Training

I have just been on possibly one of the most useless courses I've ever had the misfortune to go on. It was supposed to be about risk management aimed at people how had experience of dealing with risk but wanted to know how to do it "the company way". It could have been a rather good course given a competent tutor who knew what he was taking about rather than using the two days as an opportunity to try imply that "the board" come to him for advice. If that was true why was he presenting the course to us junior management type civil servants why wasn't he briefing my boss? And also, if that was true why didn't give one single explanation of how and why all his projects succeeded or how exactly they were successful? Or an one single example of how he thought "outside-the-box"? When Si got home this evening I subjected him to a rant on the subject I was so wound up over the wasted time and effort, it quickly came apparent that half the attendees were more clued in on how the department manages risk than the tutors were.

I think the tutor's prime idiocy was when he told us that he harangued a contractor for not considering the risk of all the men on one of the production lines leaving at the same time because they were all in the same syndicate for the national lottery - all 35 of them. :-o

Avoiding Being A Numpty. Or How To State The Bleeding Obvious.

I've been driving to and from work in Cambridgeshire and home in Norfolk for just under two weeks now. It's a route of many roundabouts and plentiful fields, the towns on the way are either bypassed or just skirted through so it should be a fairly quick route except for....

Tractors, lorries, caravans, coaches and buses. Now I don't mind those too much, well all except caravans they ARE the spawn of Beelzebub as we know, they all have restrictions on the speed that they can go on the open road. So they are not numpties well the caravan haulers probably are but they don't have the chance to be one with a caravan behind them.

No, the numpties are them others, the idiots who drive too fast and cut you up, who over take with lorries thundering towards them so that get a chill sweat and start to ready yourself for an emergency stop when the accident happens. Then there are the gibbers who seem to think that it's perfectly acceptable to bimble along at 45 miles per hour when the speed limit is 60 but speed up to go through towns at 50 miles per hour when the signs are saying 30. They really shouldn't be allowed out. They take the racing line when they could be outpaced by an asthmatic moped and worry me considerably, swing out wildly when a pedestrian is walking along the pavement and never ever use their indicators at any time during the journey.

I've also noticed as I wend my way back and forth that along each stretch of road there will be at least one numpty, the trick is to ensure that a) I'm far enough away from them and b) that I'm not the numpty.