I've just received an email from "Donald J. Trump" addressed to "supporter" basically begging for money. Or for me to download his app.
Couple of red flags though. For one I have never signed up for emails from the Republicans so I have no idea how they got my email address, for another my email address they have sent it to is incorrect (there is a dot in my email missing, so it still comes to me but I always put the dot in when registering for anything).
Not sure if this is a scammer trying to rinse people and it's somehow gotten through my spam filter or "legitimate"? Not that it will affect how I ignore it either way.
The email supposedly has come from a domain ending in @victory.donaldtrump.com with a reply to ending in @campaigns.rnchq.com
LOL. You've been profiled!
LOL!
Though that they couldn't even get the email address right says a lot about the profiling ...
My email address is a pretty easy one to fake so a lot of spam comes to me. Normally all caught by the spam filter though, surprised this one got through.
I have a very old gmail account (from when they were first released) which I only use as an emergency account to access things if everything else fails.
The amount of Donald Trump begging emails I get in there is a sight to behold - there are 55 today and nothing else.
Ok thanks. My email is very old too, also from when they were first released but I still use it as my personal email. This is the first one of these I've seen though.
Was curious if the Trump campaign is so broke they're spamming everyone desperate for cash, or if it's fraudsters. I have no intention of clicking on the email again either way though if the campaign is so broke they're spamming people randomly that would be a bad sign for their campaign.
But the Trump Campaign are (the biggest) fraudsters (of all)!
It's a surprisingly decent article from Monbiot. If he could tone down the outrage by 50%, and increase the factual analysis by 10% or so, it would actually be very good indeed.
An excellent article from Monbiot overall, I would say. What is does highlight is the huge influence of McKinsey's, as the model all other elite management consultancies follow, that many companies have actually adapted to in order to meet its expectations without running contracts with it, and that has run huge numbers of government functions.
This largely unknown organisation to most people has had huge political and cultural influence over the last 40 years - it's high time its supposedly 'apolitical' influence was more widely understood.
This is getting into lizard illuminati territory.
McKinsey is a high-end strategy consultancy but isn't the model all management consultancies follow - I know because I've worked for several - and isn't secretly pulling strings behind the scenes. That's not how they work.
The Big4 do operate as something of a soft cartel and that's because with their size, profile and reach (they audit almost all the FTSE100 and the vast majority of the FTSE250, plus have people working throughout all Government departments) work just comes through the door to them, and they are very good at leveraging. The Government likes hiring them as "what more could I have done?" in a crisis than hiring the Big4?
It's a cosy merry-go-round but it's not a conspiracy. Best thing Government could do is to lift some of the restrictions they have on hiring the best project and commercial talent and then diversify their procurement.
It's facts, rather than paranoia, I'm afraid. The modern reach, ethos and form of elite management consultancy wouldn't exist at all without McKinsey's, and its influence has been instrumental in corporate governance and public policy in the UK and the United States, and far beyond, since the turn of the 1980s. It is not a neutral technocratic instrument.
I'm afraid you asserting your opinion is a fact doesn't make it so. Some of its ex-employees have held and do hold senior corporate and political positions but that's because it employs extremely talented people who are happy to work hard for long hours - like William Hague, for example; it's not a conspiracy. It would be fair to say that operating at that level allowed them to network and build contacts with influential people at CEO level but it's secretly "controlling" anything - clients have to choose to take its advice.
Management consultancy (helping organisations improve performance) is a fairly recent profession and grew significantly in the 1980s because that was when corporations and businesses started moving away from a traditional hierarchical models just as the world got more complex in people, tax, strategy and technology, and more competitive in how it did things. It's that same evolution into more sophisticated business models that allowed GDP to rise so much at the same time. It wasn't a dark art of McKinsey that brought it all about.
Don't get me wrong: I wouldn't like to work for them. They still have an "up or out" policy, you are reviewed every six months and they work brutal hours and extensively travel. You're under constant stress. But, that said, those I know who've worked there have learnt a huge amount and found the experience very useful for their subsequent careers.
I would say the ultimate influence of McKinsey's has been very far from anti-hierarchical, and date back to the late 60s and early 70s, just anticipating the New Right. It was instrumental as early as about 1965-66 in the concepts of removing middle management and hugely rewarding those chosen at the top, in turn, that in several businesses have often led to more, rather than less, hierarchical management. The emphasis on rationalisation through the ultra-rewarding of elite management has also sometimes contributed not just to the toleration, but even celebration, of greater inequality.
A great example of the influence of McKinsey's is broadcasting and public culture in Britain. John Birt instigated a rationalising blueprint that cut out huge layers of sometimes ambiguous and eccentric middle management. This middle layer was by turns wasteful, highly developed and inspired, and crudely and simplistically hacking it out hugely damaged the BBC's distinctive ecosystem, with wide-ranging consequences for the degradation of our entire public culture. It wasn't actually his blueprint at all ; but McKinsey's.
Your selectively choosing aspects of its past to support your thesis that McKinsey is to blame for all the political ills and failings of today, including the rise of a political ascendency you detest.
It's classic conspiracy theory stuff - a simple explanation for all the world's ills.
You could close down McKinsey tomorrow and it wouldn't make any difference, other than another firm would take its place.
You put you gyms in, you take your gyms out, you put your soft play area in, shake it all about, thats what T3 is all about.
Entertaining as it is this is a sensible move. Tier 3 has to be a universal set of rules. If we end up with different rules for different places then its not a Tier is it.
Well i did point out at the time the lunacy of saying we are simplifying the rules, but T3 was set by negotiation.
Yes. Whoever would have imagined such? All stemming from the government not wishing to make a decision without local political "cover".
It's a surprisingly decent article from Monbiot. If he could tone down the outrage by 50%, and increase the factual analysis by 10% or so, it would actually be very good indeed.
An excellent article from Monbiot overall, I would say. What is does highlight is the huge influence of McKinsey's, as the model all other elite management consultancies follow, that many companies have actually adapted to in order to meet its expectations without running contracts with it, and that has run huge numbers of government functions.
This largely unknown organisation to most people has had huge political and cultural influence over the last 40 years - it's high time its supposedly 'apolitical' influence was more widely understood.
This is getting into lizard illuminati territory.
McKinsey is a high-end strategy consultancy but isn't the model all management consultancies follow - I know because I've worked for several - and isn't secretly pulling strings behind the scenes. That's not how they work.
The Big4 do operate as something of a soft cartel and that's because with their size, profile and reach (they audit almost all the FTSE100 and the vast majority of the FTSE250, plus have people working throughout all Government departments) work just comes through the door to them, and they are very good at leveraging. The Government likes hiring them as "what more could I have done?" in a crisis than hiring the Big4?
It's a cosy merry-go-round but it's not a conspiracy. Best thing Government could do is to lift some of the restrictions they have on hiring the best project and commercial talent and then diversify their procurement.
It's facts, rather than paranoia, I'm afraid. The modern reach, ethos and form of elite management consultancy wouldn't exist at all without McKinsey's, and its influence has been instrumental in corporate governance and public policy in the UK and the United States, and far beyond, since the turn of the 1980s. It is not a neutral technocratic instrument.
I'm afraid you asserting your opinion is a fact doesn't make it so. Some of its ex-employees have held and do hold senior corporate and political positions but that's because it employs extremely talented people who are happy to work hard for long hours - like William Hague, for example; it's not a conspiracy. It would be fair to say that operating at that level allowed them to network and build contacts with influential people at CEO level but it's secretly "controlling" anything - clients have to choose to take its advice.
Management consultancy (helping organisations improve performance) is a fairly recent profession and grew significantly in the 1980s because that was when corporations and businesses started moving away from a traditional hierarchical models just as the world got more complex in people, tax, strategy and technology, and more competitive in how it did things. It's that same evolution into more sophisticated business models that allowed GDP to rise so much at the same time. It wasn't a dark art of McKinsey that brought it all about.
Don't get me wrong: I wouldn't like to work for them. They still have an "up or out" policy, you are reviewed every six months and they work brutal hours and extensively travel. You're under constant stress. But, that said, those I know who've worked there have learnt a huge amount and found the experience very useful for their subsequent careers.
I would say the ultimate influence of McKinsey's has been very far from anti-hierarchical, and date back to the late 60s and early 70s, just anticipating the New Right. It was instrumental as early as about 1965-66 in the concepts of removing middle management and hugely rewarding those chosen at the top, in turn, that in several businesses have often led to more, rather than less, hierarchical management. The emphasis on rationalisation through the ultra-rewarding of elite management has also sometimes contributed not just to the toleration, but even celebration, of greater inequality.
A great example of the influence of McKinsey's is broadcasting and public culture in Britain. John Birt instigated a rationalising blueprint that cut out huge layers of sometimes ambiguous and eccentric middle management. This middle layer was by turns wasteful, highly developed and inspired, and crudely and simplistically hacking it out hugely damaged the BBC's distinctive ecosystem, with wide-ranging consequences for the degradation of our entire public culture. It wasn't actually his blueprint at all ; but McKinsey's.
Your selectively choosing aspects of its past to support your thesis that McKinsey is to blame for all the political ills and failings of today, including the rise of a political ascendency you detest.
It's classic conspiracy theory stuff - a simple explanation for all the world's ills.
You could close down McKinsey tomorrow and it wouldn't make any difference, other than another firm would take its place.
Something has gone wrong with those at the top earning so much more than the average person.
It's a surprisingly decent article from Monbiot. If he could tone down the outrage by 50%, and increase the factual analysis by 10% or so, it would actually be very good indeed.
An excellent article from Monbiot overall, I would say. What is does highlight is the huge influence of McKinsey's, as the model all other elite management consultancies follow, that many companies have actually adapted to in order to meet its expectations without running contracts with it, and that has run huge numbers of government functions.
This largely unknown organisation to most people has had huge political and cultural influence over the last 40 years - it's high time its supposedly 'apolitical' influence was more widely understood.
This is getting into lizard illuminati territory.
McKinsey is a high-end strategy consultancy but isn't the model all management consultancies follow - I know because I've worked for several - and isn't secretly pulling strings behind the scenes. That's not how they work.
The Big4 do operate as something of a soft cartel and that's because with their size, profile and reach (they audit almost all the FTSE100 and the vast majority of the FTSE250, plus have people working throughout all Government departments) work just comes through the door to them, and they are very good at leveraging. The Government likes hiring them as "what more could I have done?" in a crisis than hiring the Big4?
It's a cosy merry-go-round but it's not a conspiracy. Best thing Government could do is to lift some of the restrictions they have on hiring the best project and commercial talent and then diversify their procurement.
It's facts, rather than paranoia, I'm afraid. The modern reach, ethos and form of elite management consultancy wouldn't exist at all without McKinsey's, and its influence has been instrumental in corporate governance and public policy in the UK and the United States, and far beyond, since the turn of the 1980s. It is not a neutral technocratic instrument.
I'm afraid you asserting your opinion is a fact doesn't make it so. Some of its ex-employees have held and do hold senior corporate and political positions but that's because it employs extremely talented people who are happy to work hard for long hours - like William Hague, for example; it's not a conspiracy. It would be fair to say that operating at that level allowed them to network and build contacts with influential people at CEO level but it's secretly "controlling" anything - clients have to choose to take its advice.
Management consultancy (helping organisations improve performance) is a fairly recent profession and grew significantly in the 1980s because that was when corporations and businesses started moving away from a traditional hierarchical models just as the world got more complex in people, tax, strategy and technology, and more competitive in how it did things. It's that same evolution into more sophisticated business models that allowed GDP to rise so much at the same time. It wasn't a dark art of McKinsey that brought it all about.
Don't get me wrong: I wouldn't like to work for them. They still have an "up or out" policy, you are reviewed every six months and they work brutal hours and extensively travel. You're under constant stress. But, that said, those I know who've worked there have learnt a huge amount and found the experience very useful for their subsequent careers.
I would say the ultimate influence of McKinsey's has been very far from anti-hierarchical, and date back to the late 60s and early 70s, just anticipating the New Right. It was instrumental as early as about 1965-66 in the concepts of removing middle management and hugely rewarding those chosen at the top, in turn, that in several businesses have often led to more, rather than less, hierarchical management. The emphasis on rationalisation through the ultra-rewarding of elite management has also sometimes contributed not just to the toleration, but even celebration, of greater inequality.
A great example of the influence of McKinsey's is broadcasting and public culture in Britain. John Birt instigated a rationalising blueprint that cut out huge layers of sometimes ambiguous and eccentric middle management. This middle layer was by turns wasteful, highly developed and inspired, and crudely and simplistically hacking it out hugely damaged the BBC's distinctive ecosystem, with wide-ranging consequences for the degradation of our entire public culture. It wasn't actually his blueprint at all ; but McKinsey's.
Your selectively choosing aspects of its past to support your thesis that McKinsey is to blame for all the political ills and failings of today, including the rise of a political ascendency you detest.
It's classic conspiracy theory stuff - a simple explanation for all the world's ills.
You could close down McKinsey tomorrow and it wouldn't make any difference, other than another firm would take its place.
Indeed, because it's not a conspiracy at all ; just a vacuum of ideas on the right during the 1960s that it was instrumental in filling, and whose influence has long passed on more broadly and widely beyond it.
I've just received an email from "Donald J. Trump" addressed to "supporter" basically begging for money. Or for me to download his app.
Couple of red flags though. For one I have never signed up for emails from the Republicans so I have no idea how they got my email address, for another my email address they have sent it to is incorrect (there is a dot in my email missing, so it still comes to me but I always put the dot in when registering for anything).
Not sure if this is a scammer trying to rinse people and it's somehow gotten through my spam filter or "legitimate"? Not that it will affect how I ignore it either way.
The email supposedly has come from a domain ending in @victory.donaldtrump.com with a reply to ending in @campaigns.rnchq.com
LOL. You've been profiled!
LOL!
Though that they couldn't even get the email address right says a lot about the profiling ...
My email address is a pretty easy one to fake so a lot of spam comes to me. Normally all caught by the spam filter though, surprised this one got through.
I have a very old gmail account (from when they were first released) which I only use as an emergency account to access things if everything else fails.
The amount of Donald Trump begging emails I get in there is a sight to behold - there are 55 today and nothing else.
Ok thanks. My email is very old too, also from when they were first released but I still use it as my personal email. This is the first one of these I've seen though.
Was curious if the Trump campaign is so broke they're spamming everyone desperate for cash, or if it's fraudsters. I have no intention of clicking on the email again either way though if the campaign is so broke they're spamming people randomly that would be a bad sign for their campaign.
But the Trump Campaign are (the biggest) fraudsters (of all)!
Indeed. If something like this had come "from" Obama I'd have immediately junked it as spam without a second thought. I wouldn't out it past the Trump campaign to break the law and spam and fraudulently raise whatever cash they could.
I've just received an email from "Donald J. Trump" addressed to "supporter" basically begging for money. Or for me to download his app.
Couple of red flags though. For one I have never signed up for emails from the Republicans so I have no idea how they got my email address, for another my email address they have sent it to is incorrect (there is a dot in my email missing, so it still comes to me but I always put the dot in when registering for anything).
Not sure if this is a scammer trying to rinse people and it's somehow gotten through my spam filter or "legitimate"? Not that it will affect how I ignore it either way.
The email supposedly has come from a domain ending in @victory.donaldtrump.com with a reply to ending in @campaigns.rnchq.com
LOL. You've been profiled!
LOL!
Though that they couldn't even get the email address right says a lot about the profiling ...
My email address is a pretty easy one to fake so a lot of spam comes to me. Normally all caught by the spam filter though, surprised this one got through.
I have a very old gmail account (from when they were first released) which I only use as an emergency account to access things if everything else fails.
The amount of Donald Trump begging emails I get in there is a sight to behold - there are 55 today and nothing else.
Ok thanks. My email is very old too, also from when they were first released but I still use it as my personal email. This is the first one of these I've seen though.
Was curious if the Trump campaign is so broke they're spamming everyone desperate for cash, or if it's fraudsters. I have no intention of clicking on the email again either way though if the campaign is so broke they're spamming people randomly that would be a bad sign for their campaign.
Mark it as phishing in Gmail, might save some other's less sceptical from being scammed.
And in the unlikely event it's a genuine email, might starve the Trump campaign of cash. Win win
It's a surprisingly decent article from Monbiot. If he could tone down the outrage by 50%, and increase the factual analysis by 10% or so, it would actually be very good indeed.
An excellent article from Monbiot overall, I would say. What is does highlight is the huge influence of McKinsey's, as the model all other elite management consultancies follow, that many companies have actually adapted to in order to meet its expectations without running contracts with it, and that has run huge numbers of government functions.
This largely unknown organisation to most people has had huge political and cultural influence over the last 40 years - it's high time its supposedly 'apolitical' influence was more widely understood.
This is getting into lizard illuminati territory.
McKinsey is a high-end strategy consultancy but isn't the model all management consultancies follow - I know because I've worked for several - and isn't secretly pulling strings behind the scenes. That's not how they work.
The Big4 do operate as something of a soft cartel and that's because with their size, profile and reach (they audit almost all the FTSE100 and the vast majority of the FTSE250, plus have people working throughout all Government departments) work just comes through the door to them, and they are very good at leveraging. The Government likes hiring them as "what more could I have done?" in a crisis than hiring the Big4?
It's a cosy merry-go-round but it's not a conspiracy. Best thing Government could do is to lift some of the restrictions they have on hiring the best project and commercial talent and then diversify their procurement.
It's facts, rather than paranoia, I'm afraid. The modern reach, ethos and form of elite management consultancy wouldn't exist at all without McKinsey's, and its influence has been instrumental in corporate governance and public policy in the UK and the United States, and far beyond, since the turn of the 1980s. It is not a neutral technocratic instrument.
I'm afraid you asserting your opinion is a fact doesn't make it so. Some of its ex-employees have held and do hold senior corporate and political positions but that's because it employs extremely talented people who are happy to work hard for long hours - like William Hague, for example; it's not a conspiracy. It would be fair to say that operating at that level allowed them to network and build contacts with influential people at CEO level but it's secretly "controlling" anything - clients have to choose to take its advice.
Management consultancy (helping organisations improve performance) is a fairly recent profession and grew significantly in the 1980s because that was when corporations and businesses started moving away from a traditional hierarchical models just as the world got more complex in people, tax, strategy and technology, and more competitive in how it did things. It's that same evolution into more sophisticated business models that allowed GDP to rise so much at the same time. It wasn't a dark art of McKinsey that brought it all about.
Don't get me wrong: I wouldn't like to work for them. They still have an "up or out" policy, you are reviewed every six months and they work brutal hours and extensively travel. You're under constant stress. But, that said, those I know who've worked there have learnt a huge amount and found the experience very useful for their subsequent careers.
I would say the ultimate influence of McKinsey's has been very far from anti-hierarchical, and date back to the late 60s and early 70s, just anticipating the New Right. It was instrumental as early as about 1965-66 in the concepts of removing middle management and hugely rewarding those chosen at the top, in turn, that in several businesses have often led to more, rather than less, hierarchical management. The emphasis on rationalisation through the ultra-rewarding of elite management has also sometimes contributed not just to the toleration, but even celebration, of greater inequality.
A great example of the influence of McKinsey's is broadcasting and public culture in Britain. John Birt instigated a rationalising blueprint that cut out huge layers of sometimes ambiguous and eccentric middle management. This middle layer was by turns wasteful, highly developed and inspired, and crudely and simplistically hacking it out hugely damaged the BBC's distinctive ecosystem, with wide-ranging consequences for the degradation of our entire public culture. It wasn't actually his blueprint at all ; but McKinsey's.
Your selectively choosing aspects of its past to support your thesis that McKinsey is to blame for all the political ills and failings of today, including the rise of a political ascendency you detest.
It's classic conspiracy theory stuff - a simple explanation for all the world's ills.
You could close down McKinsey tomorrow and it wouldn't make any difference, other than another firm would take its place.
Something has gone wrong with those at the top earning so much more than the average person.
The email I supposedly got from Trump, minus pictures etc.
URGENT: Biden campaign is currently spending more than $24 million on ads in 16 states
I need to know that I can count on you right now.
I have led the BIGGEST and FASTEST Financial Recovery in History. Next year will be even BETTER unless Sleepy Joe and Phony Kamala take the White House. They’ve promised to raise your taxes by $4 TRILLION - in which case, the economy that I’ve rebuilt would CRASH.
But, the Liberal media refuses to tell the truth about Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’ CORRUPT agenda - they want to TRICK the American People into voting for them. THEY WOULD DESTROY OUR NATION!
We can’t let them get away with this. My team just launched a new ad to FIGHT BACK against their biased coverage and EXPOSE the TRUTH about what this Liberal duo would do to our economy.
The American People deserve to know what they’d be getting into if they elect Sleepy Joe and Phony Kamala. That’s why your support is so important right now.
We need to make sure we FLOOD the airwaves with our new ad, which is why I’m calling on my best supporters to help raise $2,000,000 by 11:59 PM TONIGHT. When you step up, your gift will even be 800%-MATCHED.
This is of the utmost importance. I need you to step up.
Please contribute ANY AMOUNT IMMEDIATELY to our Official Trump Ad Blitz Fund and your gift will be 800%-MATCHED. >>
President Trump needs you to step up
TRUMP AD BLITZ FUND
SUPPORTER: (My email though incorrect snipped) CONTRIBUTION STATUS: MISSING 800%-MATCH: NOT USED DEADLINE: 11:59 PM TONIGHT
CONTRIBUTE $5 = $45
CONTRIBUTE $20 = $180
CONTRIBUTE $15 = $135
CONTRIBUTE $10 = $90
CONTRIBUTE $5 = $45
CONTRIBUTE ANY AMOUNT
If the Fake News won’t report the FACTS about the Left’s UNHINGED ticket, then WE WILL!
I want to know who stood with me during this crucial time. I’ve asked to see a list of EVERY Patriot who steps up to help us reach our $2,000,000 goal by 11:59 PM TONIGHT. I hope I see your name.
Please contribute ANY AMOUNT TODAY to our Official Trump Ad Blitz Fund and get on the list of Patriots my team hands me.
Thank you,
President Trump Signature Headshot Donald J. Trump President of the United States
(Screen after screen more text snipped)
A scam for sure, but top marks to the fraudsters for imitating how the Trump campaign communicates with their supporters.
It's a surprisingly decent article from Monbiot. If he could tone down the outrage by 50%, and increase the factual analysis by 10% or so, it would actually be very good indeed.
An excellent article from Monbiot overall, I would say. What is does highlight is the huge influence of McKinsey's, as the model all other elite management consultancies follow, that many companies have actually adapted to in order to meet its expectations without running contracts with it, and that has run huge numbers of government functions.
This largely unknown organisation to most people has had huge political and cultural influence over the last 40 years - it's high time its supposedly 'apolitical' influence was more widely understood.
This is getting into lizard illuminati territory.
McKinsey is a high-end strategy consultancy but isn't the model all management consultancies follow - I know because I've worked for several - and isn't secretly pulling strings behind the scenes. That's not how they work.
The Big4 do operate as something of a soft cartel and that's because with their size, profile and reach (they audit almost all the FTSE100 and the vast majority of the FTSE250, plus have people working throughout all Government departments) work just comes through the door to them, and they are very good at leveraging. The Government likes hiring them as "what more could I have done?" in a crisis than hiring the Big4?
It's a cosy merry-go-round but it's not a conspiracy. Best thing Government could do is to lift some of the restrictions they have on hiring the best project and commercial talent and then diversify their procurement.
It's facts, rather than paranoia, I'm afraid. The modern reach, ethos and form of elite management consultancy wouldn't exist at all without McKinsey's, and its influence has been instrumental in corporate governance and public policy in the UK and the United States, and far beyond, since the turn of the 1980s. It is not a neutral technocratic instrument.
I'm afraid you asserting your opinion is a fact doesn't make it so. Some of its ex-employees have held and do hold senior corporate and political positions but that's because it employs extremely talented people who are happy to work hard for long hours - like William Hague, for example; it's not a conspiracy. It would be fair to say that operating at that level allowed them to network and build contacts with influential people at CEO level but it's secretly "controlling" anything - clients have to choose to take its advice.
Management consultancy (helping organisations improve performance) is a fairly recent profession and grew significantly in the 1980s because that was when corporations and businesses started moving away from a traditional hierarchical models just as the world got more complex in people, tax, strategy and technology, and more competitive in how it did things. It's that same evolution into more sophisticated business models that allowed GDP to rise so much at the same time. It wasn't a dark art of McKinsey that brought it all about.
Don't get me wrong: I wouldn't like to work for them. They still have an "up or out" policy, you are reviewed every six months and they work brutal hours and extensively travel. You're under constant stress. But, that said, those I know who've worked there have learnt a huge amount and found the experience very useful for their subsequent careers.
I would say the ultimate influence of McKinsey's has been very far from anti-hierarchical, and date back to the late 60s and early 70s, just anticipating the New Right. It was instrumental as early as about 1965-66 in the concepts of removing middle management and hugely rewarding those chosen at the top, in turn, that in several businesses have often led to more, rather than less, hierarchical management. The emphasis on rationalisation through the ultra-rewarding of elite management has also sometimes contributed not just to the toleration, but even celebration, of greater inequality.
A great example of the influence of McKinsey's is broadcasting and public culture in Britain. John Birt instigated a rationalising blueprint that cut out huge layers of sometimes ambiguous and eccentric middle management. This middle layer was by turns wasteful, highly developed and inspired, and crudely and simplistically hacking it out hugely damaged the BBC's distinctive ecosystem, with wide-ranging consequences for the degradation of our entire public culture. It wasn't actually his blueprint at all ; but McKinsey's.
Your selectively choosing aspects of its past to support your thesis that McKinsey is to blame for all the political ills and failings of today, including the rise of a political ascendency you detest.
It's classic conspiracy theory stuff - a simple explanation for all the world's ills.
You could close down McKinsey tomorrow and it wouldn't make any difference, other than another firm would take its place.
Something has gone wrong with those at the top earning so much more than the average person.
Nonsense, that's the politics of envy.
That's a pretty knee-jerk thing to say. There are sound reasons why large inequality isn't desirable. Not saying envy isn't a factor anywhere, it is, but you're too quick to dismiss the premise.
Stocky: Largely white Brits I take it, rather than migrant workers?
Probably so, but not necessarily. I`d like to hear more from @theProle on this.
Agree it was great insight into a demographic that 75% of PB contributors have no association with on that level.
It's interesting how this kind of breathless reportage from the building sites of Britain is dissected with such anthropological excitement on PB. I mean, are these people really so unknown to people here? I move in pretty bourgeois circles these days, perhaps even the global elite, but I went to a comprehensive school and have done a fair amount of low paid work in the past, and the fact that a lot of working class blokes don't like the EU, or anything vaguely foreign, or indeed have a low opinion of "political correctness gone mad" is hardly news to me.
Maybe it isn't but recognising those people and their views isn't the same as engaging with or addressing them.
It isn't an answer to say it's not news, you know them well, shrug your shoulders, just say they're wrong and move on.
It depends who you are. I am just a private citizen and it's not my job to educate and enlighten the masses, nor am I arrogant enough to think that I could. Live and let live is an entirely rational response to the fact that some people hold views that I disagree with. If I were a politician of course I would have to engage with them and find a way to bring some of them on board, without selling out my core beliefs or alienating other supporters. As the original poster notes, there are left wing economic messages that might resonate with them. Of course it is in the interests of the Tory party and press to play up the right wing cultural messages precisely because they don't want to engage with those economic views (hence create wedge issues like Brexit, statues etc). I just find it odd that these people seem to induce an almost anthropological fascination from some people here, as if they are an uncontacted Amazonian tribe. It makes me think that some people must have had quite a sheltered upbringing. It's also a bit reminiscent of the episode of Peep Show when Jeremy tries to be friends with their builder, or perhaps the Greek art student in Pulp's Common People.
I think your answer highlights the problem: engaging with them on economics is looking to find something that "resonates" but engaging with them on cultural messages is "playing up" to them. It's clear you find only one of those sets of concerns as legitimate.
The Tories have not created a wedge issue of statues, which didn't exist until 6 months ago. No-one from the centre-right involved in or agitating for any to come down in order to 'spark' a conflict. I think the real objection is that the Tories are now putting up a counter-argument to left-modernist views on things like white privilege, "racist" statues, gender recognition, and these views are indeed in line with many in the working class, and indeed plenty in the middle class, who see it for the nonsense it really is.
This is both unexpected, and unwelcomed, from those who've had it their own way for far too long, so is labelled as them starting a culture war when it's really just expanding the field of political debate.
But there is white privilege and there are racist statues, these issues need addressing and are not nonsense.
(1) I don't accept the term 'white privilege' - I do accept that in Western countries many white people haven't experienced racism in the way some minorities have. For that, I think it's good both listen to each other's point of view and try and understand it better. It's called talking. White privilege is an unhelpful convection that will proof entirely counterproductive - it straight way puts people onto the defensive as, actually, few white people have experienced privilege in their lives. It therefore leads to people disengaging and polarising. The language we use is very important, and we shouldn't racially finger point.
(2) The number of statues that are actually racist as opposed to "racist" is tiny. You should look at the poll taken of ublic opinion amongst ethnic minorities by “Hope Not Hate” (August 2020) https://www.hopenothate.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/BAME-report-2020-08-v3-00000003.pdf) Around two-thirds supported the removal of statues of slavers but a very wide majority of 60% to 15% felt it was a distraction from the substantive issue of race equality. A majority also agreed that the statues debate represented "political correctness" going too far – by 52% to 22%.
Sunder Katwala said this showed “a concern to differentiate between the most egregious examples and a sweeping 'year zero' idea of interrogating every historical figure by contemporary standards”; “views of ethnic minority Britons could be summed up as one of frustration that these polarising culture wars misrepresent and trivialise ethnic minority concerns about race equality.”
It's a surprisingly decent article from Monbiot. If he could tone down the outrage by 50%, and increase the factual analysis by 10% or so, it would actually be very good indeed.
An excellent article from Monbiot overall, I would say. What is does highlight is the huge influence of McKinsey's, as the model all other elite management consultancies follow, that many companies have actually adapted to in order to meet its expectations without running contracts with it, and that has run huge numbers of government functions.
This largely unknown organisation to most people has had huge political and cultural influence over the last 40 years - it's high time its supposedly 'apolitical' influence was more widely understood.
This is getting into lizard illuminati territory.
McKinsey is a high-end strategy consultancy but isn't the model all management consultancies follow - I know because I've worked for several - and isn't secretly pulling strings behind the scenes. That's not how they work.
The Big4 do operate as something of a soft cartel and that's because with their size, profile and reach (they audit almost all the FTSE100 and the vast majority of the FTSE250, plus have people working throughout all Government departments) work just comes through the door to them, and they are very good at leveraging. The Government likes hiring them as "what more could I have done?" in a crisis than hiring the Big4?
It's a cosy merry-go-round but it's not a conspiracy. Best thing Government could do is to lift some of the restrictions they have on hiring the best project and commercial talent and then diversify their procurement.
It's facts, rather than paranoia, I'm afraid. The modern reach, ethos and form of elite management consultancy wouldn't exist at all without McKinsey's, and its influence has been instrumental in corporate governance and public policy in the UK and the United States, and far beyond, since the turn of the 1980s. It is not a neutral technocratic instrument.
I'm afraid you asserting your opinion is a fact doesn't make it so. Some of its ex-employees have held and do hold senior corporate and political positions but that's because it employs extremely talented people who are happy to work hard for long hours - like William Hague, for example; it's not a conspiracy. It would be fair to say that operating at that level allowed them to network and build contacts with influential people at CEO level but it's secretly "controlling" anything - clients have to choose to take its advice.
Management consultancy (helping organisations improve performance) is a fairly recent profession and grew significantly in the 1980s because that was when corporations and businesses started moving away from a traditional hierarchical models just as the world got more complex in people, tax, strategy and technology, and more competitive in how it did things. It's that same evolution into more sophisticated business models that allowed GDP to rise so much at the same time. It wasn't a dark art of McKinsey that brought it all about.
Don't get me wrong: I wouldn't like to work for them. They still have an "up or out" policy, you are reviewed every six months and they work brutal hours and extensively travel. You're under constant stress. But, that said, those I know who've worked there have learnt a huge amount and found the experience very useful for their subsequent careers.
I would say the ultimate influence of McKinsey's has been very far from anti-hierarchical, and date back to the late 60s and early 70s, just anticipating the New Right. It was instrumental as early as about 1965-66 in the concepts of removing middle management and hugely rewarding those chosen at the top, in turn, that in several businesses have often led to more, rather than less, hierarchical management. The emphasis on rationalisation through the ultra-rewarding of elite management has also sometimes contributed not just to the toleration, but even celebration, of greater inequality.
A great example of the influence of McKinsey's is broadcasting and public culture in Britain. John Birt instigated a rationalising blueprint that cut out huge layers of sometimes ambiguous and eccentric middle management. This middle layer was by turns wasteful, highly developed and inspired, and crudely and simplistically hacking it out hugely damaged the BBC's distinctive ecosystem, with wide-ranging consequences for the degradation of our entire public culture. It wasn't actually his blueprint at all ; but McKinsey's.
Your selectively choosing aspects of its past to support your thesis that McKinsey is to blame for all the political ills and failings of today, including the rise of a political ascendency you detest.
It's classic conspiracy theory stuff - a simple explanation for all the world's ills.
You could close down McKinsey tomorrow and it wouldn't make any difference, other than another firm would take its place.
Something has gone wrong with those at the top earning so much more than the average person.
I agree, and I think that's a function of globalisation (which widens inequalities within countries whilst narrowing them between them globally, and develops a new super-elite) but I just don't think it's a conspiracy by McKinsey.
Given that most/many/(all?) of the places being moved into Tier 3 after the original lockdowns have seen cases falling since the previous categorisations, is anyone any clearer on what the Government are basing their judgements on, and why they weren't all put into Tier 3 in the first place?
It's a surprisingly decent article from Monbiot. If he could tone down the outrage by 50%, and increase the factual analysis by 10% or so, it would actually be very good indeed.
An excellent article from Monbiot overall, I would say. What is does highlight is the huge influence of McKinsey's, as the model all other elite management consultancies follow, that many companies have actually adapted to in order to meet its expectations without running contracts with it, and that has run huge numbers of government functions.
This largely unknown organisation to most people has had huge political and cultural influence over the last 40 years - it's high time its supposedly 'apolitical' influence was more widely understood.
This is getting into lizard illuminati territory.
McKinsey is a high-end strategy consultancy but isn't the model all management consultancies follow - I know because I've worked for several - and isn't secretly pulling strings behind the scenes. That's not how they work.
The Big4 do operate as something of a soft cartel and that's because with their size, profile and reach (they audit almost all the FTSE100 and the vast majority of the FTSE250, plus have people working throughout all Government departments) work just comes through the door to them, and they are very good at leveraging. The Government likes hiring them as "what more could I have done?" in a crisis than hiring the Big4?
It's a cosy merry-go-round but it's not a conspiracy. Best thing Government could do is to lift some of the restrictions they have on hiring the best project and commercial talent and then diversify their procurement.
It's facts, rather than paranoia, I'm afraid. The modern reach, ethos and form of elite management consultancy wouldn't exist at all without McKinsey's, and its influence has been instrumental in corporate governance and public policy in the UK and the United States, and far beyond, since the turn of the 1980s. It is not a neutral technocratic instrument.
I'm afraid you asserting your opinion is a fact doesn't make it so. Some of its ex-employees have held and do hold senior corporate and political positions but that's because it employs extremely talented people who are happy to work hard for long hours - like William Hague, for example; it's not a conspiracy. It would be fair to say that operating at that level allowed them to network and build contacts with influential people at CEO level but it's secretly "controlling" anything - clients have to choose to take its advice.
Management consultancy (helping organisations improve performance) is a fairly recent profession and grew significantly in the 1980s because that was when corporations and businesses started moving away from a traditional hierarchical models just as the world got more complex in people, tax, strategy and technology, and more competitive in how it did things. It's that same evolution into more sophisticated business models that allowed GDP to rise so much at the same time. It wasn't a dark art of McKinsey that brought it all about.
Don't get me wrong: I wouldn't like to work for them. They still have an "up or out" policy, you are reviewed every six months and they work brutal hours and extensively travel. You're under constant stress. But, that said, those I know who've worked there have learnt a huge amount and found the experience very useful for their subsequent careers.
I would say the ultimate influence of McKinsey's has been very far from anti-hierarchical, and date back to the late 60s and early 70s, just anticipating the New Right. It was instrumental as early as about 1965-66 in the concepts of removing middle management and hugely rewarding those chosen at the top, in turn, that in several businesses have often led to more, rather than less, hierarchical management. The emphasis on rationalisation through the ultra-rewarding of elite management has also sometimes contributed not just to the toleration, but even celebration, of greater inequality.
A great example of the influence of McKinsey's is broadcasting and public culture in Britain. John Birt instigated a rationalising blueprint that cut out huge layers of sometimes ambiguous and eccentric middle management. This middle layer was by turns wasteful, highly developed and inspired, and crudely and simplistically hacking it out hugely damaged the BBC's distinctive ecosystem, with wide-ranging consequences for the degradation of our entire public culture. It wasn't actually his blueprint at all ; but McKinsey's.
Your selectively choosing aspects of its past to support your thesis that McKinsey is to blame for all the political ills and failings of today, including the rise of a political ascendency you detest.
It's classic conspiracy theory stuff - a simple explanation for all the world's ills.
You could close down McKinsey tomorrow and it wouldn't make any difference, other than another firm would take its place.
Something has gone wrong with those at the top earning so much more than the average person.
Indeed, and there are historical and idelogical reasons for it.
It's a surprisingly decent article from Monbiot. If he could tone down the outrage by 50%, and increase the factual analysis by 10% or so, it would actually be very good indeed.
An excellent article from Monbiot overall, I would say. What is does highlight is the huge influence of McKinsey's, as the model all other elite management consultancies follow, that many companies have actually adapted to in order to meet its expectations without running contracts with it, and that has run huge numbers of government functions.
This largely unknown organisation to most people has had huge political and cultural influence over the last 40 years - it's high time its supposedly 'apolitical' influence was more widely understood.
This is getting into lizard illuminati territory.
McKinsey is a high-end strategy consultancy but isn't the model all management consultancies follow - I know because I've worked for several - and isn't secretly pulling strings behind the scenes. That's not how they work.
The Big4 do operate as something of a soft cartel and that's because with their size, profile and reach (they audit almost all the FTSE100 and the vast majority of the FTSE250, plus have people working throughout all Government departments) work just comes through the door to them, and they are very good at leveraging. The Government likes hiring them as "what more could I have done?" in a crisis than hiring the Big4?
It's a cosy merry-go-round but it's not a conspiracy. Best thing Government could do is to lift some of the restrictions they have on hiring the best project and commercial talent and then diversify their procurement.
It's facts, rather than paranoia, I'm afraid. The modern reach, ethos and form of elite management consultancy wouldn't exist at all without McKinsey's, and its influence has been instrumental in corporate governance and public policy in the UK and the United States, and far beyond, since the turn of the 1980s. It is not a neutral technocratic instrument.
I'm afraid you asserting your opinion is a fact doesn't make it so. Some of its ex-employees have held and do hold senior corporate and political positions but that's because it employs extremely talented people who are happy to work hard for long hours - like William Hague, for example; it's not a conspiracy. It would be fair to say that operating at that level allowed them to network and build contacts with influential people at CEO level but it's secretly "controlling" anything - clients have to choose to take its advice.
Management consultancy (helping organisations improve performance) is a fairly recent profession and grew significantly in the 1980s because that was when corporations and businesses started moving away from a traditional hierarchical models just as the world got more complex in people, tax, strategy and technology, and more competitive in how it did things. It's that same evolution into more sophisticated business models that allowed GDP to rise so much at the same time. It wasn't a dark art of McKinsey that brought it all about.
Don't get me wrong: I wouldn't like to work for them. They still have an "up or out" policy, you are reviewed every six months and they work brutal hours and extensively travel. You're under constant stress. But, that said, those I know who've worked there have learnt a huge amount and found the experience very useful for their subsequent careers.
I would say the ultimate influence of McKinsey's has been very far from anti-hierarchical, and date back to the late 60s and early 70s, just anticipating the New Right. It was instrumental as early as about 1965-66 in the concepts of removing middle management and hugely rewarding those chosen at the top, in turn, that in several businesses have often led to more, rather than less, hierarchical management. The emphasis on rationalisation through the ultra-rewarding of elite management has also sometimes contributed not just to the toleration, but even celebration, of greater inequality.
A great example of the influence of McKinsey's is broadcasting and public culture in Britain. John Birt instigated a rationalising blueprint that cut out huge layers of sometimes ambiguous and eccentric middle management. This middle layer was by turns wasteful, highly developed and inspired, and crudely and simplistically hacking it out hugely damaged the BBC's distinctive ecosystem, with wide-ranging consequences for the degradation of our entire public culture. It wasn't actually his blueprint at all ; but McKinsey's.
Your selectively choosing aspects of its past to support your thesis that McKinsey is to blame for all the political ills and failings of today, including the rise of a political ascendency you detest.
It's classic conspiracy theory stuff - a simple explanation for all the world's ills.
You could close down McKinsey tomorrow and it wouldn't make any difference, other than another firm would take its place.
Something has gone wrong with those at the top earning so much more than the average person.
Nonsense, that's the politics of envy.
That's a pretty knee-jerk thing to say. There are sound reasons why large inequality isn't desirable. Not saying envy isn't a factor anywhere, it is, but you're too quick to dismiss the premise.
I think TSE's response was at least semi tongue-in-cheek
It's a surprisingly decent article from Monbiot. If he could tone down the outrage by 50%, and increase the factual analysis by 10% or so, it would actually be very good indeed.
An excellent article from Monbiot overall, I would say. What is does highlight is the huge influence of McKinsey's, as the model all other elite management consultancies follow, that many companies have actually adapted to in order to meet its expectations without running contracts with it, and that has run huge numbers of government functions.
This largely unknown organisation to most people has had huge political and cultural influence over the last 40 years - it's high time its supposedly 'apolitical' influence was more widely understood.
This is getting into lizard illuminati territory.
McKinsey is a high-end strategy consultancy but isn't the model all management consultancies follow - I know because I've worked for several - and isn't secretly pulling strings behind the scenes. That's not how they work.
The Big4 do operate as something of a soft cartel and that's because with their size, profile and reach (they audit almost all the FTSE100 and the vast majority of the FTSE250, plus have people working throughout all Government departments) work just comes through the door to them, and they are very good at leveraging. The Government likes hiring them as "what more could I have done?" in a crisis than hiring the Big4?
It's a cosy merry-go-round but it's not a conspiracy. Best thing Government could do is to lift some of the restrictions they have on hiring the best project and commercial talent and then diversify their procurement.
It's facts, rather than paranoia, I'm afraid. The modern reach, ethos and form of elite management consultancy wouldn't exist at all without McKinsey's, and its influence has been instrumental in corporate governance and public policy in the UK and the United States, and far beyond, since the turn of the 1980s. It is not a neutral technocratic instrument.
I'm afraid you asserting your opinion is a fact doesn't make it so. Some of its ex-employees have held and do hold senior corporate and political positions but that's because it employs extremely talented people who are happy to work hard for long hours - like William Hague, for example; it's not a conspiracy. It would be fair to say that operating at that level allowed them to network and build contacts with influential people at CEO level but it's secretly "controlling" anything - clients have to choose to take its advice.
Management consultancy (helping organisations improve performance) is a fairly recent profession and grew significantly in the 1980s because that was when corporations and businesses started moving away from a traditional hierarchical models just as the world got more complex in people, tax, strategy and technology, and more competitive in how it did things. It's that same evolution into more sophisticated business models that allowed GDP to rise so much at the same time. It wasn't a dark art of McKinsey that brought it all about.
Don't get me wrong: I wouldn't like to work for them. They still have an "up or out" policy, you are reviewed every six months and they work brutal hours and extensively travel. You're under constant stress. But, that said, those I know who've worked there have learnt a huge amount and found the experience very useful for their subsequent careers.
I would say the ultimate influence of McKinsey's has been very far from anti-hierarchical, and date back to the late 60s and early 70s, just anticipating the New Right. It was instrumental as early as about 1965-66 in the concepts of removing middle management and hugely rewarding those chosen at the top, in turn, that in several businesses have often led to more, rather than less, hierarchical management. The emphasis on rationalisation through the ultra-rewarding of elite management has also sometimes contributed not just to the toleration, but even celebration, of greater inequality.
A great example of the influence of McKinsey's is broadcasting and public culture in Britain. John Birt instigated a rationalising blueprint that cut out huge layers of sometimes ambiguous and eccentric middle management. This middle layer was by turns wasteful, highly developed and inspired, and crudely and simplistically hacking it out hugely damaged the BBC's distinctive ecosystem, with wide-ranging consequences for the degradation of our entire public culture. It wasn't actually his blueprint at all ; but McKinsey's.
Your selectively choosing aspects of its past to support your thesis that McKinsey is to blame for all the political ills and failings of today, including the rise of a political ascendency you detest.
It's classic conspiracy theory stuff - a simple explanation for all the world's ills.
You could close down McKinsey tomorrow and it wouldn't make any difference, other than another firm would take its place.
Something has gone wrong with those at the top earning so much more than the average person.
Nonsense, that's the politics of envy.
That's a pretty knee-jerk thing to say. There are sound reasons why large inequality isn't desirable. Not saying envy isn't a factor anywhere, it is, but you're too quick to dismiss the premise.
I think TSE's response was at least semi tongue-in-cheek
What I'd be interested to know is whether McKinsey has eaten itself at any point - a constant supply of bright but green juniors, little practical knowledge in the middle and a few high ups who managed to beat Logan's run?
Those in the consultancy industries, in particular, love consulting other consultants, there is a deep level of comfort with that - lawyers, management consultants, accountants, and varying specialists such as IT consultants - of course some of these are mandated activities, but the comfort zone expands well beyond that and can go with an innate mistrust of in-house knowledge at any level. Merry-go-round would be a good description. And, beyond your own field, it's not always apparent from the size of the name whether who you are consulting someone who will run the engagement as you think a top name should or whether you are going to get a hollowed out Delboy Trotter service, hoping to make it all stick together on a wing and a prayer.
You put you gyms in, you take your gyms out, you put your soft play area in, shake it all about, thats what T3 is all about.
Entertaining as it is this is a sensible move. Tier 3 has to be a universal set of rules. If we end up with different rules for different places then its not a Tier is it.
The Regulations as passed by Parliament are very clear:
17.—(1) A person responsible for carrying on a restricted business, or providing a restricted service, in the Tier 3 area must cease to carry on that business or provide that service.
19.—(1) The restricted businesses and restricted services for the purposes of this Part of this Schedule are those falling within sub-paragraphs (2), (3) or (4).
(4) The following businesses and services fall within this sub-paragraph— (i)indoor gyms, fitness and dance studios;
So presumably we can look forward to an amendment?
No. They are breaking the law in a limited and specific way. So thats ok.
It's a surprisingly decent article from Monbiot. If he could tone down the outrage by 50%, and increase the factual analysis by 10% or so, it would actually be very good indeed.
An excellent article from Monbiot overall, I would say. What is does highlight is the huge influence of McKinsey's, as the model all other elite management consultancies follow, that many companies have actually adapted to in order to meet its expectations without running contracts with it, and that has run huge numbers of government functions.
This largely unknown organisation to most people has had huge political and cultural influence over the last 40 years - it's high time its supposedly 'apolitical' influence was more widely understood.
This is getting into lizard illuminati territory.
McKinsey is a high-end strategy consultancy but isn't the model all management consultancies follow - I know because I've worked for several - and isn't secretly pulling strings behind the scenes. That's not how they work.
The Big4 do operate as something of a soft cartel and that's because with their size, profile and reach (they audit almost all the FTSE100 and the vast majority of the FTSE250, plus have people working throughout all Government departments) work just comes through the door to them, and they are very good at leveraging. The Government likes hiring them as "what more could I have done?" in a crisis than hiring the Big4?
It's a cosy merry-go-round but it's not a conspiracy. Best thing Government could do is to lift some of the restrictions they have on hiring the best project and commercial talent and then diversify their procurement.
It's facts, rather than paranoia, I'm afraid. The modern reach, ethos and form of elite management consultancy wouldn't exist at all without McKinsey's, and its influence has been instrumental in corporate governance and public policy in the UK and the United States, and far beyond, since the turn of the 1980s. It is not a neutral technocratic instrument.
I'm afraid you asserting your opinion is a fact doesn't make it so. Some of its ex-employees have held and do hold senior corporate and political positions but that's because it employs extremely talented people who are happy to work hard for long hours - like William Hague, for example; it's not a conspiracy. It would be fair to say that operating at that level allowed them to network and build contacts with influential people at CEO level but it's secretly "controlling" anything - clients have to choose to take its advice.
Management consultancy (helping organisations improve performance) is a fairly recent profession and grew significantly in the 1980s because that was when corporations and businesses started moving away from a traditional hierarchical models just as the world got more complex in people, tax, strategy and technology, and more competitive in how it did things. It's that same evolution into more sophisticated business models that allowed GDP to rise so much at the same time. It wasn't a dark art of McKinsey that brought it all about.
Don't get me wrong: I wouldn't like to work for them. They still have an "up or out" policy, you are reviewed every six months and they work brutal hours and extensively travel. You're under constant stress. But, that said, those I know who've worked there have learnt a huge amount and found the experience very useful for their subsequent careers.
The 1980’s you say. And the period since then has been the epitome, has it not, of brilliant management in lots of private sector organisations. And of a GDP built on solid foundations ...... Or perhaps not.
Of course there have been problems, not least in the financial services industry, but world GDP (GWP) has increased from around 18tn in 1980 to around 81trn today - a four-fold increase in real terms. In England, from £15k per head in 1980 to almost £30k per head today - so we are twice as wealthy.
That doesn't mean we still have problems - including examples of poor practice, corruption, management failures and huge entitlement - but it does mean our 'new' services driven economy has delivered great improvements in the quality of life.
Two things can be true at the same time.
But these improvements are not down to the McKinsey way of management which you seemed to imply - but perhaps I misunderstood you.
If anything I think that the unnecessary complication - and the attempt to deal with that using management techniques sold at vast expense and which often seem to me to have been either the restatement of the bleeding obvious or like the Wizard of Oz devoid of content - have made things worse than they could have been. And have been one of the reasons for so many of the scandals and disasters we have seen and are still paying for.
One reason we do not have as much money as we would like is because we are still, in part, paying for the financial crisis over a decade ago, a crisis brought about by a lot of apparently very clever people trained by these apparently very clever consultants. I am afraid - and I know that this is my particular perspective - that I really don’t buy into this myth of this cleverness. There is a type of stupidity that only the very clever are capable of - and the financial world (though not just it) is full of such examples.
Europe’s car manufacturers have called on Brussels to take a less restrictive stance on future market access to the UK, warning that aspects of the bloc’s current position are “not in the long-term interests of the EU automotive industry”.
The letter from the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA) — a group that represents companies including BMW, Toyota and Fiat — urges Brussels to “reconsider its position” on rules for determining whether goods will qualify for tariff-free trade.
The group’s specific demands include that the EU should lower the percentage of components in a car that must be either European or British for the vehicle to qualify for the benefits of any EU-UK trade deal.
RCP has a grand total of one (1) poll listed for October, the famous Rasmussen (plus one other overlapping into last month). 538 lists seven (7) polls for that period, some of which are highly-reputed pollsters like YouGov.
People have explained to you repeatedly that RCP no longer bother putting the polls into their website, you can check it in a matter of seconds, and you seem to have understood the point, yet you just carry on quoting them.
What are you trying to do? Seriously, what are you doing this for, what are you hoping to achieve???
For as long I've been following politics and current affairs (since the early 90s) the pay of the very wealthy has always been an issue. Anyone remember Cedric Brown?
I've often found a lot of people like to complain about it but I think eventually the market catches up and salary hits an appropriate level.
But my bugbear is that far too many people think the wealthy are anyone who earns more than them, as we see with polls on increasing taxes.
It's a surprisingly decent article from Monbiot. If he could tone down the outrage by 50%, and increase the factual analysis by 10% or so, it would actually be very good indeed.
An excellent article from Monbiot overall, I would say. What is does highlight is the huge influence of McKinsey's, as the model all other elite management consultancies follow, that many companies have actually adapted to in order to meet its expectations without running contracts with it, and that has run huge numbers of government functions.
This largely unknown organisation to most people has had huge political and cultural influence over the last 40 years - it's high time its supposedly 'apolitical' influence was more widely understood.
This is getting into lizard illuminati territory.
McKinsey is a high-end strategy consultancy but isn't the model all management consultancies follow - I know because I've worked for several - and isn't secretly pulling strings behind the scenes. That's not how they work.
The Big4 do operate as something of a soft cartel and that's because with their size, profile and reach (they audit almost all the FTSE100 and the vast majority of the FTSE250, plus have people working throughout all Government departments) work just comes through the door to them, and they are very good at leveraging. The Government likes hiring them as "what more could I have done?" in a crisis than hiring the Big4?
It's a cosy merry-go-round but it's not a conspiracy. Best thing Government could do is to lift some of the restrictions they have on hiring the best project and commercial talent and then diversify their procurement.
It's facts, rather than paranoia, I'm afraid. The modern reach, ethos and form of elite management consultancy wouldn't exist at all without McKinsey's, and its influence has been instrumental in corporate governance and public policy in the UK and the United States, and far beyond, since the turn of the 1980s. It is not a neutral technocratic instrument.
I'm afraid you asserting your opinion is a fact doesn't make it so. Some of its ex-employees have held and do hold senior corporate and political positions but that's because it employs extremely talented people who are happy to work hard for long hours - like William Hague, for example; it's not a conspiracy. It would be fair to say that operating at that level allowed them to network and build contacts with influential people at CEO level but it's secretly "controlling" anything - clients have to choose to take its advice.
Management consultancy (helping organisations improve performance) is a fairly recent profession and grew significantly in the 1980s because that was when corporations and businesses started moving away from a traditional hierarchical models just as the world got more complex in people, tax, strategy and technology, and more competitive in how it did things. It's that same evolution into more sophisticated business models that allowed GDP to rise so much at the same time. It wasn't a dark art of McKinsey that brought it all about.
Don't get me wrong: I wouldn't like to work for them. They still have an "up or out" policy, you are reviewed every six months and they work brutal hours and extensively travel. You're under constant stress. But, that said, those I know who've worked there have learnt a huge amount and found the experience very useful for their subsequent careers.
I would say the ultimate influence of McKinsey's has been very far from anti-hierarchical, and date back to the late 60s and early 70s, just anticipating the New Right. It was instrumental as early as about 1965-66 in the concepts of removing middle management and hugely rewarding those chosen at the top, in turn, that in several businesses have often led to more, rather than less, hierarchical management. The emphasis on rationalisation through the ultra-rewarding of elite management has also sometimes contributed not just to the toleration, but even celebration, of greater inequality.
A great example of the influence of McKinsey's is broadcasting and public culture in Britain. John Birt instigated a rationalising blueprint that cut out huge layers of sometimes ambiguous and eccentric middle management. This middle layer was by turns wasteful, highly developed and inspired, and crudely and simplistically hacking it out hugely damaged the BBC's distinctive ecosystem, with wide-ranging consequences for the degradation of our entire public culture. It wasn't actually his blueprint at all ; but McKinsey's.
Your selectively choosing aspects of its past to support your thesis that McKinsey is to blame for all the political ills and failings of today, including the rise of a political ascendency you detest.
It's classic conspiracy theory stuff - a simple explanation for all the world's ills.
You could close down McKinsey tomorrow and it wouldn't make any difference, other than another firm would take its place.
Something has gone wrong with those at the top earning so much more than the average person.
I agree, and I think that's a function of globalisation (which widens inequalities within countries whilst narrowing them between them globally, and develops a new super-elite) but I just don't think it's a conspiracy by McKinsey.
Just reading the exchange I think the thesis is "exerts an influence that is often malign and is disproportionate to its nominal size and this is not widely appreciated or understood" rather than "conspiracy".
It's a surprisingly decent article from Monbiot. If he could tone down the outrage by 50%, and increase the factual analysis by 10% or so, it would actually be very good indeed.
An excellent article from Monbiot overall, I would say. What is does highlight is the huge influence of McKinsey's, as the model all other elite management consultancies follow, that many companies have actually adapted to in order to meet its expectations without running contracts with it, and that has run huge numbers of government functions.
This largely unknown organisation to most people has had huge political and cultural influence over the last 40 years - it's high time its supposedly 'apolitical' influence was more widely understood.
This is getting into lizard illuminati territory.
McKinsey is a high-end strategy consultancy but isn't the model all management consultancies follow - I know because I've worked for several - and isn't secretly pulling strings behind the scenes. That's not how they work.
The Big4 do operate as something of a soft cartel and that's because with their size, profile and reach (they audit almost all the FTSE100 and the vast majority of the FTSE250, plus have people working throughout all Government departments) work just comes through the door to them, and they are very good at leveraging. The Government likes hiring them as "what more could I have done?" in a crisis than hiring the Big4?
It's a cosy merry-go-round but it's not a conspiracy. Best thing Government could do is to lift some of the restrictions they have on hiring the best project and commercial talent and then diversify their procurement.
It's facts, rather than paranoia, I'm afraid. The modern reach, ethos and form of elite management consultancy wouldn't exist at all without McKinsey's, and its influence has been instrumental in corporate governance and public policy in the UK and the United States, and far beyond, since the turn of the 1980s. It is not a neutral technocratic instrument.
I'm afraid you asserting your opinion is a fact doesn't make it so. Some of its ex-employees have held and do hold senior corporate and political positions but that's because it employs extremely talented people who are happy to work hard for long hours - like William Hague, for example; it's not a conspiracy. It would be fair to say that operating at that level allowed them to network and build contacts with influential people at CEO level but it's secretly "controlling" anything - clients have to choose to take its advice.
Management consultancy (helping organisations improve performance) is a fairly recent profession and grew significantly in the 1980s because that was when corporations and businesses started moving away from a traditional hierarchical models just as the world got more complex in people, tax, strategy and technology, and more competitive in how it did things. It's that same evolution into more sophisticated business models that allowed GDP to rise so much at the same time. It wasn't a dark art of McKinsey that brought it all about.
Don't get me wrong: I wouldn't like to work for them. They still have an "up or out" policy, you are reviewed every six months and they work brutal hours and extensively travel. You're under constant stress. But, that said, those I know who've worked there have learnt a huge amount and found the experience very useful for their subsequent careers.
I would say the ultimate influence of McKinsey's has been very far from anti-hierarchical, and date back to the late 60s and early 70s, just anticipating the New Right. It was instrumental as early as about 1965-66 in the concepts of removing middle management and hugely rewarding those chosen at the top, in turn, that in several businesses have often led to more, rather than less, hierarchical management. The emphasis on rationalisation through the ultra-rewarding of elite management has also sometimes contributed not just to the toleration, but even celebration, of greater inequality.
A great example of the influence of McKinsey's is broadcasting and public culture in Britain. John Birt instigated a rationalising blueprint that cut out huge layers of sometimes ambiguous and eccentric middle management. This middle layer was by turns wasteful, highly developed and inspired, and crudely and simplistically hacking it out hugely damaged the BBC's distinctive ecosystem, with wide-ranging consequences for the degradation of our entire public culture. It wasn't actually his blueprint at all ; but McKinsey's.
Your selectively choosing aspects of its past to support your thesis that McKinsey is to blame for all the political ills and failings of today, including the rise of a political ascendency you detest.
It's classic conspiracy theory stuff - a simple explanation for all the world's ills.
You could close down McKinsey tomorrow and it wouldn't make any difference, other than another firm would take its place.
Something has gone wrong with those at the top earning so much more than the average person.
Nonsense, that's the politics of envy.
That's a pretty knee-jerk thing to say. There are sound reasons why large inequality isn't desirable. Not saying envy isn't a factor anywhere, it is, but you're too quick to dismiss the premise.
I think TSE's response was at least semi tongue-in-cheek
It seems to me that one of the biggest problems/scandals (setting aside the financial aspects) about test and trace is that it has been given crude targets (which it is failing to meet) but no purpose. Like so much of the target based culture (and yes this dates back a long time) is that it never steps back and asks whether the meeting (or otherwise) of targets actually improves outcomes. This of course generates perverse incentives, but also leads to a lack of critical judgement about what the targets/system is actually trying to achieve. I think this helps to explain the lack of public health experts involved in the management of the system - since test and trace has no requirement to deliver improved public health outcomes, it therefore has no need for public health expertise.
Test and trace seems to start and end with an aim of contacting people and telling them they need to self isolate. If people then ignore the requirement to do so it makes no difference whether they contact 5% of potentially affected people, or 95%.
But there is no money for closed businesses and their staff.
Might the lack of a public health expert be the reason for the failure you describe? After all the point of Test and Trace is to find those places where the virus has popped up and squash it down again by isolating the infected people. The aim is not contact but what you do with that information. Public health experts would know that. Supermarket executives would not.
Yes i agree. But my point is that Test and Trace haven't been given a mandate for enforcing self isolation. Or delivering good public health outcomes. Their role starts and ends with contacting people and advising them of the need to self isolate. What happens from then is somebody else's responsibility.
Of course it is failing at it's basic mandate (tracing 80% of contacts). And yes its mandate should be far wider and more extensive. But for it's basic mandate, it's not that surprising that those running it haven't seen much need for a Public health expert.
But even with that limited mandate, they ought to have explored better ways of doing it. Mass cheap testing is one example. It was rejected early on owing to a lack of accuracy compared to PCR, but they never seem to have considered that it might have worked much better anyway, simply because you tests many more people and therefore are able to isolate far more infected, more quickly. And makes the difficult to scale Trace part of the mandate far less important. The 'moonshot' is unnecessary, as several versions of a perfectly adequate cheap antigen test already exist.
Well if you want Government support, get out the corrupt Jenrick, these people hold the North with contempt
You do have to wonder the rationale in sending Robert "Tory dinner saves developer £45m in public money" Jenrick to explain why they don't have the £5m in question.
Sunder Katwala said this showed “a concern to differentiate between the most egregious examples and a sweeping 'year zero' idea of interrogating every historical figure by contemporary standards”; “views of ethnic minority Britons could be summed up as one of frustration that these polarising culture wars misrepresent and trivialise ethnic minority concerns about race equality.”
He's spot on.
It's not really about the degree to which each statue is racist; it's about the destruction of what Mao called the 'four olds'.
I've just received an email from "Donald J. Trump" addressed to "supporter" basically begging for money. Or for me to download his app.
Couple of red flags though. For one I have never signed up for emails from the Republicans so I have no idea how they got my email address, for another my email address they have sent it to is incorrect (there is a dot in my email missing, so it still comes to me but I always put the dot in when registering for anything).
Not sure if this is a scammer trying to rinse people and it's somehow gotten through my spam filter or "legitimate"? Not that it will affect how I ignore it either way.
The email supposedly has come from a domain ending in @victory.donaldtrump.com with a reply to ending in @campaigns.rnchq.com
LOL. You've been profiled!
No necessarily. If you have any sort of normal name as an email address you will eventually end up receiving emails intended for other people where they have put your email address in by mistake. The longer you have an email address the worse it gets.
I regularly get similar Trump begging letters addressed to a person who seems to use my email address for all sorts of things. I also get things like HOA minutes, little league stuff, and golf related things for this chap. Another woman used to book large takeways around the holidays, and I'd receive receipts for those. I've had people contact me about funerals, cruise itineraries, flight bookings, medical forms, and many more private emails that by accident are being sent to me. These aren't the usual spam, these are emails misdirected either by accident or design.
It's just as well I'm an honest person, as I could cause a lot of trouble for these people if I wanted to.
It's a surprisingly decent article from Monbiot. If he could tone down the outrage by 50%, and increase the factual analysis by 10% or so, it would actually be very good indeed.
An excellent article from Monbiot overall, I would say. What is does highlight is the huge influence of McKinsey's, as the model all other elite management consultancies follow, that many companies have actually adapted to in order to meet its expectations without running contracts with it, and that has run huge numbers of government functions.
This largely unknown organisation to most people has had huge political and cultural influence over the last 40 years - it's high time its supposedly 'apolitical' influence was more widely understood.
This is getting into lizard illuminati territory.
McKinsey is a high-end strategy consultancy but isn't the model all management consultancies follow - I know because I've worked for several - and isn't secretly pulling strings behind the scenes. That's not how they work.
The Big4 do operate as something of a soft cartel and that's because with their size, profile and reach (they audit almost all the FTSE100 and the vast majority of the FTSE250, plus have people working throughout all Government departments) work just comes through the door to them, and they are very good at leveraging. The Government likes hiring them as "what more could I have done?" in a crisis than hiring the Big4?
It's a cosy merry-go-round but it's not a conspiracy. Best thing Government could do is to lift some of the restrictions they have on hiring the best project and commercial talent and then diversify their procurement.
It's facts, rather than paranoia, I'm afraid. The modern reach, ethos and form of elite management consultancy wouldn't exist at all without McKinsey's, and its influence has been instrumental in corporate governance and public policy in the UK and the United States, and far beyond, since the turn of the 1980s. It is not a neutral technocratic instrument.
I'm afraid you asserting your opinion is a fact doesn't make it so. Some of its ex-employees have held and do hold senior corporate and political positions but that's because it employs extremely talented people who are happy to work hard for long hours - like William Hague, for example; it's not a conspiracy. It would be fair to say that operating at that level allowed them to network and build contacts with influential people at CEO level but it's secretly "controlling" anything - clients have to choose to take its advice.
Management consultancy (helping organisations improve performance) is a fairly recent profession and grew significantly in the 1980s because that was when corporations and businesses started moving away from a traditional hierarchical models just as the world got more complex in people, tax, strategy and technology, and more competitive in how it did things. It's that same evolution into more sophisticated business models that allowed GDP to rise so much at the same time. It wasn't a dark art of McKinsey that brought it all about.
Don't get me wrong: I wouldn't like to work for them. They still have an "up or out" policy, you are reviewed every six months and they work brutal hours and extensively travel. You're under constant stress. But, that said, those I know who've worked there have learnt a huge amount and found the experience very useful for their subsequent careers.
I would say the ultimate influence of McKinsey's has been very far from anti-hierarchical, and date back to the late 60s and early 70s, just anticipating the New Right. It was instrumental as early as about 1965-66 in the concepts of removing middle management and hugely rewarding those chosen at the top, in turn, that in several businesses have often led to more, rather than less, hierarchical management. The emphasis on rationalisation through the ultra-rewarding of elite management has also sometimes contributed not just to the toleration, but even celebration, of greater inequality.
A great example of the influence of McKinsey's is broadcasting and public culture in Britain. John Birt instigated a rationalising blueprint that cut out huge layers of sometimes ambiguous and eccentric middle management. This middle layer was by turns wasteful, highly developed and inspired, and crudely and simplistically hacking it out hugely damaged the BBC's distinctive ecosystem, with wide-ranging consequences for the degradation of our entire public culture. It wasn't actually his blueprint at all ; but McKinsey's.
Your selectively choosing aspects of its past to support your thesis that McKinsey is to blame for all the political ills and failings of today, including the rise of a political ascendency you detest.
It's classic conspiracy theory stuff - a simple explanation for all the world's ills.
You could close down McKinsey tomorrow and it wouldn't make any difference, other than another firm would take its place.
Something has gone wrong with those at the top earning so much more than the average person.
Nonsense, that's the politics of envy.
Way too glib - and devoid of reasoning, since the same cheap point could be played to try and justify even more grotesque inequality.
There is good evidence that more equal societies are healthier and happier.
The way in which a handful of senior people at the top of large companies attempt to manage short term events to maximise their own personal remuneration is often utterly counterproductive to the company's long term best interests, as well as tying up far more of their own personal attention and application than is healthy.
Given that most/many/(all?) of the places being moved into Tier 3 after the original lockdowns have seen cases falling since the previous categorisations, is anyone any clearer on what the Government are basing their judgements on, and why they weren't all put into Tier 3 in the first place?
It was clear from the press conference data last night. Although cases have fallen rapidly among younger people (mainly students) leading to an overall fall (or a decrease in the rate of increase), cases continue to rise among older age groups in the Tier 3 areas, and in most of the Tier 2 areas. Cases need to start falling among older age groups until they are confident that hospitals won't be over-stretched.
It's a surprisingly decent article from Monbiot. If he could tone down the outrage by 50%, and increase the factual analysis by 10% or so, it would actually be very good indeed.
An excellent article from Monbiot overall, I would say. What is does highlight is the huge influence of McKinsey's, as the model all other elite management consultancies follow, that many companies have actually adapted to in order to meet its expectations without running contracts with it, and that has run huge numbers of government functions.
This largely unknown organisation to most people has had huge political and cultural influence over the last 40 years - it's high time its supposedly 'apolitical' influence was more widely understood.
This is getting into lizard illuminati territory.
McKinsey is a high-end strategy consultancy but isn't the model all management consultancies follow - I know because I've worked for several - and isn't secretly pulling strings behind the scenes. That's not how they work.
The Big4 do operate as something of a soft cartel and that's because with their size, profile and reach (they audit almost all the FTSE100 and the vast majority of the FTSE250, plus have people working throughout all Government departments) work just comes through the door to them, and they are very good at leveraging. The Government likes hiring them as "what more could I have done?" in a crisis than hiring the Big4?
It's a cosy merry-go-round but it's not a conspiracy. Best thing Government could do is to lift some of the restrictions they have on hiring the best project and commercial talent and then diversify their procurement.
It's facts, rather than paranoia, I'm afraid. The modern reach, ethos and form of elite management consultancy wouldn't exist at all without McKinsey's, and its influence has been instrumental in corporate governance and public policy in the UK and the United States, and far beyond, since the turn of the 1980s. It is not a neutral technocratic instrument.
I'm afraid you asserting your opinion is a fact doesn't make it so. Some of its ex-employees have held and do hold senior corporate and political positions but that's because it employs extremely talented people who are happy to work hard for long hours - like William Hague, for example; it's not a conspiracy. It would be fair to say that operating at that level allowed them to network and build contacts with influential people at CEO level but it's secretly "controlling" anything - clients have to choose to take its advice.
Management consultancy (helping organisations improve performance) is a fairly recent profession and grew significantly in the 1980s because that was when corporations and businesses started moving away from a traditional hierarchical models just as the world got more complex in people, tax, strategy and technology, and more competitive in how it did things. It's that same evolution into more sophisticated business models that allowed GDP to rise so much at the same time. It wasn't a dark art of McKinsey that brought it all about.
Don't get me wrong: I wouldn't like to work for them. They still have an "up or out" policy, you are reviewed every six months and they work brutal hours and extensively travel. You're under constant stress. But, that said, those I know who've worked there have learnt a huge amount and found the experience very useful for their subsequent careers.
I would say the ultimate influence of McKinsey's has been very far from anti-hierarchical, and date back to the late 60s and early 70s, just anticipating the New Right. It was instrumental as early as about 1965-66 in the concepts of removing middle management and hugely rewarding those chosen at the top, in turn, that in several businesses have often led to more, rather than less, hierarchical management. The emphasis on rationalisation through the ultra-rewarding of elite management has also sometimes contributed not just to the toleration, but even celebration, of greater inequality.
A great example of the influence of McKinsey's is broadcasting and public culture in Britain. John Birt instigated a rationalising blueprint that cut out huge layers of sometimes ambiguous and eccentric middle management. This middle layer was by turns wasteful, highly developed and inspired, and crudely and simplistically hacking it out hugely damaged the BBC's distinctive ecosystem, with wide-ranging consequences for the degradation of our entire public culture. It wasn't actually his blueprint at all ; but McKinsey's.
Your selectively choosing aspects of its past to support your thesis that McKinsey is to blame for all the political ills and failings of today, including the rise of a political ascendency you detest.
It's classic conspiracy theory stuff - a simple explanation for all the world's ills.
You could close down McKinsey tomorrow and it wouldn't make any difference, other than another firm would take its place.
Conspiracy or not is irrelevant. What's blatantly obvious is that approach to running things has failed miserably in this particular task.
I've just received an email from "Donald J. Trump" addressed to "supporter" basically begging for money. Or for me to download his app.
Couple of red flags though. For one I have never signed up for emails from the Republicans so I have no idea how they got my email address, for another my email address they have sent it to is incorrect (there is a dot in my email missing, so it still comes to me but I always put the dot in when registering for anything).
Not sure if this is a scammer trying to rinse people and it's somehow gotten through my spam filter or "legitimate"? Not that it will affect how I ignore it either way.
The email supposedly has come from a domain ending in @victory.donaldtrump.com with a reply to ending in @campaigns.rnchq.com
Sending domains are easily faked. You should check where the app is to be downloaded from (or better still, just delete the email if you (or generic pb readers) are not au fait with these things). The obvious suspicion is that the app is not what it claims to be and is some sort of malware.
Indeed. I once had the shock of my life when I received a ransom email from myself. I really did think for a few minutes that they'd hacked my email, how else could they have sent me an email from my own account. Turns out you can fake that. I had a nasty few hours til I investigated fully.
The email I supposedly got from Trump, minus pictures etc.
URGENT: Biden campaign is currently spending more than $24 million on ads in 16 states
I need to know that I can count on you right now.
I have led the BIGGEST and FASTEST Financial Recovery in History. Next year will be even BETTER unless Sleepy Joe and Phony Kamala take the White House. They’ve promised to raise your taxes by $4 TRILLION - in which case, the economy that I’ve rebuilt would CRASH.
But, the Liberal media refuses to tell the truth about Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’ CORRUPT agenda - they want to TRICK the American People into voting for them. THEY WOULD DESTROY OUR NATION!
We can’t let them get away with this. My team just launched a new ad to FIGHT BACK against their biased coverage and EXPOSE the TRUTH about what this Liberal duo would do to our economy.
The American People deserve to know what they’d be getting into if they elect Sleepy Joe and Phony Kamala. That’s why your support is so important right now.
We need to make sure we FLOOD the airwaves with our new ad, which is why I’m calling on my best supporters to help raise $2,000,000 by 11:59 PM TONIGHT. When you step up, your gift will even be 800%-MATCHED.
This is of the utmost importance. I need you to step up.
Please contribute ANY AMOUNT IMMEDIATELY to our Official Trump Ad Blitz Fund and your gift will be 800%-MATCHED. >>
President Trump needs you to step up
TRUMP AD BLITZ FUND
SUPPORTER: (My email though incorrect snipped) CONTRIBUTION STATUS: MISSING 800%-MATCH: NOT USED DEADLINE: 11:59 PM TONIGHT
CONTRIBUTE $5 = $45
CONTRIBUTE $20 = $180
CONTRIBUTE $15 = $135
CONTRIBUTE $10 = $90
CONTRIBUTE $5 = $45
CONTRIBUTE ANY AMOUNT
If the Fake News won’t report the FACTS about the Left’s UNHINGED ticket, then WE WILL!
I want to know who stood with me during this crucial time. I’ve asked to see a list of EVERY Patriot who steps up to help us reach our $2,000,000 goal by 11:59 PM TONIGHT. I hope I see your name.
Please contribute ANY AMOUNT TODAY to our Official Trump Ad Blitz Fund and get on the list of Patriots my team hands me.
Thank you,
President Trump Signature Headshot Donald J. Trump President of the United States
(Screen after screen more text snipped)
If the prospect of your having to pay $4 Trillion MORE in tax doesn't swing you, there's no helping you.
Europe’s car manufacturers have called on Brussels to take a less restrictive stance on future market access to the UK, warning that aspects of the bloc’s current position are “not in the long-term interests of the EU automotive industry”.
The letter from the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA) — a group that represents companies including BMW, Toyota and Fiat — urges Brussels to “reconsider its position” on rules for determining whether goods will qualify for tariff-free trade.
The group’s specific demands include that the EU should lower the percentage of components in a car that must be either European or British for the vehicle to qualify for the benefits of any EU-UK trade deal.
What I'd be interested to know is whether McKinsey has eaten itself at any point - a constant supply of bright but green juniors, little practical knowledge in the middle and a few high ups who managed to beat Logan's run?
Those in the consultancy industries, in particular, love consulting other consultants, there is a deep level of comfort with that - lawyers, management consultants, accountants, and varying specialists such as IT consultants - of course some of these are mandated activities, but the comfort zone expands well beyond that and can go with an innate mistrust of in-house knowledge at any level. Merry-go-round would be a good description. And, beyond your own field, it's not always apparent from the size of the name whether who you are consulting someone who will run the engagement as you think a top name should or whether you are going to get a hollowed out Delboy Trotter service, hoping to make it all stick together on a wing and a prayer.
By the way, I don't - I don't have much time at all for the Big4 (which I left) for a variety of reasons.
I just don't think there's a conspiracy, and the firms still contain many good people who do good work but also some real pieces of work too.
I've just received an email from "Donald J. Trump" addressed to "supporter" basically begging for money. Or for me to download his app.
Couple of red flags though. For one I have never signed up for emails from the Republicans so I have no idea how they got my email address, for another my email address they have sent it to is incorrect (there is a dot in my email missing, so it still comes to me but I always put the dot in when registering for anything).
Not sure if this is a scammer trying to rinse people and it's somehow gotten through my spam filter or "legitimate"? Not that it will affect how I ignore it either way.
The email supposedly has come from a domain ending in @victory.donaldtrump.com with a reply to ending in @campaigns.rnchq.com
Sending domains are easily faked. You should check where the app is to be downloaded from (or better still, just delete the email if you (or generic pb readers) are not au fait with these things). The obvious suspicion is that the app is not what it claims to be and is some sort of malware.
Indeed. I once had the shock of my life when I received a ransom email from myself. I really did think for a few minutes that they'd hacked my email, how else could they have sent me an email from my own account. Turns out you can fake that. I had a nasty few hours til I investigated fully.
It's a surprisingly decent article from Monbiot. If he could tone down the outrage by 50%, and increase the factual analysis by 10% or so, it would actually be very good indeed.
An excellent article from Monbiot overall, I would say. What is does highlight is the huge influence of McKinsey's, as the model all other elite management consultancies follow, that many companies have actually adapted to in order to meet its expectations without running contracts with it, and that has run huge numbers of government functions.
This largely unknown organisation to most people has had huge political and cultural influence over the last 40 years - it's high time its supposedly 'apolitical' influence was more widely understood.
This is getting into lizard illuminati territory.
McKinsey is a high-end strategy consultancy but isn't the model all management consultancies follow - I know because I've worked for several - and isn't secretly pulling strings behind the scenes. That's not how they work.
The Big4 do operate as something of a soft cartel and that's because with their size, profile and reach (they audit almost all the FTSE100 and the vast majority of the FTSE250, plus have people working throughout all Government departments) work just comes through the door to them, and they are very good at leveraging. The Government likes hiring them as "what more could I have done?" in a crisis than hiring the Big4?
It's a cosy merry-go-round but it's not a conspiracy. Best thing Government could do is to lift some of the restrictions they have on hiring the best project and commercial talent and then diversify their procurement.
It's facts, rather than paranoia, I'm afraid. The modern reach, ethos and form of elite management consultancy wouldn't exist at all without McKinsey's, and its influence has been instrumental in corporate governance and public policy in the UK and the United States, and far beyond, since the turn of the 1980s. It is not a neutral technocratic instrument.
I'm afraid you asserting your opinion is a fact doesn't make it so. Some of its ex-employees have held and do hold senior corporate and political positions but that's because it employs extremely talented people who are happy to work hard for long hours - like William Hague, for example; it's not a conspiracy. It would be fair to say that operating at that level allowed them to network and build contacts with influential people at CEO level but it's secretly "controlling" anything - clients have to choose to take its advice.
Management consultancy (helping organisations improve performance) is a fairly recent profession and grew significantly in the 1980s because that was when corporations and businesses started moving away from a traditional hierarchical models just as the world got more complex in people, tax, strategy and technology, and more competitive in how it did things. It's that same evolution into more sophisticated business models that allowed GDP to rise so much at the same time. It wasn't a dark art of McKinsey that brought it all about.
Don't get me wrong: I wouldn't like to work for them. They still have an "up or out" policy, you are reviewed every six months and they work brutal hours and extensively travel. You're under constant stress. But, that said, those I know who've worked there have learnt a huge amount and found the experience very useful for their subsequent careers.
I would say the ultimate influence of McKinsey's has been very far from anti-hierarchical, and date back to the late 60s and early 70s, just anticipating the New Right. It was instrumental as early as about 1965-66 in the concepts of removing middle management and hugely rewarding those chosen at the top, in turn, that in several businesses have often led to more, rather than less, hierarchical management. The emphasis on rationalisation through the ultra-rewarding of elite management has also sometimes contributed not just to the toleration, but even celebration, of greater inequality.
A great example of the influence of McKinsey's is broadcasting and public culture in Britain. John Birt instigated a rationalising blueprint that cut out huge layers of sometimes ambiguous and eccentric middle management. This middle layer was by turns wasteful, highly developed and inspired, and crudely and simplistically hacking it out hugely damaged the BBC's distinctive ecosystem, with wide-ranging consequences for the degradation of our entire public culture. It wasn't actually his blueprint at all ; but McKinsey's.
Your selectively choosing aspects of its past to support your thesis that McKinsey is to blame for all the political ills and failings of today, including the rise of a political ascendency you detest.
It's classic conspiracy theory stuff - a simple explanation for all the world's ills.
You could close down McKinsey tomorrow and it wouldn't make any difference, other than another firm would take its place.
Conspiracy or not is irrelevant. What's blatantly obvious is that approach to running things has failed miserably in this particular task.
Sunder Katwala said this showed “a concern to differentiate between the most egregious examples and a sweeping 'year zero' idea of interrogating every historical figure by contemporary standards”; “views of ethnic minority Britons could be summed up as one of frustration that these polarising culture wars misrepresent and trivialise ethnic minority concerns about race equality.”
He's spot on.
It's not really about the degree to which each statue is racist; it's about the destruction of what Mao called the 'four olds'.
He was spot on.
If you're having to invoke Mao to support your argument then you're unwittingly supporting mine.
It's a surprisingly decent article from Monbiot. If he could tone down the outrage by 50%, and increase the factual analysis by 10% or so, it would actually be very good indeed.
An excellent article from Monbiot overall, I would say. What is does highlight is the huge influence of McKinsey's, as the model all other elite management consultancies follow, that many companies have actually adapted to in order to meet its expectations without running contracts with it, and that has run huge numbers of government functions.
This largely unknown organisation to most people has had huge political and cultural influence over the last 40 years - it's high time its supposedly 'apolitical' influence was more widely understood.
This is getting into lizard illuminati territory.
McKinsey is a high-end strategy consultancy but isn't the model all management consultancies follow - I know because I've worked for several - and isn't secretly pulling strings behind the scenes. That's not how they work.
The Big4 do operate as something of a soft cartel and that's because with their size, profile and reach (they audit almost all the FTSE100 and the vast majority of the FTSE250, plus have people working throughout all Government departments) work just comes through the door to them, and they are very good at leveraging. The Government likes hiring them as "what more could I have done?" in a crisis than hiring the Big4?
It's a cosy merry-go-round but it's not a conspiracy. Best thing Government could do is to lift some of the restrictions they have on hiring the best project and commercial talent and then diversify their procurement.
It's facts, rather than paranoia, I'm afraid. The modern reach, ethos and form of elite management consultancy wouldn't exist at all without McKinsey's, and its influence has been instrumental in corporate governance and public policy in the UK and the United States, and far beyond, since the turn of the 1980s. It is not a neutral technocratic instrument.
I'm afraid you asserting your opinion is a fact doesn't make it so. Some of its ex-employees have held and do hold senior corporate and political positions but that's because it employs extremely talented people who are happy to work hard for long hours - like William Hague, for example; it's not a conspiracy. It would be fair to say that operating at that level allowed them to network and build contacts with influential people at CEO level but it's secretly "controlling" anything - clients have to choose to take its advice.
Management consultancy (helping organisations improve performance) is a fairly recent profession and grew significantly in the 1980s because that was when corporations and businesses started moving away from a traditional hierarchical models just as the world got more complex in people, tax, strategy and technology, and more competitive in how it did things. It's that same evolution into more sophisticated business models that allowed GDP to rise so much at the same time. It wasn't a dark art of McKinsey that brought it all about.
Don't get me wrong: I wouldn't like to work for them. They still have an "up or out" policy, you are reviewed every six months and they work brutal hours and extensively travel. You're under constant stress. But, that said, those I know who've worked there have learnt a huge amount and found the experience very useful for their subsequent careers.
I would say the ultimate influence of McKinsey's has been very far from anti-hierarchical, and date back to the late 60s and early 70s, just anticipating the New Right. It was instrumental as early as about 1965-66 in the concepts of removing middle management and hugely rewarding those chosen at the top, in turn, that in several businesses have often led to more, rather than less, hierarchical management. The emphasis on rationalisation through the ultra-rewarding of elite management has also sometimes contributed not just to the toleration, but even celebration, of greater inequality.
A great example of the influence of McKinsey's is broadcasting and public culture in Britain. John Birt instigated a rationalising blueprint that cut out huge layers of sometimes ambiguous and eccentric middle management. This middle layer was by turns wasteful, highly developed and inspired, and crudely and simplistically hacking it out hugely damaged the BBC's distinctive ecosystem, with wide-ranging consequences for the degradation of our entire public culture. It wasn't actually his blueprint at all ; but McKinsey's.
Your selectively choosing aspects of its past to support your thesis that McKinsey is to blame for all the political ills and failings of today, including the rise of a political ascendency you detest.
It's classic conspiracy theory stuff - a simple explanation for all the world's ills.
You could close down McKinsey tomorrow and it wouldn't make any difference, other than another firm would take its place.
Conspiracy or not is irrelevant. What's blatantly obvious is that approach to running things has failed miserably in this particular task.
Stocky: Largely white Brits I take it, rather than migrant workers?
Probably so, but not necessarily. I`d like to hear more from @theProle on this.
Agree it was great insight into a demographic that 75% of PB contributors have no association with on that level.
It's interesting how this kind of breathless reportage from the building sites of Britain is dissected with such anthropological excitement on PB. I mean, are these people really so unknown to people here? I move in pretty bourgeois circles these days, perhaps even the global elite, but I went to a comprehensive school and have done a fair amount of low paid work in the past, and the fact that a lot of working class blokes don't like the EU, or anything vaguely foreign, or indeed have a low opinion of "political correctness gone mad" is hardly news to me.
Spot on. I'd also add that this kind of reportage seems to only ever cover half of the relevant population - namely men.
On this male-dominated site, who's going to give us the equivalent insight into what working class women are thinking? We hear a lot about the views of lads and blokes - not so much about their female equivalents. I suspect they're slightly different. And women do now have the vote, of course.
@Foxy did say that all his female ethnic minority staff open up to him, their white, older, male boss with their innermost feelings.
I said that I am quite a good eavesdropping!
But yes, as a comprehensive schoolboy of fairly proletarian taste, and a national award for listening skills, I don't do badly. 😎
Health care is a team effort, and I take a very egalitarian approach to work. Doctor in the House is not a contemporary documentary!
Sunder Katwala said this showed “a concern to differentiate between the most egregious examples and a sweeping 'year zero' idea of interrogating every historical figure by contemporary standards”; “views of ethnic minority Britons could be summed up as one of frustration that these polarising culture wars misrepresent and trivialise ethnic minority concerns about race equality.”
He's spot on.
It's not really about the degree to which each statue is racist; it's about the destruction of what Mao called the 'four olds'.
He was spot on.
Old habits like collecting fast gas guzzlers, perhaps ?
Trump campaign reportedly pulling advertising in Wisconsin - further evidence they are going all in on a last stand in PA
I think advertising at this stage makes little difference anyway, one advantage the Trump campaign has had is it has had a ground campaign in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania for months unlike Biden's campaign.
It should therefore by now know where its supporters are and will just be ensuring they turn out on or before polling day
I've just received an email from "Donald J. Trump" addressed to "supporter" basically begging for money. Or for me to download his app.
Couple of red flags though. For one I have never signed up for emails from the Republicans so I have no idea how they got my email address, for another my email address they have sent it to is incorrect (there is a dot in my email missing, so it still comes to me but I always put the dot in when registering for anything).
Not sure if this is a scammer trying to rinse people and it's somehow gotten through my spam filter or "legitimate"? Not that it will affect how I ignore it either way.
The email supposedly has come from a domain ending in @victory.donaldtrump.com with a reply to ending in @campaigns.rnchq.com
LOL. You've been profiled!
No necessarily. If you have any sort of normal name as an email address you will eventually end up receiving emails intended for other people where they have put your email address in by mistake. The longer you have an email address the worse it gets.
I regularly get similar Trump begging letters addressed to a person who seems to use my email address for all sorts of things. I also get things like HOA minutes, little league stuff, and golf related things for this chap. Another woman used to book large takeways around the holidays, and I'd receive receipts for those. I've had people contact me about funerals, cruise itineraries, flight bookings, medical forms, and many more private emails that by accident are being sent to me. These aren't the usual spam, these are emails misdirected either by accident or design.
It's just as well I'm an honest person, as I could cause a lot of trouble for these people if I wanted to.
I've just received an email from "Donald J. Trump" addressed to "supporter" basically begging for money. Or for me to download his app.
Couple of red flags though. For one I have never signed up for emails from the Republicans so I have no idea how they got my email address, for another my email address they have sent it to is incorrect (there is a dot in my email missing, so it still comes to me but I always put the dot in when registering for anything).
Not sure if this is a scammer trying to rinse people and it's somehow gotten through my spam filter or "legitimate"? Not that it will affect how I ignore it either way.
The email supposedly has come from a domain ending in @victory.donaldtrump.com with a reply to ending in @campaigns.rnchq.com
Trump can't legitimately accept a donation from you anyway. You're not a US citizen.
From personal experience, I know how tight the rules are in respect of US political parties (as opposed to PACs). My wife and I spent a fortnight in Las Vegas in October 2016, staying with a Canadian relative at their winter refuge (they have a name for Canadian winter refugees in LA: "snowbirds"). It was fascinating to see the campaign unfold in the swing state of Nevada, through local news channels and TV advertising. Hilary Clinton held an open air rally in LA one evening and we went - queueing up with 5,000 others for an hour and a half to get in, chatting with the Americans in the queue, declining to be signed up for voter registration for obvious reasons, buying campaign stuff off freebooting hawkers. It was great - right up there with Red Rock Canyon and the Hoover Dam in terms of an unforgettable holiday experience for a political activist. My wife still has a "Dump Trump" 2016 losing T-shirt which makes a set with my "A better plan, a better future" losing 2015 mug from Miliband.
Anyway, once we got past the airport-style security machines and bag searches, there was an official Democratic Party stall. We went to buy some more stuff. They asked for my name and address. On seeing that, they insisted on cancelling the transaction because I was British. Apparently sales of campaign stuff is to US citizens only, because I would potentially be contributing to the Democratic Party indirectly through the profits from sales of merchandise. That's how tight the rules on donations are in the US.
It's a surprisingly decent article from Monbiot. If he could tone down the outrage by 50%, and increase the factual analysis by 10% or so, it would actually be very good indeed.
An excellent article from Monbiot overall, I would say. What is does highlight is the huge influence of McKinsey's, as the model all other elite management consultancies follow, that many companies have actually adapted to in order to meet its expectations without running contracts with it, and that has run huge numbers of government functions.
This largely unknown organisation to most people has had huge political and cultural influence over the last 40 years - it's high time its supposedly 'apolitical' influence was more widely understood.
This is getting into lizard illuminati territory.
McKinsey is a high-end strategy consultancy but isn't the model all management consultancies follow - I know because I've worked for several - and isn't secretly pulling strings behind the scenes. That's not how they work.
The Big4 do operate as something of a soft cartel and that's because with their size, profile and reach (they audit almost all the FTSE100 and the vast majority of the FTSE250, plus have people working throughout all Government departments) work just comes through the door to them, and they are very good at leveraging. The Government likes hiring them as "what more could I have done?" in a crisis than hiring the Big4?
It's a cosy merry-go-round but it's not a conspiracy. Best thing Government could do is to lift some of the restrictions they have on hiring the best project and commercial talent and then diversify their procurement.
It's facts, rather than paranoia, I'm afraid. The modern reach, ethos and form of elite management consultancy wouldn't exist at all without McKinsey's, and its influence has been instrumental in corporate governance and public policy in the UK and the United States, and far beyond, since the turn of the 1980s. It is not a neutral technocratic instrument.
I'm afraid you asserting your opinion is a fact doesn't make it so. Some of its ex-employees have held and do hold senior corporate and political positions but that's because it employs extremely talented people who are happy to work hard for long hours - like William Hague, for example; it's not a conspiracy. It would be fair to say that operating at that level allowed them to network and build contacts with influential people at CEO level but it's secretly "controlling" anything - clients have to choose to take its advice.
Management consultancy (helping organisations improve performance) is a fairly recent profession and grew significantly in the 1980s because that was when corporations and businesses started moving away from a traditional hierarchical models just as the world got more complex in people, tax, strategy and technology, and more competitive in how it did things. It's that same evolution into more sophisticated business models that allowed GDP to rise so much at the same time. It wasn't a dark art of McKinsey that brought it all about.
Don't get me wrong: I wouldn't like to work for them. They still have an "up or out" policy, you are reviewed every six months and they work brutal hours and extensively travel. You're under constant stress. But, that said, those I know who've worked there have learnt a huge amount and found the experience very useful for their subsequent careers.
I would say the ultimate influence of McKinsey's has been very far from anti-hierarchical, and date back to the late 60s and early 70s, just anticipating the New Right. It was instrumental as early as about 1965-66 in the concepts of removing middle management and hugely rewarding those chosen at the top, in turn, that in several businesses have often led to more, rather than less, hierarchical management. The emphasis on rationalisation through the ultra-rewarding of elite management has also sometimes contributed not just to the toleration, but even celebration, of greater inequality.
A great example of the influence of McKinsey's is broadcasting and public culture in Britain. John Birt instigated a rationalising blueprint that cut out huge layers of sometimes ambiguous and eccentric middle management. This middle layer was by turns wasteful, highly developed and inspired, and crudely and simplistically hacking it out hugely damaged the BBC's distinctive ecosystem, with wide-ranging consequences for the degradation of our entire public culture. It wasn't actually his blueprint at all ; but McKinsey's.
Your selectively choosing aspects of its past to support your thesis that McKinsey is to blame for all the political ills and failings of today, including the rise of a political ascendency you detest.
It's classic conspiracy theory stuff - a simple explanation for all the world's ills.
You could close down McKinsey tomorrow and it wouldn't make any difference, other than another firm would take its place.
Conspiracy or not is irrelevant. What's blatantly obvious is that approach to running things has failed miserably in this particular task.
Sunder Katwala said this showed “a concern to differentiate between the most egregious examples and a sweeping 'year zero' idea of interrogating every historical figure by contemporary standards”; “views of ethnic minority Britons could be summed up as one of frustration that these polarising culture wars misrepresent and trivialise ethnic minority concerns about race equality.”
He's spot on.
It's not really about the degree to which each statue is racist; it's about the destruction of what Mao called the 'four olds'.
He was spot on.
Old habits like collecting fast gas guzzlers, perhaps ?
The Great Helmsman had a Hongqi Red Flag with a (probably really bad) copy of a 354ci Chrysler V8 in it.
RCP has a grand total of one (1) poll listed for October, the famous Rasmussen (plus one other overlapping into last month). 538 lists seven (7) polls for that period, some of which are highly-reputed pollsters like YouGov.
People have explained to you repeatedly that RCP no longer bother putting the polls into their website, you can check it in a matter of seconds, and you seem to have understood the point, yet you just carry on quoting them.
What are you trying to do? Seriously, what are you doing this for, what are you hoping to achieve???
Yougov was miles out in the last US election, they had Hillary getting over 300 EC votes on their MRP poll, indeed so did 538 which had Hillary getting 302 EC votes in its final projection.
RCP was much closer to the final result with its final projection giving Hillary 272 EC votes, though both 538 and RCP underestimated Trump RCP did so less than 538 did
RCP has a grand total of one (1) poll listed for October, the famous Rasmussen (plus one other overlapping into last month). 538 lists seven (7) polls for that period, some of which are highly-reputed pollsters like YouGov.
People have explained to you repeatedly that RCP no longer bother putting the polls into their website, you can check it in a matter of seconds, and you seem to have understood the point, yet you just carry on quoting them.
What are you trying to do? Seriously, what are you doing this for, what are you hoping to achieve???
Yougov was miles out in the last US election, they had Hillary getting over 300 EC votes, indeed so did 538
What do you think the job of a poll aggregation website is? Do you not think it might be a problem if they stop typing in the polls???
It's a surprisingly decent article from Monbiot. If he could tone down the outrage by 50%, and increase the factual analysis by 10% or so, it would actually be very good indeed.
An excellent article from Monbiot overall, I would say. What is does highlight is the huge influence of McKinsey's, as the model all other elite management consultancies follow, that many companies have actually adapted to in order to meet its expectations without running contracts with it, and that has run huge numbers of government functions.
This largely unknown organisation to most people has had huge political and cultural influence over the last 40 years - it's high time its supposedly 'apolitical' influence was more widely understood.
This is getting into lizard illuminati territory.
McKinsey is a high-end strategy consultancy but isn't the model all management consultancies follow - I know because I've worked for several - and isn't secretly pulling strings behind the scenes. That's not how they work.
The Big4 do operate as something of a soft cartel and that's because with their size, profile and reach (they audit almost all the FTSE100 and the vast majority of the FTSE250, plus have people working throughout all Government departments) work just comes through the door to them, and they are very good at leveraging. The Government likes hiring them as "what more could I have done?" in a crisis than hiring the Big4?
It's a cosy merry-go-round but it's not a conspiracy. Best thing Government could do is to lift some of the restrictions they have on hiring the best project and commercial talent and then diversify their procurement.
It's facts, rather than paranoia, I'm afraid. The modern reach, ethos and form of elite management consultancy wouldn't exist at all without McKinsey's, and its influence has been instrumental in corporate governance and public policy in the UK and the United States, and far beyond, since the turn of the 1980s. It is not a neutral technocratic instrument.
I'm afraid you asserting your opinion is a fact doesn't make it so. Some of its ex-employees have held and do hold senior corporate and political positions but that's because it employs extremely talented people who are happy to work hard for long hours - like William Hague, for example; it's not a conspiracy. It would be fair to say that operating at that level allowed them to network and build contacts with influential people at CEO level but it's secretly "controlling" anything - clients have to choose to take its advice.
Management consultancy (helping organisations improve performance) is a fairly recent profession and grew significantly in the 1980s because that was when corporations and businesses started moving away from a traditional hierarchical models just as the world got more complex in people, tax, strategy and technology, and more competitive in how it did things. It's that same evolution into more sophisticated business models that allowed GDP to rise so much at the same time. It wasn't a dark art of McKinsey that brought it all about.
Don't get me wrong: I wouldn't like to work for them. They still have an "up or out" policy, you are reviewed every six months and they work brutal hours and extensively travel. You're under constant stress. But, that said, those I know who've worked there have learnt a huge amount and found the experience very useful for their subsequent careers.
The 1980’s you say. And the period since then has been the epitome, has it not, of brilliant management in lots of private sector organisations. And of a GDP built on solid foundations ...... Or perhaps not.
Of course there have been problems, not least in the financial services industry, but world GDP (GWP) has increased from around 18tn in 1980 to around 81trn today - a four-fold increase in real terms. In England, from £15k per head in 1980 to almost £30k per head today - so we are twice as wealthy.
That doesn't mean we still have problems - including examples of poor practice, corruption, management failures and huge entitlement - but it does mean our 'new' services driven economy has delivered great improvements in the quality of life.
Two things can be true at the same time.
But these improvements are not down to the McKinsey way of management which you seemed to imply - but perhaps I misunderstood you.
If anything I think that the unnecessary complication - and the attempt to deal with that using management techniques sold at vast expense and which often seem to me to have been either the restatement of the bleeding obvious or like the Wizard of Oz devoid of content - have made things worse than they could have been. And have been one of the reasons for so many of the scandals and disasters we have seen and are still paying for.
One reason we do not have as much money as we would like is because we are still, in part, paying for the financial crisis over a decade ago, a crisis brought about by a lot of apparently very clever people trained by these apparently very clever consultants. I am afraid - and I know that this is my particular perspective - that I really don’t buy into this myth of this cleverness. There is a type of stupidity that only the very clever are capable of - and the financial world (though not just it) is full of such examples.
From my experience of "Consulting" (as customer and supplier) a common theme is that consultants are brought in by a particular executive as "allies" against others either inside or outside the organization. Could be defensive, a shoring up of a position when under attack, an attempt to maintain the status quo against those who want to stir things up, or the opposite, offensive, e.g. they want to get something done, or make some big changes, some "streamlining" maybe, reorg'd people and processes, whatever, and they need a "reputable" and "independent" report to slap down as clinching evidence for their case. If they are paying, the consultants will invariably tell them what they want to hear and deliver that report.
Because JVT argued against a national lockdown at the Press Conference?
"Why do you know better than JVT, Sir Keir?"
I well remember becoming incandescent back in late March 2020 when there was a bald headed quite irate swarthy man from Public Health England arguing back to the effect that testing was pointless at a time when UK cases were starting to go through the roof and every other European country took a contrary view. It was so obviously wrong then that it sticks in the memory. I now realise that that was Mr Van Tamm. His credibility is shot - basically he's prepared to do whatever the Government tells him to bolster their position.
It's a surprisingly decent article from Monbiot. If he could tone down the outrage by 50%, and increase the factual analysis by 10% or so, it would actually be very good indeed.
An excellent article from Monbiot overall, I would say. What is does highlight is the huge influence of McKinsey's, as the model all other elite management consultancies follow, that many companies have actually adapted to in order to meet its expectations without running contracts with it, and that has run huge numbers of government functions.
This largely unknown organisation to most people has had huge political and cultural influence over the last 40 years - it's high time its supposedly 'apolitical' influence was more widely understood.
This is getting into lizard illuminati territory.
McKinsey is a high-end strategy consultancy but isn't the model all management consultancies follow - I know because I've worked for several - and isn't secretly pulling strings behind the scenes. That's not how they work.
The Big4 do operate as something of a soft cartel and that's because with their size, profile and reach (they audit almost all the FTSE100 and the vast majority of the FTSE250, plus have people working throughout all Government departments) work just comes through the door to them, and they are very good at leveraging. The Government likes hiring them as "what more could I have done?" in a crisis than hiring the Big4?
It's a cosy merry-go-round but it's not a conspiracy. Best thing Government could do is to lift some of the restrictions they have on hiring the best project and commercial talent and then diversify their procurement.
It's facts, rather than paranoia, I'm afraid. The modern reach, ethos and form of elite management consultancy wouldn't exist at all without McKinsey's, and its influence has been instrumental in corporate governance and public policy in the UK and the United States, and far beyond, since the turn of the 1980s. It is not a neutral technocratic instrument.
I'm afraid you asserting your opinion is a fact doesn't make it so. Some of its ex-employees have held and do hold senior corporate and political positions but that's because it employs extremely talented people who are happy to work hard for long hours - like William Hague, for example; it's not a conspiracy. It would be fair to say that operating at that level allowed them to network and build contacts with influential people at CEO level but it's secretly "controlling" anything - clients have to choose to take its advice.
Management consultancy (helping organisations improve performance) is a fairly recent profession and grew significantly in the 1980s because that was when corporations and businesses started moving away from a traditional hierarchical models just as the world got more complex in people, tax, strategy and technology, and more competitive in how it did things. It's that same evolution into more sophisticated business models that allowed GDP to rise so much at the same time. It wasn't a dark art of McKinsey that brought it all about.
Don't get me wrong: I wouldn't like to work for them. They still have an "up or out" policy, you are reviewed every six months and they work brutal hours and extensively travel. You're under constant stress. But, that said, those I know who've worked there have learnt a huge amount and found the experience very useful for their subsequent careers.
I would say the ultimate influence of McKinsey's has been very far from anti-hierarchical, and date back to the late 60s and early 70s, just anticipating the New Right. It was instrumental as early as about 1965-66 in the concepts of removing middle management and hugely rewarding those chosen at the top, in turn, that in several businesses have often led to more, rather than less, hierarchical management. The emphasis on rationalisation through the ultra-rewarding of elite management has also sometimes contributed not just to the toleration, but even celebration, of greater inequality.
A great example of the influence of McKinsey's is broadcasting and public culture in Britain. John Birt instigated a rationalising blueprint that cut out huge layers of sometimes ambiguous and eccentric middle management. This middle layer was by turns wasteful, highly developed and inspired, and crudely and simplistically hacking it out hugely damaged the BBC's distinctive ecosystem, with wide-ranging consequences for the degradation of our entire public culture. It wasn't actually his blueprint at all ; but McKinsey's.
Your selectively choosing aspects of its past to support your thesis that McKinsey is to blame for all the political ills and failings of today, including the rise of a political ascendency you detest.
It's classic conspiracy theory stuff - a simple explanation for all the world's ills.
You could close down McKinsey tomorrow and it wouldn't make any difference, other than another firm would take its place.
Conspiracy or not is irrelevant. What's blatantly obvious is that approach to running things has failed miserably in this particular task.
Which particular task?
Improving the operation of Dido's fiefdom.
In 100 years' time "Chancellor of the Fiefdom of Dido" will be an obscure high-ranking public office occupied by a future Michael Gove.
Because JVT argued against a national lockdown at the Press Conference?
"Why do you know better than JVT, Sir Keir?"
I well remember becoming incandescent back in late March 2020 when there was a bald headed quite irate swarthy man from Public Health England arguing back to the effect that testing was pointless at a time when UK cases were starting to go through the roof and every other European country took a contrary view. It was so obviously wrong then that it sticks in the memory. I now realise that that was Mr Van Tamm. His credibility is shot - basically he's prepared to do whatever the Government tells him to bolster their position.
That this was ever our government's line during the early stages of a pandemic is a striking misjudgement, even by their own world-beating standards.
It's a surprisingly decent article from Monbiot. If he could tone down the outrage by 50%, and increase the factual analysis by 10% or so, it would actually be very good indeed.
An excellent article from Monbiot overall, I would say. What is does highlight is the huge influence of McKinsey's, as the model all other elite management consultancies follow, that many companies have actually adapted to in order to meet its expectations without running contracts with it, and that has run huge numbers of government functions.
This largely unknown organisation to most people has had huge political and cultural influence over the last 40 years - it's high time its supposedly 'apolitical' influence was more widely understood.
This is getting into lizard illuminati territory.
McKinsey is a high-end strategy consultancy but isn't the model all management consultancies follow - I know because I've worked for several - and isn't secretly pulling strings behind the scenes. That's not how they work.
The Big4 do operate as something of a soft cartel and that's because with their size, profile and reach (they audit almost all the FTSE100 and the vast majority of the FTSE250, plus have people working throughout all Government departments) work just comes through the door to them, and they are very good at leveraging. The Government likes hiring them as "what more could I have done?" in a crisis than hiring the Big4?
It's a cosy merry-go-round but it's not a conspiracy. Best thing Government could do is to lift some of the restrictions they have on hiring the best project and commercial talent and then diversify their procurement.
It's facts, rather than paranoia, I'm afraid. The modern reach, ethos and form of elite management consultancy wouldn't exist at all without McKinsey's, and its influence has been instrumental in corporate governance and public policy in the UK and the United States, and far beyond, since the turn of the 1980s. It is not a neutral technocratic instrument.
I'm afraid you asserting your opinion is a fact doesn't make it so. Some of its ex-employees have held and do hold senior corporate and political positions but that's because it employs extremely talented people who are happy to work hard for long hours - like William Hague, for example; it's not a conspiracy. It would be fair to say that operating at that level allowed them to network and build contacts with influential people at CEO level but it's secretly "controlling" anything - clients have to choose to take its advice.
Management consultancy (helping organisations improve performance) is a fairly recent profession and grew significantly in the 1980s because that was when corporations and businesses started moving away from a traditional hierarchical models just as the world got more complex in people, tax, strategy and technology, and more competitive in how it did things. It's that same evolution into more sophisticated business models that allowed GDP to rise so much at the same time. It wasn't a dark art of McKinsey that brought it all about.
Don't get me wrong: I wouldn't like to work for them. They still have an "up or out" policy, you are reviewed every six months and they work brutal hours and extensively travel. You're under constant stress. But, that said, those I know who've worked there have learnt a huge amount and found the experience very useful for their subsequent careers.
The 1980’s you say. And the period since then has been the epitome, has it not, of brilliant management in lots of private sector organisations. And of a GDP built on solid foundations ...... Or perhaps not.
Of course there have been problems, not least in the financial services industry, but world GDP (GWP) has increased from around 18tn in 1980 to around 81trn today - a four-fold increase in real terms. In England, from £15k per head in 1980 to almost £30k per head today - so we are twice as wealthy.
That doesn't mean we still have problems - including examples of poor practice, corruption, management failures and huge entitlement - but it does mean our 'new' services driven economy has delivered great improvements in the quality of life.
Two things can be true at the same time.
But these improvements are not down to the McKinsey way of management which you seemed to imply - but perhaps I misunderstood you.
If anything I think that the unnecessary complication - and the attempt to deal with that using management techniques sold at vast expense and which often seem to me to have been either the restatement of the bleeding obvious or like the Wizard of Oz devoid of content - have made things worse than they could have been. And have been one of the reasons for so many of the scandals and disasters we have seen and are still paying for.
One reason we do not have as much money as we would like is because we are still, in part, paying for the financial crisis over a decade ago, a crisis brought about by a lot of apparently very clever people trained by these apparently very clever consultants. I am afraid - and I know that this is my particular perspective - that I really don’t buy into this myth of this cleverness. There is a type of stupidity that only the very clever are capable of - and the financial world (though not just it) is full of such examples.
The problem the UK has is that since 1980 government administration has been hollowed out and the public sector has lost a massive pool of talent which has not been replaced.
Sir Walter Marshall, last head of the CEGB, for example, warned that the generating margins of less than 9% would threaten the long term stability of supply, but the asset sweating approach after electricity privatisation didn`t care. The result is the current emerging crisis in UK power generation.
Privatisation for its own sake has carried a cost that is now being paid in £7500 per diem consultants. Meanwhile our political leaders do not have the experience or understanding of administration (because they are mostly PR Merchants themselves) to strengthen the skills of the civil service in critical areas... and growing failure and corruption is the result.
Stocky: Largely white Brits I take it, rather than migrant workers?
Probably so, but not necessarily. I`d like to hear more from @theProle on this.
Agree it was great insight into a demographic that 75% of PB contributors have no association with on that level.
It's interesting how this kind of breathless reportage from the building sites of Britain is dissected with such anthropological excitement on PB. I mean, are these people really so unknown to people here? I move in pretty bourgeois circles these days, perhaps even the global elite, but I went to a comprehensive school and have done a fair amount of low paid work in the past, and the fact that a lot of working class blokes don't like the EU, or anything vaguely foreign, or indeed have a low opinion of "political correctness gone mad" is hardly news to me.
Maybe it isn't but recognising those people and their views isn't the same as engaging with or addressing them.
It isn't an answer to say it's not news, you know them well, shrug your shoulders, just say they're wrong and move on.
It depends who you are. I am just a private citizen and it's not my job to educate and enlighten the masses, nor am I arrogant enough to think that I could. Live and let live is an entirely rational response to the fact that some people hold views that I disagree with. If I were a politician of course I would have to engage with them and find a way to bring some of them on board, without selling out my core beliefs or alienating other supporters. As the original poster notes, there are left wing economic messages that might resonate with them. Of course it is in the interests of the Tory party and press to play up the right wing cultural messages precisely because they don't want to engage with those economic views (hence create wedge issues like Brexit, statues etc). I just find it odd that these people seem to induce an almost anthropological fascination from some people here, as if they are an uncontacted Amazonian tribe. It makes me think that some people must have had quite a sheltered upbringing. It's also a bit reminiscent of the episode of Peep Show when Jeremy tries to be friends with their builder, or perhaps the Greek art student in Pulp's Common People.
You're onto something here.
"The Night They Drove Coal Dixie Down (but we kept on singing!): The romanticisation of the miners' strike and the working class generally by the British middle class Left."
This is a book I've always wanted to write if I could do more than titles.
But now it's the Right doing it and it's in a far more pernicious fashion. Because what they at the same time caricature and celebrate is not the collectivist solidarity and sense of community of these salt-of-the-earths but the rather unevolved - or in PC speak "traditional" - social values and attitudes that some of them have.
I hate it - and I hate even more that in recent times it's working. June 23rd. Dec 12th. I won't add "etc" since I hope the tide is going out on all this crap, starting with Nov 3rd.
Excellent comment. As someone who believes a liberal world order is a good and far better than the alternatives, I think my side screwed up by not bothering to make to make the case for multiculturalism, globalisation etc and for not reaching out to everyone to include them in the benefits of these things. We ignored them and unsurprisingly they are receptive to the snake-oil of Farage, Johnson and the New Conservative Party that intend to con them.
I've just received an email from "Donald J. Trump" addressed to "supporter" basically begging for money. Or for me to download his app.
Couple of red flags though. For one I have never signed up for emails from the Republicans so I have no idea how they got my email address, for another my email address they have sent it to is incorrect (there is a dot in my email missing, so it still comes to me but I always put the dot in when registering for anything).
Not sure if this is a scammer trying to rinse people and it's somehow gotten through my spam filter or "legitimate"? Not that it will affect how I ignore it either way.
The email supposedly has come from a domain ending in @victory.donaldtrump.com with a reply to ending in @campaigns.rnchq.com
LOL. You've been profiled!
No necessarily. If you have any sort of normal name as an email address you will eventually end up receiving emails intended for other people where they have put your email address in by mistake. The longer you have an email address the worse it gets.
I regularly get similar Trump begging letters addressed to a person who seems to use my email address for all sorts of things. I also get things like HOA minutes, little league stuff, and golf related things for this chap. Another woman used to book large takeways around the holidays, and I'd receive receipts for those. I've had people contact me about funerals, cruise itineraries, flight bookings, medical forms, and many more private emails that by accident are being sent to me. These aren't the usual spam, these are emails misdirected either by accident or design.
It's just as well I'm an honest person, as I could cause a lot of trouble for these people if I wanted to.
Absolutely. I have the same issue.
I also know there will be a Phillip Thompson out there who receives a lot of my emails, despite the fact if saying my email out loud I always say "with only one L" and online they should be able to copy and paste it, I still get people telling me they've sent me an email and my first question is always "how did you spell it?"
It's worse with corporate emails when there's two people with the same name, mine isn't exactly unique. I used to work where someone else with my name worked in a different department and we were constantly forwarding emails meant to the other to each other as the original sender had selected the wrong person from the pop up.
It's a surprisingly decent article from Monbiot. If he could tone down the outrage by 50%, and increase the factual analysis by 10% or so, it would actually be very good indeed.
An excellent article from Monbiot overall, I would say. What is does highlight is the huge influence of McKinsey's, as the model all other elite management consultancies follow, that many companies have actually adapted to in order to meet its expectations without running contracts with it, and that has run huge numbers of government functions.
This largely unknown organisation to most people has had huge political and cultural influence over the last 40 years - it's high time its supposedly 'apolitical' influence was more widely understood.
This is getting into lizard illuminati territory.
McKinsey is a high-end strategy consultancy but isn't the model all management consultancies follow - I know because I've worked for several - and isn't secretly pulling strings behind the scenes. That's not how they work.
The Big4 do operate as something of a soft cartel and that's because with their size, profile and reach (they audit almost all the FTSE100 and the vast majority of the FTSE250, plus have people working throughout all Government departments) work just comes through the door to them, and they are very good at leveraging. The Government likes hiring them as "what more could I have done?" in a crisis than hiring the Big4?
It's a cosy merry-go-round but it's not a conspiracy. Best thing Government could do is to lift some of the restrictions they have on hiring the best project and commercial talent and then diversify their procurement.
It's facts, rather than paranoia, I'm afraid. The modern reach, ethos and form of elite management consultancy wouldn't exist at all without McKinsey's, and its influence has been instrumental in corporate governance and public policy in the UK and the United States, and far beyond, since the turn of the 1980s. It is not a neutral technocratic instrument.
I'm afraid you asserting your opinion is a fact doesn't make it so. Some of its ex-employees have held and do hold senior corporate and political positions but that's because it employs extremely talented people who are happy to work hard for long hours - like William Hague, for example; it's not a conspiracy. It would be fair to say that operating at that level allowed them to network and build contacts with influential people at CEO level but it's secretly "controlling" anything - clients have to choose to take its advice.
Management consultancy (helping organisations improve performance) is a fairly recent profession and grew significantly in the 1980s because that was when corporations and businesses started moving away from a traditional hierarchical models just as the world got more complex in people, tax, strategy and technology, and more competitive in how it did things. It's that same evolution into more sophisticated business models that allowed GDP to rise so much at the same time. It wasn't a dark art of McKinsey that brought it all about.
Don't get me wrong: I wouldn't like to work for them. They still have an "up or out" policy, you are reviewed every six months and they work brutal hours and extensively travel. You're under constant stress. But, that said, those I know who've worked there have learnt a huge amount and found the experience very useful for their subsequent careers.
I would say the ultimate influence of McKinsey's has been very far from anti-hierarchical, and date back to the late 60s and early 70s, just anticipating the New Right. It was instrumental as early as about 1965-66 in the concepts of removing middle management and hugely rewarding those chosen at the top, in turn, that in several businesses have often led to more, rather than less, hierarchical management. The emphasis on rationalisation through the ultra-rewarding of elite management has also sometimes contributed not just to the toleration, but even celebration, of greater inequality.
A great example of the influence of McKinsey's is broadcasting and public culture in Britain. John Birt instigated a rationalising blueprint that cut out huge layers of sometimes ambiguous and eccentric middle management. This middle layer was by turns wasteful, highly developed and inspired, and crudely and simplistically hacking it out hugely damaged the BBC's distinctive ecosystem, with wide-ranging consequences for the degradation of our entire public culture. It wasn't actually his blueprint at all ; but McKinsey's.
Your selectively choosing aspects of its past to support your thesis that McKinsey is to blame for all the political ills and failings of today, including the rise of a political ascendency you detest.
It's classic conspiracy theory stuff - a simple explanation for all the world's ills.
You could close down McKinsey tomorrow and it wouldn't make any difference, other than another firm would take its place.
Something has gone wrong with those at the top earning so much more than the average person.
Nonsense, that's the politics of envy.
Way too glib - and devoid of reasoning, since the same cheap point could be played to try and justify even more grotesque inequality.
There is good evidence that more equal societies are healthier and happier.
The way in which a handful of senior people at the top of large companies attempt to manage short term events to maximise their own personal remuneration is often utterly counterproductive to the company's long term best interests, as well as tying up far more of their own personal attention and application than is healthy.
There's always been inequality, the question is why is it getting much worse recently.
The rise of corporations and globalisation play a key part, it certainly gives those that advocate free trade across nations something to think about (myself included). Perhaps free trade works best when done between countries with similar GDP.
If you outsource manufacturing to a poorer country and then don't pay tax in the country you sell your goods, then the people who live there lose out twice.
Also the rich used to often give something back to their town, building town squares, libraries and university colleges...these days not so much.
Because JVT argued against a national lockdown at the Press Conference?
"Why do you know better than JVT, Sir Keir?"
I'm sure Sir Keir can counter using some of JVT's past comments, say on masks, to point out JVT is a bit rubbish.
During the government's latest coronavirus briefing, the Deputy Chief Medical Officer addressed questions about whether people in the UK should be wearing face masks.
Professor Jonathan Van Tam said he does not believe healthy people wearing them would reduce the spread of the disease in the UK, saying "what matters now is social distancing".
Trump campaign reportedly pulling advertising in Wisconsin - further evidence they are going all in on a last stand in PA
He can afford to lose Wisconsin and Michigan. It makes sense to focus on PA.
Hanging on to PA is not enough for Trump if he loses Arizona and Nebraska-2 as well as Wisconsin and Michigan. The latter two are very different demographically from Pennysylvania, so he's dependent on recovering amongst several different demographics simulataneously. And doing so very fast, because a lot of people have already voted.
It's a surprisingly decent article from Monbiot. If he could tone down the outrage by 50%, and increase the factual analysis by 10% or so, it would actually be very good indeed.
An excellent article from Monbiot overall, I would say. What is does highlight is the huge influence of McKinsey's, as the model all other elite management consultancies follow, that many companies have actually adapted to in order to meet its expectations without running contracts with it, and that has run huge numbers of government functions.
This largely unknown organisation to most people has had huge political and cultural influence over the last 40 years - it's high time its supposedly 'apolitical' influence was more widely understood.
This is getting into lizard illuminati territory.
McKinsey is a high-end strategy consultancy but isn't the model all management consultancies follow - I know because I've worked for several - and isn't secretly pulling strings behind the scenes. That's not how they work.
The Big4 do operate as something of a soft cartel and that's because with their size, profile and reach (they audit almost all the FTSE100 and the vast majority of the FTSE250, plus have people working throughout all Government departments) work just comes through the door to them, and they are very good at leveraging. The Government likes hiring them as "what more could I have done?" in a crisis than hiring the Big4?
It's a cosy merry-go-round but it's not a conspiracy. Best thing Government could do is to lift some of the restrictions they have on hiring the best project and commercial talent and then diversify their procurement.
It's facts, rather than paranoia, I'm afraid. The modern reach, ethos and form of elite management consultancy wouldn't exist at all without McKinsey's, and its influence has been instrumental in corporate governance and public policy in the UK and the United States, and far beyond, since the turn of the 1980s. It is not a neutral technocratic instrument.
I'm afraid you asserting your opinion is a fact doesn't make it so. Some of its ex-employees have held and do hold senior corporate and political positions but that's because it employs extremely talented people who are happy to work hard for long hours - like William Hague, for example; it's not a conspiracy. It would be fair to say that operating at that level allowed them to network and build contacts with influential people at CEO level but it's secretly "controlling" anything - clients have to choose to take its advice.
Management consultancy (helping organisations improve performance) is a fairly recent profession and grew significantly in the 1980s because that was when corporations and businesses started moving away from a traditional hierarchical models just as the world got more complex in people, tax, strategy and technology, and more competitive in how it did things. It's that same evolution into more sophisticated business models that allowed GDP to rise so much at the same time. It wasn't a dark art of McKinsey that brought it all about.
Don't get me wrong: I wouldn't like to work for them. They still have an "up or out" policy, you are reviewed every six months and they work brutal hours and extensively travel. You're under constant stress. But, that said, those I know who've worked there have learnt a huge amount and found the experience very useful for their subsequent careers.
The 1980’s you say. And the period since then has been the epitome, has it not, of brilliant management in lots of private sector organisations. And of a GDP built on solid foundations ...... Or perhaps not.
Of course there have been problems, not least in the financial services industry, but world GDP (GWP) has increased from around 18tn in 1980 to around 81trn today - a four-fold increase in real terms. In England, from £15k per head in 1980 to almost £30k per head today - so we are twice as wealthy.
That doesn't mean we still have problems - including examples of poor practice, corruption, management failures and huge entitlement - but it does mean our 'new' services driven economy has delivered great improvements in the quality of life.
Two things can be true at the same time.
But these improvements are not down to the McKinsey way of management which you seemed to imply - but perhaps I misunderstood you.
If anything I think that the unnecessary complication - and the attempt to deal with that using management techniques sold at vast expense and which often seem to me to have been either the restatement of the bleeding obvious or like the Wizard of Oz devoid of content - have made things worse than they could have been. And have been one of the reasons for so many of the scandals and disasters we have seen and are still paying for.
One reason we do not have as much money as we would like is because we are still, in part, paying for the financial crisis over a decade ago, a crisis brought about by a lot of apparently very clever people trained by these apparently very clever consultants. I am afraid - and I know that this is my particular perspective - that I really don’t buy into this myth of this cleverness. There is a type of stupidity that only the very clever are capable of - and the financial world (though not just it) is full of such examples.
From my experience of "Consulting" (as customer and supplier) a common theme is that consultants are brought in by a particular executive as "allies" against others either inside or outside the organization. Could be defensive, a shoring up of a position when under attack, an attempt to maintain the status quo against those who want to stir things up, or the opposite, offensive, e.g. they want to get something done, or make some big changes, some "streamlining" maybe, reorg'd people and processes, whatever, and they need a "reputable" and "independent" report to slap down as clinching evidence for their case. If they are paying, the consultants will invariably tell them what they want to hear and deliver that report.
Very True. Most people who hire consultants already know what the answer is (or think they do), and want the consultants' report to bolster their own position. Thus the consultants' initial task is to find out what the client wants by way of recommendations, then pull out previous reports for other clients with similar recommendations and cut and paste in the new company's name. Now and again you'd find the old client's name in a report, where the cutting and pasting hadn't been so thorough.
Because JVT argued against a national lockdown at the Press Conference?
"Why do you know better than JVT, Sir Keir?"
I'm sure Sir Keir can counter using some of JVT's past comments, say on masks, to point out JVT is a bit rubbish.
During the government's latest coronavirus briefing, the Deputy Chief Medical Officer addressed questions about whether people in the UK should be wearing face masks.
Professor Jonathan Van Tam said he does not believe healthy people wearing them would reduce the spread of the disease in the UK, saying "what matters now is social distancing".
Well if you want Government support, get out the corrupt Jenrick, these people hold the North with contempt
You do have to wonder the rationale in sending Robert "Tory dinner saves developer £45m in public money" Jenrick to explain why they don't have the £5m in question.
We need to stop seeing this as some grand master plan that Cummings has created and that will turn out to be genius. The truth is they don't have a plan and they're just going through the motions.
It is becoming clearer that they won last year due to Labour's poorly perceived leadership and Brexit position, that allowed what is a useless, spineless and divided Government to not receive any real scrutiny. In some sense, the reverse of 2017.
I thought May was hopeless but I'd have her back in a heartbeat. Cameron would have handled this well.
Brown would have done a good job. Blair would have done fine. Major would have done well.
It's this Government and its total lack of talent that has got us here - and I hold myself responsible for supporting Corbyn for PM when it should have been obvious he was going to let this happen. I have let the country down with that support.
What I'd be interested to know is whether McKinsey has eaten itself at any point - a constant supply of bright but green juniors, little practical knowledge in the middle and a few high ups who managed to beat Logan's run?
Those in the consultancy industries, in particular, love consulting other consultants, there is a deep level of comfort with that - lawyers, management consultants, accountants, and varying specialists such as IT consultants - of course some of these are mandated activities, but the comfort zone expands well beyond that and can go with an innate mistrust of in-house knowledge at any level. Merry-go-round would be a good description. And, beyond your own field, it's not always apparent from the size of the name whether who you are consulting someone who will run the engagement as you think a top name should or whether you are going to get a hollowed out Delboy Trotter service, hoping to make it all stick together on a wing and a prayer.
By the way, I don't - I don't have much time at all for the Big4 (which I left) for a variety of reasons.
I just don't think there's a conspiracy, and the firms still contain many good people who do good work but also some real pieces of work too.
Like everything else in life, it's complex.
Is it as complicated as the British Empire though?
I've just received an email from "Donald J. Trump" addressed to "supporter" basically begging for money. Or for me to download his app.
Couple of red flags though. For one I have never signed up for emails from the Republicans so I have no idea how they got my email address, for another my email address they have sent it to is incorrect (there is a dot in my email missing, so it still comes to me but I always put the dot in when registering for anything).
Not sure if this is a scammer trying to rinse people and it's somehow gotten through my spam filter or "legitimate"? Not that it will affect how I ignore it either way.
The email supposedly has come from a domain ending in @victory.donaldtrump.com with a reply to ending in @campaigns.rnchq.com
Trump can't legitimately accept a donation from you anyway. You're not a US citizen.
From personal experience, I know how tight the rules are in respect of US political parties (as opposed to PACs). My wife and I spent a fortnight in Las Vegas in October 2016, staying with a Canadian relative at their winter refuge (they have a name for Canadian winter refugees in LA: "snowbirds"). It was fascinating to see the campaign unfold in the swing state of Nevada, through local news channels and TV advertising. Hilary Clinton held an open air rally in LA one evening and we went - queueing up with 5,000 others for an hour and a half to get in, chatting with the Americans in the queue, declining to be signed up for voter registration for obvious reasons, buying campaign stuff off freebooting hawkers. It was great - right up there with Red Rock Canyon and the Hoover Dam in terms of an unforgettable holiday experience for a political activist. My wife still has a "Dump Trump" 2016 losing T-shirt which makes a set with my "A better plan, a better future" losing 2015 mug from Miliband.
Anyway, once we got past the airport-style security machines and bag searches, there was an official Democratic Party stall. We went to buy some more stuff. They asked for my name and address. On seeing that, they insisted on cancelling the transaction because I was British. Apparently sales of campaign stuff is to US citizens only, because I would potentially be contributing to the Democratic Party indirectly through the profits from sales of merchandise. That's how tight the rules on donations are in the US.
Did you just use Trump and legitimately in the same sentence?
Just because the rules stopped Hillary from accepting your cash doesn't mean Trump would follow the rules.
I'd genuinely love to hear what Marcus Rashford's views are on monetary policy.
Surely this government would value Rashford's views regardless, given their contempt for the views of so-called "experts"?
Absolutely, and I have said for years that the complete lack of engagement with the subject of monetary policy is a disgrace.
I might be doing Marcus a disservice, but I suspect his focus is solely on the giving of money rather than on the raising of money.
What he is keen on is giving away other peoples money as his does not consider that it is a parents reposnsibility to feed a child, he considers that it is the Governments
Comments
It's classic conspiracy theory stuff - a simple explanation for all the world's ills.
You could close down McKinsey tomorrow and it wouldn't make any difference, other than another firm would take its place.
And in the unlikely event it's a genuine email, might starve the Trump campaign of cash. Win win
Well if you want Government support, get out the corrupt Jenrick, these people hold the North with contempt
(2) The number of statues that are actually racist as opposed to "racist" is tiny. You should look at the poll taken of ublic opinion amongst ethnic minorities by “Hope Not Hate” (August 2020) https://www.hopenothate.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/BAME-report-2020-08-v3-00000003.pdf) Around two-thirds supported the removal of statues of slavers but a very wide majority of 60% to 15% felt it was a distraction from the substantive issue of race equality. A majority also agreed that the statues debate represented "political correctness" going too far – by 52% to 22%.
Sunder Katwala said this showed “a concern to differentiate between the most egregious examples and a sweeping 'year zero' idea of interrogating every historical figure by contemporary standards”; “views of ethnic minority Britons could be summed up as one of frustration that these polarising culture wars misrepresent and trivialise ethnic minority concerns about race equality.”
He's spot on.
I bet Keir was popping the champagne last night.
If Johnson has really screwed this up, doesn't much matter who takes over, these people might not risk Tory again
Those in the consultancy industries, in particular, love consulting other consultants, there is a deep level of comfort with that - lawyers, management consultants, accountants, and varying specialists such as IT consultants - of course some of these are mandated activities, but the comfort zone expands well beyond that and can go with an innate mistrust of in-house knowledge at any level. Merry-go-round would be a good description. And, beyond your own field, it's not always apparent from the size of the name whether who you are consulting someone who will run the engagement as you think a top name should or whether you are going to get a hollowed out Delboy Trotter service, hoping to make it all stick together on a wing and a prayer.
If anything I think that the unnecessary complication - and the attempt to deal with that using management techniques sold at vast expense and which often seem to me to have been either the restatement of the bleeding obvious or like the Wizard of Oz devoid of content - have made things worse than they could have been. And have been one of the reasons for so many of the scandals and disasters we have seen and are still paying for.
One reason we do not have as much money as we would like is because we are still, in part, paying for the financial crisis over a decade ago, a crisis brought about by a lot of apparently very clever people trained by these apparently very clever consultants. I am afraid - and I know that this is my particular perspective - that I really don’t buy into this myth of this cleverness. There is a type of stupidity that only the very clever are capable of - and the financial world (though not just it) is full of such examples.
The letter from the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA) — a group that represents companies including BMW, Toyota and Fiat — urges Brussels to “reconsider its position” on rules for determining whether goods will qualify for tariff-free trade.
The group’s specific demands include that the EU should lower the percentage of components in a car that must be either European or British for the vehicle to qualify for the benefits of any EU-UK trade deal.
https://www.ft.com/content/720671e0-52f4-40b2-b17b-f34518ca4de8
People have explained to you repeatedly that RCP no longer bother putting the polls into their website, you can check it in a matter of seconds, and you seem to have understood the point, yet you just carry on quoting them.
What are you trying to do? Seriously, what are you doing this for, what are you hoping to achieve???
I've often found a lot of people like to complain about it but I think eventually the market catches up and salary hits an appropriate level.
But my bugbear is that far too many people think the wealthy are anyone who earns more than them, as we see with polls on increasing taxes.
Mass cheap testing is one example.
It was rejected early on owing to a lack of accuracy compared to PCR, but they never seem to have considered that it might have worked much better anyway, simply because you tests many more people and therefore are able to isolate far more infected, more quickly. And makes the difficult to scale Trace part of the mandate far less important.
The 'moonshot' is unnecessary, as several versions of a perfectly adequate cheap antigen test already exist.
He was spot on.
I regularly get similar Trump begging letters addressed to a person who seems to use my email address for all sorts of things. I also get things like HOA minutes, little league stuff, and golf related things for this chap. Another woman used to book large takeways around the holidays, and I'd receive receipts for those. I've had people contact me about funerals, cruise itineraries, flight bookings, medical forms, and many more private emails that by accident are being sent to me. These aren't the usual spam, these are emails misdirected either by accident or design.
It's just as well I'm an honest person, as I could cause a lot of trouble for these people if I wanted to.
There is good evidence that more equal societies are healthier and happier.
The way in which a handful of senior people at the top of large companies attempt to manage short term events to maximise their own personal remuneration is often utterly counterproductive to the company's long term best interests, as well as tying up far more of their own personal attention and application than is healthy.
What's blatantly obvious is that approach to running things has failed miserably in this particular task.
I just don't think there's a conspiracy, and the firms still contain many good people who do good work but also some real pieces of work too.
Like everything else in life, it's complex.
Thank you.
"Why do you know better than JVT, Sir Keir?"
But yes, as a comprehensive schoolboy of fairly proletarian taste, and a national award for listening skills, I don't do badly. 😎
Health care is a team effort, and I take a very egalitarian approach to work. Doctor in the House is not a contemporary documentary!
It should therefore by now know where its supporters are and will just be ensuring they turn out on or before polling day
From personal experience, I know how tight the rules are in respect of US political parties (as opposed to PACs). My wife and I spent a fortnight in Las Vegas in October 2016, staying with a Canadian relative at their winter refuge (they have a name for Canadian winter refugees in LA: "snowbirds"). It was fascinating to see the campaign unfold in the swing state of Nevada, through local news channels and TV advertising. Hilary Clinton held an open air rally in LA one evening and we went - queueing up with 5,000 others for an hour and a half to get in, chatting with the Americans in the queue, declining to be signed up for voter registration for obvious reasons, buying campaign stuff off freebooting hawkers. It was great - right up there with Red Rock Canyon and the Hoover Dam in terms of an unforgettable holiday experience for a political activist. My wife still has a "Dump Trump" 2016 losing T-shirt which makes a set with my "A better plan, a better future" losing 2015 mug from Miliband.
Anyway, once we got past the airport-style security machines and bag searches, there was an official Democratic Party stall. We went to buy some more stuff. They asked for my name and address. On seeing that, they insisted on cancelling the transaction because I was British. Apparently sales of campaign stuff is to US citizens only, because I would potentially be contributing to the Democratic Party indirectly through the profits from sales of merchandise. That's how tight the rules on donations are in the US.
RCP was much closer to the final result with its final projection giving Hillary 272 EC votes, though both 538 and RCP underestimated Trump RCP did so less than 538 did
https://twitter.com/Birdyword/status/1318855820029784065?s=20
Indeed Trafalgar currently has Trump winning Michigan but Biden winning PA and Wisconsin
I might be doing Marcus a disservice, but I suspect his focus is solely on the giving of money rather than on the raising of money.
So you couldn't get a test, even with symptoms.
Sir Walter Marshall, last head of the CEGB, for example, warned that the generating margins of less than 9% would threaten the long term stability of supply, but the asset sweating approach after electricity privatisation didn`t care. The result is the current emerging crisis in UK power generation.
Privatisation for its own sake has carried a cost that is now being paid in £7500 per diem consultants. Meanwhile our political leaders do not have the experience or understanding of administration (because they are mostly PR Merchants themselves) to strengthen the skills of the civil service in critical areas... and growing failure and corruption is the result.
The chickens are coming home to roost.
I also know there will be a Phillip Thompson out there who receives a lot of my emails, despite the fact if saying my email out loud I always say "with only one L" and online they should be able to copy and paste it, I still get people telling me they've sent me an email and my first question is always "how did you spell it?"
It's worse with corporate emails when there's two people with the same name, mine isn't exactly unique. I used to work where someone else with my name worked in a different department and we were constantly forwarding emails meant to the other to each other as the original sender had selected the wrong person from the pop up.
Boris was asked about it directly 3 times at 5pm why did he only talk about £22m not £60m
The rise of corporations and globalisation play a key part, it certainly gives those that advocate free trade across nations something to think about (myself included). Perhaps free trade works best when done between countries with similar GDP.
If you outsource manufacturing to a poorer country and then don't pay tax in the country you sell your goods, then the people who live there lose out twice.
Also the rich used to often give something back to their town, building town squares, libraries and university colleges...these days not so much.
During the government's latest coronavirus briefing, the Deputy Chief Medical Officer addressed questions about whether people in the UK should be wearing face masks.
Professor Jonathan Van Tam said he does not believe healthy people wearing them would reduce the spread of the disease in the UK, saying "what matters now is social distancing".
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-52153145
It is becoming clearer that they won last year due to Labour's poorly perceived leadership and Brexit position, that allowed what is a useless, spineless and divided Government to not receive any real scrutiny. In some sense, the reverse of 2017.
I thought May was hopeless but I'd have her back in a heartbeat. Cameron would have handled this well.
Brown would have done a good job. Blair would have done fine. Major would have done well.
It's this Government and its total lack of talent that has got us here - and I hold myself responsible for supporting Corbyn for PM when it should have been obvious he was going to let this happen. I have let the country down with that support.
Where Texas Could Actually Turn Blue in 2020
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/10/20/texas-house-race-blue-democrat-2020-429826
Congress and the presidency are still a reach. But if Democrats can flip the state House — an unthinkable goal even a few years ago — they could hold the key to a longer-term transformation...
Just because the rules stopped Hillary from accepting your cash doesn't mean Trump would follow the rules.