Consultants

I was until recently of the opinion that taking the piss out of consultants and business people for their ridiculous use of jargon went out of fashion, maybe, five years ago. But today it seems that the Local Government Association in the UK is criticising its own members for now using exactly the same jargon. So perhaps the joke is hip once again. My pondering (blue sky thinking) on this matter was sparked by a day I spent recently with consultant who was organizing (facilitating) some planning (strategizing) for my work (business unit). The consultant appears to be a thoroughly decent person working hard to get a bunch of slightly suspicious and generally snarky researchers to work better together. This is probably a quixotic quest as getting researchers to cooperate is normally the proverbial herding of cats. But anyway, this is just to say that the consultant is a perfectly nice person before I begin to make fun of them. So, the day proved that consultant-speak isn’t just of invented comedic characters like in the Office or similar; they really do actually speak like that.

I got to the point where I just started writing down my favourite phrases. Readers will have to decide what they think the consultant meant by them, I will offer what came to my mind when I heard them. Resulting speculations on the state of my mind are not welcome.

• Firstly we have “stakeholders”. I was willing to let this one fly at first because I do see a use for the term, but it came up again and again (plus its usage is criticised in the article linked above). By the end of the day I came to the conclusion that the word stakeholder should from now on only be used by people who build fences or who are vampire-slayers.
• Next – “breakout groups”. Presumably a breakout group is subdivision of mass prison escape attempt. Think The Great Escape (“Let me come with you. I can see. I can see perfectly…”).
• Then “concrete action points”. These are presumably those big concrete lumps you see in Baghdad that GIs can use to return fire from behind when targeted by insurgent snipers.
• And finally – “collective internalisation”. This is clearly something that should only be attempted by experienced and highly paid porn-stars.

The wonders of medical science

About ten days ago I had a flu jab. For the last two days, I've been in bed feeling like death warmed up with the flu. Now I can actually walk without feeling like my legs are going to give way, but I still feel miserable. What's up with that then?

My work offers us the flu shot each year. I had it a few years ago and then got flu more times that year than I could remember ever before - two or three times through the winter having to have a day or two off work. So the next couple of years I decided not to have the shot. But by this year, I thought - "you're being irrational, that was just a statistical anomaly. Obviously they wouldn't give flu shots if on the population level, they didn't work". Now I'm doubting my rationalism again and going back to gut feeling (and indeed over the last two days - the feeling of every muscle and joint in my body) and next year no jab.

I would love for some doctor, bio-scientist or immunologist to tell me why I'm wrong.

It's grim 'oop north

Life in France

Life in Finland

Same wine, same quantity, slightly different price.

Friends-bloody-not-reunited

We are meant to be in the era of Web 2.0, and generally web 2.0 is free. I blog on Blogger for free. I post pictures on Flickr for free. Yahoo mail gives me as much email storage as I want for free. I keep word documents on Google docs for free. I even have a MySpace page which I don't use - for free. Friends reunited isn't free. An old friend sent me an email through the site and I want to reply but I refuse to give the chancers seven quid fifty for the pleasure of doing so! In the case of about 90% of people from the school I went to, I have absolutely no desire to be reunited with them. Plus I don't know how good the internet connection is in prison for some of them. So £7.50 is way to much to email the few people I would like to be in contact with!

So Al, if you read this, either leave a comment here or email me on the address that I left on my Friends-expensively-reunited profile. :-) I spent about half an hour googling your name last night trying to find an email address, but - I'm afraid to say - you have an annoyingly common name so no success!