Panchen et al

I had occasion to discuss the disputed status of the current Panchen Lama last night. A pretty well balanced dissection of what the actual controversy is, can be found here, with more here and here.

Google is driven by pigeons, apparently. Maybe the sale of all the guano explains their stock value. After all, you can base whole economies on bird poo.

Good for a giggle. Sense of humour and certain theological robustness required.

And, finally, another update from the trenches of recruitment. What follows is an ecerpt from an email conversation I had from an old mate who is still in the rec business:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: nameless recruiter mate of mine

I am recruiting a couple of roles for organisations linked to the Royal family. I have just had a very sheepish call from one of my contacts saying they like the candidates but traditionally they take on people with “English names”.

Right, thanks for

1. Making my job even more difficult (sorry, Sukhdev, you have the right skill set and could do the job easily but your name is just not Anglo-Saxon enough)

2. diminishing even further my respect for the royals.

Reply from me:

Really? Bloody hell. That still goes on? What do you do? I'd just tell them those are the best candidates and sod them. Be selectively deaf. The House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha is not exactly of Home Counties origin anyway (Saxon but certainly NOT Anglo....) Phil the Greek was an asylum seeker, for Vishnu's sake.

I remember hearing once that the Queen Mum was a raging racist who just was not allowed by her handlers to meet any black people on her not-all-planned-and-totally-spontaneous 'impromptu walkabouts' for fear of what she might say.

Without the amount of graduates of Oriental/sub-continental origin entering the finance profession, no-one will have the luxury of discrimination if they want an FD in ten years time anyway.