Brexit, for once some facts.

[flecc]

Tories are looking forward, at the moment in unison.

Like lemmings?
.

 

[Zlatan]

Like lemmings?
.

Thats actually a better analogy than you think. Its a common misconception that Lemmings are commiting suicide jumping into sea.


They are actually searching for pastures new, when old habitat is over populated.
But I think you knew all that Flecc.

And the Lemmings have an 80 seat majority...!!??

Corbyn is more Dodo or Dinosaur. Both extinct.
And, Labour's strategy is already indicative of their dogma. The investigation is centred around why they lost last GE. It should not be. It should be how to win next. Things are dynamic. Labour are like UK at start of WW2. We were fighting WW1 in 1939.Germans had moved on. Labour haven't yet.

 

[Danidl]

Compare this with the arguments coming out of Labour. No comparison. Its exactly point Goodwin was making. Even if half of stuff results in dead ends it doesnt matter. Its the difference in attitude. Striving to move on.
Labour are stuck in the past and cant decide a way to the future. Tories are looking forward, at the moment in unison.

Reading that extensive piece, I come to a one word summary. Lysenkoism

 

[OxygenJames]

Reading that extensive piece, I come to a one word summary. Lysenkoism

Well Danny - don't apply for any of the jobs Cummings was advertising for - that's exactly the kind of attitude we don't want.

 

[oldgroaner]

In the Guardian
"
Calling all 'weirdos and misfits': Dominic Cummings begins extraordinary No10 recruitment shake up

No1)
Upsetting pretentious remainers.
No2) Keeping OG busy. If he werent busy posting sh! te in here he, d be down local Co Op causing trouble and displaying his fruit and veg in window.
3)**** French off.
4)Pissing the con man Junkers off.
5)Annoying zee germans.
6)Pissing off the London luvvies and their free loading champagne socialist entertainers.
7)Lowered value of pound, increased value of all my foreign properties.
8)Away from corrupt EU parliament gravy train.
9)Taking power off useless feckers in Brussels and giving it to OUR useless feckers in Westminster. (At least we only have one set to listen to)
Could go on but getting bored now
Great day's sailing today. Not far from you OG. Skipsea. Very windy, nice swell running, bit on cold side. Off to Cape Verde 14th. They had never heard of Brexit on my last visit. Not a great place, but warm, windy and cheap. Waves a bit big sometimes.
Dont forget Sh! t Pies, you have formed a union with a poster who genuinely thought a 2 million increase on 10 million was a 2% increase. Just ignore any numerical posts he makes, well actually just ignore his posts.
We should introduce a "go to post xxxxx" function on here. Could save loads of time. We, ve covered all this, well about 20 times, and at a time when it was actually relevant.
Its just noise now.

Please not again, perhaps you haven't noticed, but the poster being repetitive is in fact you, and every time your ire is turned in my direction.
Why don't you grow up?

 

[oldgroaner]

And...

We’ve found one of these but want at least one more.

The sort of conversation you might have is discussing these two papers in Science (2015): Computational rationality: A converging paradigm for intelligence in brains, minds, and machines, Gershman et al and Economic reasoning and artificial intelligence, Parkes & Wellman.

You will see in these papers an intersection of:

• von Neumann’s foundation of game theory and ‘expected utility’,
• mainstream economic theories,
• modern theories about auctions,
• theoretical computer science (including problems like the complexity of probabilistic inference in Bayesian networks, which is in the NP–hard complexity class),
• ideas on ‘computational rationality’ and meta-reasoning from AI, cognitive science and so on.

If these sort of things are interesting, then you will find this project interesting.
It’s a bonus if you can code but it isn’t necessary.

D. Great project managers.

If you think you are one of the a small group of people in the world who are truly GREAT at project management, then we want to talk to you. Victoria Woodcock ran Vote Leave — she was a truly awesome project manager and without her Cameron would certainly have won. We need people like this who have a 1 in 10,000 or higher level of skill and temperament.
The Oxford Handbook on Megaprojects points out that it is possible to quantify lessons from the failures of projects like high speed rail projects because almost all fail so there is a large enough sample to make statistical comparisons, whereas there can be no statistical analysis of successes because they are so rare.

It is extremely interesting that the lessons of Manhattan (1940s), ICBMs (1950s) and Apollo (1960s) remain absolutely cutting edge because it is so hard to apply them and almost nobody has managed to do it. The Pentagon systematically de-programmed itself from more effective approaches to less effective approaches from the mid-1960s, in the name of ‘efficiency’. Is this just another way of saying that people like General Groves and George Mueller are rarer than Fields Medallists?

Anyway — it is obvious that improving government requires vast improvements in project management. The first project will be improving the people and skills already here.
If you want an example of the sort of people we need to find in Britain, look at this on CC Myers — the legendary builders. SPEED. We urgently need people with these sort of skills and attitude. (If you think you are such a company and you could dual carriageway the A1 north of Newcastle in record time, then get in touch!)

E. Junior researchers

In many aspects of government, as in the tech world and investing, brains and temperament smash experience and seniority out of the park.

We want to hire some VERY clever young people either straight out of university or recently out with with extreme curiosity and capacity for hard work.

One of you will be a sort of personal assistant to me for a year — this will involve a mix of very interesting work and lots of uninteresting trivia that makes my life easier which you won’t enjoy. You will not have weekday date nights, you will sacrifice many weekends — frankly it will hard having a boy/girlfriend at all. It will be exhausting but interesting and if you cut it you will be involved in things at the age of ~21 that most people never see.
I don’t want confident public school bluffers. I want people who are much brighter than me who can work in an extreme environment. If you play office politics, you will be discovered and immediately binned.

F. Communications

In SW1 communication is generally treated as almost synonymous with ‘talking to the lobby’. This is partly why so much punditry is ‘narrative from noise’.
With no election for years and huge changes in the digital world, there is a chance and a need to do things very differently.

We’re particularly interested in deep experts on TV and digital. We also are interested in people who have worked in movies or on advertising campaigns. There are some very interesting possibilities in the intersection of technology and story telling — if you’ve done something weird, this may be the place for you.

I noticed in the recent campaign that the world of digital advertising has changed very fast since I was last involved in 2016. This is partly why so many journalists wrongly looked at things like Corbyn’s Facebook stats and thought Labour was doing better than us — the ecosystem evolves rapidly while political journalists are still behind the 2016 tech, hence why so many fell for Carole’s conspiracy theories. The digital people involved in the last campaign really knew what they are doing, which is incredibly rare in this world of charlatans and clients who don’t know what they should be buying. If you are interested in being right at the very edge of this field, join.

We have some extremely able people but we also must upgrade skills across the spad network.

G. Policy experts

One of the problems with the civil service is the way in which people are shuffled such that they either do not acquire expertise or they are moved out of areas they really know to do something else. One Friday, X is in charge of special needs education, the next week X is in charge of budgets.

There are, of course, general skills. Managing a large organisation involves some general skills. Whether it is Coca Cola or Apple, some things are very similar — how to deal with people, how to build great teams and so on. Experience is often over-rated. When Warren Buffett needed someone to turn around his insurance business he did not hire someone with experience in insurance: ‘When Ajit entered Berkshire’s office on a Saturday in 1986, he did not have a day’s experience in the insurance business’ (Buffett).

Shuffling some people who are expected to be general managers is a natural thing but it is clear Whitehall does this too much while also not training general management skills properly. There are not enough people with deep expertise in specific fields.
If you want to work in the policy unit or a department and you really know your subject so that you could confidently argue about it with world-class experts, get in touch.
It’s also the case that wherever you are most of the best people are inevitably somewhere else. This means that governments must be much better at tapping distributed expertise. Of the top 20 people in the world who best understand the science of climate change and could advise us what to do with COP 2020, how many now work as a civil servant/spad or will become one in the next 5 years?

G. Super-talented weirdos

People in SW1 talk a lot about ‘diversity’ but they rarely mean ‘true cognitive diversity’. They are usually babbling about ‘gender identity diversity blah blah’. What SW1 needs is not more drivel about ‘identity’ and ‘diversity’ from Oxbridge humanities graduates but more genuine cognitive diversity.

We need some true wild cards, artists, people who never went to university and fought their way out of an appalling hell hole, weirdos from William Gibson novels like that girl hired by Bigend as a brand ‘diviner’ who feels sick at the sight of Tommy Hilfiger or that Chinese-Cuban free runner from a crime family hired by the KGB. If you want to figure out what characters around Putin might do, or how international criminal gangs might exploit holes in our border security, you don’t want more Oxbridge English graduates who chat about Lacan at dinner parties with TV producers and spread fake news about fake news.

By definition I don’t really know what I’m looking for but I want people around No10 to be on the lookout for such people.

We need to figure out how to use such people better without asking them to conform to the horrors of ‘Human Resources’ (which also obviously need a bonfire).


Send a max 1 page letter plus CV to ideasfornumber10@gmail.com and put in the subject line ‘job/’ and add after the / one of: data, developer, econ, comms, projects, research, policy, misfit.

I’ll have to spend time helping you so don’t apply unless you can commit to at least 2 years.
I’ll bin you within weeks if you don’t fit — don’t complain later because I made it clear now.
I will try to answer as many as possible but last time I publicly asked for job applications in 2015 I was swamped and could not, so I can’t promise an answer. If you think I’ve insanely ignored you, persist for a while.

I will use this blog to throw out ideas. It’s important when dealing with large organisations to dart around at different levels, not be stuck with formal hierarchies. It will seem chaotic and ‘not proper No10 process’ to some. But the point of this government is to do things differently and better and this always looks messy. We do not care about trying to ‘control the narrative’ and all that New Labour junk and this government will not be run by ‘comms grid’.

As Paul Graham and Peter Thiel say, most ideas that seem bad are bad but great ideas also seem at first like bad ideas — otherwise someone would have already done them. Incentives and culture push people in normal government systems away from encouraging ‘ideas that seem bad’. Part of the point of a small, odd No10 team is to find and exploit, without worrying about media noise, what Andy Grove called ‘very high leverage ideas’ and these will almost inevitably seem bad to most.

I will post some random things over the next few weeks and see what bounces back — it is all upside, there’s no downside if you don’t mind a bit of noise and it’s a fast cheap way to find good ideas…

What a classic piece!
First he proposes jobs for his pals from vote leave and then, glory be
University kids with no experience he can bully!
We had plenty of experience when the MD had a phase of employing "Fresh Young minds" from University and putting then into top positions.
The Notice would go up of the appointment and little notes would appear at the bottom
"Hope you last longer than the last one!"
And "Employ a graduate while they still know everything"
But most telling the comment
"Oh Dear!"
What a farce to put this clown into a position to interfere with the Civil service.
And what is his qualification in this respect?

He spent two years failing to get a Russian airline off the ground!

And we don't know what else he brought back with him from Russia, do we?
perhaps this from his Telegraph article will clarify his logic
"
Dominic Cummings said he wanted to hire “true wild cards” and “people who fought their way out of an appalling hell hole” to transform the civil service, instead of “public school bluffers” with no real-world experience.
In a 3,000-word job advert on his personal blog, Mr Cummings suggested the ideal candidate might be a “Chinese-Cuban free runner from a crime family hired by the KGB” as he cited characters from science fiction novels as his inspiration.
In a broadside at political correctness, he railed against people in Whitehall “babbling..."

Happy New Year

 

[Zlatan]

What a classic piece!
First he proposes jobs for his pals from vote leave and then, glory be
University kids with no experience he can bully!
We had plenty of experience when the MD had a phase of employing "Fresh Young minds" from University and putting then into top positions.
The Notice would go up of the appointment and little notes would appear at the bottom
"Hope you last longer than the last one!"
And "Employ a graduate while they still know everything"
But most telling the comment
"Oh Dear!"
What a farce to put this clown into a position to interfere with the Civil service.
And what is his qualification in this respect?

He spent two years failing to get a Russian airline off the ground!

And we don't know what else he brought back with him from Russia, do we?
perhaps this from his Telegraph article will clarify his logic
"
Dominic Cummings said he wanted to hire “true wild cards” and “people who fought their way out of an appalling hell hole” to transform the civil service, instead of “public school bluffers” with no real-world experience.
In a 3,000-word job advert on his personal blog, Mr Cummings suggested the ideal candidate might be a “Chinese-Cuban free runner from a crime family hired by the KGB” as he cited characters from science fiction novels as his inspiration.
In a broadside at political correctness, he railed against people in Whitehall “babbling..."

Happy New Year

If you dont like it OG

You could always call for an election?
And another referendum?

Not much point though, so you, ll just have to keep up the whinging and whining. Mind, you would anyway.
Anything positive to say today?
Thought not.
Uk is doomed, its cold out, world is fecked, conservatives are useless, labour are worse, Cummings is a tosser, Boris a baffoon, we should scrap aristocracy, roads are a disgrace, trains are late, manufacturing is dying,London stock exchange might aswell close and tele is crap. Your world really is a sad place OG. Oh, and maths doesnt work anymore.

 

[daveboy]

It seems to me that the "plans" for the Civil Service are a veiled threat to tow the line or be replaced. Same as the "plans" for the BBC licence fee.

 

[Zlatan]

Starmer says he wants Labour 'rebuilt ... as trusted force for good' as poll puts him leadership favourite – as it happened

Rolling coverage of the day’s political developments as they happen

www.theguardian.com

Could this be start of a change at Labour?? Lets hope so.
There is also a good piece in there talking of how Labour membership has drifted farther left at a time when country is shifting other way. (if Polls can be believed)

 

[Zlatan]

This sounds much better reform than the claptrap liberal left outpourings about cultural diversity we normally hear from London. (its about Cummings from Guardian)


That sounds good to me. Its called meritocracy. We havent seen it for years in Government and especially in Labour. Its been lost in so many institutions, from BBC to Education and everything in between. Candidates selected on ethnicity, gender, anything but merit. Look at Labour front bench. Its endemic, folk interviewed and appointed on anything but capability. If Cummings changes that... Brilliant. Dont care wether he, s Tory, Black, white or a Vulcan. Good effort. And far better than rubbish coming from other side.," a none London, none white Female" was first criteria set mentioned. Jesus, will they never learn.
And OG is arguing against it, not because of message but because of messenger.

In Rotherham dialogue was closed down in fear of upsetting certain communities. Labour openly aided this process sacking and marginilising Sarah Champion actually whilst girls were still being abused. Time for a change. We should be able to say things as they are without being labelled "racist". If this Tory Government takes a step toward that, I applaud it.

 

[Barry Shittpeas]

This sounds much better reform than the claptrap liberal left outpourings about cultural diversity we normally hear from London. (its about Cummings from Guardian)
View attachment 33542

That sounds good to me. Its called meritocracy. We havent seen it for years in Government and especially in Labour. Its been lost in so many institutions, from BBC to Education and everything in between. Candidates selected on ethnicity, gender, anything but merit. Look at Labour front bench. Its endemic, folk interviewed and appointed on anything but capability. If Cummings changes that... Brilliant. Dont care wether he, s Tory, Black, white or a Vulcan. Good effort. And far better than rubbish coming from other side.," a none London, none white Female" was first criteria set mentioned. Jesus, will they never learn.
And OG is arguing against it, not because of message but because of messenger.

In Rotherham dialogue was closed down in fear of upsetting certain communities. Labour openly aided this process sacking and marginilising Sarah Champion actually whilst girls were still being abused. Time for a change. We should be able to say things as they are without being labelled "racist". If this Tory Government takes a step toward that, I applaud it.

We have certainly done much damage as a result of putting people into jobs based on nothing more than their colour, gender or sexual orientation.

I remember it being said that Rory Stewart should not run for London Mayor because he would scupper the chances of a black candidate. How insane is that?

I hope Cummings makes some inroads towards reversing the current “colour, gender and sexual balance” appointment criteria, and starts to get the right people into the top public service jobs. All services have suffered from the BBC to NHS to the police etc. All are woefully poor performers due to inept management.

 

[oldgroaner]

If you dont like it OG

You could always call for an election?
And another referendum?

Not much point though, so you, ll just have to keep up the whinging and whining. Mind, you would anyway.
Anything positive to say today?
Thought not.
Uk is doomed, its cold out, world is fecked, conservatives are useless, labour are worse, Cummings is a tosser, Boris a baffoon, we should scrap aristocracy, roads are a disgrace, trains are late, manufacturing is dying,London stock exchange might aswell close and tele is crap. Your world really is a sad place OG. Oh, and maths doesnt work anymore.

Once again you continue this campaign of personal attacks and all without any cause. Why do you persist?
have you nothing better to do than rail at me?
Why not try posting on topic?
Are you suddenly supporting what is being done in our name?

 

[oldgroaner]

We have certainly done much damage as a result of putting people into jobs based on nothing more than their colour, gender or sexual orientation.

I remember it being said that Rory Stewart should not run for London Mayor because he would scupper the chances of a black candidate. How insane is that?

I hope Cummings makes some inroads towards reversing the current “colour, gender and sexual balance” appointment criteria, and starts to get the right people into the top public service jobs. All services have suffered from the BBC to NHS to the police etc. All are woefully poor performers due to inept management.

All true but then Cummings has proved to be an inept manager too

 

[Zlatan]

All true but then Cummings has proved to be an inept manager too

Oh, so its true when Barry says it but not when I do. Make your mind up OG.
Sums you up OG. You decide on personalities rather than whats been said. Cummings and Johnson irrespective of backgrounds or political affiliations are saying right things. (IMHO)
Your views are based, like Labour's, on old fashioned dogma.

 

[Zlatan]

All true but then Cummings has proved to be an inept manager too

Ofcourse he is, he only organised winning referendum and last GE. What does he know? You really do say the most stupid things OG. But then again he only orchestrated a 2% increase in Conservative vote in your mind. Idiot.
And, if you dont like the personal attacks I suggest
A) You stop making them.
B) Stop making stupid comments. (ie 2% and Cummings poor manager)

And, yes ofcourse I am supporting what Boris/Cummings are doing "in my name". They are the right things to do (IMHO), if they do things I dont like I will speak against them. So far, so good. Got to give them at least 3 years, and besides we have no alternative, literally and metaphorically.

 

[oldgroaner]

Oh, so its true when Barry says it but not when I do. Make your mind up OG.
Sums you up OG. You decide on personalities rather than whats bern said. Cummings and Johnson irrespective of backgrounds or political affiliations are saying right things. (IMHO)

Once again where did I say the civil service was an excellent institution?
I didn't did I? you made that up. What i said was that what cummings was proposing was the wrong way to go about it.
Do try not to read what you want to, rather than what is written.
The Civil service will be turned into a right wing instrument, and after that the judiciary will follow.
That is the way that a country goes downhill.

 

[oldgroaner]

Ofcourse he is, he only organised winning referendum and last GE. What does he know? You really do say the most stupid things OG. But then again he only orchestrated a 2% increase in Conservative vote in your mind. Idiot.

He was only a factor in the leave campaign, a role that has been exaggerated and he was at odds with the leading figures of the campaign remember?

 

[Zlatan]

He was only a factor in the leave campaign, a role that has been exaggerated and he was at odds with the leading figures of the campaign remember?

Probably, but that certainly doesnt make him " an inept manager" does it.
He is exactly what Labour are missing. A Campbell figure. Somebody intelligent in background. Corbyn had McDonnel and Abott.
And (if article in Guardian is to be believed) he is doing opposite of politicizing Civil Service. He wants to appoint on merit. Not political affiliation, gender or race. (The article and OJ's post makes that very point, accepted you dont read links)
You are prejudging everything. Give them time, give them the rope. They might hang themselves they just might build bridges. We dont know yet. Its called having on open mind OG. You should try it.
Or perhaps you, d still rather have Corbyn and his dithering, new none deal, neverendum and his "cultural diversity" BS.

 

[flecc]

But I think you knew all that Flecc.

I did indeed, but the traditional understanding is much more fun!
.

 

[Barry Shittpeas]

All true but then Cummings has proved to be an inept manager too

I don’t know about his track record, I’ve only skim read his Wiki profile. He achieved a First and is said to be “fizzing” with ideas. Whether they are good ideas remains to be seen, I’d say it’s too early to tell yet

Changes are needed in our public services. Funding, I would say is a secondary problem, the biggest problem being unsuitable management who are way out of their depth and causing inefficiency / poor performance. Many of our public services are only functioning due to people at the coal face working around and ignoring management directives.

Let’s see what Johnson / Cummings / Conservatives come up with. As far as the NHS is concerned, they need a sharp axe and a stout heart as they start cutting the dead wood.