Redemption song
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The late and great Graham Walker, one of the most colourful figures in the prewar motorcycle industry, maintained that accountants should be forbidden by law to take any executive part in business. Propped on his right elbow on the bar, pint pot in hand, he condemned them as soulless, stultifying of all initiative and bereft of humour.
He would, I am sure, have made an exception of Douglas Leithead, finance director of Scottish Road Services. Douglas has a pretty wit and remarkable biblical erudition, both of which Graham would have enjoyed.
Writing in Scotline, the company's newspaper, Dou glas describes in biblical quotations 20 aspects of the preparation of the following year's budget.
For instance, the general manager's reaction to figures submitted by subordinates: "Surely thou hast greatly deceived this people."— Jeremiah 4, 10.
At the budget meeting: "And they will deceive everyone his neighbour and will not speak the truth." — Jeremiah 9, 5.
In the car returning from the budget meeting the directors confer: -Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought and on the labour that I had laboured to do and there was no profit under the sun." — Ecclesiastes 2, 11.