What Are Think Tanks For?

You could call the front bar of most pubs in Britain 'Think Tanks'. There, many people blessed with the wondrous gift of 'Common Sense' have the 'calling' and slave tirelessly, over many hours, unpaid, in the illusive quest to solve the entire world of their problems. But no one ever listens.

In fact, in the 'Think Tank' I have attended on occasions, we even predicted the over-heating of the housing markets in the Western world as being the point at which economies would collapse. We even predicted that the rise of Hedge Funds and fat City bonuses would cause economic meltdown. But as the two observations were made in different 'sittings' and by largely different members, nobody linked the two things together.

But that's how 'Think Tanks' work. It is basically people with too much time on their hands sitting in the room with some kind of 'stimulus'. In our case it was alcohol and most other Think Tanks it is the money paid by the body who wants the answers and usually the initial question goes something along the lines of 'The NHS is getting overloaded, so how much money can we get out of it?'.

You think I'm kidding? Where did you think the Congestion Charge came from or Road Safety Speed Cameras or catching terrorists came from? All the answers involved ways of making more money, the latter by using the cameras installed to supposedly catch terrorists to be used to catch people putting the wrong things in bins and old ladies illegally parking, hence making more money. And they must be all done at separate meetings as none of the answers ever reference the other and always assume we have bottomless pits of money to hand back to Government or in consultant-speak their thinking is 'unjoined up'.

So today's gem is that a new Think Tank has come up with a way to solve over-crowding at GP surgeries. It must have take all of 30 seconds this one and the minutes of the meeting show that the chairman did not even finish reading out the question when some professor from the University of Pratts Bottom piped up, 'Charge the bastards £20 a visit.' Brilliant - all those in favour? 'Aye'. Passed unanimously. Next question vexed them a bit but took 45 minutes and they decided to end world poverty by charging all inhabitants of Africa £35 for the use of condoms.

Ryan Air seem to be operating much the same way by the looks of some of the ideas they have come up with but that's another story.

It strikes me that politicians clearly can only think for themselves when it comes to expenses and getting second jobs. All other times they simply toss the offending question into a Think Tank and out pops the answer which always goes along the lines of 'The answer to Britain's problem referenced XYZ (no need to fill the question in) is to charge ABC (refer to demographic chart book) £Delta (refer to charging rate booklet).'

So do we get value for our £60,000 a year plus multiple expensed MPs? Not really as when you add up all the consulting, research and Think Tank fees they pay out a year, we see that using their outsourced brain power actually costs us a great deal more. But one thing we can be sure of is that the more we pay for them, we end up paying a great deal more in our taxes.

Get with the programme, everyone. Register your pub's front bar as a 'Think Tank', invent a suitable studious name and make some money while you drink. I guarantee you'll make more sense than the ones in existence today.

Led By Sheep

The real British Lions are fighting in Afghanistan. In this month alone, 16 soldiers have died there bringing the total to 185 since the start of a conflict that we have all forgotten why we are fighting in.

Yesterday, Sir Jock Stirrup was at Downing Street refuting the PM's insistence that enough was being done to equip our fighting men while the Head of The Army, General Sir Richard Danatt said, as he stepped down, that we simply did not have enough resources deployed in Afghanistan. It is a tough time for Brown, who in his tenure as PM and Chancellor has overseen the systematic cutbacks in our Armed Forces at a time when we have endeavoured to fight more wars.

Meanwhile, Peter Mandelson was out 'shopping' for the Armed Forces and saying that they will get the equipment needed. I suspect he is quite good at shopping.

Action Not Reaction

The fact of the matter is that the situation has been allowed to get this serious and desperate that it has taken 16 lives this month alone and the two most senior Forces Chiefs to break rank and openly criticise the Government in order to get a reaction out of the Government. Had it not been for 16 men dying in July, life in Helmand for our Forces would have gone on as usual. Now the New Labour 'spin machine' worked so sweetly by Mandelson tries to make it look as if a) they give a damn and b) are doing something about it.

It's a far cry from the huddled bodies and massive fees paid to investment bankers in order to get answers on the bank bail outs. Money was no object then and ministers were ready to do all night sittings to save the necks of people who had screwed us so royally. All the regulators, executives and Non-Executives are still in their jobs bar a miserly few and £11.5m in investment bank fees and £26.8m in legal fees was paid to the very people complicit in the disaster.

It's like paying the Taliban to get advice on how to get more helicopters. Frankly, they probably have more idea than our Government does.

What appalls everyday people is that we question why the soldiers are in Helmand and what they are fighting for anyway. But that does not mean that we think any the less of our Armed Forces - they are led by sheep at the very top, who know nothing of how to equip an Army and stand by the men they so quickly send into danger.

In their crisp suits and serious faces they make it a 'priority' to do something only when the two most senior Army Chiefs break the political law by standing up and denouncing them. And the Opposition are no better, seizing on it only for political gain. There does not seem to be an honest person amongst them or any that actually gives a flying whatever for the 16 men who died this month and the 185 families that have been affected by the decisions of gutless people so far.

Politics is all about politicians feathering their own nests in the good times and saving their own necks in the bad. This year has been an 'Annus Horriblus' for modern politics and it is time we were served by honest people who backed up what they say with real commitments and action.

Our Armed Forces deserve far better than this and they deserve not to die for no reason or for the lack of the right equipment. It is utterly shameful that we have let them down so pathetically.

Blame It On The Boogie

At 0256 GMT on Tuesday 21 July it will be precisely 40 years since Neil Armstrong's left foot first touched the surface of the Moon.

The hatch had been opened 20 minutes earlier and the Lunar Module (LEM) had landed at 2017 the night before with the immortal words, 'Houston, the Eagle has landed' which was a line Armstrong had nicked from a Higgins book. Armstrong had literally wrestled the LEM to the surface with just seconds of fuel left and far past the target landing site. Such was the nerve of the man, having put the craft down he and his co-pilot, Buzz Aldrin, had a few sarnies and admired the view before getting a bit of shut-eye.

I loved the whole Apollo missions and I lived every moment of the flights after Apollo 11. On honeymoon, my wife and I went to see Apollo 13 and I relived the incredible story of heroism, teamwork and endeavour that got a tiny tin of metal containing 3 live bodies, a massive hole and precious little oxygen home from the vastness of space. I could remember all those space programmes with James Burke, Raymond Baxter and the US bulletins led by Walter Cronkite and feeling the blow of every new obstacle that was put in front of NASA as they tried to get the men home.

If you want an excellent and quirky insight into the minds of those who went to the Moon, then read 'Moondust' by Andrew Smith which contains his interviews with those moon-walkers who are still alive. But to think of being in a tiny capsule hurtling in nothingness without a hope of being rescued if something failed makes me shiver with claustrophobia let alone inadequacy at the skills of these men.

So Where Did It All Go?

The moonwalkers were thought to be the trailblazers, the vanguard of a large infestation of the Moon and beyond. But as with Michael Jackson's moonwalk, the whole program stopped abruptly and it was blamed on the 'Political Boogie'. The US was fighting an ever more demanding war in Vietnam and the Russians had lost interest - the race for space petered out very quickly. The culmination is that we send effectively dustbins designed by the Open University to Mars with a parachute, some old Tonka Toy wheels and a camera. The results are less than spectacular.

Yet the Space program spawned so much. The suits worn by the astronauts brought us Kevlar, at the heart of all bullet-proof jackets. The microchip burst forward as computation was miniaturised from the acreages of special rooms with the advances in silicon circuitry. The computing power aboard Apollo 11, programmed by a lone 23 year graduate, was no more powerful than the average car tripometer and yet it took these men across 250,000 miles of space to precise spots and safely back. They tested most of all the theories of modern physics and the behaviour of celestial bodies by using gravitational coupling of the Earth and Moon to 'slingshot' the vessels there and back. The underneath of the Command Module had a heat shield that could withstand the enormous temperatures of re-entry and the ropes that held the parachute to the craft on landing could withstand the powerful bite of a shark. The thickness of walls of the LEM in some places was no more than a couple of sheets of aluminium foil.

The facts and technology are breathtaking and yet it all ended unceremoniously and no man has ever returned to the Moon. Makes you think how aliens can zap so far across the worlds and arrive here, not even call in for a cuppa and then screech off into the distance after only performing a few hideous medical experiments on the genitals of country yokels in Mid-America. Seems such a waste of fuel and resources, and intelligence.

The Doubters

Of course, there are many doubters. The Van Allen Belt is the usual objection raised. This is a belt of radiation that effectively shrouds the earth from a distance and you have to cross it to get to the Moon. The structure of the Apollo crafts would never have been able to shield the astronauts from the potentially lethal doses of radiation it is assumed they would have to endure. I have no idea whether this is the case but it would seem the Americans ploughed on regardless - given that a few of the astronauts did subsequently die of cancer, perhaps they did suffer consequences. There are those who reckon if you look at the photos from the surface then the position of the shadows and 'fluttering of the flag' are indications that the whole thing was filmed on a set in Hollywood. Again I have no idea whether this is the case or not.

Neil Morrisey hosted a great program on this and showed a guy in Australia who every day shone a laser at a mirror that the Apollo missions had left on the Moon and he uses it to measure the exact distance between the Moon and Earth. It seems proof enough that someone went there and set it up. It also shows that little by little, the Moon is drifting away from us despite the fact we seem to be in gravitational harmony.

I Don't Care

Well, I am not bothered what the doubters think and I couldn't give a stuff about their arguments. I lived a childhood obsessed with the achievements of the likes of Armstrong, Aldrin, Collins, Lovell and others.

I think I will watch Apollo 13 for just the 10,000th time and see if they do actually make it backs despite over 4 minutes of lost contact during re-entry. You couldn't make that sort of stuff up, you know.

Time Called on Non-Executive Directors?

The role of Non-Executive Directors (NXDs), or perhaps I should say lack of, in the explosion of the banking system has really had little scrutiny. It is perhaps a relief that a Treasury sponsored review by Sir David Walker is finally taking a hard look.

The only real prominence on NXDs was the role that McKillip and Scott played in Fred Goodwin's pension scandal - but it is worth noting that the Government official sent to supervise the whole fiasco was a serial NXD in Lord Paul Myners. They look after their own, those boys. Meanwhile, on the regulatory side, Lord Adair Turner, the Chairman of the FSA, has around 10 jobs, many of which are highly paid NXD roles.

McKillip was castigated for his foul up on Goodwin and because of it he lost one of his prize roles, a place on the Board at BP. You see, in the stratospheric world of high-end NXD roles, once you are on the gravy train, it is very difficult to get off it. And the fact is, once you are on it, you have 'form' and so you are offered many more jobs and build yourself up a nice portfolio of highly paid, very part-time roles where you are responsible for nothing and never held accountable for anything.

Sir David Walker intends, amongst other interesting things like curbing city pay scales, to make NXDs a more accountable role, have them better trained for the job and make them play more of a part in the Governance of the Companies they are paid by. Fat chance.

The whole review thing is too late anyway. The financial gravy train has picked up more fuel and is underway again with no new regulation in sight and big bonus payouts just on the horizon. The chance of getting any kind of controls and checks in place on the City are about as likely as me winning the British Open this week. The astute among you may spot I am not actually playing in the Open and that is my point. Sir David Walker is a side show. The City will ultimately decide what happens because it has the stranglehold over the Government.

In fact, now that we own so much of the banks, they have us exactly where they want us - we pay the bills and they will make enough returns to get the public money back on the share outlay, but only if Government butts out. If the Government does interfere then there is a risk that the money does not get paid back and where would that leave the PM in the run up to an election?

Rest assured, the City will get its way. The Government has sold its soul to ensure that.

Money Well Spent

MP expenses are a thing of the past - the line has been drawn and the blood has been let. The show is over, folks. Move on, nothing to see here.

The Assembly expenses hardly got a mention even though in Wales they recently voted to stop paying for second homes there, even though the vast majority of Assembly members can commute there by car or train pretty easily as the gruelling schedule of the mechanics of Welsh Government was not quite as demanding as Westminster. But the expenses gravy train must go on.

It was good to see yesterday that the whole thing still has some legs left. After all, we had only really been exposed to second home allowances, we hadn't really got to the bottom of the vast amount of frivolous spending that goes on such things as travel and offices for those 600+ jokers on the make in the West End. Top of the list came the travel spend of the Prime Minister.

You might have thought that the prudent financial genius of an ex-Chancellor would be quite cautious about the cost of travel - it certainly looks it as he seems to have been wheeled through hedges in a barrow by the look of his suits most of the time. However, of the staggering £9.4m spent by only ministers last year, the PM's share alone was over half.

Where the hell did he go and by what means?

Well there was that fantastic, historical political dash across most of the world just prior to the G20 Summit - that was a snip at £744k alone. We still scratch our heads as to why he had to go to Brazil and Chile on that trip but then we remember that his flying partner, Peter Mandelson, had a few 'regulars' to see over there. It was a trip that saved the world, of that we can be sure.

Meanwhile, the expenses of his country house, Chequers, have been published too. The PM has clearly diverse tastes in entertainment and does not need to watch TV as the likes of Bruce Forsyth, David Walliams and Matt Lucas all came to visit while his good old chum and adviser, Fred Goodwin, visited not six months before he was cast out like the knighted criminal he was - banished with a fat pension like a common thief.

Of course, most of this is chickenfeed when compared to his predecessor who was so obsessed with travel he was contemplating getting a presidential plane to be designated 'Blair One' - he can almost personally afford one now under his new pious regime, after dinner speaking and non-executive non-jobs. He and his ministers used to keep RAF jets waiting on the tarmac at Brussels airport as ministers whooped it up and were not kept to the rigours of scheduled flights or use of the Channel Tunnel.

Let's be honest about it, shipping 27 idiots around the globe prior to G20 saved us a fortune really as we have spread the resultant bill over our outgoings for the next 20 years. And Peter M had a lovely time in his 'second home' of Brazil.

Good Use of Resources

As I surveyed a car with a smashed in window in a car park in King's Langley yesterday, I was heartened to see the Police once again focusing their resources on the real perpetrators of crime.

Sadly, for the owner of the car in King's Langley, the Police did not want to know. Meanwhile, the two day trial of Chris Tarrant's former wife, Ingrid has seen her brought to justice. Forget the rape and killings on the streets (we are led to believe killings are at their lowest for a while but it doesn't feel like it), forget knife and gun crime, forget terrorists and peers who kill in the fast lane of motorways while texting, yesterday a real criminal was brought to book in the grim streets of Cobham in Surrey.

Cobham, Britain's Worst Crime Hot Spot

Cobham is surely one of the country's worst no-go areas where crime is so rampant that even the criminals go round in pairs, while Chelsea footballers preen themselves on their local training ground. Life is tough in Cobham and it's why the streets are now full of tough, well-trained policemen who wear the type of body armour that a Marine in Afghanistan would literally die for. Last Christmas, the police moved in on one of Surrey's most hardened criminals - Ingrid Tarrant.

Reign of Terror

After a blatant spree of shopping, Tarrant, returned to her vehicle which was illegally parked at a bus stop. She ignored the battle-hardened police PC who attempted to apprehend her for causing an unnecessary obstruction. She drove off and was chased by two further officers while the Surrey Police helicopter could not get there in time as the officers flying it were buzzing local houses looking for people putting the wrong things in bins. The officers managed to catch up with Tarrant and tackled the dangerous criminal, managing to over power her and pin her to the ground before handcuffing her.

Armed and Dangerous

She was taken to a nearby police station for rigorous questioning but did not break under pressure and reveal the source of her fuel or what was in her shopping bags. Perhaps we will never know. She was found to be armed with a loaded wallet which had clearly been recently fired.

She was yesterday finally brought to book and charged £1,200 after defiantly pleading not guilty. The total operation was funded by extra parking tickets and speeding fines for the street-hardened criminals of Cobham. The town folk will sleep a little easier now another criminal is dealt a vicious blow in the name of Justice.

Surrey Police - we salute you.

A Few Honest Words

'A few honest words were spoken,' said John Smits, the South African Rugby Captain when asked about his side's second half performance to beat the British & Irish Lions in the 2nd Test at Loftus Versfeld, Pretoria recently.

He was referring to what his team did at half time when they had been comprehensively taken apart by a stunning Lions performance in the first half. They sat down and talked honestly to one another about their performances. For all the training and experience these guys had in winning the World Cup together, they changed their game profoundly by doing just doing a simple thing like talking to come back and win the game. Egos were forgotten. There were no prima donnas there despite the roll call of famous names - they collectively and individually took the criticism and made a commitment to one another to put it right. The results were spectacular.

That's what makes good teams become great - the ability to analyse themselves honestly and collectively agree to put it right. Smits had captained his side on no less than 56 occasions previously and he did not need to berate them - they knew that they had let themselves and their team down.

Fast forward to England's cricket team who pulled off an amazing draw in the First Ashes Test at Sofia Gardens, Cardiff last week and everyone is pussy-footing around the likes of Kevin Pietersen and Andrew Strauss. You can imagine what was being said - but for one bad shot KP would have scored a 100 while Strauss unlucky despite being guilty of a poor shot and poor captaincy. They will not change anything - they will just play the same and likely get beaten by an ordinary Australian side, not a patch on the 'Incredibles' of 2005.

From Sports To Business

It's a common held belief that charismatic, bigger than life characters lead businesses best. The most prolific companies, in our eyes, are those led by people who are household names, like Virgin or Ryan Air. If you read Jim Collins' book which maps out those companies that sustain greatness from being good, then you will see that often it is the most understated leaders who make companies truly great - and they are not afraid to have superb people around them. While Ryan Air debates whether it should have standing passengers and just stools to strap onto for landing in order to cram more people in with scant regard for comfort or safety perhaps their minds should be turning more to how they can make air travel more green and safe as record numbers of planes fall out of the sky this year.

'A few honest words..'.

It seems a simple remedy but regardless of who the people are in the team, no matter how experienced, no matter how good they think they are, no matter what their past deeds have been, if they cannot face honest words from others then they will ultimately walk into a failure.

Recent History

I would say that when the dust settles on what has been the most tumultuous times in business since The Depression, there will be many leaders who will finally limp out from their cowering positions hoping the worst is passed. These are the people who could not face honest words or straight facts and ran their companies into disastrous positions and then handed the whole lot to cost cutters to try and rescue the business. Many leaders cannot take criticism from their peers and certainly not from their staff - they see it as an affront but most have that unshakable belief that only they know best.

These are the people who walked their businesses into the mess. Take a look at Willie Walsh at BA. He has presided over a business that has gone from record profits to record losses in a single year. Yet common sense would say that premium customers would desert the business if there was a recession - no more Vodafone middle managers cramming Club Europe for one hour hops to Dusseldorf or Accenture Consultants going First Class to the US for a one hour meeting. The problem with BA was that their whole business was propped up by the profit they made at the front of the plane. When that diminished, they had no contingency plan to adjust the business as the low price airlines cut them to pieces. And here's the really stupid factor - they actually INCREASED their prices through the crisis and instigated more rigid rules about changing flights, taking away vital flexibility for travelling business people. Immediately, people like myself, swapped allegiance to other airlines and travelled with those who had the most flexible policy for the price - and I found it was just about every other airline.

'A few honest words.....'.

Leadership And Honesty

We talk a lot about honesty, particularly when it comes to Political leadership where there seems to be so little these days, yet we cling to their every word and believe most of the claptrap they come out with. Very few at the top accept the opinion of others unless it has a bearing on their popularity. Gordon Brown, as a for instance, truly believes he is an economic genius despite the disastrous outcome of his policies and he's hell-bent on repeating the mistakes of the past even before we have cleared the current crisis.

When you look at the facts about the wars we are fighting, as we tackle two separate and major engagements we are actively subtracting from our military resources and axing regiments, while we now know that not only equipment was woefully inadequate for the kind of warfare our troops faced, we now have to borrow helicopters from our allies.

A few honest words......

In business, it is absolutely critical to be able to engage with leadership and discuss ideas and thoughts. Specifically, in times of crisis, the last thing that firms should be doing is ignoring what its own employees know and can do rather than just cutting them to pieces - particularly when it was the leadership that led the company into the state it is in. Communication and the ability to talk openly and honestly to management at all levels is critical in all businesses.

What this recession has exposed is a layer of poor managers in business who rarely engage with their workforce and even more rarely take honest criticism and advice. We have also seen the role of the non-executive director being exposed for what it is. It seems to be a circuit of jollies for a preciously small band who butterfly-hop from firm to firm earning fat fees but having zero responsibility. It is time that Governance in companies was taken far more seriously and this needs to be a source of 'Honest words' into the executives that run companies.

British business and politics has a lot to learn from this crisis and we all need to take the opportunity it has provided us with. Honest words need to be spoken in business and leaders need to understand that they have a duty of diligence in their risk taking to their employees so it is as well to be more open and honest with them in the future.

It will take a long time to restore the reputation of British business - a lot longer to restore the reputations of the list of failed leaders.