Thinking Paper #90: Which companies with vested interests would you hire?

By Ron Ford Golightly

Abstract

The IIPBA learnt over the weekend that the Planning Minister, Greg Clark, recruited the director of Wimpy homes and someone connected to Asda to advise the government on whether or not they should build on Greenfield sites. This is true. I needn’t go into the recommendations put forward by these advisors, but the IIPBA likes to think they would be quite in favour of building wherever the fuck they could so that they could buy their wives and fat children another holiday home or swimming pool that they wouldn‘t appreciate.

Suggestions

With this in mind, the IIPBA have put together a list of companies with vested interests that the government could add to the payroll:

• McDonalds to advise on childhood obesity. Oh, wait, Andrew Lansley beat us to it. To be fair to McDonalds, they are really, really tasty. Mmm.

• Weapons manufacturers, British Aerospace to advise on how many more wars Ed Llewellyn should organise and what sorts of weapons he might need to overthrow another dictator which we used to quite like.

• British Airways to advise on how many more runways Heathrow needs. As a rule of thumb, take on board their recommendations and always add one.

• Sir Fred Goodwin (remember him?) to advise on banking reform and government policy on bonuses.

Concluding Remarks

This is called loading the dice. It feels a little wrong doesn’t it? But fear not people, there will probably be an inquiry.