A Man of Constant Sorrow wrote:
I think you've got it entirely the wrong way around Aiden.

My observation is the National Curriculum generation, being of modest intellect but high aspiration, are sweeping all wider knowledge away in their desire to "get ahead".

The net effect of this is that "traditional" intelligence is considered a quaint hindrance to yet more money/status and is sneered at.

Which is why a small part of me is revelling in the current financial crisis...
There is a similar sort of thing happening in the civil service. It's very Blairite. I was musing on it over a beer after work last night, following a meeting where a senior official had criticised some advice I'd given because, although it wasn't wrong, acknowledging it made it more difficult for Ministers to get the policies they wanted implemented.

All around here, I'm surrounded by arse lickers and cock suckers who don't have an independent bone in their body. Their definition of success is doing whatever they're told successfully, however stupid or costly or whatever it might be.

And the willingness of all these individuals not to question their orders establishes and then perpetuates the principle that, to get on, you don't ask difficult questions, you don't base decisions on information and evidence, and you believe whatever it is you're told to believe.

It's very conformist. Very 1984. Very Blair.

Strange thing is, they're all upper class, public schooly types - used to supporting the establishment - or journalists - just give them what they want.

Truth just doesn't exist in this business.

And I'm thinking it's time to get out.