Oh no! Here comes an expert.

[cromwell]

For some time now I think that we have been pushed towards government by experts. Politicians may come and go but the experts in academia, science and the Quangos remain the same; and when you come down to it our politicians seem to know next to nothing about anything, and rely very heavily on what the experts tell them.
There is one major problem with these experts; some of them are absolutely rubbish.
Take Professor Neil Ferguson, the Senna the soothsayer of Covid 19. He was the man whose research resulted in the culling of eleven million sheep and cattle during the 2001 outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease. He said later that they were under pressure and working with little data.
In 2002, Ferguson predicted that up to 50,000 people would likely die from exposure to BSE (mad cow disease) in beef. In the U.K., there were only 177 deaths from BSE.
In 2005, Ferguson predicted that up to 150 million people could be killed from bird flu. In the end, only 282 people died worldwide from the disease between 2003 and 2009!!
In 2009, a government estimate, based on Ferguson’s advice, said a “reasonable worst-case scenario” was that the swine flu would lead to 65,000 British deaths. In the end, swine flu killed 457 people in the U.K. He then predicted 500,000 UK deaths from Covid if the "herd immunity" strategy was followed.
Last March, Ferguson admitted that his Imperial College model of the COVID-19 disease was based on undocumented, 13-year-old computer code that was intended to be used for a feared influenza pandemic, rather than a coronavirus. Ferguson declined to release his original code so other scientists could check his results. He only released a heavily revised set of code last week, after a six-week delay.
OK, but with a track record of mind boggling inaccuracy - how come this bloke was still regarded as an expert? And still advising government?
The we have the experts at public Health England, who proudly boasted that in three weeks they'd be rolling out their track and trace app. I think we all remember how that went!
This week we've had the latest expert--driven car crash, the school exam results fiasco. Ofqal is a "non-ministerial government department". Whatever one of those is. PHE was the same. The head of ofqal is a civil servant who gets £200,000 pa. Its Chairman works two days work a week and had poor A level results himself. Honestly, you could not make this stuff up.
The experts at Ofqal said don't worry that the kids can't sit their exams (although Germany managed this) we have (drum roll) a high tech algorithm!!
Well, that didn't go well either. It marked down pupils by a ridiculous amount. So they had to go on teacher's predictions.
All of this is not to excuse ministers - they should have the nous to suss out that a lot of these experts are talking rubbish, but they seem incapable of doing this. They have a weakness for some "expert" waving a magic bullet, high tech solution in front of them. They fall for it every time.
As we can see yet again.
Technology that automatically keeps cars in their lane on motorways without the driver steering is the latest brainwave and could be on UK roads as early as next year.
if this goes ahead what next? Technology that regulates the speed of a car?
Are the transport experts pushing this tech, which they predict will save many lives, the same experts that thought smart motorways and getting rid of the hard shoulder was a tremendous idea? I'm betting they are.

[TheOstrich]

Excellent post, Crommers. Just makes you despair, really.

To me, one of the biggest problems (which has been with us for many years) is that there are far too many unintelligent Government Ministers floundering around out there, with no visionary plan, no idea what they are doing, and simply grabbing at any straw offered by an "expert" that will hopefully keep them in a job.

[cromwell]

Yes Os, I think that is true. If you switch from being health minister to education minister are you an expert on both? Or neither?
Ministers depend on the civil service and the quangocrats and as recent events have shown, many of them aren't up to it.
Ministers should have a bit of common sense though; but many of today's politicians across all parties have no real world experience of practically anything. University, job as a researcher, MP.
Don't know how to fix this either.

[Workingman]

Yes, a great post Cromwell.

I keep saying this and will continue to do so: The demographics of both houses is all wrong. They are overloaded with holders of PPE degrees and the various legal professions such as barristers, lawyers, QCs and solicitors. It is nigh on impossible to find anyone with a practical qualification or experience. Where are the various types of engineers, practical physicists and chemists, hands-on IT workers or simply those who have done a real day's work.

The cabinet is a case in point. Nearly all of them are from the legal or financial professions with many only holders of PPE. A PPE is a three year course in Philosophy, Politics and Economics making the holder a non-expert in all three subjects. The civil service suffers from the same restricted selection process.The outcome is that a lack of wide ranging knowledge necessary to run a country makes them reliant on bringing on experts in just about every field, and therein lie further problems.

The first is that the experts they do bring in are from the academic and not the practical side of things. The second is that they are mostly from the same 'bubbles' so not truly independent. A Venn diagram of the experts and their various fields of expertise will show a lot of overlap - same names, same institutions, same universities. They all think the same way.

The country desperately needs to find some way of broadening the skill sets within the HoC, HoL and civil service otherwise we will keep on geting the same old thinking and same old mistakes.

[cromwell]

I keep saying this and will continue to do so: The demographics of both houses is all wrong. They are overloaded with holders of PPE degrees and the various legal professions such as barristers, lawyers, QCs and solicitors. It is nigh on impossible to find anyone with a practical qualification or experience. Where are the various types of engineers, practical physicists and chemists, hands-on IT workers or simply those who have done a real day's work.

Well now! I had a quick dig around and found out that this is correct. Starmer and Lammy, lawyers. Johnson and Yvette Cooper, journalists. Rees-Mogg and Sunak, banking. not a great spread of professions.

But the real shock was when I looked up PPE graduate politicians.
Please, just read this Guardian article, because it is absolutely staggering.
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2 ... es-britain

I knew a few, Cooper, Balls, the Millibands etc. But the sheer number of Oxbridge PPE graduates in politics is just off the scale.
From Hugh Gaitskell to Wilson and Heath, Cameron, Mandelson - it s just unbelievable.

And to the almost endless list in the article I can add Matt Hancock, Rishi Sunak, Rachael Reeves and Anneliese Dodds, and this is with barely any research.

[Workingman]

No surprises to hear the owners of PPEs talking them up, because they are all singing from the same hymn sheet about a generalist course that covers nothing much useful in the real world. They all know each other and network each other to the nth.

Now ask them how a bridge with few supports can span huge distances, or how to turn a gas into a liquid to transport it hundreds of kilometres or how these reddish brown rocks can be turned into railway lines and they haven't a clue. It therefore follows that they will also not have a clue about the infrastructures needed for these things or those of a million other things necessary for modern life.

Then ask them how to short the £ or avoid answering a direct question or how to not admit when they were wrong or how to pass the blame on to others and they can bang on for days.

[Suff]

The thing is now that the upper echelons of the government have been infested with PPE holders, you are not going to see real people with real qualifications joining government. Because PPE holders don't like them, will create glass ceilings and slowly force them out of government by deselection and simple prejudice.

Now if the person with real qualifications was a Jewish, BAME, disabled woman, she'd be in for a real shot. But they are about as rare in the real business world as business people are in the world of politics.

As for the so called "experts"... Ex as in has-been, Spurt as in drip under pressure. As we used to say in the Army.

The so called "experts" are all over the Swedish government because they didn't follow the "expert" advice and lock down, causing thousands of unnecessary deaths. So their numbers are higher than the rest of Scandinavia. But in deaths per 1m population they are lower than Spain, Italy, the UK and Belgium. Critically Sweden is now dropping in new cases whilst the remainder of the "lockdown" EU is growing, as are the deaths per day.

But let's go with the "experts" do please. Because they don't actually have to run the country, feed the people, keep them in jobs, etc. Perhaps if we listened to the "experts" more, we could be passing a law to outlaw dog ownership????

I'd like to think not but my suspicion is that it is FUBAR and it won't be fixed short of a WW3 style crisis.

[cruiser2]

Saw it the paper this week that one memeber of the government-can't remember which one- was a fireplace salesman!!!

May be this is why everything is going up in smoke.

[Suff]

Worth a read.

https://www.parliament.uk/business/publ ... f-society/

It makes pretty dismal reading if we want to be represented by the "commons", or the common people as it is supposed to be. We now have lords in the commons and the representation levels are poor.

The number of manual workers among MPs is lower now than in the immediate post-war years when, typically, one-third of Labour MPs were in this group; today, it is less than one in 10. In 1945 there were 45 Labour MP ex-miners, in 2010 there were six. Fewer MPs now have a legal background compared with 50 and 100 years ago.

Over 75% of current MPs are graduates; in the period 1918 to 1945, around 40% were. There have been increases across all parties, but particularly for Labour MPs. Before 1945, less than 20% of Labour MPs were graduates. This rose to 32% in 1945, and steadily after that to stand at 72% by 2010.

[cromwell]

The thing is now that the upper echelons of the government have been infested with PPE holders, you are not going to see real people with real qualifications joining government. Because PPE holders don't like them, will create glass ceilings and slowly force them out of government by deselection and simple prejudice.

Yes;I've seen this in my old department. Get one wrong 'un in and they will bring more wrong 'uns in, in order to normalise the fact that people who know nothing of the business of the department are in charge of it.
We seem to have created a management class. Nothing wrong with a good manager at all, they are great. But when the majority of managers in charge aren't from the background of the managed then imo you are on the edge of serious problems.
The thinking is that if you can manage x, then you can manage y. Sometimes perhaps. But it has been extended in parts of the public sector like this - if you actually do know the business of the department, if you are experienced in the work of it, then you should not be a manager. I know this sounds nuts, but I've seen it.
And the managerial theory extends to the House of Commons.
Imo they too see themselves as managers who can just whistle up an expert whenever they need one, and indeed they can.
But as Suff and WM point out the politician's complete lack of knowledge of practical matters leave them completely at the mercy of such experts. They don't now if they are hearing wisdom or garbage.
Cruiser, a fireplace salesman may not be a grate background for an MP (sorry!) but a few more people in the Commons who have actually worked for a living and a lot less PPE graduates would be no bad thing.