I just posted a satirical news item in Hold It Up For Ridicule, my satirical blog which I hope is funny and balanced. Check out My Satire above. I’ve been seeing and hearing news and web reports all morning about the CBI’s instruction to “target sickies”. Their timing coincides with the first day back to work in a short week after a record breaking warm Easter. No doubt a clever HR consultant told the CBI what anybody could tell them for free, that people take a day off when the weather’s good and the cricket World Cup is on TV, ie a sickie. I wondered about mixing the item with last year’s item about Fat Cat pay, and came up with the instruction to target fat cats. My satire is about holding up for ridicule the people who make the news, in this case the CBI made and timed the news cynically. Many people will equate the cost of sickies to their own low pay. I’m saying what the media could never say. It’s worth going that extra step and asking myself if it could ever be The News. Of course not. It’s pointless to do something that can be said, because that’s not satire. The original item needed some perspective. All the figures are accurate. I would love it if someone calculated the exact cost to British industry of fat cats, and came back to say it’s actually less than the cost of sickies, thus missing the point entirely. I was aware when doing this, that fat cats are no longer this year’s news. Maybe they’ve all gone away now, and boardroom pay is back to normal. Cough, splutter!!