Friday, March 14, 2008

Innovation Nation

That's the name of a Gov white paper published yesterday as reported in Latest Science News.

As I read this piece I was smiling, thinking to myself, this is another initiative launch which will achieve nothing other than create another raft of gilt edged pensioned quango jobs. It seems like I'm not the only only to look upon the announcement with more than a hint of sarcasm. This from The Register makes for hilarious reading.

Go on, read it and have a good laugh.

2 comments:

Emma said...

Couldn't resist:

Spiffy.

What is first required of course is the creation of vast swathes of overlapping, job-creating, pension fund-consuming but totally unproductive agencies, to assess and adminster and research and dole out this largesse to those deemed most deserving (criteria may vary from those normally considered of value to profit... or planet, in this case) by those who have never actually done any work in the real world.

And the first things these must of course do is:

a) Build a tower (with regional satellites)
b) Create an empire
c) Establish a well-stocked leadership structure (a board of all the talents)
d) Set out clear targets, based more on process than result
e) Match them with nice bonusses
f) Make sure d) is met asap (with a massive comms expenditure, so make sure you have the COI and a v. expensive PR mob on speed dial), so e) goes to c)
g) And make sure that - if there is any chance of things going the shape of a pear or some dozy media do fly a quick awkward headline for all of a day - it's is all deniable and/or complicated and/or obscure enough that no one actually understands anything enough to try and stay with it all.

Critically, and this is key, the government paymasters/meddlers setting all this up and running it by nod and wink must be somehow nothing to do with any of this.

And then, if there is any money left over from the 'fund' the taxpayers are fronting in theory to actually DO something positive and proactive, you make sure you are very diligent in crushing any innovative spirit in possible applicants/beneficiaries by drowning them in mountains of pointless paperwork, bean-counter jargon and 'must-haves'(which all innovators love to do each day) so they stop even thinking of having good ideas and join the drones clocking off at 4.29pm.

I tried once for an award that was something like 'The Creative Innovation Fund'.

Didn't get it, so to learn for next time I pressed for why.

The crux of the explanation was (now remember it was the... 'Creative'... Innovation'... Fund) that the concept was 'too left field' and 'had never been done before'.

I forsee simply more of the same, and it seems they are now not even trying to rebadge it all anyway.

Glug.

Dave said...

And exactly the same applies to the post on DEFRA too. Oodles of dosh going into, well, a pit of nothing, other than a set of processes created to meet a load of pointless targets!