One good reason we all drink too much
Until some eight years ago (at which point I turned to writing full time) I still assumed those who rose to the top in banking, government, politics and the key institutional professionals more or less knew what they were about. Fair enough, there was a sprinkling of thick, greedy lawyers around: I was fairly certain of this, because I'd met most of them. And similarly, the State teachers I'd encountered when considering how to educate my kids seemed unable to tell Earth from Saturn. Oh yes - and the accountants I'd come across in corporate life didn't know the difference between cost and worth. Apart from that, however, the BSDs at the pinnacle of life would usually know what was best....I thought. There's no good reason why those were my conclusions. After all, there'd been more than a few dumb clients in my professional life, and several analysts reporting on the ad agencies I'd managed who wouldn't have known what to do with an abacus. Looking back I'd say I just assumed they somehow got rooted out before the grown-up stuff started - the conversations with long words and so forth. One of the reasons I drink too much these days (and it is only one) is to forget from time to time just how near-universal the Pompous Incompetence Project (PIP) is in the United Kingdom. Social workers believing their main job is to write impenetrable jargo-speak, and ensure the bare arse is covered in the event of an inquiry. Senior police officers believing their remit is social work, fine collection, and diversity management. Accountants who ignore the customer in favour of the shareholders. Educationalists who think the creation of unwilling graduates represents the sum total of their calling. Ministers who openly admit they know nothing about education, and have no children. MPs and journalists who can't tell the difference between a multi-ethnic and a multi-cultural society. Media 'personalities' who think cruel treatment of Game Show contestants is enhancing the culture. Lawyers who want marketing departments. Party leaders who mouth off about social injustice, but give up seven NHSs to bail out a braindead banking system. Corporates who bully their staff to work long hours - and neglect their families - purely to hide their own inadequacies. Civil servants with 0% commercial experience designing 'internal' markets. Silly little Lords immersing themselves in commercial bailout negotiations, without the foggiest idea what is possible or likely. ISP and software geeks who lack any experience of marketing, and hide in deep silosin the mistaken belief that they are offering 'service'. Banking CEOs who know nothing whatsoever about banking. Bank marketing directors who once read a book about marketing. Health administrators unable to comprehend the basics of good medical practice. General practitioners who think they are a brand in a commercial market. Home Secretaries who've never bothered to study the basic facts about how and why prison as a form of punishment and salvation scores minus 46 on a scale of one to ten. Neo-conservative and command-economy economists who can't bear to accept that mixed economies provide the greatest happiness of the greatest number. Chancellors who can't read bank balance sheets, and don't understand how massive debt leads (via downgraded borrower status) to unpayable debt. Business journalists who haven't studied the real numbers in the UK 'economy', and declare recovery to be just round the corner. Westminster politicians unable to discern how isolated and out of touch they are, and why the vast majority of people want a trade-friendly, democratic Europe, not a glorified EU monarchy doing the bidding of equally unelected Brussels troughers. But it's not really the listening to these amateur professionals that turns folks like me to drink: it's the sharp-end experience they produce that drives us nuts. Bullshit and stalling at the doctors. Loans refused in fuckwitted banks. Police who won't charge anti-social thugs. Trading Standards quangos who won't prosecute business crooks. Nothing to watch on Saturday night telly. Nowhere to park. Closed wards where once there were fully-operational hospitals. Medication and referral rationing. The loss of shops where the owners were nice and the produce reasonably priced. MPs who wait two and a half years before taking an interest in a constituent's case. Ruined economies wherein there are no jobs for qualified graduates, but a chronic shortage of tradesmen. Inflation ripping miles ahead of any basket of goods the Government might care to name. Endless laws about wimmin, but no support for struggling mothers. Despatch Box posturing about obesity and the importance of health alongside Big Eat offers in every retail outlet and the soaring price of gym memberships. Enormous, expensive and useless wind turbines ruining the lives of those near them, but the Government deciding to build more coal-fired power stations...... On and on and on and on it goes: the minority obsessions of the Elite coming first, and what the vast majority wants coming last. A lot of poor people in the UK in 2009 turn to drugs and drink through sheer frustration and hopelessness. The only alternative for many of them is to go to bed hungry and angry. A similar number of older people on limited means (and lots of people approaching their fifties) do the same thing - because they feel utterly disenfranchised by an Establishment that cares only for gestures to reality. But these remain nothing more than hostages to fortune. When politicos witter on about why-is-there-apathy, the citizens generalised above become incandescent with rage: "Look in the mirror!" they shout. But those in the opaque Westminster bubble cannot see or hear them. The medium-term consequences of this will be horrific, unless the urgency for change is grasped and prosecuted. Only the internet can do this. Because it unleashes the powers politicians cannot reach. |