Fuelling the Bisto-powered locomotive

Get in - I have nabbed another part time non-exec role (paid, naturally). I am to be a public appointments assessor assessing the appointments of assessors made by commissioners of public appointment assessments to assess appointments to commissions assessing public appointments etc etc. A very nice little recursive earner.

For the hard work he put into unearthing this fantastic opportunity I am indebted to the little mentioned and unheralded headhunter extraordinaire Donald Holding of whichever firm he is at these days. He has moved so many times I forget - he keeps headhunting himself into new roles to keep those commission payments rolling in. I say hard work, he saw it advertised in a newspaper and alerted me to the fact. That's what you pay for with Donald - his ability to read stuff in publicly accessible places. Genius.

I don't think I could be more excited if a family member was selected to row for Oxford, naturally, in the Boat Race (or at least the reserve team version). Rowing at Oxford, naturally, is a long and proud tradition in our family. I myself rowed with Tony Blair and Benezir Bhutto about a number of key issues when they were my proteges at Oxford, naturally, in the 1970s.

Nothing sums up Oxbridge's anachronistic elitist ethos more than the Boat Race so if my nephew were to be involved I would be right chuffed.

Me. In my skimpy swimmers

An interesting day out parading around in my speedos, talking to some swimwear guru about how we can work together across the beachwear and brolly industries to utilise the skills of the aquatic sector to adopt more damp-proof approaches in our own. He is a trustee of Spokes Direct, a charity which donates unwanted brollies to the dampest in society and whose CEO is a long standing member of BUBB - Stephen Buggles.

A great lunch - dunno what we talked about but it was plentiful and he paid.

I'd started the day meeting with BUBB members who are part of our professional associations special interest group. One of our BUBB treasures is the network of some 15 SIGs covering the interests and passions of our members' spheres of work. They rightly reminded me that we must always fight the corner of the professionals as well as those of our service delivery brolly organisations. Which was awkward as BUBB has a large membership in professional bodies like some of the ones representing health professionals who are against the NHS reforms that BUBB has been represented as endorsing by that weasel Cameron. Therefore worth a bit of cosying up and honeyed words to keep them onside. These jollies and canape fuelled commission launches won't be funded out of members subscriptions by themselves you know.

Have I spoken out yet about Cameron's lies in the House of Commons? Have I bollocks. Usually I would have torn a strip off him in an impassioned blog post at the very least but for some reason I have remained silent on this one.

And the evening was a dinner with old friend Ian Scorn MP who was one of those ministers under my protege Tony Blair who got the value of and fought for the brolly sector. He also wrote the infamous note to the incoming Tories when he left the Treasury saying that all the umbrellas were broken. He's a bugger to go out to dinner with mind. I nipped to the jacks at one point and came back to find he'd scoffed all my food and just left a letter explaining there was no couscous left.

I then realised I had done 2 versions of the same joke in the preceding paragraph before completing the hat-trick by finding a piece of paper covered in Scorn's handwriting saying there were no new punchlines left.

And now I'm off to Hell. Or as most people call it, Cambridge, unnaturally!

A trip to the doctors

Been feeling a little peaky. All this competition is getting to me. And possible food poisoning at NCVO's annual dinner last night no doubt - NCVO staff probably spat in my couscous. Therefore, I went to the Doctors today. I usually try and avoid the places, other than as the basis for half-arsed research into MY report on the health service that Cameron has been able to use as justification for claiming the support of the entire brolly sector for his reforms on the back of.

It was quite revealing. I took the opportunity to undertake some consultation while I was there with patients and staff. Which is more than I bothered doing when I wrote MY report.

I say consultation, I mean more overhearing things that were said.

As well as learning via the receptionist that all PCT staff earn more than Doctors (evidence enough for me) and that Mrs Gubbins needed 3 enemas that still didn't shift the problem I also found out from a magazine in the waiting room that the Titanic sank AND that jokes about the age of magazines in Doctor's waiting rooms are as old as the Titanic.

The most interesting revelation was from an old dear sitting waiting to be seen. Phlegmatically she remarked to the woman next to her that "patients is a virtue". I was shocked. The level of grammar from people not educated at Oxford, naturally, in this country is appalling. "Don't you mean patients are a virtue"? I said. She looked at me like I was mad.

And of course grammar aside, she is wrong. Patients are not a virtue, they're a bloody nuisance. They are the single biggest burden on the NHS and if we could get rid of them then all this talk of privatisation and competition would be academic. Downgrading some illnesses, conditions and diseases to baseless whinges, especially the ones that aren't profitable to treat would be a start

Anyway I went into see the doctor who examined me. She looked at me gravely. "Tell me the worse, Doctor, is it competition?"

"Yes", she said. "And quite a bad dose of it"

"Oh well", I said. "Could be worse. It's not as if competition is a disease".

"Oh but it is", she said. "And quite a serious one".

"It isn't", I screamed. "And if it was it wouldn't be financially viable to cure it."

She kicked me out still protesting.

"Wait til you're privatised you witch", I shouted as I disappeared, airborne, out into the car park.

After all, I don't see why privatisation is such an issue. Not that the reforms are about privatisation But if they were it's not as if the privatisation of other largely state controlled national concerns such as gas, electricity, water and the rail network has led to anything other than increased efficiency and cheaper prices. And greater competition.

Which is not a disease whatever Doctors tell you. And even if it was it definitely won't be fatal for the NHS. Cos MY report says so,

A leak

It's been a right arse-ache of a weekend. Some important stuff has been leaked and I have been fighting off the press, torn between a desire to get my name in the papers again and not putting my foot in it.

I am not talking about a report that BUBB did for the Cabinet Office a year ago about the effect of cuts on the brolly sector, that government chose to ignore. I will openly admit to leaking that. End of.

I am talking about the surprising news that my nemesis and future landlord Sir Hubert has only gone and got himself snared by a fair maiden. Leading brolly sector legal eagle temptress Vagabond McCartney has persuaded Hubert to forsake the bachelor life.

I can see no good coming of this. For a start, it's certainly going to disrupt our already fragile domestic arrangements when I do move into his box room later this year (though we're not merging, even if him and Vagabond are) if his bird is forever clogging up the bathroom. And she is one of those bleeding heart, liberal do-gooder lawyers with a heart, wanting to genuinely change the world rather than using social inequality simply as a crutch to further their own career and exploiting it for themselves. And she uses logic and facts and all that other hocus pocus that Sir Hubert sometimes dabbles in. It is going to make working with him even harder. Never mind McCartney, she's more like a Yoko Ono.

And there are so many other unanswered questions.

What present do I get them?

As it is going to be a Quaker wedding, does that mean there won't be any champers, always assuming that I get an invite in the first place?

I expect that Sr Hubert will use his Sector's in a Right Old State address at today's NCVO annual conference (which I am still banned from but will sneak into disguised as a couscous delivery man) to clarify these burning issues.

In the meantime, given the competition between Sir Hubert and I, it leaves me with no alternative but to get wed myself. So I am pleased to announce that I have agreed to settle down with my one true love. Myself.

Pimped out by Cameron

I wish someone had warned me that by seeming to be too close to Cameron and his disastrous NHS reforms I risked tacitly endorsing them on behalf of the whole brolly sector. Especially since the horse riding bastard used BUBB as an example of being one of the few organisations backing his bill in the Commons this week.

Despite the fact that BUBB has not taken a stance one way or another, the amount of profile I have had supporting the competition element I championed in MY report means that by association Cameron has been able to pimp me out as speaking on behalf of all brollies in support of his nonsense.

I expect that some of my members, especially those against the bill, will be furious with this.

So what should I do?

Write a stiff letter to the Times? Have a rant about Cameron's disingenuous mendacity and lies in a vitriolic blog post? Or do sweet fuck all, keep quiet and hope it goes away until the peerage arrives?

How regional tokenism works

I have been on another foreign trip this week, to a place far more remote and extreme than my usual jollies, and this one was actually properly work related as well. I have been Ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooop North.

As you may know, BUBB has an Office of Regional Tokenism in Leeds or some such hellhole, to give the impression of true national inclusivity rather than the usual London-centric (and Oxford, naturally) focus of such things.

I feel obliged to mention members in the blog sometimes lest people forget what BUBB is actually supposed to be about. I also like to, in terms that are in no way praise by numbers or patronising, big (or Bogg) up their work. This trip to the wilds of Northernland therefore gives me the chance to gushingly extol the virtues of the "wonderful" work of some of my "amazingly talented" Northern members. Some of their brolly initiatives are are fantastic, all the more so considering that they are Northern and poor and wotnot, and operating in some of the dampest conditions known to man.

Northerners are reet canny like, proper gradely, the gear, and ruddy marvellous.

That should cover it.

Canopy Finance Group

There are rumours circulating that I was seen pushing in the queue to get into the Canopy Finance Group's (nice rebrand, guys) silver jubilee reception yesterday. The very idea that I would do whatever it takes to gain access to the House of Lords is entirely without foundation. And when I say without I do of course mean with.