in which the surveillance state has awesome power over citizen’s lives. Every move is logged on all-powerful systems and the state … Continue reading →