Caught in a World Wide Web

I've just been "personally invited" to a complimentary webinar. "Do you currently leverage employee career development as a human capital management and business strategy?" the email reads. "If so, how is it impacting retention?"

As guilty far too often of such business-babble myself, I can hardly complain. I probably deserve to be bombarded by such crap from an anonymous  donor: like some ghastly verbal transplant that one neither asked for nor needed.

"Is it tied to internal mobility strategy, and aligning employees in the right positions?" the missive continues. "Do employees currently feel satisfied with the career development opportunities that your company provides?"

Is worker satisfaction, that tired old panacea, still kicking in the employment mortuary? As a sole trader, I can speak quite candidly for all my workforce.  Given the current climate, plus recent fuckups by business leaders and governments, I imagine they're just glad of a job.

Luxurious Limbo

Maroonned in the First Class lounge at Gatwick with hours to wait for the next flight to Malaga. Listening to endless 'power conversations' from VIPs in disguise - "What I need done is as follows..."; "I have no idea at all why he wants a meeting..."; "I told them plainly: London isn't Istanbul..."  Conversations whose import is clear, but whose purpose one will never know.

My true-love is trying not to guess why our 6 a.m. flight was cancelled, and whether the technical faults the nice BA woman mentioned could be catching. Is technology out of control? Is disaster contagious? Could this be the end? We sit, counting planes rather than sheep, anaesthetized by champagne.  Resistance is useless, I think, knocking back another glass. Life is a metaphor after all. The final destination is oblivion. Being together is what counts, I add.

She snuggles up on the sofa. "Do you think we'll make it?"

Level Thinking

How level is the English playing field? Somebody seems to have fenced it off recently and sold most of it off for housing. The field appears flat to the casual eye, but some have a leg-up, especially the equine class: knights of old, scattering peasants at will. Locomotion has changed, but not inequity.  It's hardly fair - and there's another absolute. "Fair dos", "Fair play" - accusations ring clear across the sporting plain. "Not fair!" Why should we be so in love with 'fairness' if it clearly doesn't exist?

Perhaps the term's popularity lies in its unreality: the need for wish-fulfilment. Just form a queue and all's well. We can forget the rest. But who thinks life is fair? To be fair, very few. It's only a game; but not when we lose, which is another thing we're meant to be good at.

With life so uneven, it requires a level approach. In an age of greed, being a loser seems the only crime. Which makes us all losers and equals.