Though I hate to say I told you so, this Thus post from August 2009 “Where’s Gordon Brown in the Libyan Desert Storm?” deals at length in customary erudite fashion with the extraordinary rehabilitation of Whacko Jacko Gadaffi, his socialite son Saif, erstwhile cocktail guest of both Mandelson and Osborne and the strange silence surrounding the [...]
Category Archives: Economics
Sex and Terror in the Robot Shop
January 8, 2011 – 6:38 pm
If my previous post gave the impression that any fool with an unhealthy knowledge of vintage robots and space toys, brightly coloured tin, Mexican death symbolism, a penchant for loud, obscure, smoking rhythm and blues, religious kitsch and clockwork automata could become a retail czar, then I apologise. Robot shopkeeping is no sinecure. I recall [...]
I’ve not been writing about Quality because there’s not much of it about
November 15, 2010 – 1:04 pm
Thus boldly boasted at the start of the year that I/we would focus on single-handedly starting a quality drive. After a lot of hard work, some hot air and a survey conducted with CQI and YouGov Stone, we staged a debate last May entitled ‘Whatever Happened to the ‘Q’ Word?’ Hosted brilliantly by Andrew Neil [...]
New Labour gambles on turkeys not voting for Christmas in May
March 30, 2010 – 2:39 pm
The UK media have been scratching their pointy heads of late as the opinion poll gap between New Labour and the Tories has closed to indicate at best a hung parliament. Despite looming and actual strikes, a record budget deficit with no prospect of recovery, real and impending tax rises, unemployment levels at a 30 [...]
Why Quality is important and why we need more of it
January 5, 2010 – 3:04 pm
A bunch of people out there believe that doing things better is the answer to our economic woes. I can’t argue with that, so I’ve recently joined the Chartered Quality Institute as its External Affairs spokesman, because I firmly believe that until and unless we get to grips with the wholly unnecessary and avoidable malaise which has [...]
It's still true: you can't eat money
August 23, 2009 – 7:33 am
“Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realise we cannot eat money.” – Cree Saying. This quote, possibly the biggest cliché in the environmental literature, inspired Jared Diamond’s seminal work “Collapse“. But humans seem to succumb to boredom fairly quickly, so [...]
Kicking National Express was a good call from Labour
July 5, 2009 – 4:18 pm
On the National Express, there’s a jolly hostess, selling crisps and tea. She’ll provide you with drinks and theatrical winks for a sky-high fee. We’re going where the air is free. Tomorrow belongs to me. Lyrics from ‘National Express,’ by The Divine Comedy. Surely some mistake? Privatised train operators are supposed to make a profit [...]
Industrialising the service sector is a false economy and fatal in the public sector
June 8, 2009 – 10:21 am
Alistair Darling has demanded further £15bn efficiency savings through more IT-led front-office/back-office public-service designs. In the accompanying Treasury report, these totals are justified by ‘proxies, assumptions and estimates’, not evidence. Indeed, the evidence points firmly the other way; the further industrialisation of public services will inevitably lead to higher costs and worse services. By John Seddon. [...]
Its the environment, stupid…
May 3, 2009 – 6:56 am
The recent revival of Marx on the Continent is causing a lot of chatter. Das Kapital is now selling like the latest batch of hot cakes, proving that even commies prefer to own the book. Ironic because they could watch David Harvey’s lecture series on Das Kapital online for free. By Daniel Taghioff. This development [...]