Thread by @swardley

Gosh, many moons ago I was within a gnat's whiskers of going to work for Aus Gov (for @paul_shetler, one of a band of people that I would work for) ... this would have sent my blood pressure through the roof ->

I was going to give a rant about Spend Control, the importance of it, how to use it create your own intelligence function within an organisation ... but ... oh, I've done this so many times and Rebooting GDS is good enough - medium.com/hackernoon/reb…

I already know that whilst a few parts of UK Gov use maps, it's not common. Given the importance of understanding your landscape in industrial policy and gameplay, I'd still reckon the Dept Biz couldn't show me maps of the 50 most important value chains in UK ...

... which given brexit would be a joke. I'm sure we've paid oodles of cash for fine McKinsey consultants to give us the usual blah, blah, digital, blah, AI, blah, ecosystem, blah, blah.

Anyway ... they have Dominic Cummings to solve all ills. He is smart, I'll give him that and Odyssean education was a start, though at times a bit rambling and disconnected from reality. Alas, he is no Deng Xiaoping.

On the positive side, a strong focus on education, a more meritocratic system with focus on identifying actual talent (not just social advantage) might enable us, in the future, to identify our own Deng Xiaoping. We need to learn how to exploit the talents of all, not just Eton.

X : What do you think of the Grammar school system?
Me : Oh, gosh. I wasn't going to do this. It's a pantomime of dressing up social advantage as meritocracy for the middle classes - dur.ac.uk/news/newsitem/… ... no, I don't agree with the system as is.

"the system leads to increased social and economic segregation between schools which has consequences for huge numbers of pupils in the non-selective schools such as lower self-esteem, poorer role models, poorer relationships and distorted sense of justice” ... enough said.

X : You're a bit of a communist.
Me : No. I view that in a competitive environment we need to release all our nation's talent. That identification and investment in talent should not rely on social class or wealth of parents. It's why I like approaches such as Sure Start.

X : You go on about Deng Xiaoping. Do you really think one person can make a difference?
Me : Make a difference on their own - no. Make a difference - yes. It's not enough to be gifted, they have to operate as a talisman for others. That's the real talent of leadership.

You take power, money and influence from a real leader, put them in the poorest of situations and people will still want to follow them. You want to find the truly great leaders in the UK then they're probably living in a council flat running a huge guild in World of Warcraft.

You won't find them in Eton and places like that. These are places where people are told they are pre-ordained to be leaders, they are taught to be leaders ... but their power mostly comes from what they inherit, what they are privileged for.