Now with 2.5% less charm

King Herod, it seems to me, is ripe for re-appraisal. Rather than a despotic tyrant, in the context of the Roman Empire he had only limited latitude for determination. He did not dictate the overarching policy, this being a matter for central authority. Rather he sought to implement it in the region, having regard to distinctive local conditions.

It can't have been an easy job, what with all those divergent interests and nuisances. An impressionable and excitable populace, prone to unlicensed gatherings. One messiah after another, often several on the go at once, some of them more disruptive than others. It's true that the Massacre of the Innocents wasn't a universally popular initiative, but it fell to King H to take some tough decisions and from that one he did not flinch. Though not achieving its objectives, as a process all reports suggest that it was delivered on time and within budget. This so rarely gets the recognition it deserves.

Today I was put in mind of Herod the Great, and the adversities he faced, by an attack of Stakeholders. I don't know if you have Stakeholders in your field - perhaps you have customers? Well, Stakeholders are worse, deputations of disputacion, pestersome mendicants, the lot of them.

Often they want guidance - not for practical purposes, more as an amulet against failure or scripture to blame when they screw things up. Refuse them and paralysis will ensue while all involved wait for each other to do things. Eventually someone will crack and start doing, and unto that endeavour will be accorded the acclaim of 'Best Practice'. When in fact it has the utility and consistency of the first pancake.

As frequently they will want money. In June. Unringfenced. In cash would be handy, ta.

Sometimes Stakeholders want to be allowed to do things hitherto prohibited and unmentionable, or at the very least for their overseers to look the other way for a bit - at this point you may hear the phrases 'light touch', and 'self-regulating'.

But most often Stakeholders just want biscuits. This is the worst of it. To preserve the dignity of policy development there must be the minuscule thong of consultation - with Stakeholders. Consultation requires meetings and at meetings there are biscuits. Referring to another body of which mine is a contemporary Stakeholders will insinuatingly observe that:

'at ----- they had Jammie Dodgers' or 'Weren't there Viennese fingers last time? Oh no, that was when we went to ----'.

Perhaps they like to see themselves as acid-tongued coquettes, seeking to ignite jealous rage in an intemperate suitor. Rather than, as they appear, the sort of people who habitually feed feral pigeons.

Where hard baked goods are concerned the Stakeholders will defenestrate all notions of fraternal cohort. For budgets they will compete in a ladylike or gentlemanly manner but for Bourbons they are like hungering beasts. Once when our internal catering broke down we brought in a selection from Marks and Spencers and they tore each other to shreds about the biscuit plate, consuming scraps of each others' flesh along with the white chocolate wafers and those ones wrapped in yellow foil. Imagine if we provided a working lunch finger buffet - identifying the participants afterwards would be down to dental records.

Stakeholders often dress like provincial bailiffs, in jackets fitted with poacher's pockets with capacity for several pounds of Ginger Snaps on each side. The other day I met an elderly bearded gentleman rattling around the corridors, engaged in multiple consultation exercises for the past decade, who claimed to have subsisted entirely on Hobnobs since 1998.

Their weakness, our strength. When we wish to divide and rule a Penguin here and Tunnock's teacake there, surreptitiously and iniquitously bestowed, can sew great discord among the category. Similarly, sworn sectoral enemies can be made to unite in synergistic partnership working at the promise and sniff of shortbread. I have brokered a deal worth millions - once you include all the gearing and match funding, etc - using a formula entirely populated with Custard Creams. If a bombardment of Rich Tea fails a few fig rolls will clear out any nest of resistance. In tough negotiations* I'll have the Garibaldi option, not figuratively but literally, in my back pocket.

So I salute Herod. And also Pontius Pilate, for he suffered representations from Stakeholders in droves. There were no Peek Freans or McVities to distract them with then. No wonder he was always washing his hands afterwards.