#gove2016

With apologies to Steve Carrell’s 2005 movie

“Michael seems to have an emotional need to gossip, particularly when drink is taken, as it all too often seemed to be.”

Says David Cameron today, without a trace of irony, when responding to publication of the Chilcot Report on the war in Iraq conducted by the last Labour Government.

Sorry Dave, you’re wrong; they won’t be.

By Wilson Smillie, 6th July 2016

Cameron clearly doesn’t feel the need, as outgoing UK Prime Minister, to be accountable for learning the lessons of running a Referendum campaign that forced the country to jump into the Brexit abyss. 

Hope is not a strategy, Dave, its an abdication of wit.

I work in Corporate-land and my industry is famous for its post-fuck-up lessons learned reports. It’s also famous for filing said reports deep in the layers of the corporate bunker, where no one will ever find them, no matter how hard and how long they search. Corporates resort to type at any whiff of scandal so the people force-fed these lessons find themselves on the streets soon after, perhaps even sitting outside their former employer’s tower, holding a paper cup collecting enough change for a coffee ... double shot, skinny soya, extra hot ... please? 

Some of these unfortunates (or fortunates, depending on your view) dust off their CV, spin their association with lessons into ‘an amazing learning opportunity’, and then, ‘having overcome significant personal obstacles’ go on to ‘deliver a successful outcome for new clients.’

In the world of resumes and recruitment its called ‘accentuating the positives’.

Today, in the immediate post-Cameron, resignation aftermath, Theresa May got her team out to brief against her rival for the top gig of next UK PM by highlighting to a Times reporter just how far @andrealeadsom went to accentuate the positives during her ‘stellar career’ in the City.

According to Mrs Leadsom’s CV her 25 years in financial services included running enormous teams and managing funds worth billions of UK pounds. Not so, say former colleagues who went on to imply that she couldn’t manage a fish supper and wouldn’t be trusted to make a profit at Monopoly if she had all the high value squares and was playing against her dog.

‘Job titles can be misleading’ was one quote. Well, that’s true, but what about ‘senior investment officer & head of corporate governance’? In my experience that describes a heavy-weight career manager-type person with presence and plenty of nous. And a big salary.

However, at Invesco Perpetual “she did not manage any teams, large or small, and she certainly did not manage any funds”.”

Her campaign spokesman clarified the point thus: “It looks as though the issue is that anyone who reads Andrea’s CV and attaches a lot of weight to that particular role may actually be under some slight misapprehension as to what it was she actually did.”

Right. Positives well and truly accentuated.

I know what this woman ‘actually did’ in her ‘stellar career’ and I’ve never met her and don’t wish to. She did nothing. Less than bugger all. She leeched off the funds her employer managed and was kept as far away as possible from anything where there was the slightest possibility she might fuck it up.

Liar, liar, panties on fire.

This barefaced lie from a woman who aspires to be Leader of the Conservative Party and de-facto Prime Minister (un-elected) is outrageous. But nobody in London seems to have batted an eyelid that she is an out-and-out fraud, many of her MP colleagues have voted for her and the men and women of the press are treating her as a serious candidate. She’s oblivious to the scandal and acting as if this is all normal ... which to be fair, for Westminster, it is.

So, to be clear, that’s two inveterate liars running for Leader of the ruling Conservative Party against Theresa May, a woman who would never describe herself as ‘feminine’.

This is exactly why ordinary people don’t trust politics, politicians or anything any of them say or do.