Golgafrincham

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According to the The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Golgafrincham was an over-populated planet, whose more resourceful inhabitants invented stories of impending doom to persuade their less-resourceful co-inhabitants to bugger off. Some said Golgafrioncham would crash into the sun; others that the planet was to be invaded by twelve-foot piranha bees; still others that it was in danger of being eaten by an mutant star-goat.

So the resourceful Golgafrinchans decided to rid themselves of the useless third of their population — the hairdressers, telephone sanitisers, internal auditors, derivative onboarding specialists, talent acquisition directors, serial entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs, executive coaches, social media consultants thought leaders and digital prophets — basically, everyone with an active LinkedIn profile.. The resourceful Golgafrinchans annouced the construction of three “Ark ships”. The A ship would carry all the leaders, scientists and other high achievers. The C ship would contain all the people who made things and did things, and the B Ark would hold the middle management third mentioned above.

To prepare the new world for the A and C Ark Ships — to be sure it was properly audited and KYC’d, had appropriate HR policies and SOX attestations in place and so on, the Golgafinchans sent the B Ark Ship off first. The remaining two-thirds of the population stayed behind and lived full, rich and happy lives until they were all wiped out by a poorly articulated indemnity.

Thus, all that remains of the Golgafrinchans are those from the B Ark Ship, which crashed (safely) into a small green-blue planet orbiting an unregarded yellow sun in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy. They — I should say, we — live on in legal, credit and operational risk and control departments to this very day.