Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Daily Mail columnist praises David Howarth

Allison Pearson, Daily Mail columnist and my former classmate, writes today:

My excellent MP, the LibDems' David Howarth, wrote a brilliant article in our local paper.

Alongside some photographs of various senior local government officials and NHS fat cats - all on ginormous salaries for four-day weeks - David posed a simple question: 'What is it they do? All I want to know is what do they actually do?'

Could this be the benchmark for David Cameron's Thrifty Britain?

All those Service Providers and Operative Strategy Target Enforcement Delivery Managers will be forced to answer the question: 'What do you actually do?' Then they can be suspended for six months and we'll see if anyone notices the difference.

3 comments:

  1. I think it's a fair question though I have to say that the RBS model seemed a good one (despite their complete failure of management since) and that was people should be active at work for 90% of their working hours time the rest is chatting etc.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Perhaps not incidentally, Allison Pearson was at college with David Howarth.

    It is a good question, though a really good leader would have an organization in place that would allow him or her to take six months leave without ill effect.

    ReplyDelete
  3. More intriquingly David also attracted praise from Paul Flynn, Labour MP for Newport West on his blog (http://paulflynnmp.typepad.com/my_weblog/2009/04/punitive-leapfrog.html)

    The increasingly impressive LibDem spokesman David Howarth accused Jack of trying to curry short-term favour with tabloid editors.' He nailed Jack with this bulls eye jibe, " The game of punitive leap-frog between the Labour and Conservative parties is an expensive indulgence that the country should no longer tolerate."

    Jack got down and dirty. He attacked with a stale coarse politics trick of reducing Howarth's comments to an absurdity and their attacking his own creation. "I now look forward to every Liberal Democrat “Focus” leaflet across the country declaring the consequence of that policy, which is that dangerous and violent offenders and persistent drug dealers will no longer be sent to prison". That's not what he said Jack.

    ReplyDelete