Om Money Pot Mehum

Meditation techniques are cheaper than civilised working conditions and could help unqualified public-sector staff towards an appropriate sense of complacency about their own incompetence, according to a serene committee of seat-warmers. Drawn from the House of Expenses Claimants and the House of Donors, the committee took a calm eight months to reach the conclusion that absenteeism and human resource burnout in stressful professions can best be averted by training people to resign themselves to keeping things as they are. Meditation is rooted in a 2400-year-old Buddhist tradition, originating in a rigidly hierarchical culture with vast inequality of wealth; so it should hardly be surprising that at least two members of the Cabinet practise it, or at any rate have found it expedient to tell one Tracey Crouch MP that they do. The former Minister for Ministerial Administration, Gussie O'Donnell, has proclaimed that "mindfulness" can "play a huge role" in prevention of poor mental health, but has called for more data to back up the claim. Translated from the Whitehall, this no doubt means that Gussie is content with his ulcers and his pension, and that if the proles wish to do strange foreign things in order to stay sane, they can do it at their own expense.