State board membership on the basis of what, not who, you know

IN the middle of the outrage about the appointment of Celia Larkin to a “cushy job” (which is neither a job nor cushy, but we’ll come to that) someone came up with the ultimate indictment of the state board to which she’d been appointed:

It was going to have two hairdressers on it.

Top up the Valium, quick, lads. Else how will we cope with the possibility of a state board with two hairdressers present? Two plumbers, two actuaries or two electronics engineers wouldn’t create headlines. State boards, for decades, have had multiples of lawyers, doctors, company directors and accountants on them. But nobody thinks two bean-counters in the same boardroom would unbalance the discourse or endanger the entity. It’s unclear what precise threat would be presented by two hairdressers on a board, but we’re in no immediate danger of finding out, since Celia Larkin, while she may own a beauty consultancy, isn’t actually a hairdresser at all. So there’s only one of them. Whew, the relief.