Sunday, Jun 14, 2009
The nothing and old rope years
Observer: Farewell, with a last word on the blunder years
Aslant to the main topic but a relief from the insubstantial property articles that fill the papers now. All about the attitudes and types who got us into this mess.
Posted by letthemfall @ 11:50 AM (809 views) Add Comment
12 Comments
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1. devo said...
Shh...
Do you hear that?
It's the winds of change.
2. paul said...
Not familiar with the writer, so quite ambivalent to his demise - montesquieu, any comments?
He is right though - the Blunder Years. I like that.
3. last_days_of_disco said...
This is typical left wing nonsense.
After backing the most apalling government in British history, the Guardian wants jump ship, not likely. Now they can live in the political wilderness. The conservatives control every local council and they will get loads of MPS and the British public have realised who their real enemy is. They can go sell Darwin and Marx somewhere else, maybe Africa is up for another round of air headed socialism to impoverish them even further.
4. Albertino Albertini said...
Left wing, maybe, but hardly complete nonsense - one of the main problems I believe this country has, on economic, political and social plains, is that it's filled with sh*t middle-managers. And, unfortunately, some of them rise to the top.
5. mr g said...
@3 "This is typical left wing nonsense"
I agree with you 100% although there is one statement in this article which is absolutely true namely, "MBA courses had taught them to manage deals and numbers, not things or people"
I have seen a few MBA "whizz kids" in my time and quite honestly they couldn't manage a p*ss up in a brewery, rather like the current government.
Master of Business Administration? My Bloomin Ar*e!
6. mr g said...
I forgot to add that MBA is also an acronym for "Means B*gger All"
7. letthemfall said...
If this is left-wing nonsense, I can only say that I prefer it to right-wing nonsense. I know from experience that much of the article has substance to it. I also know that many of the so-called private sector involvement in the public sector has not delivered the hoped for value for money, most notably the IT contracts. The broad economic approach of the Labour Govt has carried on where the previous (very right-wing) govt left off. Nothing left wing about pointing out the disasters caused by "modern management". In case no one has noticed, the biggest economic mess we've ever seen was produced by the very private and so far from the left banks.
On MBAs, I once knew someone who taught them maths. Apparently they liked to thump the table with their fists but didn't understand the formula for a straight line.
8. shipbuilder said...
This article is spot on in many respects - how sad that left vs right nonsense means that many refuse to see what is obvious. The failure of management by targets and metrics should be obvious to anyone who has ever worked in a large corporation, including the fact that most large corporations, despite decades of business management theory, still operate like slow, lumbering, centralised dictatorships, little better than the public sector. Yet still we listen to the predictable bleatings of private good, public bad. Private vs public is as irrelevant as left vs right - there is just an efficient or inefficient way of running a business. I can only conclude that those who don't understand this have never worked in a large corporation.
Until we dispel these myths and understand that in any group of people, whether it be a global coporation, a public health trust or even a village committee, there will be those who will seek centralisation for their own ends and to maximise their own gains, we will continue to fail. People like George Orwell, a socialist, understood this and warned us about it - how tragic that we still haven't learnt the lesson.
9. devo said...
"Until we dispel these myths and understand that in any group of people, whether it be a global coporation, a public health trust or even a village committee, there will be those who will seek centralisation for their own ends and to maximise their own gains, we will continue to fail."
If by 'we' you mean 'the rest of us', shipbuilder, I would agree. Those who seek 'centralisation for their own ends' have done very well out of the system you describe.
10. braindeed said...
@ 3. last_days_of_disco said...
This is typical left wing nonsense........
There hasn't been a left wing Government in the UK for 30 years.
And it'll be plus ça change with Dave.....except he'll have a 'mandate' to brutalise more, anyone deemed an 'outsider'.
Try reading the article - it makes sense if you're not grinding your teeth with indignation about the imagined 'Reds under the Bed'.
11. doggett said...
I'll second the comments of letthemfall, shipbuilder, devo and braindeed above.
I thought the article intelligent and well written, and to describe it as "typical left wing nonsense", bizarre.
12. cyril said...
It's the internet that's killing off the traditional media, as well as the credit crunch. Too many channels, not enough advertising revenue to go round. That's business for you. Au revoir.