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.
You must work for a complete shit show of an organisation. I've never heard of anything like that. How many of the leaders driving it are actually vegan? Is it driven by fuckwits who just think it's the right on thing to do or do they actually believe it? There should be vegan/vegetarian options in any organisation, but unless you're running an actual vegan event, it's just going to drive a wedge between people.
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.
You must work for a complete shit show of an organisation. I've never heard of anything like that. How many of the leaders driving it are actually vegan? Is it driven by fuckwits who just think it's the right on thing to do or do they actually believe it? There should be vegan/vegetarian options in any organisation, but unless you're running an actual vegan event, it's just going to drive a wedge between people.
One gets the impression that, for many of these people, driving the wedge is the point.
How much better would it be, if the meat-eaters stopped turning up to committee meetings…?
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.
Accept it and move on.
When we have a buffet at work our caterers provide meat, vegetarian and vegan platters and when we have our friends from the Middle East over we offer halal too.
We try to cater to all tastes and not just one.
I’m slightly surprised at the responses you have got here. But the some vegans consider veganism a lifestyle choice. To me it is a type of Cuisine I prepare a few times a month.
I have had some lovely vegan meals especially using the joyous tomato as a base.
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 think Nick's organisation is a bit of an exception. Isn't it an animal welfare charity? Be a bit weird if they were to lay on meat, unless it was specifically sourced from approved high animals welfare farms.
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.
Lettuce, spinach, asparagus, kale, cucumber, all appropriate for a ketogenic diet.
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.
She's been involved with a controversial review church property:
In its pomp the Church of England acquired responsibility for community assets such as allotments. In its death throes it's trying to extend its miserable, useless life by selling them off for development.
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.
And some of the worst of it is probably the people we don't know about, because they just get on with quietly accumulating money and power.
There's always been some sort of mutually protecting elite. Our current one has some distinctive features, though.
One is meritocracy-gone-sour, the sense that I'm at the top as a reward for my brilliance, not as a duty to serve.
Another is that modern communications and data processing mean that the new despots have tools to monitor and control that Napoleon, Hitler and the Stasi could only dream of.
Linked to that, things have scaled bigger. Fewer people at the top deciding stuff, more remote from the worms under the hoe. That will encourage a certain inhumanity.
Is this worse than the old elite? Hard to tell. But it's different, and it has clear downsides
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.
Best we can do at the moment, I think.
Cameron had a chumocracy.
With Boris it was more of a fan club or perhaps some sort of trashy 'reality show' such as Below Decks.
The bastards at the Gazette have put me in Raffles
I know a lot of PBers will be worried about me, but I’m determined to cope. The wifi seems ok so I can at least maintain some kind of rudimentary communication
I misread that as "The wife seems ok.." and was looking forward to hearing her "rudimentary communication" about you.
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.
Stewart was notably the first to break ranks over ‘lab leak’ - back when it was potentially very damaging to career prospects. A good, bold comedian - much missed
I wonder if 'bad apple' executives are deliberately given 'gongs' so that if a scandal becomes public then public anger can be focused on 'strip them of his knighthood' or 'give back the CBE' rather than on anything more substantial.
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.
I think that's right, although sacking them all immediately would be a decent alternative. I'm certainly wondering if we couldn't have a collective prosecution of everyone at the PO who was involved in the conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. Yes, I know we are talking thousands here, but just scoop the whole lot up and let those who were not involved try to prove their innocence, just as the SPMs had to.
Meanwhile the Horizon system at the PO should be abandoned forthwith,and the organisation should go back to pen and paper until Fujitsu can come up with a modern computer system that actually works. If they provide this free, we could promise not to sue the firm out of existence, or lock the CEO up in the Tower in perpetuity.
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.
Thank you for your reply. You haven’t touched on why 10k: have you made an estimate of numbers or did you just pick that because of the reference to the old 10k? You also haven’t touched on the inaccurate pay claims and the very different levels of seniority at play in your examples.
I’m not certain what prosecutions of managers in the Letby case you think are possible.
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.
Lettuce, spinach, asparagus, kale, cucumber, all appropriate for a ketogenic diet.
I know that, but they don't make a meal.
I might have some of them as a side, but most often don't bother because I don't particularly enjoy them anyway (unlike mushrooms and avocados which I do).
It was funny at work three months ago I started in a new department and I was bringing my own packed lunches into work - typically a piece of steak or chicken, with hard boiled eggs or cheese on the side. Got into a discussion with my new colleagues during lunchtime and was asked about the diet as it looked unusual, so explained, got a funny look from my new boss but he didn't say anything. Turns out my new boss is a vegetarian but doesn't try to force it upon others. He mentioned a few days later that he's got an app that he uses for vegetarian recipes for different diets, there's thousands of recipes on his app and he'd selected keto as a diet to have a look and only six of the thousands of meals in the app flagged as suitable for keto.
It was amusing afterwards people would make jokes that the two of us were cancelling each other out with our diets.
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.
And some of the worst of it is probably the people we don't know about, because they just get on with quietly accumulating money and power.
There's always been some sort of mutually protecting elite. Our current one has some distinctive features, though.
One is meritocracy-gone-sour, the sense that I'm at the top as a reward for my brilliance, not as a duty to serve.
Another is that modern communications and data processing mean that the new despots have tools to monitor and control that Napoleon, Hitler and the Stasi could only dream of.
Linked to that, things have scaled bigger. Fewer people at the top deciding stuff, more remote from the worms under the hoe. That will encourage a certain inhumanity.
Is this worse than the old elite? Hard to tell. But it's different, and it has clear downsides
The problem with meritocracy is something that I've mentioned a few times in the past, but mentioning it in this context does point to potential changes that might improve things.
We need to involve people on the decision-making process who aren't selected by the current incumbents of that process, and whose continued involvement wouldn't rely on the incumbents. We need to choose people randomly.
I'm sure that would come with its own issues, problems and limitations, but I think it would deliver at least some people willing to be awkward, wanting to improve things, and who would challenge the stewards of the status quo to up their game.
I can't think of anything else that wouldn't result in being captured by an ingroup.
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.
And some of the worst of it is probably the people we don't know about, because they just get on with quietly accumulating money and power.
There's always been some sort of mutually protecting elite. Our current one has some distinctive features, though.
One is meritocracy-gone-sour, the sense that I'm at the top as a reward for my brilliance, not as a duty to serve.
Another is that modern communications and data processing mean that the new despots have tools to monitor and control that Napoleon, Hitler and the Stasi could only dream of.
Linked to that, things have scaled bigger. Fewer people at the top deciding stuff, more remote from the worms under the hoe. That will encourage a certain inhumanity.
Is this worse than the old elite? Hard to tell. But it's different, and it has clear downsides
The saving grace is that they are too stupid to do a Stalin. Or even Lee Kuan Yew.
The old elite was worse, in aggregate.
The new elite has at least the illusion of diversity. None in thought or action of course. Just bankrupt managerialism of thousand page reports that no one reads.
Time for a Free Market in management (public and private). Fuck up, you are finished. And replaced by someone else. Until we get some winners.
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.
Stewart was notably the first to break ranks over ‘lab leak’ - back when it was potentially very damaging to career prospects. A good, bold comedian - much missed
Yes that was brilliant at the time. He was saying the unsayable, and somehow CBS let it go to air.
I wonder if 'bad apple' executives are deliberately given 'gongs' so that if a scandal becomes public then public anger can be focused on 'strip them of his knighthood' or 'give back the CBE' rather than on anything more substantial.
They shouldn’t be allowed to give back the CBE or equivalent but should be forced by law to carry the initials XCBE/XMBE etc on all their ID, bank cards and so on as a mark of shame. Much more effective when they are tutted at when they pay at the checkout or check in for their flight.
'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.'
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.
And some of the worst of it is probably the people we don't know about, because they just get on with quietly accumulating money and power.
There's always been some sort of mutually protecting elite. Our current one has some distinctive features, though.
One is meritocracy-gone-sour, the sense that I'm at the top as a reward for my brilliance, not as a duty to serve.
Another is that modern communications and data processing mean that the new despots have tools to monitor and control that Napoleon, Hitler and the Stasi could only dream of.
Linked to that, things have scaled bigger. Fewer people at the top deciding stuff, more remote from the worms under the hoe. That will encourage a certain inhumanity.
Is this worse than the old elite? Hard to tell. But it's different, and it has clear downsides
The problem with meritocracy is something that I've mentioned a few times in the past, but mentioning it in this context does point to potential changes that might improve things.
We need to involve people on the decision-making process who aren't selected by the current incumbents of that process, and whose continued involvement wouldn't rely on the incumbents. We need to choose people randomly.
I'm sure that would come with its own issues, problems and limitations, but I think it would deliver at least some people willing to be awkward, wanting to improve things, and who would challenge the stewards of the status quo to up their game.
I can't think of anything else that wouldn't result in being captured by an ingroup.
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.
I think that's right, although sacking them all immediately would be a decent alternative. I'm certainly wondering if we couldn't have a collective prosecution of everyone at the PO who was involved in the conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. Yes, I know we are talking thousands here, but just scoop the whole lot up and let those who were not involved try to prove their innocence, just as the SPMs had to.
Meanwhile the Horizon system at the PO should be abandoned forthwith,and the organisation should go back to pen and paper until Fujitsu can come up with a modern computer system that actually works. If they provide this free, we could promise not to sue the firm out of existence, or lock the CEO up in the Tower in perpetuity.
I am half serious.
IIRC there’s a six year cut-off for invoking breach of contract & once the injured party knows of the breach the clock starts ticking. So unless there’s an indemnity clause in the POs contract with Fujitsu it’s too late to sue them. PO management could have chosen to sue them for their incompetence a decade ago but chose the option that protected their careers instead, as we all now know.
Any Fujitsu employees who committed perjury during the court cases will still be prosecutable though.
She’s sadly gone off the deep end. I really do commend her for wanting to stand up and stick it to the government for its myriad failings, fair play to her for wanting to use her voice. She is now however unquestioningly blinkered to the point that she hates any UK government policy … just ‘because.’
'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.'
This change in the law is essential and urgent.
The heart of this scandal.
It was a shortcut, for convenience. People were tying up court cases with long winded examination of computer systems. There is also the fun point that it is impossible to prove a computer system is correct. Or incorrect.
It was so simple to make Computer = Truth. A stroke of the pen...
This allowed the PO to hide their bullshit for *decades*. Without it, the cases would have begun collapsing many, many years ago. There would have been human suffering, but nothing on this scale.
And with it in place, the same thing could happen tomorrow.
Meanwhile, here's a thing of beauty, and not just because it backs up my theory about the next election. (Ignore Con to Lab swingers, the decisive groups are the 2019 Con voters staying at home and the 2017 stay at homers who hated both Johnson and Corbyn but are likely to back Starmer unenthusiastically but sufficiently);
Where are 2019 voters today? With each square 100k voters in the colour of their 2019 vote (white = too young), this is how polls currently suggest they intend to vote this year.
Am sceptical Labour have gained that many non-voters, but key story is scattering of Tory vote.
Meanwhile, here's a thing of beauty, and not just because it backs up my theory about the next election. (Ignore Con to Lab swingers, the decisive groups are the 2019 Con voters staying at home and the 2017 stay at homers who hated both Johnson and Corbyn but are likely to back Starmer unenthusiastically but sufficiently);
Where are 2019 voters today? With each square 100k voters in the colour of their 2019 vote (white = too young), this is how polls currently suggest they intend to vote this year.
Am sceptical Labour have gained that many non-voters, but key story is scattering of Tory vote.
Interesting header. I think there's probably a few different groups who make up this NU10k tbh - the main goal of each group making sure they appoint their own so the other lot don't hold non execs, renumeration committee positions and so forth.
'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.'
This change in the law is essential and urgent.
The heart of this scandal.
It was a shortcut, for convenience. People were tying up court cases with long winded examination of computer systems. There is also the fun point that it is impossible to prove a computer system is correct. Or incorrect.
It was so simple to make Computer = Truth. A stroke of the pen...
This allowed the PO to hide their bullshit for *decades*. Without it, the cases would have begun collapsing many, many years ago. There would have been human suffering, but nothing on this scale.
And with it in place, the same thing could happen tomorrow.
The same thing could be happening *right now*.
The same thing is happening right now. In one of my headers on this I pointed out that dodgy computer evidence was at the heart of prosecutions of some nurses in Wales. The prosecutions collapsed, fortunately.
Meanwhile, here's a thing of beauty, and not just because it backs up my theory about the next election. (Ignore Con to Lab swingers, the decisive groups are the 2019 Con voters staying at home and the 2017 stay at homers who hated both Johnson and Corbyn but are likely to back Starmer unenthusiastically but sufficiently);
Where are 2019 voters today? With each square 100k voters in the colour of their 2019 vote (white = too young), this is how polls currently suggest they intend to vote this year.
Am sceptical Labour have gained that many non-voters, but key story is scattering of Tory vote.
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.
I think that's right, although sacking them all immediately would be a decent alternative. I'm certainly wondering if we couldn't have a collective prosecution of everyone at the PO who was involved in the conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. Yes, I know we are talking thousands here, but just scoop the whole lot up and let those who were not involved try to prove their innocence, just as the SPMs had to.
Meanwhile the Horizon system at the PO should be abandoned forthwith,and the organisation should go back to pen and paper until Fujitsu can come up with a modern computer system that actually works. If they provide this free, we could promise not to sue the firm out of existence, or lock the CEO up in the Tower in perpetuity.
I am half serious.
IIRC there’s a six year cut-off for invoking breach of contract & once the injured party knows of the breach the clock starts ticking. So unless there’s an indemnity clause in the POs contract with Fujitsu it’s too late to sue them. PO management could have chosen to sue them for their incompetence a decade ago but chose the option that protected their careers instead, as we all now know.
Any Fujitsu employees who committed perjury during the court cases will still be prosecutable though.
My understanding is that the government did contemplate suing Fujitsu at a much earlier stage but declined to do so, in part because of the embarrassing g evidence which would have come out about how the Post Office and others behaved during the procurement and commissioning process.
Meanwhile, here's a thing of beauty, and not just because it backs up my theory about the next election. (Ignore Con to Lab swingers, the decisive groups are the 2019 Con voters staying at home and the 2017 stay at homers who hated both Johnson and Corbyn but are likely to back Starmer unenthusiastically but sufficiently);
Where are 2019 voters today? With each square 100k voters in the colour of their 2019 vote (white = too young), this is how polls currently suggest they intend to vote this year.
Am sceptical Labour have gained that many non-voters, but key story is scattering of Tory vote.
The surprising thing, to me, is how small the Conservative stay-at-home group appears.
A lot comes down to what the 2019 Conservative, now Don't Know group do. How many are shy Conservatives who will eventually turn out and vote, how many will decide on the day to see what's on ITV3 instead?
That's the difference between a defeat and a rout, and probably not easy to probe or model. (As late as May 1 1997, Conservatives were pinning hopes on a similar group and we all know how that turned out.)
Meanwhile, here's a thing of beauty, and not just because it backs up my theory about the next election. (Ignore Con to Lab swingers, the decisive groups are the 2019 Con voters staying at home and the 2017 stay at homers who hated both Johnson and Corbyn but are likely to back Starmer unenthusiastically but sufficiently);
Where are 2019 voters today? With each square 100k voters in the colour of their 2019 vote (white = too young), this is how polls currently suggest they intend to vote this year.
Am sceptical Labour have gained that many non-voters, but key story is scattering of Tory vote.
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.
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 think the elites at present absolutely all subscribe to "HR speak" even if they're not "woke" in a political sense. It is the language of EDI, which has some crossovers but is more definable than "woke". The irony is of course they are promoting a system of "inclusivity" whilst simultaneously remaining exclusive.
Continuity of power interests me greatly. In the old days it was easy. Your son inherited the title, the country house, and the seat in the Lords.
Even in the greater part of the 20th century it was relatively easy to pass on your "membership" to the club. Send the kids to the right boarding school, get them an internship with one of your mates, make sure they say "loo" and never "toilet" and so on.
But now. It's harder to define. How do you become part of the NU10K, and more importantly, how do you ensure your kids stay part of the elite, privileged class? What are the things you need to pass down or instruct your children in, in order to remain one of the elites? There's a psychologist named Rob Henderson who has written some interesting stuff in that area about "luxury beliefs" building on Turchin's "overproduction of elites" theory. But I don't think it's been adequately defined.
The aim of all elites is to stay in power, and ultimately, that means becoming a hereditary power. You don't need to be Kim Jong Un to know this, we've seen it all the time in our own society, including sending your kids to the public school you went to, etc, as I've described above.
So my questions are, how do you become part of the NU10K, and, once you are part of it, how do you pass on that privilege to your children, especially if, as we have discussed, what constitutes the NU10K is constantly shifting?
Or is it the case that the NU10K is a completely new class, a mix of some of the old elites plus those risen from the ranks, and this cycle just repeats itself every generation or so, as the definition, composition and attitudes that make up the "NU10K" changes over time?
On topic. I don't like the NU10K label because there's nothing new about the well-connected 'failing upwards' and there is no specific group of such people to put a number on. That said, I agree with Malmesbury's point about the bane of the ostensibly plausible generalist. They can be bad news.
Today's Post Office witness is one of the external lawyers who is being asked about why the PostOffice seems unable to disclose what it is repeatedly asked for, accurately or on time.
Meanwhile, here's a thing of beauty, and not just because it backs up my theory about the next election. (Ignore Con to Lab swingers, the decisive groups are the 2019 Con voters staying at home and the 2017 stay at homers who hated both Johnson and Corbyn but are likely to back Starmer unenthusiastically but sufficiently);
Where are 2019 voters today? With each square 100k voters in the colour of their 2019 vote (white = too young), this is how polls currently suggest they intend to vote this year.
Am sceptical Labour have gained that many non-voters, but key story is scattering of Tory vote.
Meanwhile, here's a thing of beauty, and not just because it backs up my theory about the next election. (Ignore Con to Lab swingers, the decisive groups are the 2019 Con voters staying at home and the 2017 stay at homers who hated both Johnson and Corbyn but are likely to back Starmer unenthusiastically but sufficiently);
Where are 2019 voters today? With each square 100k voters in the colour of their 2019 vote (white = too young), this is how polls currently suggest they intend to vote this year.
Am sceptical Labour have gained that many non-voters, but key story is scattering of Tory vote.
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.
I disagree. It's a very good article. Sure, it doesn't cover everything about power in the UK, and the influence of extremely wealthy foreigners (whether resident or just with interests in the UK), is an important aspect. But it's also a different aspect; we don't have to take a global perspective every time.
And it's not a conspiracy to see the pattern of mutual backscratching across independent money, business, quangos, charities and the NED network. To give another egregious example, note how Colin Graves - a man who should have been banned for life from cricket - is back in charge at Yorkshire CCC.
As Malmesbury rightly says, this class isn't quite as identifiable as 100 (or 150) years ago but it's not that secret either.
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...
I wish I had read that. Thank you for letting me know of its existence.
Today's Post Office witness is one of the external lawyers who is being asked about why the PostOffice seems unable to disclose what it is repeatedly asked for, accurately or on time.
'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.'
This change in the law is essential and urgent.
The heart of this scandal.
It was a shortcut, for convenience. People were tying up court cases with long winded examination of computer systems. There is also the fun point that it is impossible to prove a computer system is correct. Or incorrect.
It was so simple to make Computer = Truth. A stroke of the pen...
This allowed the PO to hide their bullshit for *decades*. Without it, the cases would have begun collapsing many, many years ago. There would have been human suffering, but nothing on this scale.
And with it in place, the same thing could happen tomorrow.
The same thing could be happening *right now*.
The same thing is happening right now. In one of my headers on this I pointed out that dodgy computer evidence was at the heart of prosecutions of some nurses in Wales. The prosecutions collapsed, fortunately.
Was this the thing where clocking in/out systems made it look like specific nurses were on the ward when patients died, but further evidence revealed that it was routine for nurses to arrive early and leave after clocking in & out and so there was no actual pattern at all - it was a false signal in the data, where the data didn’t actually reflect reality.
'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.'
This change in the law is essential and urgent.
The heart of this scandal.
It was a shortcut, for convenience. People were tying up court cases with long winded examination of computer systems. There is also the fun point that it is impossible to prove a computer system is correct. Or incorrect.
It was so simple to make Computer = Truth. A stroke of the pen...
This allowed the PO to hide their bullshit for *decades*. Without it, the cases would have begun collapsing many, many years ago. There would have been human suffering, but nothing on this scale.
And with it in place, the same thing could happen tomorrow.
The same thing could be happening *right now*.
The same thing is happening right now. In one of my headers on this I pointed out that dodgy computer evidence was at the heart of prosecutions of some nurses in Wales. The prosecutions collapsed, fortunately.
Was this the thing where clocking in/out systems made it look like specific nurses were on the ward when patients died, but further evidence revealed that it was routine for nurses to arrive early and leave after clocking in & out and so there was no actual pattern at all - it was a false signal in the data, where the data didn’t actually reflect reality.
It is depressing how many people can progress in life without understanding either the concept of confounding variables, or that coincidences do happen.
Trawl any amount of data and you'll find patterns there, that are not remotely causative. Life is full of random patterns and relative patterns.
Meanwhile, here's a thing of beauty, and not just because it backs up my theory about the next election. (Ignore Con to Lab swingers, the decisive groups are the 2019 Con voters staying at home and the 2017 stay at homers who hated both Johnson and Corbyn but are likely to back Starmer unenthusiastically but sufficiently);
Where are 2019 voters today? With each square 100k voters in the colour of their 2019 vote (white = too young), this is how polls currently suggest they intend to vote this year.
Am sceptical Labour have gained that many non-voters, but key story is scattering of Tory vote.
The surprising thing, to me, is how small the Conservative stay-at-home group appears.
Tory:Labour voters dying at a ratio of 4:1 is fairly striking, obviously from the ages knew it would be that direction but I instincitively would have assumed maybe 2 or 3 to 1. Swingback is going to be tough in that scenario and quite different to previous elections where those ratios were closer together.
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.
93% don't go to private schools, and they usually don't get an opportunity to get to the top because of that accident.
'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.'
This change in the law is essential and urgent.
The heart of this scandal.
It was a shortcut, for convenience. People were tying up court cases with long winded examination of computer systems. There is also the fun point that it is impossible to prove a computer system is correct. Or incorrect.
It was so simple to make Computer = Truth. A stroke of the pen...
This allowed the PO to hide their bullshit for *decades*. Without it, the cases would have begun collapsing many, many years ago. There would have been human suffering, but nothing on this scale.
And with it in place, the same thing could happen tomorrow.
The same thing could be happening *right now*.
The same thing is happening right now. In one of my headers on this I pointed out that dodgy computer evidence was at the heart of prosecutions of some nurses in Wales. The prosecutions collapsed, fortunately.
Was this the thing where clocking in/out systems made it look like specific nurses were on the ward when patients died, but further evidence revealed that it was routine for nurses to arrive early and leave after clocking in & out and so there was no actual pattern at all - it was a false signal in the data, where the data didn’t actually reflect reality.
It is depressing how many people can progress in life without understanding either the concept of confounding variables, or that coincidences do happen.
Trawl any amount of data and you'll find patterns there, that are not remotely causative. Life is full of random patterns and relative patterns.
Drownings in the sea are still massively correlated with ice cream van sales.
Amanda Spielman. Crashed and burned at OFQUAL, overseeing catastrophic changes to exams to somehow make them worse, went to OFSTED where on her own admission things were so bad it ended completely discredited.
Susan Acland-Hood - chief executive of Courts and Probation, where she oversaw the collapse of the probation service. Then to education where between boozy parties, bungled lockdown regulations, the impending scandal at Oak National Academy, the errors over school budgets and schools literally falling down around us she has wrecked what was left of the school system too.
Sam Freedman - oversaw the academies programme, went to Teach First when that had to be paused due to innumerable scandals, lasted less than two years there (even less long than Rory Gribbell) and now lectures on public policy at the IfG telling other people how to get it right.
Dominic Cummings - a finger in all these pies, where he earned a reputation for mindless arrogance and total incompetence, ran one of the Brexit campaigns and then made chief of staff at No. 10 where following the catastrophic decision to scrap May's deal and sign one much more favourable to the EU he oversaw the early stages of Covid including the disastrous drinking culture inside government.
And that's just education, and without even thinking hard.
But it's the politicians who appointed these no marks.
I was pondering Starmer's tooth brushing intervention and my first impression was the banal absurdity of supervised oral hygiene for children in schools. Then I read that dental interventions are the main driver for child hospital admissions in the UK.
I cast my mind back to the dreaded moment when a cheery young dentist would tow the Worcestershire CC dental caravan into the school car park for a week of fillings and milk teeth extractions. Imagine the long term saving to the NHS for two salaries and a mobile dental surgery in each education authority.
We had so much as children in the 1970s and then someone in Government decided we couldn't afford this and we couldn't afford that (making no consideration for the costs down the line). The nanny state in the context of children may have been Communism, but sometimes it worked.
It wasn't the NU10K that broke our nation, and if they did,it was at the behest of their political masters.
I only partially agree. Ministers clearly have sometimes put part of their chumocracy forward to unsuitable roles, or after earlier failures elsewhere, but (particularly recently) the speed at which ministers have moved jobs means they've had to rely on civil servants to advise them of potential appointees - and the civil servants will have had more contact with senior bods in the field, and are themselves only waiting retirement to move into the NU10K Proper themselves. While ministers should do a minimum of independent due diligence checking themselves, they should be able to rely on officials for the bulk of it.
🌹Labour 42% (-) 🌳Conservatives 27% (-1) 🔶Liberal Democrats 10% (-1) 🟣Reform UK 9% (+1) 💚Greens 8% (+2) Labour lead of 15 Field work 9/1-11/1
Bad news for Davey, in this first poll with the PO Scandal leading the news.
"People think Ed Davey should resign 42%-19% - again it isn't unusual for people to say a politician (even fictional ones should resign). But more worryingly for the Lib Dem leader his own supporters are split 28%-33% on the question of if he should go."
One thing I like of this pollster is how they break down by generation, and also try to squeeze the initial "Don't Knows" into a choice.
Lab ahead with all age groups under 75, even boomers. If forced to choose then DKs break fairly evenly, but narrowly for Labour.
Strewth. If don't knows are breaking for Labour (even slightly) then that's devastating. If the crossover age is 75+ then...well.
Yeah, but, no. All the don’t knows breaking Tory might vote on the day, whilst all those favouring Labour stay at home, might not remotely be even split from each.
Something has happened reasonably recently for large number of voters to decide conclusively against Tories. I think it might have been Conference Season. I think Radical Rishi Unleashed & The Great HS2 Surrender has gone down badly with voters. Conservative drift downward seems to stem from that week?
The HS2 decision really fucked the infrastructure industry in this country and has caused chaos, quite aside from it being economically devastating.
I'm still furious about it. And the idea that Sunak thought this was evidence of him taking great decisions for the long-term that would appeal to voters.
I mean, WTF?
There’s a reputational damage to our country from this isn’t there, the rest of the world watching and thinking - you can’t do it? Imagine HS2 as a war, and you lost it, everyone sees you as weak. But it is a war, a huge commercial war out there globally, where we, global Britain, are seen not to be able to do stuff other countries have mastered before Breakfast, or at least Elevenses. I don’t think Sunak and those around him have quite grasped all the angles of what they’ve done.
Is it other countries focus more on cheaper tunnelling, being cheaper than buying up all the land and building on it?
'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.'
Can we come up with a way in which that's Starmer's fault, too ?
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.
I disagree. It's a very good article. Sure, it doesn't cover everything about power in the UK, and the influence of extremely wealthy foreigners (whether resident or just with interests in the UK), is an important aspect. But it's also a different aspect; we don't have to take a global perspective every time.
And it's not a conspiracy to see the pattern of mutual backscratching across independent money, business, quangos, charities and the NED network. To give another egregious example, note how Colin Graves - a man who should have been banned for life from cricket - is back in charge at Yorkshire CCC.
As Malmesbury rightly says, this class isn't quite as identifiable as 100 (or 150) years ago but it's not that secret either.
And its the true old school tie network now, which is actually independent of what school people went to.
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.
I disagree. It's a very good article. Sure, it doesn't cover everything about power in the UK, and the influence of extremely wealthy foreigners (whether resident or just with interests in the UK), is an important aspect. But it's also a different aspect; we don't have to take a global perspective every time.
And it's not a conspiracy to see the pattern of mutual backscratching across independent money, business, quangos, charities and the NED network. To give another egregious example, note how Colin Graves - a man who should have been banned for life from cricket - is back in charge at Yorkshire CCC.
As Malmesbury rightly says, this class isn't quite as identifiable as 100 (or 150) years ago but it's not that secret either.
Also, and it is really important to note this: some conspiracy theories TURN OUT TO BE TRUE
A pedophile private island visited by US presidents, famous actors, notable billionaires and British royals? Er, true
A pandemic which killed 20m people and a bunch of scientists and bureaucrats conspired to stop us talking about where it came from? Like the nearby lab researching pandemics? Also true
Jews building tunnels under New York…
I’ll stop there. The point is made
That said I don’t think NU10K even qualifies as a conspiracy theory. It’s just an observation that we have a new managerial elite which evinces SOME uncanny parallels to the British nobility of the late 18th century. But the comparison is not exact
🌹Labour 42% (-) 🌳Conservatives 27% (-1) 🔶Liberal Democrats 10% (-1) 🟣Reform UK 9% (+1) 💚Greens 8% (+2) Labour lead of 15 Field work 9/1-11/1
Bad news for Davey, in this first poll with the PO Scandal leading the news.
"People think Ed Davey should resign 42%-19% - again it isn't unusual for people to say a politician (even fictional ones should resign). But more worryingly for the Lib Dem leader his own supporters are split 28%-33% on the question of if he should go."
One thing I like of this pollster is how they break down by generation, and also try to squeeze the initial "Don't Knows" into a choice.
Lab ahead with all age groups under 75, even boomers. If forced to choose then DKs break fairly evenly, but narrowly for Labour.
Strewth. If don't knows are breaking for Labour (even slightly) then that's devastating. If the crossover age is 75+ then...well.
Yeah, but, no. All the don’t knows breaking Tory might vote on the day, whilst all those favouring Labour stay at home, might not remotely be even split from each.
Something has happened reasonably recently for large number of voters to decide conclusively against Tories. I think it might have been Conference Season. I think Radical Rishi Unleashed & The Great HS2 Surrender has gone down badly with voters. Conservative drift downward seems to stem from that week?
The HS2 decision really fucked the infrastructure industry in this country and has caused chaos, quite aside from it being economically devastating.
I'm still furious about it. And the idea that Sunak thought this was evidence of him taking great decisions for the long-term that would appeal to voters.
I mean, WTF?
There’s a reputational damage to our country from this isn’t there, the rest of the world watching and thinking - you can’t do it? Imagine HS2 as a war, and you lost it, everyone sees you as weak. But it is a war, a huge commercial war out there globally, where we, global Britain, are seen not to be able to do stuff other countries have mastered before Breakfast, or at least Elevenses. I don’t think Sunak and those around him have quite grasped all the angles of what they’ve done.
Is it other countries focus more on cheaper tunnelling, being cheaper than buying up all the land and building on it?
It's a sign of how absurdly weak SKS is that he's taken the easy get out card of not pledging to reverse it.
🌹Labour 42% (-) 🌳Conservatives 27% (-1) 🔶Liberal Democrats 10% (-1) 🟣Reform UK 9% (+1) 💚Greens 8% (+2) Labour lead of 15 Field work 9/1-11/1
Bad news for Davey, in this first poll with the PO Scandal leading the news.
"People think Ed Davey should resign 42%-19% - again it isn't unusual for people to say a politician (even fictional ones should resign). But more worryingly for the Lib Dem leader his own supporters are split 28%-33% on the question of if he should go."
One thing I like of this pollster is how they break down by generation, and also try to squeeze the initial "Don't Knows" into a choice.
Lab ahead with all age groups under 75, even boomers. If forced to choose then DKs break fairly evenly, but narrowly for Labour.
Strewth. If don't knows are breaking for Labour (even slightly) then that's devastating. If the crossover age is 75+ then...well.
Yeah, but, no. All the don’t knows breaking Tory might vote on the day, whilst all those favouring Labour stay at home, might not remotely be even split from each.
Something has happened reasonably recently for large number of voters to decide conclusively against Tories. I think it might have been Conference Season. I think Radical Rishi Unleashed & The Great HS2 Surrender has gone down badly with voters. Conservative drift downward seems to stem from that week?
The HS2 decision really fucked the infrastructure industry in this country and has caused chaos, quite aside from it being economically devastating.
I'm still furious about it. And the idea that Sunak thought this was evidence of him taking great decisions for the long-term that would appeal to voters.
I mean, WTF?
There’s a reputational damage to our country from this isn’t there, the rest of the world watching and thinking - you can’t do it? Imagine HS2 as a war, and you lost it, everyone sees you as weak. But it is a war, a huge commercial war out there globally, where we, global Britain, are seen not to be able to do stuff other countries have mastered before Breakfast, or at least Elevenses. I don’t think Sunak and those around him have quite grasped all the angles of what they’ve done.
Is it other countries focus more on cheaper tunnelling, being cheaper than buying up all the land and building on it?
Meanwhile, here's a thing of beauty, and not just because it backs up my theory about the next election. (Ignore Con to Lab swingers, the decisive groups are the 2019 Con voters staying at home and the 2017 stay at homers who hated both Johnson and Corbyn but are likely to back Starmer unenthusiastically but sufficiently);
Where are 2019 voters today? With each square 100k voters in the colour of their 2019 vote (white = too young), this is how polls currently suggest they intend to vote this year.
Am sceptical Labour have gained that many non-voters, but key story is scattering of Tory vote.
The surprising thing, to me, is how small the Conservative stay-at-home group appears.
Tory:Labour voters dying at a ratio of 4:1 is fairly striking, obviously from the ages knew it would be that direction but I instincitively would have assumed maybe 2 or 3 to 1. Swingback is going to be tough in that scenario and quite different to previous elections where those ratios were closer together.
Swingback is indeed going to be tough in that scenario! You can't change your mind when you're dead.
Meanwhile, here's a thing of beauty, and not just because it backs up my theory about the next election. (Ignore Con to Lab swingers, the decisive groups are the 2019 Con voters staying at home and the 2017 stay at homers who hated both Johnson and Corbyn but are likely to back Starmer unenthusiastically but sufficiently);
Where are 2019 voters today? With each square 100k voters in the colour of their 2019 vote (white = too young), this is how polls currently suggest they intend to vote this year.
Am sceptical Labour have gained that many non-voters, but key story is scattering of Tory vote.
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.
93% don't go to private schools, and they usually don't get an opportunity to get to the top because of that accident.
I think that's a myth.
There are plenty at the top who aren't from private schools. It might be that 30-40% are but the majority are not.
The key thing is they all operate as a club once they're in.
Amanda Spielman. Crashed and burned at OFQUAL, overseeing catastrophic changes to exams to somehow make them worse, went to OFSTED where on her own admission things were so bad it ended completely discredited.
Susan Acland-Hood - chief executive of Courts and Probation, where she oversaw the collapse of the probation service. Then to education where between boozy parties, bungled lockdown regulations, the impending scandal at Oak National Academy, the errors over school budgets and schools literally falling down around us she has wrecked what was left of the school system too.
Sam Freedman - oversaw the academies programme, went to Teach First when that had to be paused due to innumerable scandals, lasted less than two years there (even less long than Rory Gribbell) and now lectures on public policy at the IfG telling other people how to get it right.
Dominic Cummings - a finger in all these pies, where he earned a reputation for mindless arrogance and total incompetence, ran one of the Brexit campaigns and then made chief of staff at No. 10 where following the catastrophic decision to scrap May's deal and sign one much more favourable to the EU he oversaw the early stages of Covid including the disastrous drinking culture inside government.
And that's just education, and without even thinking hard.
But it's the politicians who appointed these no marks.
I was pondering Starmer's tooth brushing intervention and my first impression was the banal absurdity of supervised oral hygiene for children in schools. Then I read that dental interventions are the main driver for child hospital admissions in the UK.
I cast my mind back to the dreaded moment when a cheery young dentist would tow the Worcestershire CC dental caravan into the school car park for a week of fillings and milk teeth extractions. Imagine the long term saving to the NHS for two salaries and a mobile dental surgery in each education authority.
We had so much as children in the 1970s and then someone in Government decided we couldn't afford this and we couldn't afford that (making no consideration for the costs down the line). The nanny state in the context of children may have been Communism, but sometimes it worked.
It wasn't the NU10K that broke our nation, and if they did,it was at the behest of their political masters.
I only partially agree. Ministers clearly have sometimes put part of their chumocracy forward to unsuitable roles, or after earlier failures elsewhere, but (particularly recently) the speed at which ministers have moved jobs means they've had to rely on civil servants to advise them of potential appointees - and the civil servants will have had more contact with senior bods in the field, and are themselves only waiting retirement to move into the NU10K Proper themselves. While ministers should do a minimum of independent due diligence checking themselves, they should be able to rely on officials for the bulk of it.
We’ve talked lately about the problems with ministers moving jobs frequently, but civil servants also move jobs frequently and governments of every flavour love re-organisations. That means there can be little expert knowledge in the system, on either side.
Without that expert knowledge, it becomes easier to fall back on valuing generic managerial skills.
'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.'
This change in the law is essential and urgent.
The heart of this scandal.
It was a shortcut, for convenience. People were tying up court cases with long winded examination of computer systems. There is also the fun point that it is impossible to prove a computer system is correct. Or incorrect.
It was so simple to make Computer = Truth. A stroke of the pen...
This allowed the PO to hide their bullshit for *decades*. Without it, the cases would have begun collapsing many, many years ago. There would have been human suffering, but nothing on this scale.
And with it in place, the same thing could happen tomorrow.
The same thing could be happening *right now*.
The same thing is happening right now. In one of my headers on this I pointed out that dodgy computer evidence was at the heart of prosecutions of some nurses in Wales. The prosecutions collapsed, fortunately.
The PO case is particularly Kafkaesque, since they were investigator and prosecutor in their own interest, and therefore used the computer evidence rule as a shield for their lies. At least in the normal course of events, the CPS doesn't have quite the same direct interest in using it corruptly to obfuscate exculpatory evidence.
But you're absolutely correct in arguing the rule should go. It is manifestly against the interests of justice.
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.
93% don't go to private schools, and they usually don't get an opportunity to get to the top because of that accident.
I think that's a myth.
There are plenty at the top who aren't from private schools. It might be that 30-40% are but the majority are not.
The key thing is they all operate as a club once they're in.
The problem is the "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" mentality.
It was parodied well with Sir Humphrey decades ago, and nothing has changed since.
The terminology of "NU10K" may be new, but the concept is not remotely new, and it is absolutely correct.
🌹Labour 42% (-) 🌳Conservatives 27% (-1) 🔶Liberal Democrats 10% (-1) 🟣Reform UK 9% (+1) 💚Greens 8% (+2) Labour lead of 15 Field work 9/1-11/1
Bad news for Davey, in this first poll with the PO Scandal leading the news.
"People think Ed Davey should resign 42%-19% - again it isn't unusual for people to say a politician (even fictional ones should resign). But more worryingly for the Lib Dem leader his own supporters are split 28%-33% on the question of if he should go."
One thing I like of this pollster is how they break down by generation, and also try to squeeze the initial "Don't Knows" into a choice.
Lab ahead with all age groups under 75, even boomers. If forced to choose then DKs break fairly evenly, but narrowly for Labour.
Strewth. If don't knows are breaking for Labour (even slightly) then that's devastating. If the crossover age is 75+ then...well.
Yeah, but, no. All the don’t knows breaking Tory might vote on the day, whilst all those favouring Labour stay at home, might not remotely be even split from each.
Something has happened reasonably recently for large number of voters to decide conclusively against Tories. I think it might have been Conference Season. I think Radical Rishi Unleashed & The Great HS2 Surrender has gone down badly with voters. Conservative drift downward seems to stem from that week?
The HS2 decision really fucked the infrastructure industry in this country and has caused chaos, quite aside from it being economically devastating.
I'm still furious about it. And the idea that Sunak thought this was evidence of him taking great decisions for the long-term that would appeal to voters.
I mean, WTF?
There’s a reputational damage to our country from this isn’t there, the rest of the world watching and thinking - you can’t do it? Imagine HS2 as a war, and you lost it, everyone sees you as weak. But it is a war, a huge commercial war out there globally, where we, global Britain, are seen not to be able to do stuff other countries have mastered before Breakfast, or at least Elevenses. I don’t think Sunak and those around him have quite grasped all the angles of what they’ve done.
Is it other countries focus more on cheaper tunnelling, being cheaper than buying up all the land and building on it?
I also explained the other day how we could have done this on the cheap without anyone noticing
LNER trains go really fast. 125mph. And they look like high speed trains. Very sleek. 125mph is absolutely fast enough for a country as compact as Britain. We don’t need “350kph”
We should have just built a load of those sleek 125mph trains, labelled them High Speed, job done for about three pounds and tuppence
Meanwhile, here's a thing of beauty, and not just because it backs up my theory about the next election. (Ignore Con to Lab swingers, the decisive groups are the 2019 Con voters staying at home and the 2017 stay at homers who hated both Johnson and Corbyn but are likely to back Starmer unenthusiastically but sufficiently);
Where are 2019 voters today? With each square 100k voters in the colour of their 2019 vote (white = too young), this is how polls currently suggest they intend to vote this year.
Am sceptical Labour have gained that many non-voters, but key story is scattering of Tory vote.
The surprising thing, to me, is how small the Conservative stay-at-home group appears.
Tory:Labour voters dying at a ratio of 4:1 is fairly striking, obviously from the ages knew it would be that direction but I instincitively would have assumed maybe 2 or 3 to 1. Swingback is going to be tough in that scenario and quite different to previous elections where those ratios were closer together.
It's where the Red Wall Theory of appealing to the retired, wherever they are, has a big risk. The voting split amongst the 65+ in 2019 was something like 65:15, and so a fair chunk of Johnson's majority was always going to have gone to that fortunate place where there aren't General Elections by now.
🌹Labour 42% (-) 🌳Conservatives 27% (-1) 🔶Liberal Democrats 10% (-1) 🟣Reform UK 9% (+1) 💚Greens 8% (+2) Labour lead of 15 Field work 9/1-11/1
Bad news for Davey, in this first poll with the PO Scandal leading the news.
"People think Ed Davey should resign 42%-19% - again it isn't unusual for people to say a politician (even fictional ones should resign). But more worryingly for the Lib Dem leader his own supporters are split 28%-33% on the question of if he should go."
One thing I like of this pollster is how they break down by generation, and also try to squeeze the initial "Don't Knows" into a choice.
Lab ahead with all age groups under 75, even boomers. If forced to choose then DKs break fairly evenly, but narrowly for Labour.
Strewth. If don't knows are breaking for Labour (even slightly) then that's devastating. If the crossover age is 75+ then...well.
Yeah, but, no. All the don’t knows breaking Tory might vote on the day, whilst all those favouring Labour stay at home, might not remotely be even split from each.
Something has happened reasonably recently for large number of voters to decide conclusively against Tories. I think it might have been Conference Season. I think Radical Rishi Unleashed & The Great HS2 Surrender has gone down badly with voters. Conservative drift downward seems to stem from that week?
The HS2 decision really fucked the infrastructure industry in this country and has caused chaos, quite aside from it being economically devastating.
I'm still furious about it. And the idea that Sunak thought this was evidence of him taking great decisions for the long-term that would appeal to voters.
I mean, WTF?
There’s a reputational damage to our country from this isn’t there, the rest of the world watching and thinking - you can’t do it? Imagine HS2 as a war, and you lost it, everyone sees you as weak. But it is a war, a huge commercial war out there globally, where we, global Britain, are seen not to be able to do stuff other countries have mastered before Breakfast, or at least Elevenses. I don’t think Sunak and those around him have quite grasped all the angles of what they’ve done.
Is it other countries focus more on cheaper tunnelling, being cheaper than buying up all the land and building on it?
It's a sign of how absurdly weak SKS is that he's taken the easy get out card of not pledging to reverse it.
He'll be in office in 11 months and easily could.
Committing to HS2 means committing to increasing taxes given the way all the pennies saved has been committed to fixing pot holes.
And the last thing Labour needs to do is give the Tories an attack line because without it all the Tories have is vindictiveness and pain.
A traditional establishment background, well-connected, Eton, tax barrister, married to a judge etc. A bit naughty with his expenses. Spouted the MoD party line over the Mull of Kintyre helicopter crash.
But.
He had the necessary character traits which are so often missing: he listened, he changed his mind when he learnt new facts, he was curious, he actually learnt the lessons from that helicopter crash ie that computers are not infallible and organisations can become stubbornly attached to a view in the face of reality, and he was determined.
And humble - he says that his efforts failed. Which they did though I think he underestimates the value that having any MPs listen to their case and try to do something was to the subpostmasters.
It is values and character and judgment (asking ourselves not whether we "can" do something but whether we "should") which matter above everything else. This is what we need to teach our children. It is what we need to reward and promote. It is what we need to praise.
Until we start doing that instead rewarding those with the slopiest of shoulders, those whose only skill is to network, lick arse and blame others, those who never take responsibility, those who are only good at spouting the latest "received opinion", however stupid or damaging, rather than thinking for themselves, those who think the appearance of things is more important than the substance, we will get nowhere.
For someone who used to be famous for using her brain, that skill appears to have deserted her in recent years.
She was good at very fast arithmetic. That does not mean she is or would be sensible or wise about anything else.
True. She’d likely oppose supporting Ukraine if Russia invaded today.
She appears by default to oppose anything the government does, so probably.
Then again, when Yokes appeared yesterday, Yokes didn’t think much of this action either, on the basis - correct me if I got it wrong Yokes - it doesn’t actually change anything? They have been sticking their tongue out at Biden and Sunak, and after last night’s Buffalo Bills Wild West Show, they will still be sticking their tongue out at Biden and Sunak.
I’m not an expert, but experts do seem to be saying it will take a much bigger prolonged riskier action to actually stop them sticking their tongue out.
The hoo-tee have won their war, so their bloods all up over that and their cousins in Gaza, so they are not going to listen to us or let us buy them off, especially as we were trying to stop them winning their war so they absolutely feel justified in sticking their tongue out at us and enjoying themselves, so it’s a question what measures actually stop it, rather than action simply to be seen doing something when your superpowers and can’t even stop hoo-tee sticking their tongue out at you.
🌹Labour 42% (-) 🌳Conservatives 27% (-1) 🔶Liberal Democrats 10% (-1) 🟣Reform UK 9% (+1) 💚Greens 8% (+2) Labour lead of 15 Field work 9/1-11/1
Bad news for Davey, in this first poll with the PO Scandal leading the news.
"People think Ed Davey should resign 42%-19% - again it isn't unusual for people to say a politician (even fictional ones should resign). But more worryingly for the Lib Dem leader his own supporters are split 28%-33% on the question of if he should go."
One thing I like of this pollster is how they break down by generation, and also try to squeeze the initial "Don't Knows" into a choice.
Lab ahead with all age groups under 75, even boomers. If forced to choose then DKs break fairly evenly, but narrowly for Labour.
Strewth. If don't knows are breaking for Labour (even slightly) then that's devastating. If the crossover age is 75+ then...well.
Yeah, but, no. All the don’t knows breaking Tory might vote on the day, whilst all those favouring Labour stay at home, might not remotely be even split from each.
Something has happened reasonably recently for large number of voters to decide conclusively against Tories. I think it might have been Conference Season. I think Radical Rishi Unleashed & The Great HS2 Surrender has gone down badly with voters. Conservative drift downward seems to stem from that week?
The HS2 decision really fucked the infrastructure industry in this country and has caused chaos, quite aside from it being economically devastating.
I'm still furious about it. And the idea that Sunak thought this was evidence of him taking great decisions for the long-term that would appeal to voters.
I mean, WTF?
It's particularly disappointing when you consider how successful the Elizabeth Line has been. It's possible the enormous construction bill will be paid off within 20 years because passenger numbers are so high.
Waterproof earphones are bleeding’ magic by the way. Thanks to @rcs1000 for the tip
You can swim laps listening to audio books. It takes away nearly all the boredom. And swimming is so good for you
The headphones I want are ones I can comfortably fall asleep in. You get crappy "headband" ones for sleeping but they're uncomfortable and the audio is crap. Comfortable noise cancellers that will switch off after an hour or so, so i can drift off listening to something, but will also bring up white noise / noise cancelling again if they detect ambient noise rising above a certain db.
Thought about this a lot when I used to travel for work. Million dollar idea there for somebody...
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.
A Cyclefree-standard whistleblowing procedure in all public organisations would be a step in the right direction.
For someone who used to be famous for using her brain, that skill appears to have deserted her in recent years.
She was good at very fast arithmetic. That does not mean she is or would be sensible or wise about anything else.
On the other hand it's a shame we haven't been able to find and smoke some of their fast boats. Maybe we should put a couple of Q ships out there
We certainly could. Lynx/Seahawk Romeo with a nutter on the door gun but, unlike air strikes, it's a bit unpredictable and unlikely to align favourably with the news cycle. Better just to bomb some bits of desert at the time of choosing and call it done.
Crab Air would not have to be asked twice for this lastest act of strategic foresight. They will bomb any part of the Middle East at any time in order to justify the continued and highly expensive existence of "Club Med" at Akrotiri.
On topic I don't understand what the thread means. How do we identify the people who are supposed to be replaced? Is there a list?
Yes, they usually have something like Sir, Lady, MBE, OBE etc in their names. HTH.
Are you sure that's what it means? I read it again and it doesn't seem like it. As far as I can tell that only applies to Cressida Dick.
The problem is people getting and abusing connections so that who you know becomes more relevant than what you know.
Oh and the catch-22 desire for "prior experience" is a great one for getting a closed shop. Prior experience means you are eligible for a new job, even if you were terrible at the old one, whereas a good outsider candidate could be good at the job but lacking prior experience can't get it - and can't get the next one, as they still lack prior experience.
🌹Labour 42% (-) 🌳Conservatives 27% (-1) 🔶Liberal Democrats 10% (-1) 🟣Reform UK 9% (+1) 💚Greens 8% (+2) Labour lead of 15 Field work 9/1-11/1
Bad news for Davey, in this first poll with the PO Scandal leading the news.
"People think Ed Davey should resign 42%-19% - again it isn't unusual for people to say a politician (even fictional ones should resign). But more worryingly for the Lib Dem leader his own supporters are split 28%-33% on the question of if he should go."
One thing I like of this pollster is how they break down by generation, and also try to squeeze the initial "Don't Knows" into a choice.
Lab ahead with all age groups under 75, even boomers. If forced to choose then DKs break fairly evenly, but narrowly for Labour.
Strewth. If don't knows are breaking for Labour (even slightly) then that's devastating. If the crossover age is 75+ then...well.
Yeah, but, no. All the don’t knows breaking Tory might vote on the day, whilst all those favouring Labour stay at home, might not remotely be even split from each.
Something has happened reasonably recently for large number of voters to decide conclusively against Tories. I think it might have been Conference Season. I think Radical Rishi Unleashed & The Great HS2 Surrender has gone down badly with voters. Conservative drift downward seems to stem from that week?
The HS2 decision really fucked the infrastructure industry in this country and has caused chaos, quite aside from it being economically devastating.
I'm still furious about it. And the idea that Sunak thought this was evidence of him taking great decisions for the long-term that would appeal to voters.
I mean, WTF?
There’s a reputational damage to our country from this isn’t there, the rest of the world watching and thinking - you can’t do it? Imagine HS2 as a war, and you lost it, everyone sees you as weak. But it is a war, a huge commercial war out there globally, where we, global Britain, are seen not to be able to do stuff other countries have mastered before Breakfast, or at least Elevenses. I don’t think Sunak and those around him have quite grasped all the angles of what they’ve done.
Is it other countries focus more on cheaper tunnelling, being cheaper than buying up all the land and building on it?
It's a sign of how absurdly weak SKS is that he's taken the easy get out card of not pledging to reverse it.
He'll be in office in 11 months and easily could.
The narrative was that Sunak planned to sell the land required and pronto, to salt the earth and prevent a policy reversal by any alternative government.
'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.'
This change in the law is essential and urgent.
The heart of this scandal.
It was a shortcut, for convenience. People were tying up court cases with long winded examination of computer systems. There is also the fun point that it is impossible to prove a computer system is correct. Or incorrect.
It was so simple to make Computer = Truth. A stroke of the pen...
This allowed the PO to hide their bullshit for *decades*. Without it, the cases would have begun collapsing many, many years ago. There would have been human suffering, but nothing on this scale.
And with it in place, the same thing could happen tomorrow.
The same thing could be happening *right now*.
The same thing is happening right now. In one of my headers on this I pointed out that dodgy computer evidence was at the heart of prosecutions of some nurses in Wales. The prosecutions collapsed, fortunately.
Was this the thing where clocking in/out systems made it look like specific nurses were on the ward when patients died, but further evidence revealed that it was routine for nurses to arrive early and leave after clocking in & out and so there was no actual pattern at all - it was a false signal in the data, where the data didn’t actually reflect reality.
It is depressing how many people can progress in life without understanding either the concept of confounding variables, or that coincidences do happen.
Trawl any amount of data and you'll find patterns there, that are not remotely causative. Life is full of random patterns and relative patterns.
Drownings in the sea are still massively correlated with ice cream van sales.
Thats not a random pattern though. Both are correlated with sunshine which *is* causative
Comments
There should be vegan/vegetarian options in any organisation, but unless you're running an actual vegan event, it's just going to drive a wedge between people.
How much better would it be, if the meat-eaters stopped turning up to committee meetings…?
We try to cater to all tastes and not just one.
I’m slightly surprised at the responses you have got here. But the some vegans consider veganism a lifestyle choice. To me it is a type of Cuisine I prepare a few times a month.
I have had some lovely vegan meals especially using the joyous tomato as a base.
There’s surely got to be a knock on effect to inflation again (oil prices are up), and a risk that rate cuts are now pushed back again to late summer…
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/jul/11/church-of-england-sell-off-wellesbourne-allotment-warwickshire
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/jan/09/hampshire-allotment-holders-appalled-over-eviction-notices
There's always been some sort of mutually protecting elite. Our current one has some distinctive features, though.
One is meritocracy-gone-sour, the sense that I'm at the top as a reward for my brilliance, not as a duty to serve.
Another is that modern communications and data processing mean that the new despots have tools to monitor and control that Napoleon, Hitler and the Stasi could only dream of.
Linked to that, things have scaled bigger. Fewer people at the top deciding stuff, more remote from the worms under the hoe. That will encourage a certain inhumanity.
Is this worse than the old elite? Hard to tell. But it's different, and it has clear downsides
With Boris it was more of a fan club or perhaps some sort of trashy 'reality show' such as Below Decks.
I was a bit surprised he left. We'll see how Haas do this season.
"The economy grew by 0.3% in November, official figures show, which was stronger than expected."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67943106
I'm certainly wondering if we couldn't have a collective prosecution of everyone at the PO who was involved in the conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. Yes, I know we are talking thousands here, but just scoop the whole lot up and let those who were not involved try to prove their innocence, just as the SPMs had to.
Meanwhile the Horizon system at the PO should be abandoned forthwith,and the organisation should go back to pen and paper until Fujitsu can come up with a modern computer system that actually works. If they provide this free, we could promise not to sue the firm out of existence, or lock the CEO up in the Tower in perpetuity.
I am half serious.
I’m not certain what prosecutions of managers in the Letby case you think are possible.
I might have some of them as a side, but most often don't bother because I don't particularly enjoy them anyway (unlike mushrooms and avocados which I do).
It was funny at work three months ago I started in a new department and I was bringing my own packed lunches into work - typically a piece of steak or chicken, with hard boiled eggs or cheese on the side. Got into a discussion with my new colleagues during lunchtime and was asked about the diet as it looked unusual, so explained, got a funny look from my new boss but he didn't say anything. Turns out my new boss is a vegetarian but doesn't try to force it upon others. He mentioned a few days later that he's got an app that he uses for vegetarian recipes for different diets, there's thousands of recipes on his app and he'd selected keto as a diet to have a look and only six of the thousands of meals in the app flagged as suitable for keto.
It was amusing afterwards people would make jokes that the two of us were cancelling each other out with our diets.
We need to involve people on the decision-making process who aren't selected by the current incumbents of that process, and whose continued involvement wouldn't rely on the incumbents. We need to choose people randomly.
I'm sure that would come with its own issues, problems and limitations, but I think it would deliver at least some people willing to be awkward, wanting to improve things, and who would challenge the stewards of the status quo to up their game.
I can't think of anything else that wouldn't result in being captured by an ingroup.
Lab: 44% (+1)
Con: 24% (+1)
Lib Dem: 10% (-1)
Reform: 10% (=)
Green: 6% (-1)
SNP: 3% (=)
Others: 3% (=)
Fieldwork 10-11 January
The old elite was worse, in aggregate.
The new elite has at least the illusion of diversity. None in thought or action of course. Just bankrupt managerialism of thousand page reports that no one reads.
Time for a Free Market in management (public and private). Fuck up, you are finished. And replaced by someone else. Until we get some winners.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=sSfejgwbDQ8
Proof that you can say the most controversial things, if you can find a way to make it funny?
https://x.com/carolvorders/status/1745656915898552577
The term “meritocracy” was originally created as a warning, not something to be welcomed. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_the_Meritocracy
Any Fujitsu employees who committed perjury during the court cases will still be prosecutable though.
It was a shortcut, for convenience. People were tying up court cases with long winded examination of computer systems. There is also the fun point that it is impossible to prove a computer system is correct. Or incorrect.
It was so simple to make Computer = Truth. A stroke of the pen...
This allowed the PO to hide their bullshit for *decades*. Without it, the cases would have begun collapsing many, many years ago. There would have been human suffering, but nothing on this scale.
And with it in place, the same thing could happen tomorrow.
The same thing could be happening *right now*.
Where are 2019 voters today? With each square 100k voters in the colour of their 2019 vote (white = too young), this is how polls currently suggest they intend to vote this year.
Am sceptical Labour have gained that many non-voters, but key story is scattering of Tory vote.
https://x.com/Dylan_Difford/status/1745730836601676160
The surprising thing, to me, is how small the Conservative stay-at-home group appears.
You can swim laps listening to audio books. It takes away nearly all the boredom. And swimming is so good for you
That's the difference between a defeat and a rout, and probably not easy to probe or model. (As late as May 1 1997, Conservatives were pinning hopes on a similar group and we all know how that turned out.)
Continuity of power interests me greatly. In the old days it was easy. Your son inherited the title, the country house, and the seat in the Lords.
Even in the greater part of the 20th century it was relatively easy to pass on your "membership" to the club. Send the kids to the right boarding school, get them an internship with one of your mates, make sure they say "loo" and never "toilet" and so on.
But now. It's harder to define. How do you become part of the NU10K, and more importantly, how do you ensure your kids stay part of the elite, privileged class? What are the things you need to pass down or instruct your children in, in order to remain one of the elites? There's a psychologist named Rob Henderson who has written some interesting stuff in that area about "luxury beliefs" building on Turchin's "overproduction of elites" theory. But I don't think it's been adequately defined.
The aim of all elites is to stay in power, and ultimately, that means becoming a hereditary power. You don't need to be Kim Jong Un to know this, we've seen it all the time in our own society, including sending your kids to the public school you went to, etc, as I've described above.
So my questions are, how do you become part of the NU10K, and, once you are part of it, how do you pass on that privilege to your children, especially if, as we have discussed, what constitutes the NU10K is constantly shifting?
Or is it the case that the NU10K is a completely new class, a mix of some of the old elites plus those risen from the ranks, and this cycle just repeats itself every generation or so, as the definition, composition and attitudes that make up the "NU10K" changes over time?
This should be fun.
And it's not a conspiracy to see the pattern of mutual backscratching across independent money, business, quangos, charities and the NED network. To give another egregious example, note how Colin Graves - a man who should have been banned for life from cricket - is back in charge at Yorkshire CCC.
As Malmesbury rightly says, this class isn't quite as identifiable as 100 (or 150) years ago but it's not that secret either.
Trawl any amount of data and you'll find patterns there, that are not remotely causative. Life is full of random patterns and relative patterns.
I don’t think Sunak and those around him have quite grasped all the angles of what they’ve done.
Is it other countries focus more on cheaper tunnelling, being cheaper than buying up all the land and building on it?
Hislop can be a bit of an arse, but I did enjoy watching him shout at Jake Berry.
https://twitter.com/reece_dinsdale/status/1745530978250997821
Your rally in support of a genocide meets outside the South African embassy 2.30pm Sunday
Enjoy
The key thing is they all know each other.
A pedophile private island visited by US presidents, famous actors, notable billionaires and British royals? Er, true
A pandemic which killed 20m people and a bunch of scientists and bureaucrats conspired to stop us talking about where it came from? Like the nearby lab researching pandemics? Also true
Jews building tunnels under New York…
I’ll stop there. The point is made
That said I don’t think NU10K even qualifies as a conspiracy theory. It’s just an observation that we have a new managerial elite which evinces SOME uncanny parallels to the British nobility of the late 18th century. But the comparison is not exact
He'll be in office in 11 months and easily could.
You can't change your mind when you're dead.
There are plenty at the top who aren't from private schools. It might be that 30-40% are but the majority are not.
The key thing is they all operate as a club once they're in.
Labour leader SKS spoke to #BBCBreakfast after US and UK forces carried out air strikes against Houthi rebel targets in Yemen
One Party State not even bothered about getting the Parliamentary rubber stamp
Without that expert knowledge, it becomes easier to fall back on valuing generic managerial skills.
At least in the normal course of events, the CPS doesn't have quite the same direct interest in using it corruptly to obfuscate exculpatory evidence.
But you're absolutely correct in arguing the rule should go. It is manifestly against the interests of justice.
It was parodied well with Sir Humphrey decades ago, and nothing has changed since.
The terminology of "NU10K" may be new, but the concept is not remotely new, and it is absolutely correct.
LNER trains go really fast. 125mph. And they look like high speed trains. Very sleek. 125mph is absolutely fast enough for a country as compact as Britain. We don’t need “350kph”
We should have just built a load of those sleek 125mph trains, labelled them High Speed, job done for about three pounds and tuppence
And the last thing Labour needs to do is give the Tories an attack line because without it all the Tories have is vindictiveness and pain.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/how-lord-arbuthnot-became-post-office-victims-most-trusted-voice-5h3vkzxtz
A traditional establishment background, well-connected, Eton, tax barrister, married to a judge etc. A bit naughty with his expenses. Spouted the MoD party line over the Mull of Kintyre helicopter crash.
But.
He had the necessary character traits which are so often missing: he listened, he changed his mind when he learnt new facts, he was curious, he actually learnt the lessons from that helicopter crash ie that computers are not infallible and organisations can become stubbornly attached to a view in the face of reality, and he was determined.
And humble - he says that his efforts failed. Which they did though I think he underestimates the value that having any MPs listen to their case and try to do something was to the subpostmasters.
It is values and character and judgment (asking ourselves not whether we "can" do something but whether we "should") which matter above everything else. This is what we need to teach our children. It is what we need to reward and promote. It is what we need to praise.
Until we start doing that instead rewarding those with the slopiest of shoulders, those whose only skill is to network, lick arse and blame others, those who never take responsibility, those who are only good at spouting the latest "received opinion", however stupid or damaging, rather than thinking for themselves, those who think the appearance of things is more important than the substance, we will get nowhere.
We need to be able to strike the enemy, whoever it is, suddenly, devastatingly and without warning.
Warfare needs to continue to be managed under the prerogative power.
I’m not an expert, but experts do seem to be saying it will take a much bigger prolonged riskier action to actually stop them sticking their tongue out.
The hoo-tee have won their war, so their bloods all up over that and their cousins in Gaza, so they are not going to listen to us or let us buy them off, especially as we were trying to stop them winning their war so they absolutely feel justified in sticking their tongue out at us and enjoying themselves, so it’s a question what measures actually stop it, rather than action simply to be seen doing something when your superpowers and can’t even stop hoo-tee sticking their tongue out at you.
Thought about this a lot when I used to travel for work. Million dollar idea there for somebody...
Crab Air would not have to be asked twice for this lastest act of strategic foresight. They will bomb any part of the Middle East at any time in order to justify the continued and highly expensive existence of "Club Med" at Akrotiri.
Oh and the catch-22 desire for "prior experience" is a great one for getting a closed shop. Prior experience means you are eligible for a new job, even if you were terrible at the old one, whereas a good outsider candidate could be good at the job but lacking prior experience can't get it - and can't get the next one, as they still lack prior experience.