Mayday, our PM has me worried

YOU know who Theresa May finds inspiring? Theresa May.

Having parked her furniture delivery vans at Number 10, she’s now overhauling the décor by removing the paintings of previous leaders and replacing them with framed quotations from the mission statement she made on the day she was voted into Downing Street.

She has been in office less than a month, but Mrs May is starting to worry me more than earthquakes or meteor strikes. Maybe she is genuinely determined to keep social justice to the fore of Conservative policy, but framing your own quotes is the sort of thing even Donald Trump would dismiss as a bit conceited.

It would be like a Scottish politician using taxpayers’ money to commission a commemorative boulder etched with his words: ‘The rocks will melt with the sun before I allow tuition fees to be imposed on Scottish students.’ Here’s the thing about inspirational slogans in the workplace: they are counter-productive. I once worked for a department store where the staff-room was wall-papered with pictures of dolphins, beaches and determined toddlers, reminding us that there was no ‘I’ in team, or ‘to exceed your limits, you must first push the envelope’.

Eventually, we had a whip round and bought a poster of our own – a rolling snowball, which bore the legend: ‘Teamwork: A few harmless flakes working together can unleash an avalanche of destruction’.

BBC Scotland has also flirted with motivational motifs. At one point, to encourage staff to keep audiences in mind, newsrooms and production offices were papered with posters bearing the motto: ‘What Is Scotland Thinking About Today?’ Underneath someone wrote: ‘Biscuits’.