Thursday 17 September 2009

Whining and dining

It was back to work with, if not a vengeance, certainly a minor retribution. Myself and some favoured members had our annual away day with the Umbrella Office. Basically this is our chance to badger government. We spent most of the day discussing whether our discussions should be Chatham House or not. In the end we decided they should, which means I have now broken the rules.

It is a bit worrying to see the unions rolling back the years and dusting off the placards saying "no cuts" in public spending. This approach didn't work in the 70s when there were loads of cuts. And I've still got the scars to prove it. We need a more constructive approach. Such as begging for more cash.

Thankfully one area where there hasn't been any cutbacks is troughing at the corporate table. We had a dinner for our greediest 100 members last night. The splendid lawyers, Boats Bells & Makeweight, laid on a superb meal and fine wine which was greatly enjoyed by the assembled throng. Without a shred of irony I then spoke on the future of capacity-building for the umbrella sector. I said that with spending cuts inevitable, the sector could not demand the same level of investment in infrastructure that had taken place over the past decade, but quaffing expensive plonk was fine. Everyone raised their glasses and cheered and we then got stuck into the cheeseboard.

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