SE Boss: "We're not fucked, we're focused."

This week New Scottish Enterprise chair Crawford Gillies told the waiting media that the agency was "now focused" on aiding the Scottish economy.

He told The JT: "Scottish Enterprise in the past was perhaps a bit blurry, and out of focus, but we've been to the optician and now we're fine."

Indeedly, and if The Sunday Herald is to believed, our job-creation agency is already on the case when it comes to aiding the Scottish economy, to the tune of at least £100K spent at various venues working on "team building".

When asked by the SH whether this kind of an exercise was, you know, like justified, a spokeshack for SE said : "The event was very successful and feedback from the staff has been overwhelmingly positive. A staff survey following the event showed that 95% of staff felt that the event would would have a positive impact on their role."

Presumably the other 5% told the truth.

Let's be honest, the results of staff feedback surveys for training events should be like chips, taken with a pinch of salt.

It's not that the staff fear they might be identified for a negative assessment, it's just that few staff will risk the chance of attending a future away day where they can spend the day looking out the window, blissfully daydreaming.

Asking staff if an event was "useful" is comparable to the trainer at the beginning of the day saying, "I thought we'd aim for an early finish today, about 4pm OK?" No one ever says " No, we're paid 'til five, 'til five we stay." It just doesn't happen.

And while were on matters economic, those wildcat strikes over the cheap labour scam being worked by certain multi-national companies? I note that some politicians, who have self-evidently yet to receive the memo containing the "R" word, are still insisting that international labour mobility is A Good Thing. That's "good" presumably, as in good for multinationals to bid for work in one jurisdiction, hire labour in another, deploy that labour (bought at a bargain price) in yet another.

Just as a thought experiment , let's imagine that we, the voters, decided to invite bids from politicians throughout the EU to operate our political system for us. I mean if our domestic pols are lecturing us on the benefits of driving costs to the floor, then presumably they'd have no objection to a consortium of say, Greek politicians, bidding for the work based on what Greece currently pays them.

It might be quite good actually, given the combustibility of the Latin temperament.

I've seen those Greek MPs on the telly, fighting in parliament. Some of them are really good at fighting, I can tell you. And compare and contrast with our own MSPs play fighting at First Minister's QT. Let's face it, as boys who sat at the front of the school class, neither Salmond or Grey would be any good at fighting properly.

That's it, I've decided, phone the Greeks.

Inside: Gratuitous ethnic slur gag. Why do Greek men grow moustaches? So they can be more like their mothers.

Not at all blurry

Look at him! He'd be brilliant as an MSP he would