What adds value to our country… and what adds value to our world:
- Art galleries, museums and collections.
- British and other standards. British inventions, however old.
- Creativity, innovation, intellectual advantages, knowledge, profits, wealth, infrastructure ranked by importance.
- Commercial institutions such as banks, Trinity House, Ordnance Survey etc, even music and good education.
- Economy, education, erudition, exercise, Scouts and Guides, experience, dexterity.
- Infrastructure, innovation, institutions/institutes, federations, unions, societies, etc.
- British-based knowledge run by Encyclopedia Britannica and others.
- Old People.
- The People.
- Training. Universities (now only Oxbridge is not debased/devalued).
- Wildness and Wisdom.
Question: WHAT IS NOW MISSING?
Answer: PRUNING…
Question: ANYTHING ELSE?? (said sarcastically)
Answer: INTUITIVE JUMPS… Of a higher order than music or painting. Or creativity if you want a moronic hackneyed label, which does not begin to satisfy the criteria. I’m not that clever to take this much further, however, I must try.
First, the pruning. It is obvious to the meanest intelligence that the state is several thousand percent overblown, corrupt, uncontrolled and wasteful, and suitable only for menial tasks. The same is true of over large, over mighty and corrupt businesses that are encouraged to suck on the teats of government and its free income. This is a well known problem and can be discussed elsewhere.
The second but more important question of creativity has clearly been long considered by our betters and their response has been what we’ve currently got. Musicians, artists, actors(presenters), designers, fashion, FGMBRAQ by the ton and crappy education.
One of the tricks of management is to separate half a dozen or so people from the rest of the firm and put them under a bit of pressure of varying kinds. The results can be amazing. During my apprenticeship in the 50s with GEC, I was subjected to similar. It works. The technique is used mainly for development but odd results do occasionally occur. It must surely have been developed. Many other devices must have been developed in 70 years. Psychologists cannot all have been lying on couches for 70 years.
Unfortunately, big business has a different problem. It’s big, so a tiny increase in anything will result in huge numbers, including directors’ remuneration. And it requires no intelligence or thought to sack a few hundred, or bribe an MP. A 0.02 % increase in profit pays a thousand times over for a £100,000 bribe or rise in a director’s bonus. This is just fact. It explains Remain being big business’s preferred option.
Also, business makes a profit. They want to continue. Change costs. So, change is bad. Business will fight tooth and nail against any change except snail-like growth from its own controllable efforts. This means our intuitive jumps are stultified and not paid for, unless harmlessly channelled. Similar reasoning applies to the Civil Service. Again, ANY change is BAD.
During my lifetime in work there have been many instances where governments have collected supposedly clever people and put them to work on various projects which have been abandoned at the last minute for some scummy political reason or aim. I only know of one or two like TSR2 and missile guidance systems, and I suspect, helicopters.
This is a big and vital debate. And I’m not clever or knowledgeable enough to guess much further. We need discoveries and intuitive leaps for the immediate problems like CURING diseases not treating them, like proper quantum computers instead of just inventing a new name. Artificial Intelligence will not solve them. Educationalists need not apply.
This is a big and vital debate for the world. I am not clever or knowledgeable enough to even start this debate let alone engage in it. Although certainly I’m old enough to shout at you kids.
Any single one of these that can be stolen, undermined or denied us is pure gold for EU politics.
And top of their list is destruction of our legal sysem shared by most of the world except the EU. So, BEWARE of the ECJ and the ECHR They have already infected UN.
This article raises so many points, for me. Thank you Glen. Big government has definitely to be pruned. Big business need their wings clipped or at least brought to a point where they can’t suffocate SMEs’. Big is not good news.
Cure for diseases must be opened up. For example a transparent and impartial review of Gc-MAF. Preventative treatments for dementia. Protection from technology invading our privacy. It is a long list.
But the comments are as revealing. We are a generation who have tasted freedom. A lot of the young people today will not understand the innocence and simplicity of the ‘swinging sixties’ the post war euphoria and excitement. Innovation, imagination, the discipline and the hope going hand in hand. That is not to say the young are any the less capable. Generally speaking they have been nurtured in a confused and disjointed society. Those who have a good work ethic are, it could be argued, the lucky ones.
Change has never been so inevitable. We must all be activists even in small ways for change can go in the wrong direction. ‘Our’ world is one of ownership and the powers that be have done everything to steal that ownership from us. They have trampled on the young. That is my opinion.
I just think the EU is the new USSR. The state is – – – -. I dare say UK is bad but brexit has to be a step in the right direction. And so far I positively approve Bojo’s vision – it’s not just that Corbyn would be a disaster. Ukip used to have a very good manifesto but something bad has happened to it now. Richard Braine seemed good, but he doesn’t seem to be saying anything much now. Nigel Farage has great charisma and if Brexit doesn’t happen on time, he’ll be in parliament but does he have policies to increase innovation, to promote those who will push new ideas through against tired old managements?
At the moment I really think Boris’ new Tory party are the best we’ve had for a long time.
Our UK/GB has suffered with the ‘Something for Nothing Culture’, brought on by Labour. – Conservatives have made headway in the reversal of this. ….. Many old mates of mine passed through Officer Cadet training for the Merchant Navy, and one guy was doing well in this until he got married ! – That was the end of the Navy for him, and he got a shore based job, worked his tail off but without promotion. – He emigrated to Australia with his wife, and found that his ‘Can Do’ attitude promoted him in his employment. – He ended his working life, financially well found ! ….. I side-stepped the Navy and started a business, which was good for 25 years, then three large customers went bad on me, and my Company had to go into Receivership. I joined a Multi-National Company and like my mate, worked my tail off but without promotion. – What Management refused to see, my workmates saw, and they voted me into the position of their Shop Steward. After a pause, and learning new skills, I started to run rings around the Management, until they offered me an ‘Exceptional Redundancy’ that gave me an early retirement. Two years later that Company crashed, and I knew why !
Now, I have never believed that I have any specialist knowledge, but I do know that I had a very wide range of knowledge in business which would have been useful to that employer, and could have even played a part in saving that Company. ….. That’s all water under the bridge now, but it does highlight one of the faults within Companies and their Management. UK/GB must change attitudes to promotion, based upon factual expectations, rather than promoting someone who will be of no threat to middle or senior Management. The attitudes shown in Australia in the late 1960s is the way that this Nation has to go now, and for the foreseeable future. We are soon to be rid of the ball and chain of the EU, and through our life within WTO Trade, many new and sensible ideas are required to make it all work towards success. – A good start point would be the use of a little intelligence and vision upon those showing keenness with idea suggestions. ….. I guess we can only hope !
“the state is several thousand percent overblown, corrupt, uncontrolled and wasteful”
The best description that I have seen for some time.
An example of this back in the sixties,seventies and eighties, I always worked in private practice, i.e. Solicitors and Barristers Chambers with shorthand and Dictaphone typing together with assisting Solicitors and Barristers personally at Court etc. It was very demanding and full-on for all of my working week with reasonable remuneration. Two of my friends fell into clerical work with the County Council and were not qualified in anything other than shuffling papers around (or filing them). However one of them did speak fluent welsh. They both earnt far more than I did from the beginning, apparently a welsh speaker was more employable even though welsh was not a requirement for the job. The second worked for two years and then went on the sick where she stayed for an interminable time before eventually she was pensioned off for life even though she seemed to do most things without hindrance (except work). I put in about 40 years, give or take, with short breaks to have my children, my husband over 50 years, and it’s fair to say I do feel a bit disgruntled about this. This situation could probably be multiplied several thousand times over around the country and that’s without taking into account those families who appear to be on benefits from cradle to grave. “Overblown, corrupt, uncontrolled and wasteful” is a polite way of putting it.