UK ministers to recive “life coaching” at taxpayers’ expense

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2330445,00.html

PATRICIA HEWITT and other cabinet ministers are receiving “life coaching” at taxpayers’ expense to help them cope with the pressures of government. Chartered psychologists are each being paid an estimated £250 per hour to act as mentors to the health secretary and her senior civil servants.

In a new training technique being used widely in Whitehall, ministers and their staff are assigned personal coaches, whom they are expected to treat as “critical friends”, using role-playing sessions to prepare for running the country.

A string of other government departments, including No 10, the Home Office, the Foreign Office, the Cabinet Office, the Department for Transport and the Treasury, are also using chartered psychologists, at an annual cost estimated at several million pounds.

The Liberal Democrats, who uncovered the practice of using life coaches, claim it is an abuse of taxpayers’ money. Lord Oakeshott, the party’s Treasury spokesman, said he would table parliamentary questions to find out who had authorised the payments. “Ministers should not need psychological coaching to do their job,” he said. “If they really do, the fat fees consultants charge must come out of their own pockets, not the public purse.”

make it around the track before collapsing.

Is "life coaching"?

Perhaps I am getting irascable in my looming dotage, but if one is in the the retinue of leaders of one of the world's major countries and one needs coaching on life, then I think it would be best to sack him post haste and forthwith and get someone who can live life without a coach.

Like a pub guv or a London Taxi Driver.