The Rise and Rise of Mediocrity

..classed
as actually employed. How one survives seven days on $13.50 is not explained.
There are also many people who want to work – take many of those over 45 for
example, who have given up seeking any job through not being able to take the
endless frustration of hidden ageism denying them even an interview.
Then there are those who are unemployable either through the random distribution
of low intelligence or who have the misfortune of physical disability. So you
could comfortably double the unemployment rate and be a little closer to the
truth.
That out of the way we can now ask: what has removed a vast acreage of tasks
involving carbon paper, rubber stamps and typing pools? Why are there thousands
more people who have jobs which did not exist before and which might, by some
definitions, be considered totally dispensable?
For a start, being both inventive and gullible, we invented whole new layers
of bureaucracy to intrude into every aspect of our lives. Management by mediocrity
– a whole new class of parasitic drones have arisen like flies from the festering
swamp, middle managers who have no genuine purpose but to stop people getting
things done, enjoying themselves or employing more people like them in mini-empires
of mediocrity. No longer do we have workers lazing around on their shovels on
the railways – now we have valuable corporate operatives performing tasks
of such life and death importance that we would not notice if they didn’t
exist.
The simple sausage sizzle is threatened through the elaborate Health and Safety
issue that have to be complied with. In England the village fair is under threat
of being suffocated with the hundreds of compliance documents that have to be
filled in. Don’t think about having a street party and there is no chance
of Guy Fawke’s Day with bonfires, crackers and generally maiming of the
civilian population ever being reinstated unless by a misguided American air
strike of implausible deniability.
Marketing might be another example. I have met people who are passionately concerned
with the placement of frozen peas in supermarkets, whose lives are concerned
with brand image and product placement, with brand differentiation and innovation.
These people ensure that we have multiple changing brands of soap powder. And
politicians and their policies.
I work in a very large organization which actually relies on efficient processes
to ensure that large scale infrastructure projects both work and get delivered
on time. In my recent memory, engineers, business developers like myself, and
finance people would sit down and work out what needed to be done to make life
better, entertain us on the way – and to also make some money. It didn’t
take long to decide what was worth doing and the most efficient way of doing
it. We formed teams both real and virtual that were responsible for getting
things done quickly and efficiently, which we (nearly always) did.
But now we have a centralized computer system that is loathed by all, but through
which every project has to flow. It is incomprehensible and is controlled by
a group of people who couldn’t get a job holding the stop sign at a road
works unless it was permanently on ‘do not pass.’ Do these people
contribute anything? No, they actually impede the natural flow of business,
in much the same way as trying to empty a bath through a straw might.
Universities and colleges, which for centuries survived quite admirably creating
and conveying knowledge, suddenly have business managers creating courses for
students who cannot fail because they are fee paying customers for jobs that
may never exist. Endless reams of paper work are introduced which have no meaning
to education but keep employed the person who designed the forms. Teachers now
fill in forms describing the teaching that they no longer have the time to do.
The only reason that teaching standards have not fallen is that teachers will
continue to do the best by their students no matter the idiocy that countless
layers of bureaucracy impose.
But the worst addition must be the thousands of spin doctors that intervene
between life and reality, who manage and massage every message from our political
and business leaders in to some meaningless pap with the consistency of baby
food and the smell of a week old nappy. Those who have witnessed the behaviour
of politicians in Parliament over the past three decades would have seen the
appalling decline in debate, from a rough semblance of reason to a grab bag
of clichés and unlovely posturing.
Every phrase is polished to a lapidary smoothness like a perfectly smooth pill
so that no trace of controversy attaches whilst it passes through the bowel
of public discourse without taste, nutrition or memory of its passing.
Let me give you an example from Kevin Rudd, the Albino John Howard of the Labor
Party, to a Dorothy Dixer question at 2.07 pm on Tuesday June 23rd from a certain
Mr. Sidebottom, who is the member for Braddon in Tasmania and also Deputy Speaker.

“My question is to the Prime Minister. Will the Prime Minister update
the House on developments in global markets and Australia’s decisive response
to the global recession?”
Our August leader went on for one full page of Hansard with such memorable space
spontaneous filler as
“……. Also, I had the privilege today of visiting the Trinity
Christian School in Wanniassa. I looked carefully there at what the school is
doing in the implementation of Building the Education Revolution. I attended
that with the local member, Annette Ellis. We spoke to the local principal about
how it is actually going to make a difference to that school. There is a building
going up worth about $2 million—we saw some of the workmen there this
morning—and, as I am advised, it will include about five new learning
areas which will be wired to the new economy. On top of that they are extending
the library by about a third. It is a school, I am advised, of about 1,139 kids.
The Building the Education Revolution makes a difference to local schools like
that right across the country. Of course, Trinity Christian School is one of
about 7½ thousand primary schools across the country. All members in
this House are having these construction projects built across their electorates
and their communities to make a difference…..”
He went on. And on. And on. Do your own analysis as to content and purpose.
The very much lamented Douglas Adams told of the Golgafrincham “B”
Ark with it’s cargo hold full of with thousands of frozen hairdressers,
tired TV producers, insurance salesmen, personnel officers, security guards,
public relations executives, and management consultants sent ahead, they supposed,
of the “A” ship with all the brilliant leaders, scientists and great
artists and the “C” ship with all the people who did all the actual
work, and who made and did things. From whom they had never heard anything since
they had been launched ahead of (they were told) of their planet either being
eaten by a giant star goat, invaded by a gigantic swarm of twelve foot piranha
bees, or crashing into the sun. But they did know that they had been programmed
to crash into the planet which they were meant to colonise.
It all seems like a very good idea to me