"Make a Fresh Start in the New Year with the highest level Strategic Leadership Qualification available". What????
Do you ever see things and do a quick double take because you can't believe what you saw?
I often do, as when I read the heading above, which then told me the Institute of Leadership and Management (ILM) Level 7 award in Strategic Leadership costs from only £500. Isn't that just great? I can be a leader for £500!
This, like so much on the internet, is sheer, unadulterated moonshine. Having led one or two organisations, usually in exactly the wrong direction, I am here to tell you that no £500 diploma would have been much good to Alexander the Great, Napoleon, Attila the Hun or any other of those types. It took me 21 years of trial, error and study to become even an indifferent leader.
Actually I find the idea of this Institute ludicrous, and have a strong feeling that the only people to do well out of it in the New Year will be those who run it.
Another thing that caught my eye just now was a headline from an Aussie ad magazine that read, "Ad industry vows greater online transparency". A great example of how to be simultanously pompous and completely incomprehensible. No wonder advertising is in trouble.
Have you noticed how the word "vows" often precedes a lie? Yesterday I saw the Ineffectual Toad "vows" to protect Cadbury's workers. How? Just as the day before I wondered how Smoothy Cameron is only going to have "elite" teachers. Where will he find them? From amongst all those who've been so badly educated since his hero the despicable money-mad Bliar made "education, education, education" his top priority 13 years ago?
Rogues and politicians (what's the difference?) only get away with these lies because most people don't stop and think.
This reminds me, yesterday there was a minor kerfuffle on one of these online anorak forums about a video I posted. In it I said nearly websites make up to 5 basic, crass mistakes which we cure in a few weeks for far too little money. Some fool with too little work to do pointed out that the website this led to had missed quite a few tricks in the wonderful realm of SEO and all that jazz.
I immediately recalled George Bernard Shaw's joke about the man who "seized the wrong end of the stick and belaboured his opponent with it." This is because it wasn't a website, but a landing page with a specific purpose; it was put together literally in minutes; its only job was to get enquiries; and it did that admirably well (unlike most of the ideas I've had over the years).
What was a real hoot was that the nitpicker who was talking such uninformed drivel makes every one of these basic errors on his own site. Another wag said I looked like Donald Duck on the video, which may well be true, but didn't stop it doing a great job.
Next time I'm going to wear a Pippa Pig costume (I LOVE you, Pippa. Honest. I have a great picture of you in Peter Jones ... but that's enough romance for today).
If you click below you can see my Donald Duck, and the offending page too. I admit it is pretty ropey - but it was done even quicker than the landing page. (Isn't Donald Duck rhyming slang for something or other?)
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