Spare a thought for Northern Ireland’s civil servants, who are so overworked and under-slept they’re now being given lectures on beating stress and mindfulness to cope with the strains of it all… in the middle of the working day. A new internal memo reveals how miserable civil servants now have the opportunity to sign up for three separate lectures – each an hour in length – to soothe their minds as they go about their taxpayer-funded work. Is Rishi reading this?

The first lecture, “mindfulness for busy minds“, starts next Tuesday:

“Do you feel like you don’t have a minute for yourself, never mind time to do all the things you need to get done in a day? Do you find yourself thinking all the time? Find it hard to concentrate, or to get to sleep at night because your mind is still in overdrive? If the answer is yes to any of these, then this event is for you. Mindfulness for Busy Minds is an introduction to the calming benefits of mindfulness. In this session. Patrick Mcllwee of New Ways NI will show how you can release tension caused by overthinking. breathe through strong emotions and settle the mind for concentration or sleep.”

The next lecture is on “managing stress“, although they’ve really saved the best for last: “No Tweeting While You’re Eating“. Whilst specific details aren’t yet listed, Guido’s dug around to find previous lectures on the subject for other bodies, with one recently given to the Northern Ireland Safety Group. It does what it says on the tin. They’ll be taught how to stop aimlessly scrolling Twitter during their lunch breaks.

Civil servants are now presumably so distracted by social media at work that their managers are imposing an intervention during working hours. Save the date…