I’ve just been to a meeting chaired by a bloke who clearly does nothing but play or watch sport. And given the size of his girth my money’s on the latter.  According to our pot-bellied uberfurher for the morning, everything needs to be done “by the close of play”, Bungo Moyes needs to stop “raising the bar”, and the miserable lack of strategic clarity emerging from the SHA is “par for the course”.  And despite the fact that I’ve never played cricket, high-jumped or shot a round of golf, I understood everything that man said.

 

So what’s that all about, eh? I’ll tell you what it’s all about.  It’s about time we moved on from the patriarchal sporting metaphors of the playing fields of Eton and got a bit more now, a bit more edgy, a bit more credit crunch.  So how about these few starters for 10?

 

To nationalise the bankvb. to consciously take a course of action that is doomed to failure because there’s nowhere else to go.   qv “What are we going to do about commissioning, Mark?”  “I reckon it’s time to nationalise the bank, Dave:  let’s call it world class and put the PCTs through an assessment process.”

 

To put on ebay vb  to exit a physical or human or asset from an organisation at maximum speed and efficiency. qv “Anyone seen Lord Warner lately?”  “Haven’t you heard?  They put him on ebay.”

 

Born with a trackeradjto be plain lucky, from those who took out pre-recession tracker mortgages linked to the Bank of England interest rate qv “How did he get to be the on the Leadership Council?” “Born with a tracker, mate, born with a tracker.”

 

So come on, good people, let’s have some more.  And while we’re at it, let’s consign a few made-up management gobbledegook words to the dustbin of history.  May I get the ball rolling with “co-production”, with “optimalising” as a pretty close second?

 

Over to you.