> Single common thread has to be poor governance. Certainly in politics and the civil service and also, from what I hear, amongst business leaders.
Strongly agree. I used to work in the civil service and there are many good individuals but the management structure is poor (though I think generally very effective at line management) and plenty of duffers get promoted. Many ministers are really very mediocre.
Good ideas and techniques are very slowly adopted, but then things like Agile are cargo-culted in an inappropriate way. To be fair, plenty of tech firms do this.
Dominic Cummings has lots of interesting ideas on this on his Substack. When Truss’ mini budget nearly broke pension funds, he pointed out that not only No 10 not know how leveraged they were, but nobody seems to care that they didn’t know. Surely central government should be able to pull together all the data it gathers?
Unfortunately he turned out to be not very good at governing.
Happen to know a couple of people who have worked with Cummings and Boris.
Cummings seems like a reasonably intelligent guy, if ethically dubious and difficult to work with (putting it mildly). What is shocking is that he looks like a genius when compared to those around him. He has basically read around a bit, thinks for himself, and is open to contrarian ideas. He’s just a reminder of how poor our governance is.
I think the reality is most of our govts are not just incompetent but actively harmful in terms of national interest. Obviously a hard Brexit, which Cameron and Johnson created as a byproduct of their own political schemes, is the greatest symbol of this.
Strongly agree. I used to work in the civil service and there are many good individuals but the management structure is poor (though I think generally very effective at line management) and plenty of duffers get promoted. Many ministers are really very mediocre.
Good ideas and techniques are very slowly adopted, but then things like Agile are cargo-culted in an inappropriate way. To be fair, plenty of tech firms do this.
Dominic Cummings has lots of interesting ideas on this on his Substack. When Truss’ mini budget nearly broke pension funds, he pointed out that not only No 10 not know how leveraged they were, but nobody seems to care that they didn’t know. Surely central government should be able to pull together all the data it gathers?
Unfortunately he turned out to be not very good at governing.