Malmesbury's hypothesis is of course compelling, and because of its simplicity and explanatory power is excellently neat.
However, looked at closely the idea is in essence a conspiracy theory. This does not mean it is wrong of course, just as the simple nature of theories based on Martian lizards does not require that they are incorrect, even though I think they are.
So if ever a simple idea needed hard evidence, ground rules for what sort of data would disconfirm it, quantitative analysis in addition to anecdote (and anecdotes can be compelling, but are not enough) and so on, this is one such.
On topic, I'm not sure it's that simple. Get rid of them all and you'd just get another lot. Someone has to run all these businesses and organisations.
It's the groupthink, lack of accountability and integrity that's the issue and I think that's more of a structural and values problem.
Changing the culture would of necessity also require getting rid of many of the current executives and leaders. Agreed that wouldn't if itself be sufficient.
It would be a huge task, as would need reform in both individual organisations, and across society. And determined (and capable) reformers are quite rare.
@rcs1000 's belief in small iterative improvements is one approach - though in this context, how might that apply ?
In my experience, if you challenge, people close ranks, mark you down as a difficult sod, and then freeze you and edge you out.
I'm sure there's something about interpersonal style that helps manage that but, at the end of the day, there are only so many ways to deliver a difficult message and, if it doesn't want to be heard, it won't be.
The observation is exact. I’m coming round to the neologism
You have skipped an important point: their religious faith. The old Upper Ten Thousand had to be observant Church of England, at least ostensibly, with perhaps a few token Jews and Catholics
The NU10K have to be Woke; that is their belief system, which similarly binds them together
Dominic Cummings is woke now?
The syphilis of woke has entered its tertiary phase, where it drives Leon mad.
The observation is exact. I’m coming round to the neologism
You have skipped an important point: their religious faith. The old Upper Ten Thousand had to be observant Church of England, at least ostensibly, with perhaps a few token Jews and Catholics
The NU10K have to be Woke; that is their belief system, which similarly binds them together
Both terms are just meaningless terms of abuse
I've never heard anyone say 'the Church of England' as a term of abuse, not even in Wales. Is it a thing in Scotland, perhaps?
That someone as apparently morally bankrupt as Paula Vennells rose so far in the C of E should be a cause for reflection. cf. The Catholic Church colluding in the rape of children.
In clerical terms she was never more than a parish priest was she?
She had some management roles, particularly reviewing investment portfolios etc, but just a few years back was being hailed for her management expertise, for example being awarded a CBE and being brought into the Cabinet Office after leaving the Post Office.
Apparently she got on the final shortlist for the bishop of London - third most senior position in that evil empire. Possibly only rumours of the incoming scandal kept her off that position.
Saying something unpopular here: in that role, or her one as vicar, she's probably fine. And maybe even quite a nice generous person. Because these issues wouldn't arise.
I suspect she's somewhat susceptible to institution capture and she was completely different in the Post Office and primarily (only) interested in defending its corporate interests and blinded by confirmation bias and selective presentation of evidence.
I don't know for sure (my Crockford's is a bit out of date, and Wikipedia is ambiguous), but I'm not sure that Vennells was ever a full time parish priest, even.
Certainly for a lot of her time in the clergy, she was a businesswoman who was also ordained and did some unpaid church work.
Splendid people, and the church would collapse tomorrow without them. But an odd choice to catapult into a very top job.
On topic, I'm not sure it's that simple. Get rid of them all and you'd just get another lot. Someone has to run all these businesses and organisations.
It's the groupthink, lack of accountability and integrity that's the issue and I think that's more of a structural and values problem.
Changing the culture would of necessity also require getting rid of many of the current executives and leaders. Agreed that wouldn't if itself be sufficient.
It would be a huge task, as would need reform in both individual organisations, and across society. And determined (and capable) reformers are quite rare.
@rcs1000 's belief in small iterative improvements is one approach - though in this context, how might that apply ?
In my experience, if you challenge, people close ranks, mark you down as a difficult sod, and then freeze you and edge you out.
I'm sure there's something about interpersonal style that helps manage that but, at the end of the day, there are only so many ways to deliver a difficult message and, if it doesn't want to be heard, it won't be.
Hence why no-one at senior levels of the PO took a contrary stand despite the frog getting hotter and hotter...
The observation is exact. I’m coming round to the neologism
You have skipped an important point: their religious faith. The old Upper Ten Thousand had to be observant Church of England, at least ostensibly, with perhaps a few token Jews and Catholics
The NU10K have to be Woke; that is their belief system, which similarly binds them together
Did you write this?
Apparently you need a 200Ah fucking truck battery to start a Wolseley 15/60.
But it never lets you down on a frosty morning....
Yes it does look like the trusty B series rather than a Perkins diesel, so no need to de- ice the fuel tank with a small bonfire.
NEW: The Texas Military Department confirms the TX National Guard has seized control of Shelby Park in Eagle Pass (city property where mass illegal crossings are), and is restricting Border Patrol from accessing the area, saying the Feds “perpetuate illegal crossings”. This is the area where Border Patrol has been cutting TX razor wire. Razor wire and fences are now deployed to block the area off from the public and federal government. Attached video is from our crew on the ground this morning as they began blocking it off. You can expect DOJ to sue Texas over this.
The observation is exact. I’m coming round to the neologism
You have skipped an important point: their religious faith. The old Upper Ten Thousand had to be observant Church of England, at least ostensibly, with perhaps a few token Jews and Catholics
The NU10K have to be Woke; that is their belief system, which similarly binds them together
Did you write this?
Apparently you need a 200Ah fucking truck battery to start a Wolseley 15/60.
But it never lets you down on a frosty morning....
Yes it does look like the trusty B series rather than a Perkins diesel, so no need to de- ice the fuel tank with a small bonfire.
Hindustan Ambassadors came with 1.5 diesel B-series. The crimes of the British Empire knew no limits.
The observation is exact. I’m coming round to the neologism
You have skipped an important point: their religious faith. The old Upper Ten Thousand had to be observant Church of England, at least ostensibly, with perhaps a few token Jews and Catholics
The NU10K have to be Woke; that is their belief system, which similarly binds them together
Did you write this?
Apparently you need a 200Ah fucking truck battery to start a Wolseley 15/60.
But it never lets you down on a frosty morning....
Yes it does look like the trusty B series rather than a Perkins diesel, so no need to de- ice the fuel tank with a small bonfire.
Hindustan Ambassadors came with 1.5 diesel B-series. The crimes of the British Empire knew no limits.
The observation is exact. I’m coming round to the neologism
You have skipped an important point: their religious faith. The old Upper Ten Thousand had to be observant Church of England, at least ostensibly, with perhaps a few token Jews and Catholics
The NU10K have to be Woke; that is their belief system, which similarly binds them together
They also keep banging on about vegan food - I'm not joking.
I'm on a major committee for an organisation and they keep going on about it to demonstrate their commitment to climate change. So it's about only laying this on at their events and meetings. Because it's "progressive".
I struggle to challenge this in a calm way - it's very unpopular, and their members have said so - and, of course, you can end up looking like the difficult one / bogeyman even though you know many secretly agree.
Hmmm. You're on 'a major committee for an organisation', and you are literally the only person I know (whether online or in real life) who keeps 'banging on about vegan food' - are you trying to tell us you are a member of NU10K?
Er, no. It's other committee members who raise it.
I respond to it.
This is like: "you're the only one who's had problems with Horizon."
There's another angle to this. Between 2 and 3% of the UK are vegan. Another 6% are vegetarian. Another 6% are pescetarian. (1)
That is a significant minority of the population. The chances are the organisation you represent has people who are vegan, vegetarian or pescetarian. Are you doing your duty to your members if you do not provide food that they can eat?
I'm not a vegetarian, but I'm perfectly happy to cook - and eat - veggie, or even vegan, food. What have you got against it?
They want to lay on this, and only this, for everyone.
100% of people.
How frequent are the events? How many people attending? What type: buffet/meal? Do you have the budget to provide different meals for differing requirements? What about those who have food allergies, etc, etc?
I believe Common Purpose 'graduates' are some of the worst. Apparently alumni are termed graduates because if they were 'members' they'd be asked to disclose membership. Any involvement with the group would be a significant demerit in a recruitment process if I ran such things - which of course I don't, so it is rather a guarantee that another graduate will promote you.
I know I am of an age where senility sets in and I have a family history of Parkinson's, but aside from noticing the occasional shuffle as I progress through the day, I have few other symptoms. Nonetheless I do find myself struggling to understand WTF some posters are trying to demonstrate in their posts.
Agree 100% with this excellent article and its conclusion. Perhaps this appointment for the former non-exec chairman of Fujitsu (and Tory party donor according to the Mirror) neatly links with this week’s big story:
...Simon Blagden CBE has been appointed by Digital Secretary Nadine Dorries to chair Building Digital UK (BDUK) - the agency in charge of delivering the government’s roll out of faster broadband and mobile coverage across the UK.
Simon has 30 years’ experience in the IT, telecoms and digital industry. For 14 years he was non-executive Chairman at Fujitsu Telecommunications UK.
The new role will place him at the helm of the executive agency overseeing Project Gigabit, the biggest broadband roll out in British history backed with a record £5 billion to connect hard-to-reach areas across the UK, as well as the £1 billion Shared Rural Network which will dial up 4G phone signal rural areas.
In 2000 he joined Spescom, a specialist business communications technology group based in Johannesburg, as CEO to lead its international telecoms and IT business. He continues to serve as non-executive Chairman of management consultancy Larkspur International. In 2016, he was awarded a CBE for services to the economy.
He will step down as Chair of the Telecoms Supply Chain Diversification (TSCD) Advisory Council, a position he has held since last year. The Advisory Council is a non-statutory advisory committee of independent members set up to provide advice to the government on measures to build a more diverse, innovative and secure telecoms supply chain.
Digital Secretary Nadine Dorries said:
“ BDUK is critical to rolling out the lightning-fast broadband and mobile coverage needed to improve lives and drive productivity across the UK. Simon will be an extremely capable chair of BDUK thanks to his deep understanding of telecoms and wide breadth of experience in the sector...
...The appointment is for a term of four years. The role is for two days per week, remunerated at £80,000 per annum. The new Chair was appointed through a fair and open process, in line with the methods used for other DCMS Public Appointments...
On topic, I'm not sure it's that simple. Get rid of them all and you'd just get another lot. Someone has to run all these businesses and organisations.
It's the groupthink, lack of accountability and integrity that's the issue and I think that's more of a structural and values problem.
I agree, and citing "Common Cause" in the header has a whiff of conspiracy theory and populism to it.
What evidence does the writer have that any of his "NU10k" have had any training by Common Cause?
It’s the crapulence to which such people aspire. The dim ceiling on their imaginations. Managerialism by slogan.
Have you read the vapid bilge in question?
The idea that it could lead to anything other than a Confederacy of Dunces is risible.
Simon has 30 years’ experience in the IT, telecoms and digital industry. For 14 years he was non-executive Chairman at Fujitsu Telecommunications UK.
While I have no particular love for Fujitsu, the company that bought ICL and delivered a series of epic failures in Government IT, ruining lives in the process, I must point out that Fujitsu Telecommunications UK is a different company.
On topic, I'm not sure it's that simple. Get rid of them all and you'd just get another lot. Someone has to run all these businesses and organisations.
It's the groupthink, lack of accountability and integrity that's the issue and I think that's more of a structural and values problem.
I agree, and citing "Common Cause" in the header has a whiff of conspiracy theory and populism to it.
What evidence does the writer have that any of his "NU10k" have had any training by Common Cause?
It’s the crapulence to which such people aspire. The dim ceiling on their imaginations. Managerialism by slogan.
Have you read the vapid bilge in question?
The idea that it could lead to anything other than a Confederacy of Dunces is risible.
The observation is exact. I’m coming round to the neologism
You have skipped an important point: their religious faith. The old Upper Ten Thousand had to be observant Church of England, at least ostensibly, with perhaps a few token Jews and Catholics
The NU10K have to be Woke; that is their belief system, which similarly binds them together
Both terms are just meaningless terms of abuse
The NU10K is simply the herd of upper management of the country - its main aim is aggregate protection of the herd.
There is no ideology involved.
Time and again, in major scandals, we see the same pattern. Real accountability stops at a certain level. The Chairman resigned, took a golden handshake and moved to a new job on more money.
Woke is now a term of abuse for anything someone doesn’t like.
Malmesbury's hypothesis is of course compelling, and because of its simplicity and explanatory power is excellently neat.
However, looked at closely the idea is in essence a conspiracy theory. This does not mean it is wrong of course, just as the simple nature of theories based on Martian lizards does not require that they are incorrect, even though I think they are.
So if ever a simple idea needed hard evidence, ground rules for what sort of data would disconfirm it, quantitative analysis in addition to anecdote (and anecdotes can be compelling, but are not enough) and so on, this is one such.
I don't think it's a conspiracy theory - it's hardly controversial that elites in pretty well all societies tend to look after their own. Low quality leaders have little interest in appointing others more competent who might challenge them.
It doesn't require some convoluted secret plot; it's just the operation of common interests turned toxic.
The observation is exact. I’m coming round to the neologism
You have skipped an important point: their religious faith. The old Upper Ten Thousand had to be observant Church of England, at least ostensibly, with perhaps a few token Jews and Catholics
The NU10K have to be Woke; that is their belief system, which similarly binds them together
Both terms are just meaningless terms of abuse
The NU10K is simply the herd of upper management of the country - its main aim is aggregate protection of the herd.
There is no ideology involved.
Time and again, in major scandals, we see the same pattern. Real accountability stops at a certain level. The Chairman resigned, took a golden handshake and moved to a new job on more money.
Woke is now a term of abuse for anything someone doesn’t like.
No, it is not
The Spectator, as ever, skewered Wokeness acutely, here
On topic, I'm not sure it's that simple. Get rid of them all and you'd just get another lot. Someone has to run all these businesses and organisations.
It's the groupthink, lack of accountability and integrity that's the issue and I think that's more of a structural and values problem.
Changing the culture would of necessity also require getting rid of many of the current executives and leaders. Agreed that wouldn't if itself be sufficient.
It would be a huge task, as would need reform in both individual organisations, and across society. And determined (and capable) reformers are quite rare.
@rcs1000 's belief in small iterative improvements is one approach - though in this context, how might that apply ?
In my experience, if you challenge, people close ranks, mark you down as a difficult sod, and then freeze you and edge you out.
I'm sure there's something about interpersonal style that helps manage that but, at the end of the day, there are only so many ways to deliver a difficult message and, if it doesn't want to be heard, it won't be.
Giles Fraser in Unherd:
One Bishop who spoke up for the local church and against mass church closures was castigated in Vennell’s report for an attitude displaying an unwillingness to face “the ‘burdens’ of truth”. In an Orwellian twist, the report suggested that such recalcitrant Bishops would benefit from a “peer review” — which is manager-speak for re-education. It advised they have a “‘leadership contract’ or covenant agreed by senior leaders aligned to shared leadership values and behaviours”. This is the kind of language by which managerialism clasps its bony hands around the throats of the church.
Curious article. It's slightly too close to the conspiracy theorists and misses the target, in my opinion.
To understand the dynamics of power in the UK in the 2020s, you have to look at the interplay of mind-boggling global wealth with established power structures.
Simon has 30 years’ experience in the IT, telecoms and digital industry. For 14 years he was non-executive Chairman at Fujitsu Telecommunications UK.
While I have no particular love for Fujitsu, the company that bought ICL and delivered a series of epic failures in Government IT, ruining lives in the process, I must point out that Fujitsu Telecommunications UK is a different company.
It's going to be a tough gig selling anything with the name Fulitsu on it now, Scott. They will have to change the name.
The observation is exact. I’m coming round to the neologism
You have skipped an important point: their religious faith. The old Upper Ten Thousand had to be observant Church of England, at least ostensibly, with perhaps a few token Jews and Catholics
The NU10K have to be Woke; that is their belief system, which similarly binds them together
Both terms are just meaningless terms of abuse
The NU10K is simply the herd of upper management of the country - its main aim is aggregate protection of the herd.
There is no ideology involved.
Time and again, in major scandals, we see the same pattern. Real accountability stops at a certain level. The Chairman resigned, took a golden handshake and moved to a new job on more money.
Woke is now a term of abuse for anything someone doesn’t like.
No, it is not
The Spectator, as ever, skewered Wokeness acutely, here
On topic, I'm not sure it's that simple. Get rid of them all and you'd just get another lot. Someone has to run all these businesses and organisations.
It's the groupthink, lack of accountability and integrity that's the issue and I think that's more of a structural and values problem.
Changing the culture would of necessity also require getting rid of many of the current executives and leaders. Agreed that wouldn't if itself be sufficient.
It would be a huge task, as would need reform in both individual organisations, and across society. And determined (and capable) reformers are quite rare.
@rcs1000 's belief in small iterative improvements is one approach - though in this context, how might that apply ?
What is needed is accountability and sanctions for bad behaviour.
For example, many of the senior people in the PO comedy are lawyers and accountants. The lawyers could be struck off. Others bared from being directors of companies. That’s before we get to perjury.
Enforce the laws. Enforce accountability. SOX had a big effect in banking - because senior managers were frightened of prosecution.
The observation is exact. I’m coming round to the neologism
You have skipped an important point: their religious faith. The old Upper Ten Thousand had to be observant Church of England, at least ostensibly, with perhaps a few token Jews and Catholics
The NU10K have to be Woke; that is their belief system, which similarly binds them together
They also keep banging on about vegan food - I'm not joking.
I'm on a major committee for an organisation and they keep going on about it to demonstrate their commitment to climate change. So it's about only laying this on at their events and meetings. Because it's "progressive".
I struggle to challenge this in a calm way - it's very unpopular, and their members have said so - and, of course, you can end up looking like the difficult one / bogeyman even though you know many secretly agree.
Hmmm. You're on 'a major committee for an organisation', and you are literally the only person I know (whether online or in real life) who keeps 'banging on about vegan food' - are you trying to tell us you are a member of NU10K?
Er, no. It's other committee members who raise it.
I respond to it.
This is like: "you're the only one who's had problems with Horizon."
It's really not.
It really is
How so? CR has a history of ranting about things like existence of a vegetarian option on a menu, thinks that parents who let their children who eat vegetarian food should be done for child abuse and so on. Unless I'm them mixing up with another poster. I don't think I'm involved with prosecuting CR for some criminal offence. You can argue the pros and cons of how you cater to people's special dietary requirements, but I'm not on this committee either.
I think woke is a real thing, but obviously it gets thrown around more widely than it should. An example of it, in my opinion, is that you have to sign in to youtube to verify your age (lol) to watch this video:
Malmesbury's hypothesis is of course compelling, and because of its simplicity and explanatory power is excellently neat.
However, looked at closely the idea is in essence a conspiracy theory. This does not mean it is wrong of course, just as the simple nature of theories based on Martian lizards does not require that they are incorrect, even though I think they are.
So if ever a simple idea needed hard evidence, ground rules for what sort of data would disconfirm it, quantitative analysis in addition to anecdote (and anecdotes can be compelling, but are not enough) and so on, this is one such.
It’s not a conspiracy - it’s a mutual disinclination to hold people to account, by other people with power. A back scratching circle.
The back pages of Private Eye over decades list the many, many times that that the senior people avoid any actual inconvenience from disaster.
Much as directors deciding other directors pay ends up with trebles all round.
Well done @Malmesbury but this is just another explanation for why everything's going wrong for me just like every disaffected person throughout history. Someone else's fault. On a widespread, organised level. Just a(nother) conspiracy theory for the modern age. Thousands of them all over the socials. A shame that PB spends time discussing it as though it were a "thing".
Curious article. It's slightly too close to the conspiracy theorists and misses the target, in my opinion.
To understand the dynamics of power in the UK in the 2020s, you have to look at the interplay of mind-boggling global wealth with established power structures.
Talking of conspiracy theories, the “Jewish tunnels” story gets curioser and curioser. And better (for the purposes of amusement). The tunnels were supposedly built by an angry bunch of teens - and, let’s face it, that makes sense - what community hasn’t got a bunch of kids building a network of secret tunnels under a world city? - my hometown of Hereford was known for it - but now it turns out the teens.. hired Mexican migrants to “finish the tunnels”. The migrants lived and worked down there, which is obvs why “no one noticed”
Simon has 30 years’ experience in the IT, telecoms and digital industry. For 14 years he was non-executive Chairman at Fujitsu Telecommunications UK.
While I have no particular love for Fujitsu, the company that bought ICL and delivered a series of epic failures in Government IT, ruining lives in the process, I must point out that Fujitsu Telecommunications UK is a different company.
It was the 14 years as a non exec bit that stood out for me.
The observation is exact. I’m coming round to the neologism
You have skipped an important point: their religious faith. The old Upper Ten Thousand had to be observant Church of England, at least ostensibly, with perhaps a few token Jews and Catholics
The NU10K have to be Woke; that is their belief system, which similarly binds them together
They also keep banging on about vegan food - I'm not joking.
I'm on a major committee for an organisation and they keep going on about it to demonstrate their commitment to climate change. So it's about only laying this on at their events and meetings. Because it's "progressive".
I struggle to challenge this in a calm way - it's very unpopular, and their members have said so - and, of course, you can end up looking like the difficult one / bogeyman even though you know many secretly agree.
Hmmm. You're on 'a major committee for an organisation', and you are literally the only person I know (whether online or in real life) who keeps 'banging on about vegan food' - are you trying to tell us you are a member of NU10K?
Er, no. It's other committee members who raise it.
I respond to it.
This is like: "you're the only one who's had problems with Horizon."
There's another angle to this. Between 2 and 3% of the UK are vegan. Another 6% are vegetarian. Another 6% are pescetarian. (1)
That is a significant minority of the population. The chances are the organisation you represent has people who are vegan, vegetarian or pescetarian. Are you doing your duty to your members if you do not provide food that they can eat?
I'm not a vegetarian, but I'm perfectly happy to cook - and eat - veggie, or even vegan, food. What have you got against it?
They want to lay on this, and only this, for everyone.
100% of people.
How frequent are the events? How many people attending? What type: buffet/meal? Do you have the budget to provide different meals for differing requirements? What about those who have food allergies, etc, etc?
And why does it matter?
It would be easier to gracefully admit you misread the post, and move on, rather than pointing to squirrels.
They want to lay on 100% vegan food (and nothing else) at all their events and to all their members in the name of 'sustainability'.
Members don't like that choice being taken away from them, and rightly so. So I'm challenging it.
The observation is exact. I’m coming round to the neologism
You have skipped an important point: their religious faith. The old Upper Ten Thousand had to be observant Church of England, at least ostensibly, with perhaps a few token Jews and Catholics
The NU10K have to be Woke; that is their belief system, which similarly binds them together
Both terms are just meaningless terms of abuse
The NU10K is simply the herd of upper management of the country - its main aim is aggregate protection of the herd.
There is no ideology involved.
I simply do not accept this assertion.
What evidence is there that this conspiratorial group even exists, let alone its primary goal being some mafiosa of mutual aid?
Certainly people at the top in both public and private sector exhibit self interest, but doesn't everybody at every level? That is simply part of being human.
On topic, I'm not sure it's that simple. Get rid of them all and you'd just get another lot. Someone has to run all these businesses and organisations.
It's the groupthink, lack of accountability and integrity that's the issue and I think that's more of a structural and values problem.
Changing the culture would of necessity also require getting rid of many of the current executives and leaders. Agreed that wouldn't if itself be sufficient.
It would be a huge task, as would need reform in both individual organisations, and across society. And determined (and capable) reformers are quite rare.
@rcs1000 's belief in small iterative improvements is one approach - though in this context, how might that apply ?
What is needed is accountability and sanctions for bad behaviour.
For example, many of the senior people in the PO comedy are lawyers and accountants. The lawyers could be struck off. Others bared from being directors of companies. That’s before we get to perjury.
Enforce the laws. Enforce accountability. SOX had a big effect in banking - because senior managers were frightened of prosecution.
Isn't the risk there that you just encourage the cover ups, closure of ranks and everyone having dirt on everyone else?
I'd like to have Better People at the top (suburban science masters have a great range of transferable skills, just saying), but people are still people. I suspect the answer lies more in structuring things so that no single role or position is too indispensable and power is more distributed.
Curious article. It's slightly too close to the conspiracy theorists and misses the target, in my opinion.
To understand the dynamics of power in the UK in the 2020s, you have to look at the interplay of mind-boggling global wealth with established power structures.
Talking of conspiracy theories, the “Jewish tunnels” story gets curioser and curioser. And better (for the purposes of amusement). The tunnels were supposedly built by an angry bunch of teens - and, let’s face it, that makes sense - what community hasn’t got a bunch of kids building a network of secret tunnels under a world city? - my hometown of Hereford was known for it - but now it turns out the teens.. hired Mexican migrants to “finish the tunnels”. The migrants lived and worked down there, which is obvs why “no one noticed”
The observation is exact. I’m coming round to the neologism
You have skipped an important point: their religious faith. The old Upper Ten Thousand had to be observant Church of England, at least ostensibly, with perhaps a few token Jews and Catholics
The NU10K have to be Woke; that is their belief system, which similarly binds them together
Both terms are just meaningless terms of abuse
The NU10K is simply the herd of upper management of the country - its main aim is aggregate protection of the herd.
There is no ideology involved.
Time and again, in major scandals, we see the same pattern. Real accountability stops at a certain level. The Chairman resigned, took a golden handshake and moved to a new job on more money.
Woke is now a term of abuse for anything someone doesn’t like.
No, it is not
The Spectator, as ever, skewered Wokeness acutely, here
Curious article. It's slightly too close to the conspiracy theorists and misses the target, in my opinion.
To understand the dynamics of power in the UK in the 2020s, you have to look at the interplay of mind-boggling global wealth with established power structures.
That has a different dynamic. Mainly because the mind bogglingly wealthy individuals and corporations are nearly all foreign.
Once again - it’s not about conspiracy. The Old Ten Thousand wasn’t either - more mutual protection. A way of thinking. “X is an idiot, but he’s a Good Chap and married to my third cousin”
The observation is exact. I’m coming round to the neologism
You have skipped an important point: their religious faith. The old Upper Ten Thousand had to be observant Church of England, at least ostensibly, with perhaps a few token Jews and Catholics
The NU10K have to be Woke; that is their belief system, which similarly binds them together
They also keep banging on about vegan food - I'm not joking.
I'm on a major committee for an organisation and they keep going on about it to demonstrate their commitment to climate change. So it's about only laying this on at their events and meetings. Because it's "progressive".
I struggle to challenge this in a calm way - it's very unpopular, and their members have said so - and, of course, you can end up looking like the difficult one / bogeyman even though you know many secretly agree.
Hmmm. You're on 'a major committee for an organisation', and you are literally the only person I know (whether online or in real life) who keeps 'banging on about vegan food' - are you trying to tell us you are a member of NU10K?
Er, no. It's other committee members who raise it.
I respond to it.
This is like: "you're the only one who's had problems with Horizon."
There's another angle to this. Between 2 and 3% of the UK are vegan. Another 6% are vegetarian. Another 6% are pescetarian. (1)
That is a significant minority of the population. The chances are the organisation you represent has people who are vegan, vegetarian or pescetarian. Are you doing your duty to your members if you do not provide food that they can eat?
I'm not a vegetarian, but I'm perfectly happy to cook - and eat - veggie, or even vegan, food. What have you got against it?
There is absolutely nothing wrong with having a selection of food that includes vegetarian options.
Its when the entire meal selection for everyone has to be vegan, then that's a problem. We had someone here a few weeks ago boasting about how he insisted that the entire buffet somewhere was vegan. That is as disgusting as insisting the entire food selection is meat and meat alone.
On topic, I'm not sure it's that simple. Get rid of them all and you'd just get another lot. Someone has to run all these businesses and organisations.
It's the groupthink, lack of accountability and integrity that's the issue and I think that's more of a structural and values problem.
Changing the culture would of necessity also require getting rid of many of the current executives and leaders. Agreed that wouldn't if itself be sufficient.
It would be a huge task, as would need reform in both individual organisations, and across society. And determined (and capable) reformers are quite rare.
@rcs1000 's belief in small iterative improvements is one approach - though in this context, how might that apply ?
In my experience, if you challenge, people close ranks, mark you down as a difficult sod, and then freeze you and edge you out.
I'm sure there's something about interpersonal style that helps manage that but, at the end of the day, there are only so many ways to deliver a difficult message and, if it doesn't want to be heard, it won't be.
Giles Fraser in Unherd:
One Bishop who spoke up for the local church and against mass church closures was castigated in Vennell’s report for an attitude displaying an unwillingness to face “the ‘burdens’ of truth”. In an Orwellian twist, the report suggested that such recalcitrant Bishops would benefit from a “peer review” — which is manager-speak for re-education. It advised they have a “‘leadership contract’ or covenant agreed by senior leaders aligned to shared leadership values and behaviours”. This is the kind of language by which managerialism clasps its bony hands around the throats of the church.
Curious article. It's slightly too close to the conspiracy theorists and misses the target, in my opinion.
To understand the dynamics of power in the UK in the 2020s, you have to look at the interplay of mind-boggling global wealth with established power structures.
Talking of conspiracy theories, the “Jewish tunnels” story gets curioser and curioser. And better (for the purposes of amusement). The tunnels were supposedly built by an angry bunch of teens - and, let’s face it, that makes sense - what community hasn’t got a bunch of kids building a network of secret tunnels under a world city? - my hometown of Hereford was known for it - but now it turns out the teens.. hired Mexican migrants to “finish the tunnels”. The migrants lived and worked down there, which is obvs why “no one noticed”
Curious article. It's slightly too close to the conspiracy theorists and misses the target, in my opinion.
To understand the dynamics of power in the UK in the 2020s, you have to look at the interplay of mind-boggling global wealth with established power structures.
Talking of conspiracy theories, the “Jewish tunnels” story gets curioser and curioser. And better (for the purposes of amusement). The tunnels were supposedly built by an angry bunch of teens - and, let’s face it, that makes sense - what community hasn’t got a bunch of kids building a network of secret tunnels under a world city? - my hometown of Hereford was known for it - but now it turns out the teens.. hired Mexican migrants to “finish the tunnels”. The migrants lived and worked down there, which is obvs why “no one noticed”
The observation is exact. I’m coming round to the neologism
You have skipped an important point: their religious faith. The old Upper Ten Thousand had to be observant Church of England, at least ostensibly, with perhaps a few token Jews and Catholics
The NU10K have to be Woke; that is their belief system, which similarly binds them together
Both terms are just meaningless terms of abuse
The NU10K is simply the herd of upper management of the country - its main aim is aggregate protection of the herd.
There is no ideology involved.
Time and again, in major scandals, we see the same pattern. Real accountability stops at a certain level. The Chairman resigned, took a golden handshake and moved to a new job on more money.
Woke is now a term of abuse for anything someone doesn’t like.
No, it is not
The Spectator, as ever, skewered Wokeness acutely, here
Simon has 30 years’ experience in the IT, telecoms and digital industry. For 14 years he was non-executive Chairman at Fujitsu Telecommunications UK.
While I have no particular love for Fujitsu, the company that bought ICL and delivered a series of epic failures in Government IT, ruining lives in the process, I must point out that Fujitsu Telecommunications UK is a different company.
It's going to be a tough gig selling anything with the name Fulitsu on it now, Scott. They will have to change the name.
How about Fukupu? Has a certain ring to it.
They were traditionally known as FTEL. Perhaps they knew what was coming...
The observation is exact. I’m coming round to the neologism
You have skipped an important point: their religious faith. The old Upper Ten Thousand had to be observant Church of England, at least ostensibly, with perhaps a few token Jews and Catholics
The NU10K have to be Woke; that is their belief system, which similarly binds them together
Both terms are just meaningless terms of abuse
The NU10K is simply the herd of upper management of the country - its main aim is aggregate protection of the herd.
There is no ideology involved.
Time and again, in major scandals, we see the same pattern. Real accountability stops at a certain level. The Chairman resigned, took a golden handshake and moved to a new job on more money.
Woke is now a term of abuse for anything someone doesn’t like.
No, it is not
The Spectator, as ever, skewered Wokeness acutely, here
The observation is exact. I’m coming round to the neologism
You have skipped an important point: their religious faith. The old Upper Ten Thousand had to be observant Church of England, at least ostensibly, with perhaps a few token Jews and Catholics
The NU10K have to be Woke; that is their belief system, which similarly binds them together
Both terms are just meaningless terms of abuse
The NU10K is simply the herd of upper management of the country - its main aim is aggregate protection of the herd.
There is no ideology involved.
I simply do not accept this assertion.
What evidence is there that this conspiratorial group even exists, let alone its primary goal being some mafiosa of mutual aid?
Certainly people at the top in both public and private sector exhibit self interest, but doesn't everybody at every level? That is simply part of being human.
It’s not a conspiracy.
Consider
1) People with aristocratic connections have a strong tendency not to hold other people with aristocratic connections to account. Help them get jobs, ease their way.
2) People with power have a strong tendency not to hold other people with power to account. Help them get jobs, ease their way.
We have moved from 1) to 2)
We need to move, using enforced laws, to move beyond 2) to something better.
On topic, I'm not sure it's that simple. Get rid of them all and you'd just get another lot. Someone has to run all these businesses and organisations.
It's the groupthink, lack of accountability and integrity that's the issue and I think that's more of a structural and values problem.
Changing the culture would of necessity also require getting rid of many of the current executives and leaders. Agreed that wouldn't if itself be sufficient.
It would be a huge task, as would need reform in both individual organisations, and across society. And determined (and capable) reformers are quite rare.
@rcs1000 's belief in small iterative improvements is one approach - though in this context, how might that apply ?
In my experience, if you challenge, people close ranks, mark you down as a difficult sod, and then freeze you and edge you out.
I'm sure there's something about interpersonal style that helps manage that but, at the end of the day, there are only so many ways to deliver a difficult message and, if it doesn't want to be heard, it won't be.
Giles Fraser in Unherd:
One Bishop who spoke up for the local church and against mass church closures was castigated in Vennell’s report for an attitude displaying an unwillingness to face “the ‘burdens’ of truth”. In an Orwellian twist, the report suggested that such recalcitrant Bishops would benefit from a “peer review” — which is manager-speak for re-education. It advised they have a “‘leadership contract’ or covenant agreed by senior leaders aligned to shared leadership values and behaviours”. This is the kind of language by which managerialism clasps its bony hands around the throats of the church.
The message might change- woke, antiwoke, globalisation, nationalism... but the underlying sin "I'm in charge, do as you are told" is the same.
For one reason or another I am currently reading about Gregory VII and Leo IX's reforms. It was precisely the same then.
I wouldn't call it a conspiracy more than self-interest and zeitgeist. No one would be banging on about veganism in corporate boardrooms if the purple-haired protesters weren't shouting about it on social media and on our streets.
The observation is exact. I’m coming round to the neologism
You have skipped an important point: their religious faith. The old Upper Ten Thousand had to be observant Church of England, at least ostensibly, with perhaps a few token Jews and Catholics
The NU10K have to be Woke; that is their belief system, which similarly binds them together
They also keep banging on about vegan food - I'm not joking.
I'm on a major committee for an organisation and they keep going on about it to demonstrate their commitment to climate change. So it's about only laying this on at their events and meetings. Because it's "progressive".
I struggle to challenge this in a calm way - it's very unpopular, and their members have said so - and, of course, you can end up looking like the difficult one / bogeyman even though you know many secretly agree.
Hmmm. You're on 'a major committee for an organisation', and you are literally the only person I know (whether online or in real life) who keeps 'banging on about vegan food' - are you trying to tell us you are a member of NU10K?
Er, no. It's other committee members who raise it.
I respond to it.
This is like: "you're the only one who's had problems with Horizon."
There's another angle to this. Between 2 and 3% of the UK are vegan. Another 6% are vegetarian. Another 6% are pescetarian. (1)
That is a significant minority of the population. The chances are the organisation you represent has people who are vegan, vegetarian or pescetarian. Are you doing your duty to your members if you do not provide food that they can eat?
I'm not a vegetarian, but I'm perfectly happy to cook - and eat - veggie, or even vegan, food. What have you got against it?
There is absolutely nothing wrong with having a selection of food that includes vegetarian options.
Its when the entire meal selection for everyone has to be vegan, then that's a problem. We had someone here a few weeks ago boasting about how he insisted that the entire buffet somewhere was vegan. That is as disgusting as insisting the entire food selection is meat and meat alone.
To be clear, it isn't as disgusting. Unless for some philosophical or moral reason meat-eaters can't eat vegan or vegetarian food.
I had a colleague who was a self-styled 'meatarian'. He would ask for food to come with no green stuff on the plate, and would send it back if it had some. He was, as you might guess, as much of an @ss as the worst vegans.
To be clear: I like meat. But because I live with a pescetarian, I often find myself going a few days without eating any meat because I cook shared meals. And then, at times like Christmas, I realise I've eaten very few greens and almost all scrumptious meat.
The observation is exact. I’m coming round to the neologism
You have skipped an important point: their religious faith. The old Upper Ten Thousand had to be observant Church of England, at least ostensibly, with perhaps a few token Jews and Catholics
The NU10K have to be Woke; that is their belief system, which similarly binds them together
They also keep banging on about vegan food - I'm not joking.
I'm on a major committee for an organisation and they keep going on about it to demonstrate their commitment to climate change. So it's about only laying this on at their events and meetings. Because it's "progressive".
I struggle to challenge this in a calm way - it's very unpopular, and their members have said so - and, of course, you can end up looking like the difficult one / bogeyman even though you know many secretly agree.
Hmmm. You're on 'a major committee for an organisation', and you are literally the only person I know (whether online or in real life) who keeps 'banging on about vegan food' - are you trying to tell us you are a member of NU10K?
Er, no. It's other committee members who raise it.
I respond to it.
This is like: "you're the only one who's had problems with Horizon."
There's another angle to this. Between 2 and 3% of the UK are vegan. Another 6% are vegetarian. Another 6% are pescetarian. (1)
That is a significant minority of the population. The chances are the organisation you represent has people who are vegan, vegetarian or pescetarian. Are you doing your duty to your members if you do not provide food that they can eat?
I'm not a vegetarian, but I'm perfectly happy to cook - and eat - veggie, or even vegan, food. What have you got against it?
They want to lay on this, and only this, for everyone.
100% of people.
How frequent are the events? How many people attending? What type: buffet/meal? Do you have the budget to provide different meals for differing requirements? What about those who have food allergies, etc, etc?
And why does it matter?
It would be easier to gracefully admit you misread the post, and move on, rather than pointing to squirrels.
They want to lay on 100% vegan food (and nothing else) at all their events and to all their members in the name of 'sustainability'.
Members don't like that choice being taken away from them, and rightly so. So I'm challenging it.
Next time it comes up, you can say quite genuinely that some people can't or won't eat vegan food for health reasons.
My father was a vegetarian for decades, his diet gave him diabetes, which runs in my family. He had to cut out lots of carbs and gave up vegetarianism for his health, and is much healthier now though he still has to live with diabetes.
I'm at risk of diabetes and in trying to improve my health I'm on a carnivore diet (I eat meat, cheese, eggs and dairy) and I've cut out carbs. If any ignoramus ever dares say anything to me about veganism or vegetarianism in a wanting-to-push-it-on-others way then I mention diabetes and that shuts them up almost always. If it doesn't, I'll just ignore them.
Make your own choices, I have no problem with that. Ever dare to try to force your choices on me, and I'll give back as good as I get. I won't force a steak down your throat, don't try and make me eat vegetables.
The observation is exact. I’m coming round to the neologism
You have skipped an important point: their religious faith. The old Upper Ten Thousand had to be observant Church of England, at least ostensibly, with perhaps a few token Jews and Catholics
The NU10K have to be Woke; that is their belief system, which similarly binds them together
They also keep banging on about vegan food - I'm not joking.
I'm on a major committee for an organisation and they keep going on about it to demonstrate their commitment to climate change. So it's about only laying this on at their events and meetings. Because it's "progressive".
I struggle to challenge this in a calm way - it's very unpopular, and their members have said so - and, of course, you can end up looking like the difficult one / bogeyman even though you know many secretly agree.
Hmmm. You're on 'a major committee for an organisation', and you are literally the only person I know (whether online or in real life) who keeps 'banging on about vegan food' - are you trying to tell us you are a member of NU10K?
Er, no. It's other committee members who raise it.
I respond to it.
This is like: "you're the only one who's had problems with Horizon."
There's another angle to this. Between 2 and 3% of the UK are vegan. Another 6% are vegetarian. Another 6% are pescetarian. (1)
That is a significant minority of the population. The chances are the organisation you represent has people who are vegan, vegetarian or pescetarian. Are you doing your duty to your members if you do not provide food that they can eat?
I'm not a vegetarian, but I'm perfectly happy to cook - and eat - veggie, or even vegan, food. What have you got against it?
There is absolutely nothing wrong with having a selection of food that includes vegetarian options.
Its when the entire meal selection for everyone has to be vegan, then that's a problem. We had someone here a few weeks ago boasting about how he insisted that the entire buffet somewhere was vegan. That is as disgusting as insisting the entire food selection is meat and meat alone.
To be clear, it isn't as disgusting. Unless for some philosophical or moral reason meat-eaters can't eat vegan or vegetarian food.
I had a colleague who was a self-styled 'meatarian'. He would ask for food to come with no green stuff on the plate, and would send it back if it had some. He was, as you might guess, as much of an @ss as the worst vegans.
To be clear: I like meat. But because I live with a pescetarian, I often find myself going a few days without eating any meat because I cook shared meals. And then, at times like Christmas, I realise I've eaten very few greens and almost all scrumptious meat.
The solution to this is to simply not provide food.
Malmesbury's hypothesis is of course compelling, and because of its simplicity and explanatory power is excellently neat.
However, looked at closely the idea is in essence a conspiracy theory. This does not mean it is wrong of course, just as the simple nature of theories based on Martian lizards does not require that they are incorrect, even though I think they are.
So if ever a simple idea needed hard evidence, ground rules for what sort of data would disconfirm it, quantitative analysis in addition to anecdote (and anecdotes can be compelling, but are not enough) and so on, this is one such.
I don't think it's a conspiracy theory - it's hardly controversial that elites in pretty well all societies tend to look after their own. Low quality leaders have little interest in appointing others more competent who might challenge them.
It doesn't require some convoluted secret plot; it's just the operation of common interests turned toxic.
Agree. This is the power of the concept. It's the new old boy network, more diverse (which is to be welcomed) but with the same problems of looking after 'our own' and closing ranks.
In some ways, there's nothing really new about NU10K, just a subtle changing in its composition over time. Afterall, the lovely Ms Vennells that we always had round for dinner never claimed to be an IT specialist, did she? How could she have done anything different? She was doing her best, no doubt, and now everyon's being beastly to her even though she's such a sweetheart. And she did put in a good word for you when you needed contact with Tim over that contract when it all went pear-shaped, saved you a few blushes, that. And her friend Liz helped out with that scholarship, too. So would it really hurt to put Paula's name forward for that non-exec post Liz suggested while she gets back on her feet?
Question is, what - if anything - can be done about it? More rigorous review of appointments by more diverse teams? Limits to the numbers of positions people can hold? Bar against being involved in selection panels for people known to you socially? It's a tricky thing because of course this kind of thing happens at all levels - our recent builder's apprentice was his sister's nephew. My (accidental) break into my current field came courtesy of a friend's dad. Who you know is an important part of getting on in life. The key difference is that most of us don't get to fail upwards.
The observation is exact. I’m coming round to the neologism
You have skipped an important point: their religious faith. The old Upper Ten Thousand had to be observant Church of England, at least ostensibly, with perhaps a few token Jews and Catholics
The NU10K have to be Woke; that is their belief system, which similarly binds them together
They also keep banging on about vegan food - I'm not joking.
I'm on a major committee for an organisation and they keep going on about it to demonstrate their commitment to climate change. So it's about only laying this on at their events and meetings. Because it's "progressive".
I struggle to challenge this in a calm way - it's very unpopular, and their members have said so - and, of course, you can end up looking like the difficult one / bogeyman even though you know many secretly agree.
Hmmm. You're on 'a major committee for an organisation', and you are literally the only person I know (whether online or in real life) who keeps 'banging on about vegan food' - are you trying to tell us you are a member of NU10K?
Er, no. It's other committee members who raise it.
I respond to it.
This is like: "you're the only one who's had problems with Horizon."
There's another angle to this. Between 2 and 3% of the UK are vegan. Another 6% are vegetarian. Another 6% are pescetarian. (1)
That is a significant minority of the population. The chances are the organisation you represent has people who are vegan, vegetarian or pescetarian. Are you doing your duty to your members if you do not provide food that they can eat?
I'm not a vegetarian, but I'm perfectly happy to cook - and eat - veggie, or even vegan, food. What have you got against it?
There is absolutely nothing wrong with having a selection of food that includes vegetarian options.
Its when the entire meal selection for everyone has to be vegan, then that's a problem. We had someone here a few weeks ago boasting about how he insisted that the entire buffet somewhere was vegan. That is as disgusting as insisting the entire food selection is meat and meat alone.
To be clear, it isn't as disgusting. Unless for some philosophical or moral reason meat-eaters can't eat vegan or vegetarian food.
I had a colleague who was a self-styled 'meatarian'. He would ask for food to come with no green stuff on the plate, and would send it back if it had some. He was, as you might guess, as much of an @ss as the worst vegans.
To be clear: I like meat. But because I live with a pescetarian, I often find myself going a few days without eating any meat because I cook shared meals. And then, at times like Christmas, I realise I've eaten very few greens and almost all scrumptious meat.
I can't or won't eat vegetables on my diet. For my health, I'm on a ketogenic diet which means I'm not allowed more than 20 grams of carbs in an entire day - to put that into context, one apple has 26 grams of carbs.
I won't have vegetables on my plate, and I'm living healthier now than I have in years. I have absolutely no objections to others eating vegetables, but I won't.
I typically eat meat 4-5 times a day. Breakfast, lunch, dinner and if I grab a snack it'll be something like a salami. Vegetables I may have once or twice a week and then only in a small portion and restricted low-carb types like mushrooms or avocado.
The observation is exact. I’m coming round to the neologism
You have skipped an important point: their religious faith. The old Upper Ten Thousand had to be observant Church of England, at least ostensibly, with perhaps a few token Jews and Catholics
The NU10K have to be Woke; that is their belief system, which similarly binds them together
Both terms are just meaningless terms of abuse
The NU10K is simply the herd of upper management of the country - its main aim is aggregate protection of the herd.
There is no ideology involved.
I simply do not accept this assertion.
What evidence is there that this conspiratorial group even exists, let alone its primary goal being some mafiosa of mutual aid?
Certainly people at the top in both public and private sector exhibit self interest, but doesn't everybody at every level? That is simply part of being human.
Yes, it feels a bit like an Elders of Zion/Illuminati/Masons/Brethren thing. I'm sure there are plentiful examples of people giving jobs to people they know and think are reliable, but that's human nature, qualified only by rigid procedures to avoid it. Beyond that I don't believe there's any kind of conspiracy.
Malmesbury's hypothesis is of course compelling, and because of its simplicity and explanatory power is excellently neat.
However, looked at closely the idea is in essence a conspiracy theory. This does not mean it is wrong of course, just as the simple nature of theories based on Martian lizards does not require that they are incorrect, even though I think they are.
So if ever a simple idea needed hard evidence, ground rules for what sort of data would disconfirm it, quantitative analysis in addition to anecdote (and anecdotes can be compelling, but are not enough) and so on, this is one such.
It’s not a conspiracy - it’s a mutual disinclination to hold people to account, by other people with power. A back scratching circle.
The back pages of Private Eye over decades list the many, many times that that the senior people avoid any actual inconvenience from disaster.
Much as directors deciding other directors pay ends up with trebles all round.
I wonder what % if the NU10K went to private school? Probably >7%.
It is a conspiracy in the sense that people are human and have failings and are self-interested. In the same way that anything is a conspiracy in such terms.
Isn't this just basically saying that corruption is a thing? It exists in the UK, as it does in every country. According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index though, things are currently going downhill in the UK (in comparison to other countries).
As ever, the way to fight corruption is through transparency.
The observation is exact. I’m coming round to the neologism
You have skipped an important point: their religious faith. The old Upper Ten Thousand had to be observant Church of England, at least ostensibly, with perhaps a few token Jews and Catholics
The NU10K have to be Woke; that is their belief system, which similarly binds them together
They also keep banging on about vegan food - I'm not joking.
I'm on a major committee for an organisation and they keep going on about it to demonstrate their commitment to climate change. So it's about only laying this on at their events and meetings. Because it's "progressive".
I struggle to challenge this in a calm way - it's very unpopular, and their members have said so - and, of course, you can end up looking like the difficult one / bogeyman even though you know many secretly agree.
Hmmm. You're on 'a major committee for an organisation', and you are literally the only person I know (whether online or in real life) who keeps 'banging on about vegan food' - are you trying to tell us you are a member of NU10K?
Er, no. It's other committee members who raise it.
I respond to it.
This is like: "you're the only one who's had problems with Horizon."
There's another angle to this. Between 2 and 3% of the UK are vegan. Another 6% are vegetarian. Another 6% are pescetarian. (1)
That is a significant minority of the population. The chances are the organisation you represent has people who are vegan, vegetarian or pescetarian. Are you doing your duty to your members if you do not provide food that they can eat?
I'm not a vegetarian, but I'm perfectly happy to cook - and eat - veggie, or even vegan, food. What have you got against it?
They want to lay on this, and only this, for everyone.
100% of people.
How frequent are the events? How many people attending? What type: buffet/meal? Do you have the budget to provide different meals for differing requirements? What about those who have food allergies, etc, etc?
And why does it matter?
It would be easier to gracefully admit you misread the post, and move on, rather than pointing to squirrels.
They want to lay on 100% vegan food (and nothing else) at all their events and to all their members in the name of 'sustainability'.
Members don't like that choice being taken away from them, and rightly so. So I'm challenging it.
The type of event is actually quite important. Is it large meals, or just buffets?
If buffets, it's impossible to tell what's in the food in half of the company buffets I've ever been to...
On topic, I'm not sure it's that simple. Get rid of them all and you'd just get another lot. Someone has to run all these businesses and organisations.
It's the groupthink, lack of accountability and integrity that's the issue and I think that's more of a structural and values problem.
Not so much the NU10K as the "seagulls" - they fly in, crap everywhere, steal the chips and fly off.
But, yes - no professionalism, no moral compass, no accountability..
The worst sort of people are in charge because we no longer (if we ever did) value professionalism and integrity.
I guess the header is, in part at least, an attempt to answer the question: Where does power lie in the UK? The examples given in the article of the NU10K are mainly high-flying public servants, and I wouldn't dispute that the revolving door of jobs they inhabit needs sorting.
However, if I were one of the captains of industry, or one of the CEOs of the FTSE companies, I'd be delighted if the meme of the NU10K takes hold, as it distracts from where real power and wealth lie. Yes, some of the NU10K are (too) highly paid, but they earn little compared to the FTSE CEOs who last year earned, on average, £3.91m - 118 times the median wage, up from 79 times in 2020.
It's a long time since the capitalist class replaced the aristocracy as the main source of power and wealth in the UK. I see no sign whatsoever of the really, really rich and powerful being replaced by the NU10K, but they would enjoy the header. Are Mone and Barrowman part of the NU10K? I think not.
Interesting thread header from Malmesbury. Reminds me in a way of George Walden's book, The New Elites, that hits on some of the same points but from a more political rather than managerial viewpoint. Walden's book was initially written about the New Labour era but updated to include the Cameron era - essentially pointing out the continuity.
I'm not sure you need to go into the merits or demerits of the "common purpose conspiracy" (some say it's true, some say it's tosh) but as far as I know, Britain has *always* been a chumocracy for the right sort of person. The right sort of person just changes over time. A couple of hundred years ago, it would have been someone born to the right family. The Yes Minister era demonstrates another kid of chumocracy in the Civil Service. And now of course we have the undeniable "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" attitude of the present elite - but it hardly feels new.
The question from me is one of continuity of power. If as Leon professes, you need to belong to the church of woke to be in the NU10K, what of previous generations of elites? Are elites still hereditary, changing their values chimerically over the decades in order to remain in power (or for their children to remain in power) or do new groups of elites form over time, displacing the old?
The observation is exact. I’m coming round to the neologism
You have skipped an important point: their religious faith. The old Upper Ten Thousand had to be observant Church of England, at least ostensibly, with perhaps a few token Jews and Catholics
The NU10K have to be Woke; that is their belief system, which similarly binds them together
They also keep banging on about vegan food - I'm not joking.
I'm on a major committee for an organisation and they keep going on about it to demonstrate their commitment to climate change. So it's about only laying this on at their events and meetings. Because it's "progressive".
I struggle to challenge this in a calm way - it's very unpopular, and their members have said so - and, of course, you can end up looking like the difficult one / bogeyman even though you know many secretly agree.
Hmmm. You're on 'a major committee for an organisation', and you are literally the only person I know (whether online or in real life) who keeps 'banging on about vegan food' - are you trying to tell us you are a member of NU10K?
Er, no. It's other committee members who raise it.
I respond to it.
This is like: "you're the only one who's had problems with Horizon."
There's another angle to this. Between 2 and 3% of the UK are vegan. Another 6% are vegetarian. Another 6% are pescetarian. (1)
That is a significant minority of the population. The chances are the organisation you represent has people who are vegan, vegetarian or pescetarian. Are you doing your duty to your members if you do not provide food that they can eat?
I'm not a vegetarian, but I'm perfectly happy to cook - and eat - veggie, or even vegan, food. What have you got against it?
There is absolutely nothing wrong with having a selection of food that includes vegetarian options.
Its when the entire meal selection for everyone has to be vegan, then that's a problem. We had someone here a few weeks ago boasting about how he insisted that the entire buffet somewhere was vegan. That is as disgusting as insisting the entire food selection is meat and meat alone.
My organisation promotes reduced meat consumption (because we dislike factory farms), and has a policy that when food is paid for by donors (e.g. at a reception that we organise, or when staff are travellling) then the food shouldn't be meat, since the donors might reasonably feel it wasn't what they had in mind. If we get our own food we can eat what we like. I'm not vegetarian but the policy seems to me reasonable enough - I can perfectly well get by on expenses without feeling a craving for someone to pay for me to have salami.
Curious article. It's slightly too close to the conspiracy theorists and misses the target, in my opinion.
To understand the dynamics of power in the UK in the 2020s, you have to look at the interplay of mind-boggling global wealth with established power structures.
Talking of conspiracy theories, the “Jewish tunnels” story gets curioser and curioser. And better (for the purposes of amusement). The tunnels were supposedly built by an angry bunch of teens - and, let’s face it, that makes sense - what community hasn’t got a bunch of kids building a network of secret tunnels under a world city? - my hometown of Hereford was known for it - but now it turns out the teens.. hired Mexican migrants to “finish the tunnels”. The migrants lived and worked down there, which is obvs why “no one noticed”
That does not make the story "curioser and curioser" [sic]
It is a non-story with a non-story element to it.
The attitude of some seems to be: simply mentioning this story is ‘anti Semitic’. Because it plays into so many time-honoured tropes of anti-semitism - Jews, New York, building secret tunnels, Hasidim literally emerging from sewers
That is likely what you feel, and fair enough. I couldn’t care less, tho - the story is so absurd and surreal it makes me laugh
The observation is exact. I’m coming round to the neologism
You have skipped an important point: their religious faith. The old Upper Ten Thousand had to be observant Church of England, at least ostensibly, with perhaps a few token Jews and Catholics
The NU10K have to be Woke; that is their belief system, which similarly binds them together
They also keep banging on about vegan food - I'm not joking.
I'm on a major committee for an organisation and they keep going on about it to demonstrate their commitment to climate change. So it's about only laying this on at their events and meetings. Because it's "progressive".
I struggle to challenge this in a calm way - it's very unpopular, and their members have said so - and, of course, you can end up looking like the difficult one / bogeyman even though you know many secretly agree.
Hmmm. You're on 'a major committee for an organisation', and you are literally the only person I know (whether online or in real life) who keeps 'banging on about vegan food' - are you trying to tell us you are a member of NU10K?
Er, no. It's other committee members who raise it.
I respond to it.
This is like: "you're the only one who's had problems with Horizon."
There's another angle to this. Between 2 and 3% of the UK are vegan. Another 6% are vegetarian. Another 6% are pescetarian. (1)
That is a significant minority of the population. The chances are the organisation you represent has people who are vegan, vegetarian or pescetarian. Are you doing your duty to your members if you do not provide food that they can eat?
I'm not a vegetarian, but I'm perfectly happy to cook - and eat - veggie, or even vegan, food. What have you got against it?
There is absolutely nothing wrong with having a selection of food that includes vegetarian options.
Its when the entire meal selection for everyone has to be vegan, then that's a problem. We had someone here a few weeks ago boasting about how he insisted that the entire buffet somewhere was vegan. That is as disgusting as insisting the entire food selection is meat and meat alone.
My organisation promotes reduced meat consumption (because we dislike factory farms), and has a policy that when food is paid for by donors (e.g. at a reception that we organise, or when staff are travellling) then the food shouldn't be meat, since the donors might reasonably feel it wasn't what they had in mind. If we get our own food we can eat what we like. I'm not vegetarian but the policy seems to me reasonable enough - I can perfectly well get by on expenses without feeling a craving for someone to pay for me to have salami.
I think the policy is disgusting and I would refuse to donate to your organisation if I knew that was the policy.
If money has been donated to pay for food then why the hell should those who eat meat be excluded by your discrimination?
The header is a way for the little man (no offence) to console himself that he is powerless and everyone is acting against him in a concerted way. Of course there are elements of truth - as in people do act in a concerted way for the purposes of self-interest but it is no more than exists and has existed from the beginning of time.
Could/should it be changed a la @Northern_Al's post? Well of course in an ideal world. But we don't leive in an ideal world. Doesn't stop people campaigning to make the world "better" although you then get into the Casino-type situation of what constitutes better.
Malmesbury's hypothesis is of course compelling, and because of its simplicity and explanatory power is excellently neat.
However, looked at closely the idea is in essence a conspiracy theory. This does not mean it is wrong of course, just as the simple nature of theories based on Martian lizards does not require that they are incorrect, even though I think they are.
So if ever a simple idea needed hard evidence, ground rules for what sort of data would disconfirm it, quantitative analysis in addition to anecdote (and anecdotes can be compelling, but are not enough) and so on, this is one such.
It’s not a conspiracy - it’s a mutual disinclination to hold people to account, by other people with power. A back scratching circle.
The back pages of Private Eye over decades list the many, many times that that the senior people avoid any actual inconvenience from disaster.
Much as directors deciding other directors pay ends up with trebles all round.
I wonder what % if the NU10K went to private school? Probably >7%.
According to Wikipedia, Vennells won a place at a private school.
One thing that I've noticed in the civil service over the last 15 years is the number of people prepared to openly slag off Oxbridge. I'm sure plenty of the upper echelons of public life are filled with Oxbridge educated people, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's changing.
The observation is exact. I’m coming round to the neologism
You have skipped an important point: their religious faith. The old Upper Ten Thousand had to be observant Church of England, at least ostensibly, with perhaps a few token Jews and Catholics
The NU10K have to be Woke; that is their belief system, which similarly binds them together
Both terms are just meaningless terms of abuse
The NU10K is simply the herd of upper management of the country - its main aim is aggregate protection of the herd.
There is no ideology involved.
I simply do not accept this assertion.
What evidence is there that this conspiratorial group even exists, let alone its primary goal being some mafiosa of mutual aid?
Certainly people at the top in both public and private sector exhibit self interest, but doesn't everybody at every level? That is simply part of being human.
I agree. The 'Nu10k' hypothesis is essentially post-hoc. You look at 'upper management' as a class and then look for commonalities. That's not necessarily a good way of examining things.
The explanation is much simpler, as others have said, but also in these kinds of jobs similar traits and experiences are selected for and so you end up with similar kinds of people. If I want someone to run a big organisation, I would want them to demonstrate that they are able to run a big organisation. Best way of doing that is to get someone who has run a big organisation before. You see this with football managers all the time.
If I ran a company, or government body, or advisory board and was looking for a new job, I wouldn't mention how I was involved in decisions that poisoned a well in the third world, or sent innocent people to jail or wasted millions of pounds, I'd talk about leadership and organisation skills.
Now, it might be that there are better ways to recruit senior management that will result in a more intellectually diverse leadership and (hopefully) result in better run organisations but I'm not sure a conspiracy of upwardly mobile commoners is necessarily the issue.
The observation is exact. I’m coming round to the neologism
You have skipped an important point: their religious faith. The old Upper Ten Thousand had to be observant Church of England, at least ostensibly, with perhaps a few token Jews and Catholics
The NU10K have to be Woke; that is their belief system, which similarly binds them together
They also keep banging on about vegan food - I'm not joking.
I'm on a major committee for an organisation and they keep going on about it to demonstrate their commitment to climate change. So it's about only laying this on at their events and meetings. Because it's "progressive".
I struggle to challenge this in a calm way - it's very unpopular, and their members have said so - and, of course, you can end up looking like the difficult one / bogeyman even though you know many secretly agree.
Hmmm. You're on 'a major committee for an organisation', and you are literally the only person I know (whether online or in real life) who keeps 'banging on about vegan food' - are you trying to tell us you are a member of NU10K?
Er, no. It's other committee members who raise it.
I respond to it.
This is like: "you're the only one who's had problems with Horizon."
There's another angle to this. Between 2 and 3% of the UK are vegan. Another 6% are vegetarian. Another 6% are pescetarian. (1)
That is a significant minority of the population. The chances are the organisation you represent has people who are vegan, vegetarian or pescetarian. Are you doing your duty to your members if you do not provide food that they can eat?
I'm not a vegetarian, but I'm perfectly happy to cook - and eat - veggie, or even vegan, food. What have you got against it?
There is absolutely nothing wrong with having a selection of food that includes vegetarian options.
Its when the entire meal selection for everyone has to be vegan, then that's a problem. We had someone here a few weeks ago boasting about how he insisted that the entire buffet somewhere was vegan. That is as disgusting as insisting the entire food selection is meat and meat alone.
To be clear, it isn't as disgusting. Unless for some philosophical or moral reason meat-eaters can't eat vegan or vegetarian food.
I had a colleague who was a self-styled 'meatarian'. He would ask for food to come with no green stuff on the plate, and would send it back if it had some. He was, as you might guess, as much of an @ss as the worst vegans.
To be clear: I like meat. But because I live with a pescetarian, I often find myself going a few days without eating any meat because I cook shared meals. And then, at times like Christmas, I realise I've eaten very few greens and almost all scrumptious meat.
That's your opinion.
A lot of people find the lack of protein and taste in vegetarian and vegan food unfulfilling, don't enjoy it and are hungry after. There are also those with medical conditions and on controlled diets who can't get enough sustenance from it.
Diet is a deeply personal choice - and an invasive one - and it's inappropriate for anyone to make the call on what people should or should not ingest into their bodies.
The observation is exact. I’m coming round to the neologism
You have skipped an important point: their religious faith. The old Upper Ten Thousand had to be observant Church of England, at least ostensibly, with perhaps a few token Jews and Catholics
The NU10K have to be Woke; that is their belief system, which similarly binds them together
They also keep banging on about vegan food - I'm not joking.
I'm on a major committee for an organisation and they keep going on about it to demonstrate their commitment to climate change. So it's about only laying this on at their events and meetings. Because it's "progressive".
I struggle to challenge this in a calm way - it's very unpopular, and their members have said so - and, of course, you can end up looking like the difficult one / bogeyman even though you know many secretly agree.
Hmmm. You're on 'a major committee for an organisation', and you are literally the only person I know (whether online or in real life) who keeps 'banging on about vegan food' - are you trying to tell us you are a member of NU10K?
Er, no. It's other committee members who raise it.
I respond to it.
This is like: "you're the only one who's had problems with Horizon."
There's another angle to this. Between 2 and 3% of the UK are vegan. Another 6% are vegetarian. Another 6% are pescetarian. (1)
That is a significant minority of the population. The chances are the organisation you represent has people who are vegan, vegetarian or pescetarian. Are you doing your duty to your members if you do not provide food that they can eat?
I'm not a vegetarian, but I'm perfectly happy to cook - and eat - veggie, or even vegan, food. What have you got against it?
They want to lay on this, and only this, for everyone.
100% of people.
How frequent are the events? How many people attending? What type: buffet/meal? Do you have the budget to provide different meals for differing requirements? What about those who have food allergies, etc, etc?
And why does it matter?
It would be easier to gracefully admit you misread the post, and move on, rather than pointing to squirrels.
They want to lay on 100% vegan food (and nothing else) at all their events and to all their members in the name of 'sustainability'.
Members don't like that choice being taken away from them, and rightly so. So I'm challenging it.
The type of event is actually quite important. Is it large meals, or just buffets?
If buffets, it's impossible to tell what's in the food in half of the company buffets I've ever been to...
Mate, seriously. You got it wrong.
It's fine. I do too sometimes. It reflects well on you to admit this, not badly.
The observation is exact. I’m coming round to the neologism
You have skipped an important point: their religious faith. The old Upper Ten Thousand had to be observant Church of England, at least ostensibly, with perhaps a few token Jews and Catholics
The NU10K have to be Woke; that is their belief system, which similarly binds them together
They also keep banging on about vegan food - I'm not joking.
I'm on a major committee for an organisation and they keep going on about it to demonstrate their commitment to climate change. So it's about only laying this on at their events and meetings. Because it's "progressive".
I struggle to challenge this in a calm way - it's very unpopular, and their members have said so - and, of course, you can end up looking like the difficult one / bogeyman even though you know many secretly agree.
Hmmm. You're on 'a major committee for an organisation', and you are literally the only person I know (whether online or in real life) who keeps 'banging on about vegan food' - are you trying to tell us you are a member of NU10K?
Er, no. It's other committee members who raise it.
I respond to it.
This is like: "you're the only one who's had problems with Horizon."
There's another angle to this. Between 2 and 3% of the UK are vegan. Another 6% are vegetarian. Another 6% are pescetarian. (1)
That is a significant minority of the population. The chances are the organisation you represent has people who are vegan, vegetarian or pescetarian. Are you doing your duty to your members if you do not provide food that they can eat?
I'm not a vegetarian, but I'm perfectly happy to cook - and eat - veggie, or even vegan, food. What have you got against it?
There is absolutely nothing wrong with having a selection of food that includes vegetarian options.
Its when the entire meal selection for everyone has to be vegan, then that's a problem. We had someone here a few weeks ago boasting about how he insisted that the entire buffet somewhere was vegan. That is as disgusting as insisting the entire food selection is meat and meat alone.
To be clear, it isn't as disgusting. Unless for some philosophical or moral reason meat-eaters can't eat vegan or vegetarian food.
I had a colleague who was a self-styled 'meatarian'. He would ask for food to come with no green stuff on the plate, and would send it back if it had some. He was, as you might guess, as much of an @ss as the worst vegans.
To be clear: I like meat. But because I live with a pescetarian, I often find myself going a few days without eating any meat because I cook shared meals. And then, at times like Christmas, I realise I've eaten very few greens and almost all scrumptious meat.
That's your opinion.
A lot of people find the lack of protein and taste in vegetarian and vegan food unfulfilling, don't enjoy it and are hungry after. There are also those with medical conditions and on controlled diets who can't get enough sustenance from it.
Diet is a deeply personal choice - and an invasive one - and it's inappropriate for anyone to make the call on what people should or should not ingest into their bodies.
Interesting thread header from Malmesbury. Reminds me in a way of George Walden's book, The New Elites, that hits on some of the same points but from a more political rather than managerial viewpoint. Walden's book was initially written about the New Labour era but updated to include the Cameron era - essentially pointing out the continuity.
I'm not sure you need to go into the merits or demerits of the "common purpose conspiracy" (some say it's true, some say it's tosh) but as far as I know, Britain has *always* been a chumocracy for the right sort of person. The right sort of person just changes over time. A couple of hundred years ago, it would have been someone born to the right family. The Yes Minister era demonstrates another kid of chumocracy in the Civil Service. And now of course we have the undeniable "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" attitude of the present elite - but it hardly feels new.
The question from me is one of continuity of power. If as Leon professes, you need to belong to the church of woke to be in the NU10K, what of previous generations of elites? Are elites still hereditary, changing their values chimerically over the decades in order to remain in power (or for their children to remain in power) or do new groups of elites form over time, displacing the old?
You don’t have to be Woke to be NU10K. What does woke mean, anyway?
At most it is echoed in the vapid managerialism they espouse. The content to the PowerPoint that everyone sleeps through.
I think your point about the definition of elites moving is exactly right. The UK avoided revolution because the elites allowed a few outsiders in as well as changing over time. 1911 was a peaceful revolution in many ways.
Aberfan showed how the new management became exactly like the old management, very rapidly.
I understand that the #NU10K idea is trying to identify a real problem. Too many people are allowed to fail upwards. But the presentation lacks an evidence base and tries to sex up the idea, which undermines the point being made.
There is nothing to suggest, no estimation, that there are 10,000 such people. That’s just chosen to match the old upper 10k.
The article claims that members of the #NU10K are often paid more than the PM, but that isn’t obviously true for two of the three examples given. Hospital managers in the Letby case will be paid less. A head of children’s services is usually paid less. I think we’re looking at very different levels of seniority and pay in the examples mentioned.
The most conspiratorial claim is that, “They defend their kind to the last”. Again, this is not evidenced, yet it is crucial to the thesis presented. I suspect that people in social services tend to protect their own, and people in hospital management tend to protect their own, etc. — a phenomenon seen in most groups of people! — but I don’t see that there is a conspiracy across the #NU10K whereby senior management in one area are going out of their way to defend senior management in another area.
The result is a catchy hashtag that can be thrown around in most scandals, but it’s about as informative as the Tories’ Blob, the Republicans’ Deep State or even the Illuminati.
Curious article. It's slightly too close to the conspiracy theorists and misses the target, in my opinion.
To understand the dynamics of power in the UK in the 2020s, you have to look at the interplay of mind-boggling global wealth with established power structures.
Talking of conspiracy theories, the “Jewish tunnels” story gets curioser and curioser. And better (for the purposes of amusement). The tunnels were supposedly built by an angry bunch of teens - and, let’s face it, that makes sense - what community hasn’t got a bunch of kids building a network of secret tunnels under a world city? - my hometown of Hereford was known for it - but now it turns out the teens.. hired Mexican migrants to “finish the tunnels”. The migrants lived and worked down there, which is obvs why “no one noticed”
That does not make the story "curioser and curioser" [sic]
It is a non-story with a non-story element to it.
The attitude of some seems to be: simply mentioning this story is ‘anti Semitic’. Because it plays into so many time-honoured tropes of anti-semitism - Jews, New York, building secret tunnels, Hasidim literally emerging from sewers
That is likely what you feel, and fair enough. I couldn’t care less, tho - the story is so absurd and surreal it makes me laugh
I wish Jon Stewart was still at the Daily Show, I'm sure his take on this story would be hilarious.
The observation is exact. I’m coming round to the neologism
You have skipped an important point: their religious faith. The old Upper Ten Thousand had to be observant Church of England, at least ostensibly, with perhaps a few token Jews and Catholics
The NU10K have to be Woke; that is their belief system, which similarly binds them together
They also keep banging on about vegan food - I'm not joking.
I'm on a major committee for an organisation and they keep going on about it to demonstrate their commitment to climate change. So it's about only laying this on at their events and meetings. Because it's "progressive".
I struggle to challenge this in a calm way - it's very unpopular, and their members have said so - and, of course, you can end up looking like the difficult one / bogeyman even though you know many secretly agree.
Hmmm. You're on 'a major committee for an organisation', and you are literally the only person I know (whether online or in real life) who keeps 'banging on about vegan food' - are you trying to tell us you are a member of NU10K?
Er, no. It's other committee members who raise it.
I respond to it.
This is like: "you're the only one who's had problems with Horizon."
There's another angle to this. Between 2 and 3% of the UK are vegan. Another 6% are vegetarian. Another 6% are pescetarian. (1)
That is a significant minority of the population. The chances are the organisation you represent has people who are vegan, vegetarian or pescetarian. Are you doing your duty to your members if you do not provide food that they can eat?
I'm not a vegetarian, but I'm perfectly happy to cook - and eat - veggie, or even vegan, food. What have you got against it?
There is absolutely nothing wrong with having a selection of food that includes vegetarian options.
Its when the entire meal selection for everyone has to be vegan, then that's a problem. We had someone here a few weeks ago boasting about how he insisted that the entire buffet somewhere was vegan. That is as disgusting as insisting the entire food selection is meat and meat alone.
To be clear, it isn't as disgusting. Unless for some philosophical or moral reason meat-eaters can't eat vegan or vegetarian food.
I had a colleague who was a self-styled 'meatarian'. He would ask for food to come with no green stuff on the plate, and would send it back if it had some. He was, as you might guess, as much of an @ss as the worst vegans.
To be clear: I like meat. But because I live with a pescetarian, I often find myself going a few days without eating any meat because I cook shared meals. And then, at times like Christmas, I realise I've eaten very few greens and almost all scrumptious meat.
That's your opinion.
A lot of people find the lack of protein and taste in vegetarian and vegan food unfulfilling, don't enjoy it and are hungry after. There are also those with medical conditions and on controlled diets who can't get enough sustenance from it.
Diet is a deeply personal choice - and an invasive one - and it's inappropriate for anyone to make the call on what people should or should not ingest into their bodies.
Which is why the sort of event it is matters: if it's the only food they're getting in the day, then yes, it may be important. If it's a finger buffet at a chinwag, then it doesn't matter, does it?
For those of you on the spin doctors creative writing course todays StarmerDrama is "Starmer is to blame for the Houthi rebels attacking ships because......"
The observation is exact. I’m coming round to the neologism
You have skipped an important point: their religious faith. The old Upper Ten Thousand had to be observant Church of England, at least ostensibly, with perhaps a few token Jews and Catholics
The NU10K have to be Woke; that is their belief system, which similarly binds them together
They also keep banging on about vegan food - I'm not joking.
I'm on a major committee for an organisation and they keep going on about it to demonstrate their commitment to climate change. So it's about only laying this on at their events and meetings. Because it's "progressive".
I struggle to challenge this in a calm way - it's very unpopular, and their members have said so - and, of course, you can end up looking like the difficult one / bogeyman even though you know many secretly agree.
Hmmm. You're on 'a major committee for an organisation', and you are literally the only person I know (whether online or in real life) who keeps 'banging on about vegan food' - are you trying to tell us you are a member of NU10K?
Er, no. It's other committee members who raise it.
I respond to it.
This is like: "you're the only one who's had problems with Horizon."
There's another angle to this. Between 2 and 3% of the UK are vegan. Another 6% are vegetarian. Another 6% are pescetarian. (1)
That is a significant minority of the population. The chances are the organisation you represent has people who are vegan, vegetarian or pescetarian. Are you doing your duty to your members if you do not provide food that they can eat?
I'm not a vegetarian, but I'm perfectly happy to cook - and eat - veggie, or even vegan, food. What have you got against it?
There is absolutely nothing wrong with having a selection of food that includes vegetarian options.
Its when the entire meal selection for everyone has to be vegan, then that's a problem. We had someone here a few weeks ago boasting about how he insisted that the entire buffet somewhere was vegan. That is as disgusting as insisting the entire food selection is meat and meat alone.
To be clear, it isn't as disgusting. Unless for some philosophical or moral reason meat-eaters can't eat vegan or vegetarian food.
I had a colleague who was a self-styled 'meatarian'. He would ask for food to come with no green stuff on the plate, and would send it back if it had some. He was, as you might guess, as much of an @ss as the worst vegans.
To be clear: I like meat. But because I live with a pescetarian, I often find myself going a few days without eating any meat because I cook shared meals. And then, at times like Christmas, I realise I've eaten very few greens and almost all scrumptious meat.
That's your opinion.
A lot of people find the lack of protein and taste in vegetarian and vegan food unfulfilling, don't enjoy it and are hungry after. There are also those with medical conditions and on controlled diets who can't get enough sustenance from it.
Diet is a deeply personal choice - and an invasive one - and it's inappropriate for anyone to make the call on what people should or should not ingest into their bodies.
Well said.
There is a conceited attitude by vegetarians of "I won't eat what you are having but there's no reason you can't eat what I am" - which for too many then becomes a "you should/must eat what I am".
No, lots of people who aren't vegetarian aren't for very good reasons. If you're vegetarian their reasons may not be good reasons for you, but they are for them (ie me), so don't discriminate against them.
Discriminating against meat eaters is every bit as offensive and wrong as discriminating against Catholics/Jews/Muslims or any other belief system is.
Don't discriminate, and if you can't not discriminate, then don't be involved in organising anything.
The observation is exact. I’m coming round to the neologism
You have skipped an important point: their religious faith. The old Upper Ten Thousand had to be observant Church of England, at least ostensibly, with perhaps a few token Jews and Catholics
The NU10K have to be Woke; that is their belief system, which similarly binds them together
They also keep banging on about vegan food - I'm not joking.
I'm on a major committee for an organisation and they keep going on about it to demonstrate their commitment to climate change. So it's about only laying this on at their events and meetings. Because it's "progressive".
I struggle to challenge this in a calm way - it's very unpopular, and their members have said so - and, of course, you can end up looking like the difficult one / bogeyman even though you know many secretly agree.
Hmmm. You're on 'a major committee for an organisation', and you are literally the only person I know (whether online or in real life) who keeps 'banging on about vegan food' - are you trying to tell us you are a member of NU10K?
Er, no. It's other committee members who raise it.
I respond to it.
This is like: "you're the only one who's had problems with Horizon."
There's another angle to this. Between 2 and 3% of the UK are vegan. Another 6% are vegetarian. Another 6% are pescetarian. (1)
That is a significant minority of the population. The chances are the organisation you represent has people who are vegan, vegetarian or pescetarian. Are you doing your duty to your members if you do not provide food that they can eat?
I'm not a vegetarian, but I'm perfectly happy to cook - and eat - veggie, or even vegan, food. What have you got against it?
There is absolutely nothing wrong with having a selection of food that includes vegetarian options.
Its when the entire meal selection for everyone has to be vegan, then that's a problem. We had someone here a few weeks ago boasting about how he insisted that the entire buffet somewhere was vegan. That is as disgusting as insisting the entire food selection is meat and meat alone.
My organisation promotes reduced meat consumption (because we dislike factory farms), and has a policy that when food is paid for by donors (e.g. at a reception that we organise, or when staff are travellling) then the food shouldn't be meat, since the donors might reasonably feel it wasn't what they had in mind. If we get our own food we can eat what we like. I'm not vegetarian but the policy seems to me reasonable enough - I can perfectly well get by on expenses without feeling a craving for someone to pay for me to have salami.
I think the policy is disgusting and I would refuse to donate to your organisation if I knew that was the policy.
If money has been donated to pay for food then why the hell should those who eat meat be excluded by your discrimination?
Because it's related to the aims of the organization, in terms of consistency.
There's also a difference between paying for food (as a practical but basically secondary aim of running an organization) and making it a primary aim of the organization.
The observation is exact. I’m coming round to the neologism
You have skipped an important point: their religious faith. The old Upper Ten Thousand had to be observant Church of England, at least ostensibly, with perhaps a few token Jews and Catholics
The NU10K have to be Woke; that is their belief system, which similarly binds them together
They also keep banging on about vegan food - I'm not joking.
I'm on a major committee for an organisation and they keep going on about it to demonstrate their commitment to climate change. So it's about only laying this on at their events and meetings. Because it's "progressive".
I struggle to challenge this in a calm way - it's very unpopular, and their members have said so - and, of course, you can end up looking like the difficult one / bogeyman even though you know many secretly agree.
Hmmm. You're on 'a major committee for an organisation', and you are literally the only person I know (whether online or in real life) who keeps 'banging on about vegan food' - are you trying to tell us you are a member of NU10K?
Er, no. It's other committee members who raise it.
I respond to it.
This is like: "you're the only one who's had problems with Horizon."
There's another angle to this. Between 2 and 3% of the UK are vegan. Another 6% are vegetarian. Another 6% are pescetarian. (1)
That is a significant minority of the population. The chances are the organisation you represent has people who are vegan, vegetarian or pescetarian. Are you doing your duty to your members if you do not provide food that they can eat?
I'm not a vegetarian, but I'm perfectly happy to cook - and eat - veggie, or even vegan, food. What have you got against it?
There is absolutely nothing wrong with having a selection of food that includes vegetarian options.
Its when the entire meal selection for everyone has to be vegan, then that's a problem. We had someone here a few weeks ago boasting about how he insisted that the entire buffet somewhere was vegan. That is as disgusting as insisting the entire food selection is meat and meat alone.
My organisation promotes reduced meat consumption (because we dislike factory farms), and has a policy that when food is paid for by donors (e.g. at a reception that we organise, or when staff are travellling) then the food shouldn't be meat, since the donors might reasonably feel it wasn't what they had in mind. If we get our own food we can eat what we like. I'm not vegetarian but the policy seems to me reasonable enough - I can perfectly well get by on expenses without feeling a craving for someone to pay for me to have salami.
"Promotes" because "we dislike".
Exactly. You are projecting your values onto others.
This is what I object to.
It really isn't any of your business and it's your not your place to do it.
I guess the header is, in part at least, an attempt to answer the question: Where does power lie in the UK? The examples given in the article of the NU10K are mainly high-flying public servants, and I wouldn't dispute that the revolving door of jobs they inhabit needs sorting.
However, if I were one of the captains of industry, or one of the CEOs of the FTSE companies, I'd be delighted if the meme of the NU10K takes hold, as it distracts from where real power and wealth lie. Yes, some of the NU10K are (too) highly paid, but they earn little compared to the FTSE CEOs who last year earned, on average, £3.91m - 118 times the median wage, up from 79 times in 2020.
It's a long time since the capitalist class replaced the aristocracy as the main source of power and wealth in the UK. I see no sign whatsoever of the really, really rich and powerful being replaced by the NU10K, but they would enjoy the header. Are Mone and Barrowman part of the NU10K? I think not.
There's an executive oligarchy in big business in much the same way there's one within big government.
Malmesbury's hypothesis is of course compelling, and because of its simplicity and explanatory power is excellently neat.
However, looked at closely the idea is in essence a conspiracy theory. This does not mean it is wrong of course, just as the simple nature of theories based on Martian lizards does not require that they are incorrect, even though I think they are.
So if ever a simple idea needed hard evidence, ground rules for what sort of data would disconfirm it, quantitative analysis in addition to anecdote (and anecdotes can be compelling, but are not enough) and so on, this is one such.
It’s not a conspiracy - it’s a mutual disinclination to hold people to account, by other people with power. A back scratching circle.
The back pages of Private Eye over decades list the many, many times that that the senior people avoid any actual inconvenience from disaster.
Much as directors deciding other directors pay ends up with trebles all round.
I wonder what % if the NU10K went to private school? Probably >7%.
According to Wikipedia, Vennells won a place at a private school.
One thing that I've noticed in the civil service over the last 15 years is the number of people prepared to openly slag off Oxbridge. I'm sure plenty of the upper echelons of public life are filled with Oxbridge educated people, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's changing.
She then went to Bradford Uni, where she met her husband. Is Yorkshire taking over from Oxbridge?
The observation is exact. I’m coming round to the neologism
You have skipped an important point: their religious faith. The old Upper Ten Thousand had to be observant Church of England, at least ostensibly, with perhaps a few token Jews and Catholics
The NU10K have to be Woke; that is their belief system, which similarly binds them together
They also keep banging on about vegan food - I'm not joking.
I'm on a major committee for an organisation and they keep going on about it to demonstrate their commitment to climate change. So it's about only laying this on at their events and meetings. Because it's "progressive".
I struggle to challenge this in a calm way - it's very unpopular, and their members have said so - and, of course, you can end up looking like the difficult one / bogeyman even though you know many secretly agree.
Hmmm. You're on 'a major committee for an organisation', and you are literally the only person I know (whether online or in real life) who keeps 'banging on about vegan food' - are you trying to tell us you are a member of NU10K?
Er, no. It's other committee members who raise it.
I respond to it.
This is like: "you're the only one who's had problems with Horizon."
There's another angle to this. Between 2 and 3% of the UK are vegan. Another 6% are vegetarian. Another 6% are pescetarian. (1)
That is a significant minority of the population. The chances are the organisation you represent has people who are vegan, vegetarian or pescetarian. Are you doing your duty to your members if you do not provide food that they can eat?
I'm not a vegetarian, but I'm perfectly happy to cook - and eat - veggie, or even vegan, food. What have you got against it?
There is absolutely nothing wrong with having a selection of food that includes vegetarian options.
Its when the entire meal selection for everyone has to be vegan, then that's a problem. We had someone here a few weeks ago boasting about how he insisted that the entire buffet somewhere was vegan. That is as disgusting as insisting the entire food selection is meat and meat alone.
To be clear, it isn't as disgusting. Unless for some philosophical or moral reason meat-eaters can't eat vegan or vegetarian food.
I had a colleague who was a self-styled 'meatarian'. He would ask for food to come with no green stuff on the plate, and would send it back if it had some. He was, as you might guess, as much of an @ss as the worst vegans.
To be clear: I like meat. But because I live with a pescetarian, I often find myself going a few days without eating any meat because I cook shared meals. And then, at times like Christmas, I realise I've eaten very few greens and almost all scrumptious meat.
That's your opinion.
A lot of people find the lack of protein and taste in vegetarian and vegan food unfulfilling, don't enjoy it and are hungry after. There are also those with medical conditions and on controlled diets who can't get enough sustenance from it.
Diet is a deeply personal choice - and an invasive one - and it's inappropriate for anyone to make the call on what people should or should not ingest into their bodies.
For one single meal?!
Yes. 🤦♂️
If I eat a meal with over 20 grams of carbs, which is almost any vegetarian meal, that will throw me out of ketosis and damage my diet. Now I appreciate that's extreme, but your attitude is as condescending as me only putting on steaks and chicken wings with nothing else at a work buffet and then saying to any vegetarians that its only one single meal.
Curious article. It's slightly too close to the conspiracy theorists and misses the target, in my opinion.
To understand the dynamics of power in the UK in the 2020s, you have to look at the interplay of mind-boggling global wealth with established power structures.
Talking of conspiracy theories, the “Jewish tunnels” story gets curioser and curioser. And better (for the purposes of amusement). The tunnels were supposedly built by an angry bunch of teens - and, let’s face it, that makes sense - what community hasn’t got a bunch of kids building a network of secret tunnels under a world city? - my hometown of Hereford was known for it - but now it turns out the teens.. hired Mexican migrants to “finish the tunnels”. The migrants lived and worked down there, which is obvs why “no one noticed”
That does not make the story "curioser and curioser" [sic]
It is a non-story with a non-story element to it.
The attitude of some seems to be: simply mentioning this story is ‘anti Semitic’. Because it plays into so many time-honoured tropes of anti-semitism - Jews, New York, building secret tunnels, Hasidim literally emerging from sewers
That is likely what you feel, and fair enough. I couldn’t care less, tho - the story is so absurd and surreal it makes me laugh
I wish Jon Stewart was still at the Daily Show, I'm sure his take on this story would be hilarious.
Yes, he’d have been great with this. It is possible to see the funny side without wishing to rebuild Treblinka
The old Stephen Colbert would likewise have been very amusing. Not so much now
The observation is exact. I’m coming round to the neologism
You have skipped an important point: their religious faith. The old Upper Ten Thousand had to be observant Church of England, at least ostensibly, with perhaps a few token Jews and Catholics
The NU10K have to be Woke; that is their belief system, which similarly binds them together
They also keep banging on about vegan food - I'm not joking.
I'm on a major committee for an organisation and they keep going on about it to demonstrate their commitment to climate change. So it's about only laying this on at their events and meetings. Because it's "progressive".
I struggle to challenge this in a calm way - it's very unpopular, and their members have said so - and, of course, you can end up looking like the difficult one / bogeyman even though you know many secretly agree.
Hmmm. You're on 'a major committee for an organisation', and you are literally the only person I know (whether online or in real life) who keeps 'banging on about vegan food' - are you trying to tell us you are a member of NU10K?
Er, no. It's other committee members who raise it.
I respond to it.
This is like: "you're the only one who's had problems with Horizon."
There's another angle to this. Between 2 and 3% of the UK are vegan. Another 6% are vegetarian. Another 6% are pescetarian. (1)
That is a significant minority of the population. The chances are the organisation you represent has people who are vegan, vegetarian or pescetarian. Are you doing your duty to your members if you do not provide food that they can eat?
I'm not a vegetarian, but I'm perfectly happy to cook - and eat - veggie, or even vegan, food. What have you got against it?
There is absolutely nothing wrong with having a selection of food that includes vegetarian options.
Its when the entire meal selection for everyone has to be vegan, then that's a problem. We had someone here a few weeks ago boasting about how he insisted that the entire buffet somewhere was vegan. That is as disgusting as insisting the entire food selection is meat and meat alone.
To be clear, it isn't as disgusting. Unless for some philosophical or moral reason meat-eaters can't eat vegan or vegetarian food.
I had a colleague who was a self-styled 'meatarian'. He would ask for food to come with no green stuff on the plate, and would send it back if it had some. He was, as you might guess, as much of an @ss as the worst vegans.
To be clear: I like meat. But because I live with a pescetarian, I often find myself going a few days without eating any meat because I cook shared meals. And then, at times like Christmas, I realise I've eaten very few greens and almost all scrumptious meat.
I can't or won't eat vegetables on my diet. For my health, I'm on a ketogenic diet which means I'm not allowed more than 20 grams of carbs in an entire day - to put that into context, one apple has 26 grams of carbs.
I won't have vegetables on my plate, and I'm living healthier now than I have in years. I have absolutely no objections to others eating vegetables, but I won't.
I typically eat meat 4-5 times a day. Breakfast, lunch, dinner and if I grab a snack it'll be something like a salami. Vegetables I may have once or twice a week and then only in a small portion and restricted low-carb types like mushrooms or avocado.
Then you have a restricted diet. This is where it gets more complex, especially with allergies that need to be catered for. When you say "can't or won't"; I take 'can't' to mean that it is a medical thing, or 'won't' because that's a personal choice. As a matter of interest, which is it?
Malmesbury's hypothesis is of course compelling, and because of its simplicity and explanatory power is excellently neat.
However, looked at closely the idea is in essence a conspiracy theory. This does not mean it is wrong of course, just as the simple nature of theories based on Martian lizards does not require that they are incorrect, even though I think they are.
So if ever a simple idea needed hard evidence, ground rules for what sort of data would disconfirm it, quantitative analysis in addition to anecdote (and anecdotes can be compelling, but are not enough) and so on, this is one such.
I don't think it's a conspiracy theory - it's hardly controversial that elites in pretty well all societies tend to look after their own. Low quality leaders have little interest in appointing others more competent who might challenge them.
It doesn't require some convoluted secret plot; it's just the operation of common interests turned toxic.
Agree. This is the power of the concept. It's the new old boy network, more diverse (which is to be welcomed) but with the same problems of looking after 'our own' and closing ranks.
In some ways, there's nothing really new about NU10K, just a subtle changing in its composition over time. Afterall, the lovely Ms Vennells that we always had round for dinner never claimed to be an IT specialist, did she? How could she have done anything different? She was doing her best, no doubt, and now everyon's being beastly to her even though she's such a sweetheart. And she did put in a good word for you when you needed contact with Tim over that contract when it all went pear-shaped, saved you a few blushes, that. And her friend Liz helped out with that scholarship, too. So would it really hurt to put Paula's name forward for that non-exec post Liz suggested while she gets back on her feet?
Question is, what - if anything - can be done about it? More rigorous review of appointments by more diverse teams? Limits to the numbers of positions people can hold? Bar against being involved in selection panels for people known to you socially? It's a tricky thing because of course this kind of thing happens at all levels - our recent builder's apprentice was his sister's nephew. My (accidental) break into my current field came courtesy of a friend's dad. Who you know is an important part of getting on in life. The key difference is that most of us don't get to fail upwards.
It's unlikely that Malmesbury's neologism will become universally popular. It's a little too awkward. But it is a useful term as long as you don't try to apply it too strictly.
Sure, the idea has been around since Adam was a boy, but there is something kind of novel in the type of mutual backscratching we see so much of now. It's kind of classless, and blatant, in a way that earlier manifestations were not. During Boris's reign as PM I noted the use of the term Chumocracy. I seem to hear it less now, although it seems to reflect a similar conspiracy to the New Ten Kay.
I'm happy with either term, and if Malmesbury's word gets into the Oxford English one day, I hope he gives PB due credit for promoting it.
As for what to do about it, I think the best remedy is to publicise the names of those on selection committees. Who at the Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust thought Paula Vennels would be a spiffing appointment in 2019? Who put her name forward for the Cabinet Office in the same year? If we knew that we might have a better idea of who these NU10Ks are, and what damage they and their pals have done elsewhere.
The observation is exact. I’m coming round to the neologism
You have skipped an important point: their religious faith. The old Upper Ten Thousand had to be observant Church of England, at least ostensibly, with perhaps a few token Jews and Catholics
The NU10K have to be Woke; that is their belief system, which similarly binds them together
They also keep banging on about vegan food - I'm not joking.
I'm on a major committee for an organisation and they keep going on about it to demonstrate their commitment to climate change. So it's about only laying this on at their events and meetings. Because it's "progressive".
I struggle to challenge this in a calm way - it's very unpopular, and their members have said so - and, of course, you can end up looking like the difficult one / bogeyman even though you know many secretly agree.
Hmmm. You're on 'a major committee for an organisation', and you are literally the only person I know (whether online or in real life) who keeps 'banging on about vegan food' - are you trying to tell us you are a member of NU10K?
Er, no. It's other committee members who raise it.
I respond to it.
This is like: "you're the only one who's had problems with Horizon."
There's another angle to this. Between 2 and 3% of the UK are vegan. Another 6% are vegetarian. Another 6% are pescetarian. (1)
That is a significant minority of the population. The chances are the organisation you represent has people who are vegan, vegetarian or pescetarian. Are you doing your duty to your members if you do not provide food that they can eat?
I'm not a vegetarian, but I'm perfectly happy to cook - and eat - veggie, or even vegan, food. What have you got against it?
There is absolutely nothing wrong with having a selection of food that includes vegetarian options.
Its when the entire meal selection for everyone has to be vegan, then that's a problem. We had someone here a few weeks ago boasting about how he insisted that the entire buffet somewhere was vegan. That is as disgusting as insisting the entire food selection is meat and meat alone.
To be clear, it isn't as disgusting. Unless for some philosophical or moral reason meat-eaters can't eat vegan or vegetarian food.
I had a colleague who was a self-styled 'meatarian'. He would ask for food to come with no green stuff on the plate, and would send it back if it had some. He was, as you might guess, as much of an @ss as the worst vegans.
To be clear: I like meat. But because I live with a pescetarian, I often find myself going a few days without eating any meat because I cook shared meals. And then, at times like Christmas, I realise I've eaten very few greens and almost all scrumptious meat.
I can't or won't eat vegetables on my diet. For my health, I'm on a ketogenic diet which means I'm not allowed more than 20 grams of carbs in an entire day - to put that into context, one apple has 26 grams of carbs.
I won't have vegetables on my plate, and I'm living healthier now than I have in years. I have absolutely no objections to others eating vegetables, but I won't.
I typically eat meat 4-5 times a day. Breakfast, lunch, dinner and if I grab a snack it'll be something like a salami. Vegetables I may have once or twice a week and then only in a small portion and restricted low-carb types like mushrooms or avocado.
Rather worrying in terms of the possible quality of your thinking, then. The human body needs 200g of glucose (or the equivalent) a day, about 2/3 for the brain (which is obligately dependent on glycolysis for energy production).
I guess the header is, in part at least, an attempt to answer the question: Where does power lie in the UK? The examples given in the article of the NU10K are mainly high-flying public servants, and I wouldn't dispute that the revolving door of jobs they inhabit needs sorting.
However, if I were one of the captains of industry, or one of the CEOs of the FTSE companies, I'd be delighted if the meme of the NU10K takes hold, as it distracts from where real power and wealth lie. Yes, some of the NU10K are (too) highly paid, but they earn little compared to the FTSE CEOs who last year earned, on average, £3.91m - 118 times the median wage, up from 79 times in 2020.
It's a long time since the capitalist class replaced the aristocracy as the main source of power and wealth in the UK. I see no sign whatsoever of the really, really rich and powerful being replaced by the NU10K, but they would enjoy the header. Are Mone and Barrowman part of the NU10K? I think not.
There's an executive oligarchy in big business in much the same way there's one within big government.
With I'm sure some crossover.
I would say that the NU10K embraces big business as much as big government.
There is a great deal of movement between the private and public, as a part of that.
The observation is exact. I’m coming round to the neologism
You have skipped an important point: their religious faith. The old Upper Ten Thousand had to be observant Church of England, at least ostensibly, with perhaps a few token Jews and Catholics
The NU10K have to be Woke; that is their belief system, which similarly binds them together
They also keep banging on about vegan food - I'm not joking.
I'm on a major committee for an organisation and they keep going on about it to demonstrate their commitment to climate change. So it's about only laying this on at their events and meetings. Because it's "progressive".
I struggle to challenge this in a calm way - it's very unpopular, and their members have said so - and, of course, you can end up looking like the difficult one / bogeyman even though you know many secretly agree.
Hmmm. You're on 'a major committee for an organisation', and you are literally the only person I know (whether online or in real life) who keeps 'banging on about vegan food' - are you trying to tell us you are a member of NU10K?
Er, no. It's other committee members who raise it.
I respond to it.
This is like: "you're the only one who's had problems with Horizon."
There's another angle to this. Between 2 and 3% of the UK are vegan. Another 6% are vegetarian. Another 6% are pescetarian. (1)
That is a significant minority of the population. The chances are the organisation you represent has people who are vegan, vegetarian or pescetarian. Are you doing your duty to your members if you do not provide food that they can eat?
I'm not a vegetarian, but I'm perfectly happy to cook - and eat - veggie, or even vegan, food. What have you got against it?
There is absolutely nothing wrong with having a selection of food that includes vegetarian options.
Its when the entire meal selection for everyone has to be vegan, then that's a problem. We had someone here a few weeks ago boasting about how he insisted that the entire buffet somewhere was vegan. That is as disgusting as insisting the entire food selection is meat and meat alone.
To be clear, it isn't as disgusting. Unless for some philosophical or moral reason meat-eaters can't eat vegan or vegetarian food.
I had a colleague who was a self-styled 'meatarian'. He would ask for food to come with no green stuff on the plate, and would send it back if it had some. He was, as you might guess, as much of an @ss as the worst vegans.
To be clear: I like meat. But because I live with a pescetarian, I often find myself going a few days without eating any meat because I cook shared meals. And then, at times like Christmas, I realise I've eaten very few greens and almost all scrumptious meat.
That's your opinion.
A lot of people find the lack of protein and taste in vegetarian and vegan food unfulfilling, don't enjoy it and are hungry after. There are also those with medical conditions and on controlled diets who can't get enough sustenance from it.
Diet is a deeply personal choice - and an invasive one - and it's inappropriate for anyone to make the call on what people should or should not ingest into their bodies.
For one single meal?!
Yes. 🤦♂️
If I eat a meal with over 20 grams of carbs, which is almost any vegetarian meal, that will throw me out of ketosis and damage my diet. Now I appreciate that's extreme, but your attitude is as condescending as me only putting on steaks and chicken wings with nothing else at a work buffet and then saying to any vegetarians that its only one single meal.
The observation is exact. I’m coming round to the neologism
You have skipped an important point: their religious faith. The old Upper Ten Thousand had to be observant Church of England, at least ostensibly, with perhaps a few token Jews and Catholics
The NU10K have to be Woke; that is their belief system, which similarly binds them together
They also keep banging on about vegan food - I'm not joking.
I'm on a major committee for an organisation and they keep going on about it to demonstrate their commitment to climate change. So it's about only laying this on at their events and meetings. Because it's "progressive".
I struggle to challenge this in a calm way - it's very unpopular, and their members have said so - and, of course, you can end up looking like the difficult one / bogeyman even though you know many secretly agree.
Hmmm. You're on 'a major committee for an organisation', and you are literally the only person I know (whether online or in real life) who keeps 'banging on about vegan food' - are you trying to tell us you are a member of NU10K?
Er, no. It's other committee members who raise it.
I respond to it.
This is like: "you're the only one who's had problems with Horizon."
There's another angle to this. Between 2 and 3% of the UK are vegan. Another 6% are vegetarian. Another 6% are pescetarian. (1)
That is a significant minority of the population. The chances are the organisation you represent has people who are vegan, vegetarian or pescetarian. Are you doing your duty to your members if you do not provide food that they can eat?
I'm not a vegetarian, but I'm perfectly happy to cook - and eat - veggie, or even vegan, food. What have you got against it?
There is absolutely nothing wrong with having a selection of food that includes vegetarian options.
Its when the entire meal selection for everyone has to be vegan, then that's a problem. We had someone here a few weeks ago boasting about how he insisted that the entire buffet somewhere was vegan. That is as disgusting as insisting the entire food selection is meat and meat alone.
To be clear, it isn't as disgusting. Unless for some philosophical or moral reason meat-eaters can't eat vegan or vegetarian food.
I had a colleague who was a self-styled 'meatarian'. He would ask for food to come with no green stuff on the plate, and would send it back if it had some. He was, as you might guess, as much of an @ss as the worst vegans.
To be clear: I like meat. But because I live with a pescetarian, I often find myself going a few days without eating any meat because I cook shared meals. And then, at times like Christmas, I realise I've eaten very few greens and almost all scrumptious meat.
I can't or won't eat vegetables on my diet. For my health, I'm on a ketogenic diet which means I'm not allowed more than 20 grams of carbs in an entire day - to put that into context, one apple has 26 grams of carbs.
I won't have vegetables on my plate, and I'm living healthier now than I have in years. I have absolutely no objections to others eating vegetables, but I won't.
I typically eat meat 4-5 times a day. Breakfast, lunch, dinner and if I grab a snack it'll be something like a salami. Vegetables I may have once or twice a week and then only in a small portion and restricted low-carb types like mushrooms or avocado.
Then you have a restricted diet. This is where it gets more complex, especially with allergies that need to be catered for. When you say "can't or won't"; I take 'can't' to mean that it is a medical thing, or 'won't' because that's a personal choice. As a matter of interest, which is it?
Both.
I've not been advised to go on this diet by a doctor, doctors sadly too often stick with the failed five-a-day fruits and vegetables advice. I've done my own research and found this diet, tried it, and its working for me.
So I've chosen to do it, and its important for me medically.
I suspect in fifty years time we'll look back with horror at the advice to cut out fats and the way carbs were heavily pushed on people. There already seems to be a lot of pushback and advances in that research now that backs lower carb as the solution.
Its funny, when I was researching carnivore diets before I formally started it a lot of articles were saying along the lines of "yes it may be good for you, but its meat, so that's a problem". Sorry, my health comes first - I both enjoy meat, and its good for me.
The observation is exact. I’m coming round to the neologism
You have skipped an important point: their religious faith. The old Upper Ten Thousand had to be observant Church of England, at least ostensibly, with perhaps a few token Jews and Catholics
The NU10K have to be Woke; that is their belief system, which similarly binds them together
Both terms are just meaningless terms of abuse
The NU10K is simply the herd of upper management of the country - its main aim is aggregate protection of the herd.
There is no ideology involved.
Time and again, in major scandals, we see the same pattern. Real accountability stops at a certain level. The Chairman resigned, took a golden handshake and moved to a new job on more money.
Woke is now a term of abuse for anything someone doesn’t like.
No, it is not
The Spectator, as ever, skewered Wokeness acutely, here
The observation is exact. I’m coming round to the neologism
You have skipped an important point: their religious faith. The old Upper Ten Thousand had to be observant Church of England, at least ostensibly, with perhaps a few token Jews and Catholics
The NU10K have to be Woke; that is their belief system, which similarly binds them together
They also keep banging on about vegan food - I'm not joking.
I'm on a major committee for an organisation and they keep going on about it to demonstrate their commitment to climate change. So it's about only laying this on at their events and meetings. Because it's "progressive".
I struggle to challenge this in a calm way - it's very unpopular, and their members have said so - and, of course, you can end up looking like the difficult one / bogeyman even though you know many secretly agree.
Things like vegan food and woke are just fads in the context of these people. It's a symptom of the groupthink, the inability to be the awkward one, or to risk identifying yourself as outside the ingroup, that ideas like this are adopted wholesale, rather than to a more appropriate degree.
The specific ideas themselves could be anything, certainly the only selection pressure would be that they should avoid causing any difficulty to the ingroup - so I'd guess travel expenses for these committees get a lot less traction than providing vegan food, even though there's a potential climate benefit to reducing travel.
I understand that the #NU10K idea is trying to identify a real problem. Too many people are allowed to fail upwards. But the presentation lacks an evidence base and tries to sex up the idea, which undermines the point being made.
There is nothing to suggest, no estimation, that there are 10,000 such people. That’s just chosen to match the old upper 10k.
The article claims that members of the #NU10K are often paid more than the PM, but that isn’t obviously true for two of the three examples given. Hospital managers in the Letby case will be paid less. A head of children’s services is usually paid less. I think we’re looking at very different levels of seniority and pay in the examples mentioned.
The most conspiratorial claim is that, “They defend their kind to the last”. Again, this is not evidenced, yet it is crucial to the thesis presented. I suspect that people in social services tend to protect their own, and people in hospital management tend to protect their own, etc. — a phenomenon seen in most groups of people! — but I don’t see that there is a conspiracy across the #NU10K whereby senior management in one area are going out of their way to defend senior management in another area.
The result is a catchy hashtag that can be thrown around in most scandals, but it’s about as informative as the Tories’ Blob, the Republicans’ Deep State or even the Illuminati.
You’ll notice a strange lack of interest in prosecution (or even sanction) of the managers in Letby case - they broke laws protecting whistleblowers and engaged in organised harassment.
The point is that we need to enforce accountability. And consequences.
Otherwise changing governments will have little effect.
'Stephen Mason, a barrister and expert on electronic evidence, said: “It says, for the person who’s saying ‘there’s something wrong with this computer’, that they have to prove it. Even if it’s the person accusing them who has the information.”
Mason, along with eight other legal and computer experts, was invited by the government to suggest an update to the law in 2020, following a high court ruling against the Post Office, but the recommendations they submitted were never applied.'
Curious article. It's slightly too close to the conspiracy theorists and misses the target, in my opinion.
To understand the dynamics of power in the UK in the 2020s, you have to look at the interplay of mind-boggling global wealth with established power structures.
Talking of conspiracy theories, the “Jewish tunnels” story gets curioser and curioser. And better (for the purposes of amusement). The tunnels were supposedly built by an angry bunch of teens - and, let’s face it, that makes sense - what community hasn’t got a bunch of kids building a network of secret tunnels under a world city? - my hometown of Hereford was known for it - but now it turns out the teens.. hired Mexican migrants to “finish the tunnels”. The migrants lived and worked down there, which is obvs why “no one noticed”
That does not make the story "curioser and curioser" [sic]
It is a non-story with a non-story element to it.
The attitude of some seems to be: simply mentioning this story is ‘anti Semitic’. Because it plays into so many time-honoured tropes of anti-semitism - Jews, New York, building secret tunnels, Hasidim literally emerging from sewers
That is likely what you feel, and fair enough. I couldn’t care less, tho - the story is so absurd and surreal it makes me laugh
I wish Jon Stewart was still at the Daily Show, I'm sure his take on this story would be hilarious.
I sometimes like to think that there would be a lot less polarisation in the US at the moment, were the old Jon Stewart still doing the old Daily Show. Unafraid to take on any and all elites and their nonesense, irrespective of political leaning.
There’s very few commentators still doing that, perhaps Bill Maher is the closest remaining with a mainstream platform, although there a few in the new media space.
On topic, I'm not sure it's that simple. Get rid of them all and you'd just get another lot. Someone has to run all these businesses and organisations.
It's the groupthink, lack of accountability and integrity that's the issue and I think that's more of a structural and values problem.
Yes, it’s a systemic issue rather than some broad bunch of Freemasons loosely organised in some way and all looking after each other. Take executive pay. The execs in one company are non-execs at others, all sitting on each other’s remuneration committees, and companies ‘benchmark’ their senior pay with each other. So there’s no-one who doesn’t have at least an indirect incentive to see senior pay and bonuses forever pushed upwards; although some of the payments are eye-watering in individual terms, against the turnover of the company they’re lost in the roundings. Every remuneration policy you see has the mantra “we pay upper quartile pay for upper quartile performance”; with everyone aiming for upper quartile, it’s obvious where it goes. The US shows the way and we aren’t too far behind.
And of course, in the round, we don’t get upper quartile performance; it’s the same bunch of people, just being paid more. Just as if we paid a £million as MPs salary, we wouldn’t get better MPs. The explosion in top pay even spreads into the charity sector, where the top people in organisations like Amnesty earn absurd amounts.
The challenge ought to be a flood of people coming up behind competing for these highly paid positions, bringing the market rate down. And it’s true that universities churn out far more business studies, marketing and accounting graduates than they used to. But, as with much of the ‘bread and bricks economy’, competition through supply and demand seems not to be working as a restraint on prices. Western economies nowadays looks increasingly more oligarchic than competitive.
With the shareholders who then vote on these ever higher executive remunerations being other executives controlling block votes controlled by financial organisations.
How often are the directors remunerations voted down at AGMs ?
The observation is exact. I’m coming round to the neologism
You have skipped an important point: their religious faith. The old Upper Ten Thousand had to be observant Church of England, at least ostensibly, with perhaps a few token Jews and Catholics
The NU10K have to be Woke; that is their belief system, which similarly binds them together
Both terms are just meaningless terms of abuse
The NU10K is simply the herd of upper management of the country - its main aim is aggregate protection of the herd.
There is no ideology involved.
I simply do not accept this assertion.
What evidence is there that this conspiratorial group even exists, let alone its primary goal being some mafiosa of mutual aid?
Certainly people at the top in both public and private sector exhibit self interest, but doesn't everybody at every level? That is simply part of being human.
It’s not a conspiracy.
Consider
1) People with aristocratic connections have a strong tendency not to hold other people with aristocratic connections to account. Help them get jobs, ease their way.
2) People with power have a strong tendency not to hold other people with power to account. Help them get jobs, ease their way.
We have moved from 1) to 2)
We need to move, using enforced laws, to move beyond 2) to something better.
Instead of recycling the same failed idiots.
What you write here and what you wrote in your header are different, however. If you’d said this at he start, there would’ve been less disagreement.
Agree 100% with this excellent article and its conclusion. Perhaps this appointment for the former non-exec chairman of Fujitsu (and Tory party donor according to the Mirror) neatly links with this week’s big story:
Great. So now we can expect our broadband to work appallingly, be told our monthly bill for it is about a million quid and have dim-witted but menacing Liverpudlians come round and shout abuse at us before threatening us with prison.
The observation is exact. I’m coming round to the neologism
You have skipped an important point: their religious faith. The old Upper Ten Thousand had to be observant Church of England, at least ostensibly, with perhaps a few token Jews and Catholics
The NU10K have to be Woke; that is their belief system, which similarly binds them together
They also keep banging on about vegan food - I'm not joking.
I'm on a major committee for an organisation and they keep going on about it to demonstrate their commitment to climate change. So it's about only laying this on at their events and meetings. Because it's "progressive".
I struggle to challenge this in a calm way - it's very unpopular, and their members have said so - and, of course, you can end up looking like the difficult one / bogeyman even though you know many secretly agree.
Hmmm. You're on 'a major committee for an organisation', and you are literally the only person I know (whether online or in real life) who keeps 'banging on about vegan food' - are you trying to tell us you are a member of NU10K?
Er, no. It's other committee members who raise it.
I respond to it.
This is like: "you're the only one who's had problems with Horizon."
There's another angle to this. Between 2 and 3% of the UK are vegan. Another 6% are vegetarian. Another 6% are pescetarian. (1)
That is a significant minority of the population. The chances are the organisation you represent has people who are vegan, vegetarian or pescetarian. Are you doing your duty to your members if you do not provide food that they can eat?
I'm not a vegetarian, but I'm perfectly happy to cook - and eat - veggie, or even vegan, food. What have you got against it?
There is absolutely nothing wrong with having a selection of food that includes vegetarian options.
Its when the entire meal selection for everyone has to be vegan, then that's a problem. We had someone here a few weeks ago boasting about how he insisted that the entire buffet somewhere was vegan. That is as disgusting as insisting the entire food selection is meat and meat alone.
To be clear, it isn't as disgusting. Unless for some philosophical or moral reason meat-eaters can't eat vegan or vegetarian food.
I had a colleague who was a self-styled 'meatarian'. He would ask for food to come with no green stuff on the plate, and would send it back if it had some. He was, as you might guess, as much of an @ss as the worst vegans.
To be clear: I like meat. But because I live with a pescetarian, I often find myself going a few days without eating any meat because I cook shared meals. And then, at times like Christmas, I realise I've eaten very few greens and almost all scrumptious meat.
I can't or won't eat vegetables on my diet. For my health, I'm on a ketogenic diet which means I'm not allowed more than 20 grams of carbs in an entire day - to put that into context, one apple has 26 grams of carbs.
I won't have vegetables on my plate, and I'm living healthier now than I have in years. I have absolutely no objections to others eating vegetables, but I won't.
I typically eat meat 4-5 times a day. Breakfast, lunch, dinner and if I grab a snack it'll be something like a salami. Vegetables I may have once or twice a week and then only in a small portion and restricted low-carb types like mushrooms or avocado.
Rather worrying in terms of the possible quality of your thinking, then. The human body needs 200g of glucose (or the equivalent) a day, about 2/3 for the brain (which is obligately dependent on glycolysis for energy production).
The body makes glucose. It can make or absorb glucose from carbs, or it can make it from protein.
Meat is protein. That's where I'm getting my glucose from, but it doesn't spike and crash like it does with a carb-based diet, the body makes it at the rate I need it so my blood sugar is much healthier.
On topic, I'm not sure it's that simple. Get rid of them all and you'd just get another lot. Someone has to run all these businesses and organisations.
It's the groupthink, lack of accountability and integrity that's the issue and I think that's more of a structural and values problem.
Changing the culture would of necessity also require getting rid of many of the current executives and leaders. Agreed that wouldn't if itself be sufficient.
It would be a huge task, as would need reform in both individual organisations, and across society. And determined (and capable) reformers are quite rare.
@rcs1000 's belief in small iterative improvements is one approach - though in this context, how might that apply ?
Sack each of them one at a time. We may as well enjoy the process.
Comments
However, looked at closely the idea is in essence a conspiracy theory. This does not mean it is wrong of course, just as the simple nature of theories based on Martian lizards does not require that they are incorrect, even though I think they are.
So if ever a simple idea needed hard evidence, ground rules for what sort of data would disconfirm it, quantitative analysis in addition to anecdote (and anecdotes can be compelling, but are not enough) and so on, this is one such.
I'm sure there's something about interpersonal style that helps manage that but, at the end of the day, there are only so many ways to deliver a difficult message and, if it doesn't want to be heard, it won't be.
How many of the NU10K went to state schools do we think?
Certainly for a lot of her time in the clergy, she was a businesswoman who was also ordained and did some unpaid church work.
Splendid people, and the church would collapse tomorrow without them. But an odd choice to catapult into a very top job.
NEW: The Texas Military Department confirms the TX National Guard has seized control of Shelby Park in Eagle Pass (city property where mass illegal crossings are), and is restricting Border Patrol from accessing the area, saying the Feds “perpetuate illegal crossings”. This is the area where Border Patrol has been cutting TX razor wire. Razor wire and fences are now deployed to block the area off from the public and federal government. Attached video is from our crew on the ground this morning as they began blocking it off.
You can expect DOJ to sue Texas over this.
And why does it matter?
...Simon Blagden CBE has been appointed by Digital Secretary Nadine Dorries to chair Building Digital UK (BDUK) - the agency in charge of delivering the government’s roll out of faster broadband and mobile coverage across the UK.
Simon has 30 years’ experience in the IT, telecoms and digital industry. For 14 years he was non-executive Chairman at Fujitsu Telecommunications UK.
The new role will place him at the helm of the executive agency overseeing Project Gigabit, the biggest broadband roll out in British history backed with a record £5 billion to connect hard-to-reach areas across the UK, as well as the £1 billion Shared Rural Network which will dial up 4G phone signal rural areas.
In 2000 he joined Spescom, a specialist business communications technology group based in Johannesburg, as CEO to lead its international telecoms and IT business. He continues to serve as non-executive Chairman of management consultancy Larkspur International. In 2016, he was awarded a CBE for services to the economy.
He will step down as Chair of the Telecoms Supply Chain Diversification (TSCD) Advisory Council, a position he has held since last year. The Advisory Council is a non-statutory advisory committee of independent members set up to provide advice to the government on measures to build a more diverse, innovative and secure telecoms supply chain.
Digital Secretary Nadine Dorries said:
“ BDUK is critical to rolling out the lightning-fast broadband and mobile coverage needed to improve lives and drive productivity across the UK. Simon will be an extremely capable chair of BDUK thanks to his deep understanding of telecoms and wide breadth of experience in the sector...
...The appointment is for a term of four years. The role is for two days per week, remunerated at £80,000 per annum.
The new Chair was appointed through a fair and open process, in line with the methods used for other DCMS Public Appointments...
Have you read the vapid bilge in question?
The idea that it could lead to anything other than a Confederacy of Dunces is risible.
There is no ideology involved.
Time and again, in major scandals, we see the same pattern. Real accountability stops at a certain level. The Chairman resigned, took a golden handshake and moved to a new job on more money.
Woke is now a term of abuse for anything someone doesn’t like.
It doesn't require some convoluted secret plot; it's just the operation of common interests turned toxic.
The Spectator, as ever, skewered Wokeness acutely, here
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-wokeness-really-is-like-fascism/
One Bishop who spoke up for the local church and against mass church closures was castigated in Vennell’s report for an attitude displaying an unwillingness to face “the ‘burdens’ of truth”. In an Orwellian twist, the report suggested that such recalcitrant Bishops would benefit from a “peer review” — which is manager-speak for re-education. It advised they have a “‘leadership contract’ or covenant agreed by senior leaders aligned to shared leadership values and behaviours”. This is the kind of language by which managerialism clasps its bony hands around the throats of the church.
https://unherd.com/2024/01/will-the-church-follow-the-post-office/
The message might change- woke, antiwoke, globalisation, nationalism... but the underlying sin "I'm in charge, do as you are told" is the same.
To understand the dynamics of power in the UK in the 2020s, you have to look at the interplay of mind-boggling global wealth with established power structures.
How about Fukupu? Has a certain ring to it.
For example, many of the senior people in the PO comedy are lawyers and accountants. The lawyers could be struck off. Others bared from being directors of companies. That’s before we get to perjury.
Enforce the laws. Enforce accountability. SOX had a big effect in banking - because senior managers were frightened of prosecution.
I don't think I'm involved with prosecuting CR for some criminal offence. You can argue the pros and cons of how you cater to people's special dietary requirements, but I'm not on this committee either.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZuMSXalq78
The back pages of Private Eye over decades list the many, many times that that the senior people avoid any actual inconvenience from disaster.
Much as directors deciding other directors pay ends up with trebles all round.
https://nypost.com/2024/01/11/news/orthodox-jewish-students-used-migrant-labor-for-secret-tunnel/
They want to lay on 100% vegan food (and nothing else) at all their events and to all their members in the name of 'sustainability'.
Members don't like that choice being taken away from them, and rightly so. So I'm challenging it.
What evidence is there that this conspiratorial group even exists, let alone its primary goal being some mafiosa of mutual aid?
Certainly people at the top in both public and private sector exhibit self interest, but doesn't everybody at every level? That is simply part of being human.
I'd like to have Better People at the top (suburban science masters have a great range of transferable skills, just saying), but people are still people. I suspect the answer lies more in structuring things so that no single role or position is too indispensable and power is more distributed.
Edit: Text changed on account of avoidance of Danny Baker confusion issues.
Once again - it’s not about conspiracy. The Old Ten Thousand wasn’t either - more mutual protection. A way of thinking. “X is an idiot, but he’s a Good Chap and married to my third cousin”
Its when the entire meal selection for everyone has to be vegan, then that's a problem. We had someone here a few weeks ago boasting about how he insisted that the entire buffet somewhere was vegan. That is as disgusting as insisting the entire food selection is meat and meat alone.
It is a non-story with a non-story element to it.
Consider
1) People with aristocratic connections have a strong tendency not to hold other people with aristocratic connections to account. Help them get jobs, ease their way.
2) People with power have a strong tendency not to hold other people with power to account. Help them get jobs, ease their way.
We have moved from 1) to 2)
We need to move, using enforced laws, to move beyond 2) to something better.
Instead of recycling the same failed idiots.
I wouldn't call it a conspiracy more than self-interest and zeitgeist. No one would be banging on about veganism in corporate boardrooms if the purple-haired protesters weren't shouting about it on social media and on our streets.
I had a colleague who was a self-styled 'meatarian'. He would ask for food to come with no green stuff on the plate, and would send it back if it had some. He was, as you might guess, as much of an @ss as the worst vegans.
To be clear: I like meat. But because I live with a pescetarian, I often find myself going a few days without eating any meat because I cook shared meals. And then, at times like Christmas, I realise I've eaten very few greens and almost all scrumptious meat.
My father was a vegetarian for decades, his diet gave him diabetes, which runs in my family. He had to cut out lots of carbs and gave up vegetarianism for his health, and is much healthier now though he still has to live with diabetes.
I'm at risk of diabetes and in trying to improve my health I'm on a carnivore diet (I eat meat, cheese, eggs and dairy) and I've cut out carbs. If any ignoramus ever dares say anything to me about veganism or vegetarianism in a wanting-to-push-it-on-others way then I mention diabetes and that shuts them up almost always. If it doesn't, I'll just ignore them.
Make your own choices, I have no problem with that. Ever dare to try to force your choices on me, and I'll give back as good as I get. I won't force a steak down your throat, don't try and make me eat vegetables.
In some ways, there's nothing really new about NU10K, just a subtle changing in its composition over time. Afterall, the lovely Ms Vennells that we always had round for dinner never claimed to be an IT specialist, did she? How could she have done anything different? She was doing her best, no doubt, and now everyon's being beastly to her even though she's such a sweetheart. And she did put in a good word for you when you needed contact with Tim over that contract when it all went pear-shaped, saved you a few blushes, that. And her friend Liz helped out with that scholarship, too. So would it really hurt to put Paula's name forward for that non-exec post Liz suggested while she gets back on her feet?
Question is, what - if anything - can be done about it? More rigorous review of appointments by more diverse teams? Limits to the numbers of positions people can hold? Bar against being involved in selection panels for people known to you socially? It's a tricky thing because of course this kind of thing happens at all levels - our recent builder's apprentice was his sister's nephew. My (accidental) break into my current field came courtesy of a friend's dad. Who you know is an important part of getting on in life. The key difference is that most of us don't get to fail upwards.
I won't have vegetables on my plate, and I'm living healthier now than I have in years. I have absolutely no objections to others eating vegetables, but I won't.
I typically eat meat 4-5 times a day. Breakfast, lunch, dinner and if I grab a snack it'll be something like a salami. Vegetables I may have once or twice a week and then only in a small portion and restricted low-carb types like mushrooms or avocado.
As ever, the way to fight corruption is through transparency.
If buffets, it's impossible to tell what's in the food in half of the company buffets I've ever been to...
But, yes - no professionalism, no moral compass, no accountability..
The worst sort of people are in charge because we no longer (if we ever did) value professionalism and integrity.
However, if I were one of the captains of industry, or one of the CEOs of the FTSE companies, I'd be delighted if the meme of the NU10K takes hold, as it distracts from where real power and wealth lie. Yes, some of the NU10K are (too) highly paid, but they earn little compared to the FTSE CEOs who last year earned, on average, £3.91m - 118 times the median wage, up from 79 times in 2020.
It's a long time since the capitalist class replaced the aristocracy as the main source of power and wealth in the UK. I see no sign whatsoever of the really, really rich and powerful being replaced by the NU10K, but they would enjoy the header.
Are Mone and Barrowman part of the NU10K? I think not.
I'm not sure you need to go into the merits or demerits of the "common purpose conspiracy" (some say it's true, some say it's tosh) but as far as I know, Britain has *always* been a chumocracy for the right sort of person. The right sort of person just changes over time. A couple of hundred years ago, it would have been someone born to the right family. The Yes Minister era demonstrates another kid of chumocracy in the Civil Service. And now of course we have the undeniable "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" attitude of the present elite - but it hardly feels new.
The question from me is one of continuity of power. If as Leon professes, you need to belong to the church of woke to be in the NU10K, what of previous generations of elites? Are elites still hereditary, changing their values chimerically over the decades in order to remain in power (or for their children to remain in power) or do new groups of elites form over time, displacing the old?
That is likely what you feel, and fair enough. I couldn’t care less, tho - the story is so absurd and surreal it makes me laugh
If money has been donated to pay for food then why the hell should those who eat meat be excluded by your discrimination?
Could/should it be changed a la @Northern_Al's post? Well of course in an ideal world. But we don't leive in an ideal world. Doesn't stop people campaigning to make the world "better" although you then get into the Casino-type situation of what constitutes better.
It's called being human and living in society.
One thing that I've noticed in the civil service over the last 15 years is the number of people prepared to openly slag off Oxbridge. I'm sure plenty of the upper echelons of public life are filled with Oxbridge educated people, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's changing.
The explanation is much simpler, as others have said, but also in these kinds of jobs similar traits and experiences are selected for and so you end up with similar kinds of people. If I want someone to run a big organisation, I would want them to demonstrate that they are able to run a big organisation. Best way of doing that is to get someone who has run a big organisation before. You see this with football managers all the time.
If I ran a company, or government body, or advisory board and was looking for a new job, I wouldn't mention how I was involved in decisions that poisoned a well in the third world, or sent innocent people to jail or wasted millions of pounds, I'd talk about leadership and organisation skills.
Now, it might be that there are better ways to recruit senior management that will result in a more intellectually diverse leadership and (hopefully) result in better run organisations but I'm not sure a conspiracy of upwardly mobile commoners is necessarily the issue.
A lot of people find the lack of protein and taste in vegetarian and vegan food unfulfilling, don't enjoy it and are hungry after. There are also those with medical conditions and on controlled diets who can't get enough sustenance from it.
Diet is a deeply personal choice - and an invasive one - and it's inappropriate for anyone to make the call on what people should or should not ingest into their bodies.
It's fine. I do too sometimes. It reflects well on you to admit this, not badly.
Accept it and move on.
At most it is echoed in the vapid managerialism they espouse. The content to the PowerPoint that everyone sleeps through.
I think your point about the definition of elites moving is exactly right. The UK avoided revolution because the elites allowed a few outsiders in as well as changing over time. 1911 was a peaceful revolution in many ways.
Aberfan showed how the new management became exactly like the old management, very rapidly.
There is nothing to suggest, no estimation, that there are 10,000 such people. That’s just chosen to match the old upper 10k.
The article claims that members of the #NU10K are often paid more than the PM, but that isn’t obviously true for two of the three examples given. Hospital managers in the Letby case will be paid less. A head of children’s services is usually paid less. I think we’re looking at very different levels of seniority and pay in the examples mentioned.
The most conspiratorial claim is that, “They defend their kind to the last”. Again, this is not evidenced, yet it is crucial to the thesis presented. I suspect that people in social services tend to protect their own, and people in hospital management tend to protect their own, etc. — a phenomenon seen in most groups of people! — but I don’t see that there is a conspiracy across the #NU10K whereby senior management in one area are going out of their way to defend senior management in another area.
The result is a catchy hashtag that can be thrown around in most scandals, but it’s about as informative as the Tories’ Blob, the Republicans’ Deep State or even the Illuminati.
Good morning, everyone.
F1: Gunther Steiner departs as Haas team principal.
https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article.breaking-guenther-steiner-leaves-haas-team-principal-ayao-komatsu.EoHIsZH1SbRkJMSKJ8h3I.html
So what type of event is it?
There is a conceited attitude by vegetarians of "I won't eat what you are having but there's no reason you can't eat what I am" - which for too many then becomes a "you should/must eat what I am".
No, lots of people who aren't vegetarian aren't for very good reasons. If you're vegetarian their reasons may not be good reasons for you, but they are for them (ie me), so don't discriminate against them.
Discriminating against meat eaters is every bit as offensive and wrong as discriminating against Catholics/Jews/Muslims or any other belief system is.
Don't discriminate, and if you can't not discriminate, then don't be involved in organising anything.
There's also a difference between paying for food (as a practical but basically secondary aim of running an organization) and making it a primary aim of the organization.
Exactly. You are projecting your values onto others.
This is what I object to.
It really isn't any of your business and it's your not your place to do it.
With I'm sure some crossover.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/jan/11/why-home-office-visa-plans-nail-in-coffin-uk-hospitality
If I eat a meal with over 20 grams of carbs, which is almost any vegetarian meal, that will throw me out of ketosis and damage my diet. Now I appreciate that's extreme, but your attitude is as condescending as me only putting on steaks and chicken wings with nothing else at a work buffet and then saying to any vegetarians that its only one single meal.
The old Stephen Colbert would likewise have been very amusing. Not so much now
Sure, the idea has been around since Adam was a boy, but there is something kind of novel in the type of mutual backscratching we see so much of now. It's kind of classless, and blatant, in a way that earlier manifestations were not. During Boris's reign as PM I noted the use of the term Chumocracy. I seem to hear it less now, although it seems to reflect a similar conspiracy to the New Ten Kay.
I'm happy with either term, and if Malmesbury's word gets into the Oxford English one day, I hope he gives PB due credit for promoting it.
As for what to do about it, I think the best remedy is to publicise the names of those on selection committees. Who at the Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust thought Paula Vennels would be a spiffing appointment in 2019? Who put her name forward for the Cabinet Office in the same year? If we knew that we might have a better idea of who these NU10Ks are, and what damage they and their pals have done elsewhere.
Best we can do at the moment, I think.
Lolz.
There is a great deal of movement between the private and public, as a part of that.
I've not been advised to go on this diet by a doctor, doctors sadly too often stick with the failed five-a-day fruits and vegetables advice. I've done my own research and found this diet, tried it, and its working for me.
So I've chosen to do it, and its important for me medically.
I suspect in fifty years time we'll look back with horror at the advice to cut out fats and the way carbs were heavily pushed on people. There already seems to be a lot of pushback and advances in that research now that backs lower carb as the solution.
Its funny, when I was researching carnivore diets before I formally started it a lot of articles were saying along the lines of "yes it may be good for you, but its meat, so that's a problem". Sorry, my health comes first - I both enjoy meat, and its good for me.
The specific ideas themselves could be anything, certainly the only selection pressure would be that they should avoid causing any difficulty to the ingroup - so I'd guess travel expenses for these committees get a lot less traction than providing vegan food, even though there's a potential climate benefit to reducing travel.
The point is that we need to enforce accountability. And consequences.
Otherwise changing governments will have little effect.
Good to see it flagged up.
'Stephen Mason, a barrister and expert on electronic evidence, said: “It says, for the person who’s saying ‘there’s something wrong with this computer’, that they have to prove it. Even if it’s the person accusing them who has the information.”
Mason, along with eight other legal and computer experts, was invited by the government to suggest an update to the law in 2020, following a high court ruling against the Post Office, but the recommendations they submitted were never applied.'
There’s very few commentators still doing that, perhaps Bill Maher is the closest remaining with a mainstream platform, although there a few in the new media space.
How often are the directors remunerations voted down at AGMs ?
I believe its less than 1% of the time.
Meat is protein. That's where I'm getting my glucose from, but it doesn't spike and crash like it does with a carb-based diet, the body makes it at the rate I need it so my blood sugar is much healthier.