Boris in charge

A picture brought to me by Microsoft News with the caption: '© Reuters/KCNA North Korean leader Kim Jong Un attends enlarged meeting of the Political Bureau of the 7th Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK), in Pyongyang'. 

Presumably a meeting which approximates to one of our own Cabinet meetings, of which we are treated to similar pictures from time to time. Even in a place like North Korea, the leader has some dim understanding that he can't be in charge of everything and that his rule depends, at least to some extent, on the consent of his peers.

A leader or a culture which seems to like everyone else in a rather servile pose, earnestly taking notes. Oriental even. I wonder how far away the armed guards are. One supposes that such a leader would be into that sort of thing - not forgetting that our own leader has them too. The days when our PM could nip out of the back door of No.10 of an evening and stroll down to Piccadilly for a spot of fallen-woman-saving (Gladstone, I think) are long gone.

Presumably also, a management consultant or a psychologist could make much of the fact that in North Korea the leader sits at the top of a long thin table with a hole in the middle rather than, as is the custom here in the UK, in the middle of one of the long sides of a long thin table without a hole in the middle.

PS: just had my regular YouGov fix. The last part of this was testing whether I knew about or liked a long list of obscure people, books and things. I was interested that one of the obscure books was 'At Swim-Two-Birds' from Ireland. Possibly a famous book over there, but I think that having heard of it over here is a score point. I even own a copy, part of a handsome compendium from the Everyman's Library. I have even read it, just the once.