Why don’t you wait until Jez gets a job lot of them and sells them for a bit cheaper no questions asked of course
I reckon that's what he's got in those boxes in his hallway. Either that or a load of cheap POS top boxes!
It’s never too late but....... As an ex military OF I am pretty appalled by the uniform and woeful ineptitude of our political masters. In the UK you cannot really separate the collective incompetence of the Tories at Westminster, Welsh Labour or Holyrood Nats. I am hugely relieved the Lib Dumbs have no grip on any levers anywhere. The 1st Principle of War is ‘selection and maintenance of the aim’. Sounds poncey nonsense but actually it isn’t. It means think b carefully about what you are doing and why because EVERYTHING forward hinges on it. Do x in order to achieve y. Think it through very carefully. The ‘unifying purpose’ has been ‘to save the NHS’. This is a strategic blunder when the real aim should surely be to save lives. Think about it. In order to ‘save the NHS’ we have decanted so-called bed blockers untested into care homes and infected swathes of the vulnerable with tragically predictable consequences. Unintended consequences flow directly from the wrong aim. ‘Saving lives’ might have suggested there were other options. Our Health Secretary (Peter Pandemic) thinks his job (amongst other things) involves getting his photo taken humping (empty?) boxes labelled PPE. If the General is lugging ammo it’s beyond serious...... Generals don’t fight ‘the contact battle’ - that is for subordinate HQs. Generals plan and direct coming phases. They don’t micromanage. They also know the limitations of their personal skill sets. Take note, Dr Gove/Sturgeon etc. Generals understand the importance of intelligence (good enough, never perfect) to test, track trace and would have prioritised it from Day 1. Politicians lie to cover their oversights. It has been horribly apparent we have elected a bunch of lawyers, newspaper columnists etc., opposed by an equally unskilled bunch of political activists. NONE of them has actually run anything under conditions of uncertainty and WE are paying the price of educating them while they sift the competing advice of academic egotists. The practising clinicians have been elbowed aside. The class of modern professional politician is (insert your preferred terminology....)!!! I wouldn’t have started from here.
I am advocating basic competence not militarising a public health problem with economic consequences. How about a genuine strategy? Politicians use the word when toying with a new idea. I mean a published evaluation of the problem, the various competing factors, options, selection of the best course and a plan to implement it. There is no need for operational security/secrecy and every reason for peer review and public buy in. It might run to 50 or 60 pages and be read by less than 5% but would at least demonstrate a rational evaluation of the problem and a pragmatic and practicable approach to its resolution. The guys on the ships sailing South in 1982 to the Falklands wrote one up as the basis of framing professional debate on the ‘best way to crack this’. It’s about comprehensive method and parking prejudiced opinion. Sure there will be political decisions but governments should lead and have broad based advice. I see more timidity and desire to avoid blame amidst infantilising the population. If there is no certainty of a vaccine - and there isn’t - we should plan on coping without not pretend the cavalry are coming.
Generals have also got there by promoting up the ranks having shown their abilities at all stages of their career, with regards to problem solving, man management and indeed management in general, working in adversity, diplomacy and many other attributes. Politicians have done none of this and have therefore no credible skillset to deal with crisis of any kind. There needs to be some sort of structure to political careers whereby people cannot just "become a politician".
Kind of. You get to Colonel on ability. After that it matters if your face fits with the right people at the right time. You’d call it politics!
Actually Private Walker, remarkably little. It is pretty meritocratic. Not perfect but not corrupt so talent generally rises. Service Secretaries are not HR depts but rather guarantors of system fairness. You can’t recruit a Major or Sergeant from a competitor. You therefore have to grow them selectively and carefully.
Re military ranks. Many years ago, when they could afford such things, I worked for a local authority which had a Public Relations Officer who I will call Archie Carruthers. Tall, laid back, charming and very polite, everyone liked him. One day, he had to deal with an irate member of the public about something. "Well, Mr Smith", Archie began. The stroppy customer drew himself up and said: "Major Smith if you don't mind". " Oh well, if you want to be like that, old boy, it's Group Captain Carruthers actually".
The unspoken truth is that Major/Lt Cdr/Sqn Ldr are the great officer sticking ranks. Less than 50% promote beyond them. A certain ‘Major’ Hewitt actually held the substantive rank of Captain. The poor chap struggled with the promotion exam. I don’t recall if he jumped before he was shown the door as no longer employable in the rank.
Just listening to the Covid news on French telly and curious things seem to be going on in abattoirs across the country. High percentages of workers tested positive for the virus.
