Management

Whenever I think of family holidays from when I was a child I always seem to recall the rainy days. Holidays would not be the same without rainy days. It is an essential part of the experience of a holiday. Going abroad to places with more consistent 'better' weather has robbed the British holiday of one of its most significant aspects. The disappointment, the sense of being trapped within a small area with limited resources is akin to those exercises for trainee army officers that management-types appropriated for those courses they like to send each other on. However, such courses seems to have more to do with an attempt to change the image of the office worker from that of pampered wimp into macho dynamic professional.

These paramilitary style courses are not really that necessary - except in the image sense as above. All they really needed to do - if they were serious about their charges actually learning something useful - is to put a new clause into all their office workers' contracts. A clause that states that the workers are obliged to spend two weeks every year on a caravan holiday in Wales with a young family. That would sort out the thrusting go-ahead achievers from the time-servers. That is if any of them survived.

However, it is more likely that it would be the go-ahead thrusting dynamic sort that would fall apart when faced with real problems. But that wouldn't really matter as business these days is more about image than anything else, if it was ever otherwise. Whatever happens, the thrusting dynamic youngster in the expensive suit is going to appear far more dynamic than the balding, middle-aged bloke in the jam-stained cardigan.

Nevertheless they would do wise to remember that in the Bond films it is the old, faintly ludicrous Q that comes up with all the useful devices, Bond is just a tool.