Some of the most ambitious folk I’ve ever met were also among the least talented.
And some of the most talented folk I’ve ever met were among the least ambitious.
It is a fatal flaw in humankind that the people who are driven by a desire for personal advancement are often blessed with an incompetence matched only by an unwavering conviction in their own capability.
Meantime many of the folk with talent to spare squander it in the belief that they’re not good enough, or because they don’t want to be seen to be chasing promotion, or to be the boss.
Perhaps that explains the inadequacies of a Prime Minister and Chancellor who launched an un-costed tax cutting plan for high earners who were already doing very well.
It’s a plan which has now resulted in a 180-degree turn worthy of the late Dutch football legend Johan Cruyff.
At least the Dutch master’s swivelling motion was only damaging to opposing defenders.
Truss and Kwarteng’s spinning threatened to breach the financial stability of the entire country.
Tories might not question Truss and Kwarteng, but the people are
The PM will discover there’s a fatal flaw in surrounding herself with only those who are like-minded.
Every organisation, including governments, needs those who will not meekly accept diktat from on high.
Having to listen to others is a useful and sound discipline, ignored at their peril by those who think they have all the answers.
Ultimately a decision has to be arrived at.
And that may mean not acting on the advice of others.
But it takes rank incompetence and arrogance to surround yourself – as Truss seems to be doing – with only those who unthinkingly follow the leader.
Already, just weeks after becoming Prime Minister she looks as though she may have cost the Conservatives the next election.
And last weekend we saw indications that disquiet with her government is finally spilling over into widespread public anger.
Enough is Enough is the name adopted by the grassroots campaign movement which took to the streets of Britain last Saturday.
The simmering rage at the growing inequalities and unfairness permeating our society is reaching boiling point.
Young and old, employed and unemployed, low earners and middle earners, are protesting at the apparently insatiable greed of those in positions of power.
Financiers are gambling with our futures
The World is Not Enough is not just the title of a James Bond film; it also seems to encapsulate the belief of some in society who think they are uniquely deserving cases by comparison to the rest of the hoi polloi like you and me.
Their avarice and inability to read the room threatens to be their downfall.
Kwasi Kwarteng says unions “slow down our economy.”
But it wasn’t unions that led to the longest wage stagnation since the 1800s – it was the Tory government.
Workers have waited around for years for wages to grow.
Time is up. We’re going on strike.#EnoughlsEnough
— Enough is Enough (@eiecampaign) October 3, 2022
Margaret Thatcher referred to striking miners and the Labour movement as “the enemy within”.
But the enemy within today – the enemy who threaten the very fabric of our democracy – are those politicians, bankers, and casino hedge fund operators, who would destroy our pensions and living standards so they could acquire yet another Ferrari to sit in the drive.
Kwarteng was reportedly described as a “useful idiot” by a hedge fund manager at the champagne reception for the movers and shakers which the Chancellor attended after delivering his disastrous mini-Budget.
It’s all a game of Monopoly to those high financiers who breathe a different air from the rest of us in their rarified atmosphere.
But they are shorting the pound and playing roulette with the savings of people who have worked a lifetime to earn a decent retirement.
And they are endangering the future of the next generation, who are already struggling to get on the housing ladder or to pay the mortgage or the rent.
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