Carol has the misfortune to work for a local Health Authority here in Wales. It is over-laden with management, much as I experienced when working for Social Services. My experience of senior management is that they are self-protecting and grossly out of touch with practice at grass-roots level. One of the tacks they employ in order to cover their own backs is to create a plethora of rules and dictates. One of the most absurd I remember from my years in Social Services followed an incident when one employee left his spectacles on a window-sill in summer, which resulted in a small fire. Prior to the days of e-mail, over 3000 letters were sent out to staff warning then of the imminent dangers of starting fires with their specs. Well, Carol has returned from a month off – she was recuperating from an operation – and has had the distinct pleasure of wading through hundreds of e-mails. Despite the urgency of many of the requests, the world did not come to an end in her absence.To get to the “Swine Flu” issue, the instruction has gone out to 130+ OT’s (Occupational Therapists) – and probably many hundreds of other disciplines – that they must telephone in each morning by 9:15, to one lonely secretary, advising her that they do NOT have Swine Flu and are fit for work. Hmm? What arsehole thought this one up? Wouldn’t it have been better for someone to ring from home to report that they DID have Swine Flu? It’s about time some of these over paid clowns got out of their ivory towers and got back in touch with the real world. Thank God I’m out of it!

Anybody else got some good examples of bureaucracy at its best?