An e-mail arrives. It is from Shell, the subject of embarrassing leaks this week about plans to sack 3,000 people and outsource the IT functions. It is the internal e-mail setting out the official version of events to staff. Pass by the fact that it is virtually illiterate. In it, Jerome K. Jerome, sorry, Jeroen van der Veer, chief executive of Shell, explains that the outsourcing of jobs “is an excellent example of a function driving towards top quartile”. This translates as, you’re sacked, but we still get our bonuses. I am reliably informed that this is how people within Shell do talk to each other. As in “as Shell’s businesses implement their strategies to achieve ‘More Upstream, Profitable Downstream’ and top quartile, there has been an equal drive in the functions as well”.

Gibberish. I have every sympathy with Shell IT staff who will lose their jobs. But you might end up working for someone who doesn’t condescend to staff in purest management-speak.

We have all been blithely writing that Northern Rock was the first run on a British bank in living memory. Not so, says a reader; the collapse of the Israel British Bank, which despite its name was indeed British, occurred in 1974. “Depositors were queueing up at its London HQ [over Holborn Viaduct station] to withdraw their savings, causing the bank to close its doors forever. These included my colleagues who were staff of associated companies,” he recalls. “I was just grateful I had not got round to transferring my personal bank account into it.” I make inquiries. The bank did, indeed, go into receivership. It appears to have some link with the interminable feud between Lonrho’s Tiny Rowland and Mohamed Al Fayed. An area into which I have no wish to intrude.

Sir Ian McAllister, chairman of Network Rail, whose recent knighthood, I have suggested, should be taken back for the unprecedented incompetence his company displayed over the holiday period. Suggests a reader: “If the knighthood cannot be withdrawn, how about a campaign to encourage him to do the decent thing and decline it?” Hmm. Human nature being as it is . . . Still, a better idea occurs. He should be required to spend four days on a freezing railway station platform before the honour actually vests.

Reality bites as strike takes hold in America

The writers’ strike is starting to bite in the US. The next reality TV show is Donald Trump’s Celebrity Apprentice, with boxer Lennox Lewis and Piers Morgan, and the show will “encourage the contestants to reach out to their network of celebrity contacts for assistance or donations”. A few cheap celeb star turns, then. Trump says that, of the 100 people who applied to be on the show, “we took 14, but a couple of them cancelled because they couldn’t stand the concept of being fired”. That included a former baseball player. “The level of viciousness, hatred and competitiveness was unbelievable.” This is a recommendation?

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