There was a fascinating article in the Financial Times a few days ago, about the 'right kind of stupidity'.
It describes the idea of 'functional stupidity', conceived by Mats Alvesson and Andrew Spicer, describing the 'bovine state' which organisations can sink into - large organisations in particular. The idea is that organisations which attract particularly clever staff, like banks and management consultancies, are particularly prone to the kind of 'functional stupidity' that overwhelmed the Soviet Union.
Or as the UBS chief put it about the Libor rate fixing scandal: "A mechanistic reliance on risk processes".
The insight that which the FT's Andrew Hill brings to this debate is that organisations need a bit of functional stupidity just to get by, otherwise you have clever people questioning everything. You need agreed processes.
What he doesn't say is that agreed processes is, paradoxically, exactly the route by which organisations also become 'functionally stupid'. That is why it is the large organisations, which need processes just to survive, that are the most prone to it. Vision is clearer in small organisations. So is a sense of responsibility.
But the debate so far, at least as set out in the FT, doesn't cover the most ferocious method that organisations become functionally stupid. They boil their objectives down into numerical targets - or, worse, the government does it for them - that purport to measure everything. This is Taylorism, and Taylorism famously asks employees to leave their brains at reception, to be picked up on the way home.
The explanation for the staggering ineffectiveness of so many services in the first decade of this century was this very reliance on numerical targets. Like nearly everybody else, I haven't read the long-awaited report on the way older patients were abused at Mid Staffordshire Hospital, but it seems a clear cut case of functional stupidity brought on by an over-reliance on targets.
Targets appear to simplify the task for staff. It makes them concentrate on bowlderised versions of the job. Too simple means stupid.
This is important when it comes to working out how public services can be more effective. Management consultancies which have pushed the idea of breaking processes down into numbers have been, not just a terrible waste of money - but they have also been infectious carriers of functional stupidity.
house speculation isn't good news, really
The Evening Standard led today on the news that £600 million of flats have been sold in a four day kerfuffle around the new development at Battersea Power Station. The implication is that this is evidence of some kind of recovery.
It isn't. It is evidence of just how much our distorted economy depends on speculators. Our increasingly unaffordable homes market, just like the inflationary food market, increasingly pricing out more swathes of the population, is the result.
Whether it is the housing rules that allow foreign speculators to buy up homes in London and leave them empty, or whether it is Barclay's domination of the food speculation market, speculation is impoverishing us.
The speculative froth is increasingly distanced from people's real lives. It isn't evidence of emerging health, it is evidence of deepening sickness.
It isn't. It is evidence of just how much our distorted economy depends on speculators. Our increasingly unaffordable homes market, just like the inflationary food market, increasingly pricing out more swathes of the population, is the result.
Whether it is the housing rules that allow foreign speculators to buy up homes in London and leave them empty, or whether it is Barclay's domination of the food speculation market, speculation is impoverishing us.
The speculative froth is increasingly distanced from people's real lives. It isn't evidence of emerging health, it is evidence of deepening sickness.
The benefits of radio call-ins
Mark Pack has blogged about the latest poll which, after his LBC show, seems to give Nick Clegg a much deserved boost. I have an even less scientific basis for judging the impact: conversation at the school gates.
It was remarkably positive. Someone I met even said: "I didn't know he had done all those good things."
It makes me wonder whether bypassing the extraordinarily narrow lens of the conventional political media may turn out to be the only way that a politician can now get their message across.
It was remarkably positive. Someone I met even said: "I didn't know he had done all those good things."
It makes me wonder whether bypassing the extraordinarily narrow lens of the conventional political media may turn out to be the only way that a politician can now get their message across.
We need to be able to 'conquer unemployment' again
Mark Pack has written a characteristically intelligent newsletter about the current positioning of the Lib Dems, around the idea of being a moderating influence on both sides. As he says, this has the advantage of being patently true and a good description of an effective junior coalition partner. But there is something about the combination of efficient economy and social concern which doesn't quite cut it as a political message.
Yes, it describes the effective position of the Lib Dems and the Liberals before them, just as it provided the message for the most successful of the SDP political broadcasts in the 1980s. What it fails to do is to explain what the connection between the two objectives is. It looks like compromise.There are two reasons why, as Liberals, we should not be content with this as a narrative for the party.
First, it is the very opposite of a big idea. It may carry conviction among voters temporarily, but what it will not do is provide the party with the intellectual engine it needs to WIN - or to attract the activists of tomorrow, and the people who are prepared to devote their lives to cajolling the Liberals into power.
The second problem is that the words' efficient economy' covers up the basic problem which is that, not spending too much and being 'sensible' with the economy does not do justice to the traditional Liberal position on the economy.
It doesn't do justice to the emerging industrial policy that Vince Cable is presiding over. Nor does it do justice to the idea of a small-scale economy that can revive local fortunes from the bottom up, as Danny Alexander is beginning to develop.
The truth is that the Lib Dems badly need a central organising economic idea. They have survived for too long now on a bundle of issues around fairness and civil liberties, which - although important - are not winning reasons for government.
David Lloyd George, whose 150th birthday is coming up, used the slogan 'we can conquer unemployment' in the 1929 general election, using the ideas of John Maynard Keynes to provided it with its intellectual underpinning. Until the Lib Dems can say that again, they will just be a glorified pressure group.
Is the Hobbit quite 'real'?
The novelist Umberto Eco was an early adopter in the great debate about authenticity. After a trip around California, constantly being urged to look at strange three-dimensional versions of Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper - all hyped as 'better than the real thing' - he wrote an essay called 'Travels in hyper-reality'.
Since then, the world of hyper-reality is all around us. It is in the catwalk models we are supposed to look like, the doctored photographs on the front of magazines, and especially in the cinema.
I have just been to see Peter Jackson's film The Hobbit, which is a little long - though the dragon is rather fabulous - but the portrayal of the Shire, home of Bilbo Baggins, has definitely been given the hyper-real treatment. The colours are altered to make it more lush than real. They is something sugary about it that sticks in the mouth.
Perhaps it is contradictory of me to demand that the portrayal of something as mystical and fantastical as The Hobbit should be real, but I am not so sure. The Shire was rooted in Englishness, and intended to be, and there was a hint of idealised Englishness about it. Yet it was very down-to-earth kind of Englishness, not the kind you expect to be shot through some schmaltzy green tinged lens.
Also, we have to take into account Tolkien's own views on authenticity:
"The notion that motor cars are more 'alive' than, say, centaurs or dragons is curious... for my part I cannot convince myself that the roof of Bletchley Station is more 'real' than the clouds and as an artefect I find it less inspiring than the legendary dome of heaven."
But none of this suggests that everything Tolkien wrote needs to be served up to us as a caricature of itself. I find I can''t believe it that way.
Since then, the world of hyper-reality is all around us. It is in the catwalk models we are supposed to look like, the doctored photographs on the front of magazines, and especially in the cinema.
I have just been to see Peter Jackson's film The Hobbit, which is a little long - though the dragon is rather fabulous - but the portrayal of the Shire, home of Bilbo Baggins, has definitely been given the hyper-real treatment. The colours are altered to make it more lush than real. They is something sugary about it that sticks in the mouth.
Perhaps it is contradictory of me to demand that the portrayal of something as mystical and fantastical as The Hobbit should be real, but I am not so sure. The Shire was rooted in Englishness, and intended to be, and there was a hint of idealised Englishness about it. Yet it was very down-to-earth kind of Englishness, not the kind you expect to be shot through some schmaltzy green tinged lens.
Also, we have to take into account Tolkien's own views on authenticity:
"The notion that motor cars are more 'alive' than, say, centaurs or dragons is curious... for my part I cannot convince myself that the roof of Bletchley Station is more 'real' than the clouds and as an artefect I find it less inspiring than the legendary dome of heaven."
But none of this suggests that everything Tolkien wrote needs to be served up to us as a caricature of itself. I find I can''t believe it that way.
The real issue about Leveson
I have a feeling that, whenever people talk about reaching a compromise between different Liberal imperatives - as Nick Clegg has about the Leveson Enquiry - it often means that we have missed the key Liberal point entirely.
I don't know whether Leveson included much on press and media ownership. The political debate has been entirely over what balance between state, legal and self regulation there should be, with everyone wanting versions of pretty much the same thing. But the real evil is not there: it is the hold that the Murdoch press managed to have over politics because of the extent of their media dominance.
If the ownership of the media was more diverse, Murdoch would have had less of a strangehold over national debate. This is not an issue about state control of the press. It is an issue about monopoly. Until we introduce some anti-trust powers over media ownership, we will be back right bang into the Last Chance Cafe all over again.
I don't know whether Leveson included much on press and media ownership. The political debate has been entirely over what balance between state, legal and self regulation there should be, with everyone wanting versions of pretty much the same thing. But the real evil is not there: it is the hold that the Murdoch press managed to have over politics because of the extent of their media dominance.
If the ownership of the media was more diverse, Murdoch would have had less of a strangehold over national debate. This is not an issue about state control of the press. It is an issue about monopoly. Until we introduce some anti-trust powers over media ownership, we will be back right bang into the Last Chance Cafe all over again.
On being booted
Well, my small but significant electorate have spoken (dammit!) and I am no longer on the federal policy committee for the Lib Dems.
Since I am almost silent now, while I'm carrying out an independent review for the government, and I am a pretty loyal supporter of the party leader, I'm not terribly surprised. But I've been on the FPC now for fourteen years, so it will be a bit of a wrench coming to terms with not being there any more.
But good luck to my heirs and successors, may they make brilliant, innovative policy (and may they ask my advice occasionally!)
But finding myself on the losing list yesterday has made me think back over the past decade or so and wonder whether I ever really made the best use of my position. Perhaps more recently I helped with a couple of decisions which I am pleased about - the wording on banks in the party's last election manifesto, which made its way into the coalition agreement. Also some of the latest policy on sustainable jobs, which I believe is important and new.
But apart from that? I have been wondering about this. Part of the problem is undoubtedly realising how to behave effectively when all you see as a party policy maker is a succession of policy documents flying past. Part of the problem is that they do just fly past, and you know how difficult it is to make any of them memorable or effective.
That is the major problem for politicians now, and in all parties. Media scrutiny demands that they should be measured and tentative; the circumstances of the times demand that they should be bold.
So if I have attempt to stand for this election again, I will have to be a great deal more focussed. When it comes to the overwhelmingly important task - providing the Lib Dems with an absolutely distinctive and effective economic policy, then it's No More Mr Nice Guy!
Since I am almost silent now, while I'm carrying out an independent review for the government, and I am a pretty loyal supporter of the party leader, I'm not terribly surprised. But I've been on the FPC now for fourteen years, so it will be a bit of a wrench coming to terms with not being there any more.
But good luck to my heirs and successors, may they make brilliant, innovative policy (and may they ask my advice occasionally!)
But finding myself on the losing list yesterday has made me think back over the past decade or so and wonder whether I ever really made the best use of my position. Perhaps more recently I helped with a couple of decisions which I am pleased about - the wording on banks in the party's last election manifesto, which made its way into the coalition agreement. Also some of the latest policy on sustainable jobs, which I believe is important and new.
But apart from that? I have been wondering about this. Part of the problem is undoubtedly realising how to behave effectively when all you see as a party policy maker is a succession of policy documents flying past. Part of the problem is that they do just fly past, and you know how difficult it is to make any of them memorable or effective.
That is the major problem for politicians now, and in all parties. Media scrutiny demands that they should be measured and tentative; the circumstances of the times demand that they should be bold.
So if I have attempt to stand for this election again, I will have to be a great deal more focussed. When it comes to the overwhelmingly important task - providing the Lib Dems with an absolutely distinctive and effective economic policy, then it's No More Mr Nice Guy!
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