Practical Thoughts

An Obituary printed in the London Times: Today we mourn the passing of a beloved old friend, Common Sense, who has been with us for many years. No one knows for sure how old he was, since his birth records were long ago lost in bureaucratic red tape. He will be remembered as having cultivated such valuable lessons as: Knowing when to come in out of the rain; Why the early bird gets the worm; Life isn't always fair; and maybe it was my fault. Common Sense lived by simple, sound financial policies (don't spend more than you can earn) and reliable strategies (adults, not children, are in charge). His health began to deteriorate rapidly when well-intentioned but overbearing regulations were set in place: Reports of a 6-year-old boy charged with sexual harassment for kissing a classmate; Teens suspended from school for using mouthwash after lunch; A teacher fired for reprimanding an unruly student, only worsened his condition. Common Sense lost ground when parents att...

The heading of this article states the obvious ... we are tied together in this irrevocable existence by just being here. It does not matter whether we live here or in Timbuktu, we are linked together; we are one. So when the country's CONDEM leadership tell us that "we're all in it together", they seem to be telling us something we don't know. Is this they just talking down to us, or are they actually committing a Freudian slip ... that they're actually trying to cover up something? Yes, they're covering up. They tell us with one hand that they're going to go for the offshore investors who escape paying taxes, yet they have members of their own cabinet that use those facilities. They tell us that we're in it together, but the cabinet contains around 20 millionaires who will hardly note any jolt as this economic 'knife' cuts at the jugular for those who are not able to bear the burden that cuts will bring. They also tell us that all...

The good thing about Tony Blair's autobiography is that it's proceeds will go to the British Legion. But, having see him being interviewed on the BBC, I have no desire to read it. The nature of the book (as TB himself revealed) should - I suggest - turn away reasonable people from its pages. Anyone who calls himself a friend should not be describing his friend as having "zero emotional intelligence", and even more so when Gordon Brown's life reveals anything but that. So what is TB trying to do? I see him living a life with blinkers on and in the process creating smoke screens for his followers to negotiate. Few of his words seem to resonate with truth, as Chistopher Meyer has observed. What sort of politician is TB? One, clearly that believes in his own path to solve the world's problems. That his actions have helped to kill over 100,000 Iraqis (oh, Mr. Blair, that Sadam killed a huge number is not the point to justify this) in the ploy of regime chang...

Today I'm a bit down with a chest infection, but at least (I thought) you cannot hear my barking coughs, so I decided to continue with a small piece for this week! The latest piece of 'wonder' news from the government is that they're appointing someone special to oversee cost-cutting in the NHS. Apparently a person so special that when he was head of BP he cut their services so massively that standards and safety issues (it is reported) went by the board. It would appear to be his legacy of management that effectively caused the BP oil-spill situation which the U.S. is so bitterly complaining about - and justifiably so. So ... with my throat being sore I leave that message of warning with you. I rather wish that my throat had become sore by voicing loudly this issue at Hyde Park Corner, but there we are!

Last week's budget brought out condemnation from The Independent and The Times . How, they said, can you apply such a swingeing budget and expect any stimulus for growth to take hold? It's absurd, they cried, there must be stimulus for growth ... Well, if the world were to be ever-capable of sustaining never-ending growth then I would be the first to agree with the logic of those newspapers. The problem is that the world is not capable of sustaining continuous demands on its resources, therefore the budget - more by a miracle than human design I strongly suspect - has bent to the laws of sustainability. The major failure of the new government has been that they have not said that we need to address our view of life in quite a different way - that we individually need (in any case) to tighten our purse strings and also place a ceiling on our desires. This government is doing some right things, but in the wrong way. It's not being transparent about the real decision...

Last night, at half-time in the Brazil vs Ivory Coast match (yes, I watch some of the World Cup!), I flicked over to another channel where they just happened to be talking about ecological problems in the Philippines. They happened to show an island that was so small you could see the detail of the whole island in the camera shot, and the island was covered with the multi-coloured roofs of so many, many huts. So, the immediate question was "How do they find the foods they need?" The answer was, of course, that fishing was the essence of their survival. But the population of that island (and the surrounding islands) was becoming so great that the fish supplies were being rapidly plundered ... and in such a way that big damage was being done to the coral reefs. They were dynamiting the fish, and using poisons, to capture their needed quota. The resulting scenario was bleak ... the future of the fish stocks was in jeopardy. Luckily, the problem was already being addressed ...

I would hope so. But I am seriously wondering whether the profit motive in business, combined with the culture of 'image', isn't losing sight of the fact that people are ... well ... people, and the best ways of people management are to do with recognising that employees are just like anyone else. Including the managers. People are people and feel a need for being recognised as having value. Importantly, however, enabling people to feel recognised (and not just by wage-earning) can be important for the growth of the employer's business. Back in the early 1970s, when I was an up-and-coming project leader / supervisor, I was wisely sent on some in-house training to learn how to become a better people manager. And the first principles I was introduced to were those laid out by man named Abraham Maslow. He was probably a genius, and I say that because the principles and issues he laid out were so much to do with commonsense and the fact that the motives for each and eve...

It is not my wish to start throwing barbed arrows at governing politicians, and certainly not for the reason that their political persuasion may be different from mine. However, having been willing to give the new young men in power the chance to prove that they might be knights in shining armour, the cracks have started to show. Having supported Labour's point of view that the economy should not be squeezed too quickly - mainly to protect jobs and services and to provide for the chance of recovery - the Liberals have suddenly moved towards the Tories' policy and are working hand-in-hand with the Tories. In other words, 15m voters (vs 10m) voted for caution on spending cuts and 15m voters presumably now feel that they have been disenfranchised. They have been sold downriver. "Oh, the situation is worse than we thought!" pipes Nick Clegg. Nonsense. The amount of borrowing is several billion down on what was thought to be the case. The situation is (marginally) ...

About 35 years ago, a man called Ernst Schumacher wrote a book entitled the same as the title of this post. Despite his name, he had become 'English' in every sense, and had been a very successful executive in the British Coal Board decades earlier. I was fortunate to hear a talk given by him in London, just prior to his death around 1976/77. In my view, the man should be recognised as a prophet. In his well-written book he described how necessary it was (for the sake of man's well-being as much as anything) to downsize our approach to everything, that it was not necessary to plot solutions to technological problems on a huge scale. He illustrated how 'big' solutions for under-developed countries often ended in failure. But he went beyond that, he pointed out the need for people to be involved in what they're employed by - to have a 'say' in their collective welfare; the aplication of the 'commonwealth' or 'cooperative' principle. Sch...

I have been writing a lot about the UK election, and as it's a fresh issue that helps to account for it; it would probably be not right for me to sound out-of-touch with current events! But, today, let's step back a little and think of the global situation and the UK's recent events in the light of that. What's recently happened in Greece and is possibly impending in Portugal and Spain, and much further away - in Thailand and parts of Africa - is probably only a glimmer of the stark realities of where modern culture has taken us. Despite our withdrawal as a country of Empire so many years ago now, there has ever since been a continuation of the theme of the main western countries taking a colonial approach in far-away territories. The west has always tried to make out to our distant friends that there is something superior about our way of life of TVs, cars and associated gimmicks, and now that eastern countries are better able to produce those commodities, we feel ...