The clue is in the name. The search is for an Apprentice, not a fully rounded and opinionated business executive, polished and equipped with the latest in corporate BS, ready to run Glaxo or BP. Or even for that matter, neither is it a search for an entrepreneur busting to rush out and set up a mobile sushi delivery service with a fleet of girls on roller blades.
A business victim of Sir Alan Sugar once described his management style as akin to Ronnie Barker's misanthropic Arkwright, of "Open all hours" fame. Sugar is indeed the epitome of all-seeing shop keeper with the sole concern of selling something for more than it costs, preferably before its sell-by date. And if you reckon that know him well enough after four series, that you suspect that he might be capable of turning a blind eye to one of his Apprentices "adjusting" a sell-by date if it "became necessary", then shame on you for thinking such a thing!
It is therefore probably entirely appropriate that these "robust" standards are offered to the masses who aspire to start up and operate a business in a country where such an ambition has become progressively less achievable thanks to mountains of legislation and legions of enforcers that do nothing whatever to help anyone help themselves. The harsh fact is that unless you can win the lottery, you can no longer start a business and continue to own it without cutting a few corners. And if you don't understand that, then you are indeed better off applying for one of the zillions of unproductive jobs created over the past 10 years on the public payroll as one of Gordon Brown's loyal Bin storm troopers, a CSO - or if you are really daring, maybe a HIPS evaluator.
TMP is not the least surprised that "business leaders" regularly stand up to express despair at The Apprentice for sending out the wrong messages. Yet these are the business leaders that have formed unholy alliances with New labour where mostly irrelevant legislative impositions have flooded the process of managing a business in such a way that only the big companies can afford the fleet of unproductive staff to administer the various (mostly EU inspired) rules and regulations that apply to every aspect of employment, trading and accounting.
Unlike Sir A., these business leaders are generally so far removed from the "sharp" end of their businesses that they wouldn't realise if it stabbed them in the arse. Those who object at the exposure of the prevailing corporate culture of "blame storming" and general duplicity in the workplace that most candidates bring to Sir A's boardroom would do well to consider what the various "deals" between big business and government have done to the fabric and culture of enterprise in the UK over the past 10 years. It's been just as corrosive and unhelpful as anything Harold Wilson cooked up with his beer and sandwich sessions with the Unions.
Yet in Lee McQueen we have a diamond geezer in the same mould as the original winner, Tim Campbell. McQueen is widely appreciated by those who have worked with him, and he exemplifies the "determined doer" that never made the boardroom showdown once in the series. In fact, listen to Tim and Lee and you might wonder at the remarkable similarity in their voices. (Can we please see Lee and Tim in the same room together?)
There was one grating moment in the series that TMP objected to - Sir Alan's choice of interviewers leaves a lot to be desired. If they (and their glittering array of gas guzzlers) are examples of people who have "made it" then there is no hope for nice guys. The quite extraordinarily and unnecessarily unpleasant Paul Kemsley asked McQueen to do his pterodactyl impression, and then slated him for doing as he asked. What a complete c*nt.
The best bloke won.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
At last ! It's about the economy, stupid
While those of us who had spotted the problems with the Blair/Brown vision of Britain in 1997 began to come out and declare the emperor and his chancellor to be stark buck naked, many of the glitterati and chattering classes still clung grimly on to the view that the mirage of a touchy-feely multicultural, diversity-tolerant, welfare-everywhere Britain was all we needed to go forth in an increasingly nasty, unfair, intolerant, competitive and brutal world. Never mind that just about all our innate advantages but one was being steadily overturned or overtaken: no more "free" oil/gas; agriculture and fishing industries neutered by the EU; barmy military crusades; barmy immigration tactics; hopeless housing policies; the near-destruction of parliamentary politics.
Blair has broken every toy he inherited and wasted virtually every tax he (and Broon) raised with almost nothing to show for any of it other than a vastly fatter public sector, with many pointless jobs for the boys and girls. He probably deserves to be impeached and locked up for many of his more wilfully stupid acts; however, marrying Cherie was a life sentence, so perhaps he is already suffering enough.
Perhaps top of the list of impeachable stupidity is the total neglect of power generation capacity that is at last being appreciated for the potential catastrophe that it truly is; but as long as there was that talismanic "chicken in the pot", naive voters were quite prepared to ignore the basics and leave Brown free to fritter away all (and more) of the benefits of John Major and Ken Clark's remarkable but completely forgotten last 3 years of financial recovery.
The feel good factor remained afloat on a sea of credit while inflation was suppressed by the transparency of markets as a result of the Internet and communications revolution.
All most doom mongers have ever wanted to do was to be able to drag the debate back to the core issues around the economy before it was too - but while that pot remains chicken-bearing, no one wanted to listen. It is astonishing how deaf the normally sensible British population has become as a result of the growing indifference to politics.
Perhaps we will start to hear less of the "I don't vote, I can't change anything" nonsense that has typified the Blair years. With the chickenless pot a reality, the fear is no longer one of change, but fear of no change, since the bloke in charge of the empty pot has clearly and so comprehensively lost the plot. Indeed, it becomes clearer by the day that he never actually had it; he just got very lucky indeed.
The frustration of being forced to watch the cabal of Blair's ruling minorities being allowed and encouraged to exercise their various irrelevant dogmatic prejudices while Rome burned, has been excruciating. Nicely exemplified by the bearded legions of local council Nazis and their love of the bin Gestapo.
This is no time for gentle adjustments. What we need now is a government willing to take on the big issues; David Cameron seems to be winning trust as the genuine family guy and ready to dare to say that youth crime and single parent families and working mothers might actually be connected in some way. Let's also hope he is surrounded by the necessary brutes that are needed to take apart 10 years of socialist faux-utopia, and replace it with sustainable policies and tactics - including ways to remind everyone in the UK and EU that it was the Common Market that we voted for - which was a very different thing to the Franco-German empire we now have.
Common sense is the cornerstone of the Majority Party: it should be an essential part of every policy - yet it is astonishing just how far old-fashioned common sense has been replaced by the common nonsense of the politically correct. The news that Ken Livingstone has more time to spend with his newts might have marked that tide's turn at last.
Oh yes, and that one innate advantage even Brown cannot completely squander (although he is doing his best) is the fact that we invented the English language and still have a great deal of creativity to provide within it just as the rest of the world has decided it is the de facto global lingua franca. (Please try and forget the cash being squandered to ensure that your council tax bill can be provided in Welsh, Gallic, Hindustani and 27 dialects of Arabic...)
Bring on the election before the lights go out, and stay out. Those chickens are coming home to roost anywhere but in that pot on the table.
Blair has broken every toy he inherited and wasted virtually every tax he (and Broon) raised with almost nothing to show for any of it other than a vastly fatter public sector, with many pointless jobs for the boys and girls. He probably deserves to be impeached and locked up for many of his more wilfully stupid acts; however, marrying Cherie was a life sentence, so perhaps he is already suffering enough.
Perhaps top of the list of impeachable stupidity is the total neglect of power generation capacity that is at last being appreciated for the potential catastrophe that it truly is; but as long as there was that talismanic "chicken in the pot", naive voters were quite prepared to ignore the basics and leave Brown free to fritter away all (and more) of the benefits of John Major and Ken Clark's remarkable but completely forgotten last 3 years of financial recovery.
The feel good factor remained afloat on a sea of credit while inflation was suppressed by the transparency of markets as a result of the Internet and communications revolution.
All most doom mongers have ever wanted to do was to be able to drag the debate back to the core issues around the economy before it was too - but while that pot remains chicken-bearing, no one wanted to listen. It is astonishing how deaf the normally sensible British population has become as a result of the growing indifference to politics.
Perhaps we will start to hear less of the "I don't vote, I can't change anything" nonsense that has typified the Blair years. With the chickenless pot a reality, the fear is no longer one of change, but fear of no change, since the bloke in charge of the empty pot has clearly and so comprehensively lost the plot. Indeed, it becomes clearer by the day that he never actually had it; he just got very lucky indeed.
The frustration of being forced to watch the cabal of Blair's ruling minorities being allowed and encouraged to exercise their various irrelevant dogmatic prejudices while Rome burned, has been excruciating. Nicely exemplified by the bearded legions of local council Nazis and their love of the bin Gestapo.
This is no time for gentle adjustments. What we need now is a government willing to take on the big issues; David Cameron seems to be winning trust as the genuine family guy and ready to dare to say that youth crime and single parent families and working mothers might actually be connected in some way. Let's also hope he is surrounded by the necessary brutes that are needed to take apart 10 years of socialist faux-utopia, and replace it with sustainable policies and tactics - including ways to remind everyone in the UK and EU that it was the Common Market that we voted for - which was a very different thing to the Franco-German empire we now have.
Common sense is the cornerstone of the Majority Party: it should be an essential part of every policy - yet it is astonishing just how far old-fashioned common sense has been replaced by the common nonsense of the politically correct. The news that Ken Livingstone has more time to spend with his newts might have marked that tide's turn at last.
Oh yes, and that one innate advantage even Brown cannot completely squander (although he is doing his best) is the fact that we invented the English language and still have a great deal of creativity to provide within it just as the rest of the world has decided it is the de facto global lingua franca. (Please try and forget the cash being squandered to ensure that your council tax bill can be provided in Welsh, Gallic, Hindustani and 27 dialects of Arabic...)
Bring on the election before the lights go out, and stay out. Those chickens are coming home to roost anywhere but in that pot on the table.
Friday, May 23, 2008
Up the Junction - a note to the BBC
The BBC Radio 5 discussion of the Crewe by-election seemed bizarrely biased where the sole argument being put forward by most of the callers is that the last 16 years of Tory administration had been unlovely at times. Never mind that Gordon Brown's financial opportunity was entirely down to the inheritance of John Major's financial turnaround - an act of rare honesty for any hue of politician that cost him the election.
Some of us recall Harold Wilson, Jim Callaghan, Michael Foot, Neil Kinnock and John Smith but guess what? We got over it, and become more interested in the future than the past. Why is the left incapable of moving on from the Tolpuddle Martyrs? Is it because they have limited creativity and little imagination? Look at the way the established left fights elections - after the BNP, it is always the left that is first to resort crude smear and scare tactics. And true to type, they did it all again in Crewe.
Victoria Derbyshire seems to be making rather less effort to conceal the BBC's institutional "leanings" than usual - perhaps the realisation that the BBC will be revised by a Conservative government has set off alarms.
But since we are obsessed by the past, please consider this - the BBC's contribution to the digital economy has been much the same as when the BBC Computer (remember that? much lauded at the time, but where is it now?) stifled commercial competition and put a brake on the UK home computer industry at a crucially formative time for world markets.
So you may indeed be right to be concerned for your futures under a new administration, but don't confuse the good of the BBC and its crew of Guardianista with the good of the country and its population at large.
Some of us recall Harold Wilson, Jim Callaghan, Michael Foot, Neil Kinnock and John Smith but guess what? We got over it, and become more interested in the future than the past. Why is the left incapable of moving on from the Tolpuddle Martyrs? Is it because they have limited creativity and little imagination? Look at the way the established left fights elections - after the BNP, it is always the left that is first to resort crude smear and scare tactics. And true to type, they did it all again in Crewe.
Victoria Derbyshire seems to be making rather less effort to conceal the BBC's institutional "leanings" than usual - perhaps the realisation that the BBC will be revised by a Conservative government has set off alarms.
But since we are obsessed by the past, please consider this - the BBC's contribution to the digital economy has been much the same as when the BBC Computer (remember that? much lauded at the time, but where is it now?) stifled commercial competition and put a brake on the UK home computer industry at a crucially formative time for world markets.
So you may indeed be right to be concerned for your futures under a new administration, but don't confuse the good of the BBC and its crew of Guardianista with the good of the country and its population at large.
Saturday, May 17, 2008
The Wicked Witch and a Motley Crewe
TMP is quite embarrassed by the relentless stream of proof that our assessment of the government and its key personalities over the past two years, has been proven to be so perfectly accurate. The Wicked Witch's tireless efforts since Tony's resignation have confirmed that the dreadful woman is capable of saying and doing just about anything in the interests of accumulating cash.
It is perfectly correct that she should be be relieved of her judicial duties; how can anyone now be confident that a "particularly persuasive" plea for clemency from a dodgy defendant might not end up as a piece of artwork hanging in her latest mansion?
It's taken the Tories the best part of 20 years to live down its clumsily acquired image as heartless toffs in the wake of the poll tax riots, but pretty much the whole of the Labour party now lies exposed as completely bereft of principles, and capable of saying and doing just about anything to cash in on personal memoirs ...or cling to power.
After the sneering destruction of the hereditary element of the House of Lords and its replacement using tawdry purchased honours, the attempt to install the next in line for the Dunwoody dynasty in Crewe using just about any smear tactics that they can conjure, seems particularly appropriate as an act of exquisite cynicism in the dying days of this completely corrupt regime.
It is a mark of Gordon Brown's continued political autism that he did not take the opportunity to stamp his authority on the party and assert that no mater what it cost, he would not permit acts of such cynicism and indecency as have been employed by the party in the Crewe by election, to be traded for a few cheap votes - especially since Labour was probably going to lose either way.
The most impressive and dignified thing he could have done was to withdraw the dreadful Dunwoody woman, expel the Crewe Labour party, and leave the Conservatives and Liberals to fight it out.
It is perfectly correct that she should be be relieved of her judicial duties; how can anyone now be confident that a "particularly persuasive" plea for clemency from a dodgy defendant might not end up as a piece of artwork hanging in her latest mansion?
It's taken the Tories the best part of 20 years to live down its clumsily acquired image as heartless toffs in the wake of the poll tax riots, but pretty much the whole of the Labour party now lies exposed as completely bereft of principles, and capable of saying and doing just about anything to cash in on personal memoirs ...or cling to power.
After the sneering destruction of the hereditary element of the House of Lords and its replacement using tawdry purchased honours, the attempt to install the next in line for the Dunwoody dynasty in Crewe using just about any smear tactics that they can conjure, seems particularly appropriate as an act of exquisite cynicism in the dying days of this completely corrupt regime.
It is a mark of Gordon Brown's continued political autism that he did not take the opportunity to stamp his authority on the party and assert that no mater what it cost, he would not permit acts of such cynicism and indecency as have been employed by the party in the Crewe by election, to be traded for a few cheap votes - especially since Labour was probably going to lose either way.
The most impressive and dignified thing he could have done was to withdraw the dreadful Dunwoody woman, expel the Crewe Labour party, and leave the Conservatives and Liberals to fight it out.
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Something of a breakthrough
The vote for Boris Johnson and the Conservative party in general suggests that we seem to be witnessing a sea change in the zeitgeist, as the unholy alliances between Big Money and cabals of misguided and inept minorities are starting to come apart.
Let us pray that this is the beginning of the end of rule by using exaggerated and irrational fear of anything the cabals can "bogeyfy" - ranging from terror to climate.
There appears to be a growing desire for the return of good old fashioned common sense.
Let's hope Cameron understands that he is mostly in favour purely because he could not be any worse than Gordon Brown, and that in order to secure the opportunity he needs to set about restoring some of the old-fashioned ideas that were sacrificed to spin. If you find yourself starting to feel any sympathy for the increasingly pathetic sight of Gordon Brown doing his sorry best to confess and promise to listen and try harder, then TMP has one word of advice: DON'T!
Brown always was grotesquely over rated as a Chancellor - he took a solid inheritance from the previous Tory administration, destroyed the pensions industry and built an economy on the shifting sands of dubious credit. It is supremely ironic but wholly justified that this all came home to roost within months of his assumption of the office of (sub) Prime Minister. And let's not spare the embarrassment of those idiots in the City and business that encouraged the New Labour disaster, and got their gongs (by hook or by crook). But it is too much to hope that they repent, and properly atone for their sins, since most have trousered fat fortunes built on Brown's phony property and credit booms, and are now wonderfully isolated from the cost of petrol, and the prospect of an impecunious old age.
It should be quite simple for Cameron to get the plot from here: the electorate has pretty much shown him what they want - genuine lo-nonsense conservative politics with a bit of an edge and glamour. The BoJo majority clearly doesn't care for political correctness, the ECHR or indeed the array of neo-Nazis Labour has invented, best exemplified by the Gestapo of Health and Safety.
Let's hope StanJo gets his son's vacated seat, and the undoing of the 12 years of the clearly failed New Labour Project continues, with a return to the old fashioned ideas of doing the will of the majority .
Hoo-bloody-rah.
Let us pray that this is the beginning of the end of rule by using exaggerated and irrational fear of anything the cabals can "bogeyfy" - ranging from terror to climate.
There appears to be a growing desire for the return of good old fashioned common sense.
Let's hope Cameron understands that he is mostly in favour purely because he could not be any worse than Gordon Brown, and that in order to secure the opportunity he needs to set about restoring some of the old-fashioned ideas that were sacrificed to spin. If you find yourself starting to feel any sympathy for the increasingly pathetic sight of Gordon Brown doing his sorry best to confess and promise to listen and try harder, then TMP has one word of advice: DON'T!
Brown always was grotesquely over rated as a Chancellor - he took a solid inheritance from the previous Tory administration, destroyed the pensions industry and built an economy on the shifting sands of dubious credit. It is supremely ironic but wholly justified that this all came home to roost within months of his assumption of the office of (sub) Prime Minister. And let's not spare the embarrassment of those idiots in the City and business that encouraged the New Labour disaster, and got their gongs (by hook or by crook). But it is too much to hope that they repent, and properly atone for their sins, since most have trousered fat fortunes built on Brown's phony property and credit booms, and are now wonderfully isolated from the cost of petrol, and the prospect of an impecunious old age.
It should be quite simple for Cameron to get the plot from here: the electorate has pretty much shown him what they want - genuine lo-nonsense conservative politics with a bit of an edge and glamour. The BoJo majority clearly doesn't care for political correctness, the ECHR or indeed the array of neo-Nazis Labour has invented, best exemplified by the Gestapo of Health and Safety.
Let's hope StanJo gets his son's vacated seat, and the undoing of the 12 years of the clearly failed New Labour Project continues, with a return to the old fashioned ideas of doing the will of the majority .
Hoo-bloody-rah.
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