Comedienne and TV busybody Ruby Wax has been hired by the Home Office to coach senior staff in leadership and communications, launching some gleeful outrage from the usual suspects.
Even with our sceptical goggles on, we can see that there will always be expensive professional development for senior civil servants. If that money has to be spent, it might as well go on a well-known TV celeb who has relevant qualifications and coaching experience. It's not as if Wax has been booked for a series of stand-up gigs or commissioned for A Special Audience With... The Department for Work and Pensions for telly. We don't see that much to be shocked by; she's a leadership and communications trainer as well as a TV personality, and she will guarantee the training sticks (even if it's only effective name-dropping that lasts). If the training budget needs to be spent, then booking Ruby Wax for some workshops is value for money, of a sort.
However, for even more comic investment and real value for money, the Home Office might consider a few sessions scanning the comments on The Evening Standard article:
...Yet all Civil Servants, the NHS needs to take on board is the advice of my farther, a lifelong retailer, how to improve performance. Faced with a branch whose sales were declining, we had long investigations. Was it the wrong goods for the area, was the promotions wrong. Finally in exasperation, he said ,"they could try smiling". When was the last time you saw any civil servant smile? Particularly we hear in Downing Street.
Thanks to the Evening Standard we discover these wastes of money.
- Alan,, England.
Instead of Ruby Wax, 'Alan,, England' could do the trick. Or for the gold standard comedy training, they need Sarah, London. Now that's value for tax payers' money!
Image by Matt From London, with permission
