Radioactive Cannibal Vikings From Hell

Speak to any successful businessman, it doesn't matter in what area of the economy, and he'll tell you that one of the keys to success is foresight, planning and knowing the important nitty gritty of the business. You've just got to talk to Britain's most successful businessmen and CEO's to know how true this is.

Let's hear how this is put into practice:

 Nick Buckles,  (soon to be ex) Group Chief Executive of G4S when asked on Saturday's "Today" programme when he knew that they couldn't deliver the number of security guards they contracted for: "8 days ago".

Bob Diamond, ex (disgraced?) CEO of Barclay's: when questioned when he knew about LIBOR fixing; "When I read the FSA report of their investigations."

The Munster, sorry, the Murdoch family...well apparently never, had no idea, about hacking...

None seemed to worry too much about what their employees were doing or the  important nitty gritty of the job.

Nick Buckling, under the strain of being shown to be overpaid and useless, when asked if he knew whether all the security guards to be employed at the Olympic sites could speak/understand English, frankly couldn't put hand on heart. All he could say was they had to have the appropriate certificates.  Right, and that's acceptable quality control.

Bob Diamond, didn't know that any of the dealers were fixing LIBOR - this from a man who prided himself on transforming Barclay's Capital.

The Morlocks knew nothing about how the newspaper industry works.

Listening to Nick "One, Two Buckle My Shoe" interviewed he sounded like a lost school boy. Clearly overwhelmed by events. So different from the image carefully crafted by their Corporate website.

To quote from 4GS "Our Values"

Customer Focus – we have close, open relationships with our customers that generate trust and we work in partnership for the mutual benefit of our organisations.

Expertise – we develop and demonstrate our expertise through our innovative and leading-edge approach to creating and delivering the right solution.

Performance – we challenge ourselves to improve performance year-on-year and to create long-term sustainability.

Best People – we always take care to employ the best people, develop their competence, provide opportunities and inspire them to live our values.

Integrity – we can always be trusted to do the right thing.

I suspect neither Nick nor any of his illustrious Board members can ever again look at these without cringing with embarrassment!

I don't want to bang on about poor Nick, I really shouldn't single out G4S, after all they appear to be just one of many UK companies who have been caught either breaking the law, with their hands in the till or just being crap. However, I'm having fun so why not.

Poor, out of his depth, but highly paid, Nick tried to explain that the reason why things had gone belly up - security wise was because recruiting security staff was a complicated business. The words "complicated" and "100,000" (the number of applications) occurred rather too often in the interview.

Yes Nicholas, or do your friends call you Nicky?, that's what you signed up to manage: a highly complex operation. For goodness sake you proudly proclaim you employ over 600,000 people world-wide - can't manage to recruit 13,000? Mind you given what's crawling out from under your corporate pile your company's meaning  of "employing" appears to be rather restricted.

Can I suggest a Royal Commission on the State of Corporate Britain - 'cause it needs something to shift the pile of shit that's accumulated over the years, and piecemeal inquiries won't begin to touch the crap.