Pink Pound: Hold The Eighth Page Of The Business Section!

IBM are officially the most gay-friendly corporation in the world!
The International Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce (IGLCC) has announced the results of their second International Business Equality Index.
Eh?
"The International Index is a measurement of the performance of multinational corporations in relation to Diversity and Inclusion issues in the countries where they have offices, specifically regarding to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) communities."
But who are the IGLCC?
Looking at their website all they seem to do is put together this index - and have an annual general assembly/gala dinner where they give out the index awards.
If corporations want to take part all they have to do is "respond to an online survey composed of 17 questions" about exactly how good they reckon they are to the gays.
So it's basically a self-selecting, self-judging, self-serving box-ticking PR stunt.
They claim participation is free - but the IGLCC sells copies of their index report for €1,500.
Affiliated membership costs €175. It does not say on their website how much it costs to become a corporate member, a sponsor, to access the IGLCC Business Data Base, or to attend the annual general assembly/gala dinner so you can pick up the award you pretty much awarded yourself.
They say; "By participating in the survey your corporation gets many benefits", including "Increased visibility in the LGBT market segment."
Which means, if nothing else, The Pink Paper can always be relied on to cut-and-paste the IGLCC press release and run it as a news story.
And you get "permitted" to use a little logo thing saying your corporation is "recognized as one of the 2010 most gay friendly corporations in the world" - or more specifically it was one of just 25 companies that took part.
These are clearly good, good times for those wonderful people at IBM.
Last month, the home secretary, Theresa May announced that - despite the Conservative government scrapping ID cards -
IBM's £265 million contract to build the central National Biometric Identity Service for storing biometric information for passports (and ID cards) will remain in place, Computing magazine reports.
Of course IBM have a proven track record on collecting private information for states on their citizens.
They famously did their bit to help Hitler and the holocaust;
"IBM technology was used to organize nearly everything in Germany and then Nazi Europe, from the identification of the Jews in censuses, registrations, and ancestral tracing programs to the running of railroads and organizing of concentration camp slave labor."
Perhaps this is what the corporation means by IBM IT Solutions?