Management speak bingo. House!

Waterstones recommendations…

…include one of those gushingly bum-crawling Thatcher bios. I’ve declined any further messages from them.

I’m not sure why I saw this as wrong, funny, and both…

…but the mobility scooter parked outside the lunchtime session pub as I drove past made me laugh. I had a clear mental picture of the owner bombing home, careering around corners, with a bunch of geriatric drunks hanging on like one of those motorcycle display team pyramids, chased by a couple of community plod on their mountain bikes. What psychologists call the Benny Hill closing chase scene syndrome.

Having experienced first hand the blistering speed BLISS can get out of a golf cart, I won’t underestimate what those mobility scooters might be capable of.

What to think about UKIP?

I don’t like them. But on my enemy’s enemy basis, anyone giving the major parties bloody noses can’t be such a bad thing.

Just wish it were the Greens.

Or the Raving Loonies. Better still the Raving Loonies.

The ten worst examples of management speak

The Guardian have published this as if it’s all new. That b******t bingo spreadsheet was doing the rounds, what, ten years ago? More? Here’s their list:

• Going forward. Being a fan of drawing a line, moving on, and banning the revisiting of baggage, I prefer this to the really rubbish: from this point in time onwards, and similar.

• Drill down. That helicopter-speak drivel. Unnecessary if people stick to an appropriate level of detail.

• Action. As a verb. Awful. Has given rise to actioning, actionable, and all sorts of abominations.

• End of play. A personal dislike, because apart from anything else, it’s wrong. If it’s a cricketing simile, then it’s close of play. You draw stumps at the close of play. Probably confused with end of the day (at the). Just say close of business, or better still, by today.

• Deliver. Nothing wrong with deliver. It says what it means. Deliver your report, deliver your results. The hellspawn like deliverables, they’re the problems.

• Talking of problems, we don’t have problems, only issues (and challenges – like bashing up everyone in sight is ‘challenging behaviour’). No doubt borrowed from social work and mental health. If there’s a problem, say that. A roof don’t leak because of ‘issues’.

• Leverage. This has a strict, defined meaning in economics, but is loosely used to mean ‘bargaining power’. Or blackmailing.

• Stakeholders. Convince someone that they’re a stakeholder, and they’ll put their life on the line for your project. Apparently.

• Competencies. Meaning abilities. My range of competencies means what I can do (perhaps, if I’m concentrating that day).

• Sunset. Meaning abandon, or shut down. My experience is that many sunsetted projects have new dawns. Urgent new dawns, often years after sunsetting.