In light of recent errors of judgment by members of government it has been determined that all staff should be made aware of revised guidance on personal expenses:

1) Staff are not permitted to use company money to pay for accommodation beyond that required directly for business. In order to remove all doubt this includes the paying mortgages with salary. Staff are expected to use their savings or take supplementary employment (subject to approval on the grounds of conflict of interest) to fund their lifestyles.*

2) Manure: by-products of grazing animals may only be purchased with company money where required for normal business operations. No authorisation is required for the purchase of modest quantities of bovine manure for sales staff or support staff.

3) Pornographic videos may not be hired by spouses of employees and be claimed on expenses, only by employees themselves for their own use.

4) Plumbing services may be provided on the company account providing sufficient evidence is provided of the problem before hand and 7 days of notice given of any unexpected work.

5) Employees may employ their relatives only where that relative is paid through the off-shore shell account funds normally reserved for bribery.

6) Bribery will no longer be tolerated, instead the practice will be retitled: external non-declared incentives.

7) Due to previous abuse of the system a maximum number of days of ‘away from home’ subsistence may be claimed in one year. This limit is now set to: 400 days per annum.

8) Staff will be expected to hand all gifts to the finance department for placing on eBay. This includes personal presents for the following events/holidays:
– Birthdays
– Christmas (and other religious festivals)
– Weddings (except for those in junior grades or director grade and above).
Income from the sale of these items will be put towards to executive training and development fund maintained by our contractor: Betfair.com

* Acceptable forms of secondary employment not considered a conflict of interest include but are not limited to:
– intimate massage
– private escort services
– sale and distribution of narcotics
– sale and distribution of videos (especially for pornography or blackmail)
Employment which is considered a conflict of interest with company business includes (but is not limited to):
– Fraud
– Organised religion
– Children’s entertainment
– Murder, arson and/or pillage

Please ensure you follow this guidance in future.

Kind regards,

Finance Department

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

This June there will be local government and European Parliament elections in the UK, this will occupy many peoples minds and for the first time it will challenge me personally. Mainly because it looks like for the first time ever: I will be voting.Yes, I am twenty nine years old and I have not yet voted. Personally I have always disliked the idea and these are my reasons:

Continue reading “Politics in the UK (or anywhere)”

Haiku.ogg

Just a quick one, but I realised this morning that I have a compulsion to hit the character limit of twitter as accurately as possible when I post. Then it reminded me of the concept of a Haiku poem. Extract from Wikipedia for those who aren’t familiar with the concept:

Haiku (俳句 haikai verse) Haiku.ogg listen, plural haiku, is a form of Japanese poetry, consisting of 17 morae (or on), in three metrical phrases of 5, 7 and 5 morae respectively. Haiku typically contain a kigo, or seasonal reference, and a kireji or verbal caesura. In Japanese, haiku are traditionally printed in a single vertical line, while haiku in English usually appear in three lines, to parallel the three metrical phrases of Japanese haiku. Previously called hokku, haiku was given its current name by the Japanese writer Masaoka Shiki at the end of the 19th century.

This idea of being constrained by the structure can make you think and distill the essence of what you want to say. Of course there is a great deal of noise in Twitter, but when you next tweet, consider what you say.

Before you ask, no, I can’t compose a real Haiku for Twitter. But luckily there is a group on facebook dedicated to Tweeting in Haiku: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=23023722312