The nub of the problem

Was meandering through the dear old Torygraph and came across this entry in Daniel Hannan's blog. The subject was these high level resignations.

I was moved to post the following:

"The problem here is that a Politician (Who knows little beyond their particular party political dogma) tells the Expert (Who know relatively little beyond their specialisations) what the ‘answer’ should be. The Expert disagrees with the preset, politically decided answer, and says so publicly. In order not to look a fool the Politician demands that the Expert resign.

Call me a fool if you like, but what the hell is the point of hiring someone to advise government, then demanding their head when they won’t give out the ‘right’ answer? That’s where the problem lies."

Exactly so; what is the point when the 'answer' is already decided? That's a morons way of working. Mind you, back in my UK contracting days, I occasionally talked myself out of a job by not 'toeing the party line'. Management would ask me for an honest opinion; I would deliver my report, then having asked for that specific advice the Management plump for the option they'd already decided upon, even though said option was the worst thing they could possibly do. Then when the project I was supposed to be working on all ended in tears, the contractor who delivered the specialist advice which wasn't taken (me) was fired as the scapegoat for the 'failure' while the real culprits (the idiots who arbitrarily decided what the answer was without advice) escaped without sanction. On several projects, where Tech support, the IT management team and the contractors (Of which I was one) were all in complete agreement; still the Suits upstairs decided (Much to the chagrin of anyone with even a smidgen of technical knowledge) to fund a different technology which was subsequently dumped because it never worked. Cue much shaking of heads and 'told you so's' as all the contractors moved on and the full time support staff hit the pub.

Like most Techies, I have a fundamental distrust of MBA bearing Suits (Called 'Suits' because the physical contents of the Suit are interchangeable, but the dogma driven output remains the same). One sometimes thinks that their decision making processes could be improved by replacing whole office blocks full of Managerial staff with a blindfolded CEO picking options from the gossip columns of the Daily Wail with a pin. The same for politicians.

Over here in BC, although corporate culture has a say you can at least stand your ground on a 'prove me wrong' basis without being handed your pink slip (P45). Similarly, Canadian politicians (at least where I live) are still accessible because they aren't too grand to talk to people, and aren't too scared / self important to walk the streets alone without a Police escort and / or entourage. Nor do they appear ill advised enough to believe that politics of whatever colour is the answer; rather than the source of the problem. Thank goodness for that.