Tuesday, January 03, 2023

Alexei Sayle on the psychology of managerial incompetence

The UK is suffering because of the "outright incompetence" of government ministers, says the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Alexei Sayle explained the reason for Britain's incompetent leadership almost 40 years ago.

3 comments:

Phil Beesley said...

What changed then, over 40 years? If government ministers were useless years ago, why were they less useless?

My hypothesis is that recent generations of government ministers do not recognise the existence of intelligent, knowledgeable people. They have surrounded themselves by nomarks, pushing away everyone who might be difficult in an intellectual or moral way.

Who need experts?

Previous generations drew in experts as a defence. They knew smart people who knew smart people.

Recent lots are drawn from a political generation. They don't know many people outside the London-Oxford-Cambridge triangle. They don't really know anything about business or manufacturing because they haven't done it. Job experience as a banker merely educates people about banking.

They don't know how much they don't know.

Jonathan Calder said...

My favourite line was the one about the KGB.

Phil Beesley said...

We have a Prime Minister who thought that FSB was a travel agency.