Do you like the Channel 4 program Grand Designs? I do. I love Kevin McLoud’s slightly ironic delivery and I love the optimism of the people embarking on complex projects in house design and creation. The almost desperate need to realise their dreams. But what really does fascinate you most? What is the common theme that connects the vast majority of these dreamers? Yes, they get it hopelessly wrong. They are wildly overoptimistic as to what can be achieved in a realistic time and a realistic budget. They are almost universally ignorant of the ways of the construction industry and the customs and practices evolved over centuries that allow smooth liaison between trades and between the architect and the men realising his creation. It is a very complex matter involving a logical process and certain necessary durations and the limits of men and materials. Much of this is not written. It is in the individual skills of the tradesmen and in the materials they use. The architect knows he can rely on these matters without any need to specify them exactly. He knows that the customary contractual relationships will happen, often without a contract but in the natural cooperation to get the job done that is beneficial to each other. I have worked in construction. I have made drawings. I have written specifications. I have set out bills of quantity. But in all those bureaucratic documents I have never had to set out how men work with other men. How the natural need to cooperate well in order to succeed happens without the need for any detailed prescription. It all happens as if by magic, and I have been there as the Engineer often merely to explain and clarify or to mediate.
Here is a lesson for all bureaucrats. We know what to do. We do not need you to tell us. Because you can’t. You do not know what we do and how we resolve the millions of small equations necessary to complete even the simplest negotiation let alone a complex product like a trophy house.
And yet here you are again embarking on another risible attempt to have us bend to your will to do what you say is what we should do, quite against the grain of our superior knowledge. Here you come arriving with the laughably named Retail Distribution Review. The title simply camouflage for another bureaucratic Grand Design for retail financial markets. And just like most of the dreamers observed by Kevin McLoud it is clear that you have absolutely no clue as to what you are about. Like other initiatives - stakeholder products, revised banking capital ratios, treating customers fairly, and others – it will fail. It will fail because it is bureaucratic and it will fail because you are wrong. Likely the outcomes will be diametrically opposite to what you intend.
I am one of thousands of people working in the retail financial services game that knows by custom and practice what works and what does not. I am one of thousands carrying out millions of those small transactions that secure efficient delivery of financial services to our millions of diverse clients who are all individuals with unique demands and requirements. How can you possibly know what they all want? How can you be sure that what you propose does not result in massive consumer detriment as the mad bureaucracy you inflict on us pours carborundum into the smoothly oiled machinery of the existing market developed over centuries?
You have required us to respond to your consultation paper on this risible proposal, and we have responded. But clearly it is pointless to do so. By doing we give spurious legitimacy to these ridiculous proposals. We let you bog us down in the trench warfare of the minutiae when we need to be using blitzkrieg to go round these bureaucratic blockages. To advance to a place where the costs are lower and customers benefit and do not suffer bureaucratic detriment.
But you are clever. A lot of your proposals hand further cartelising advantage to some of my peer group who are only too happy to have competition limited by the application of arbitrary entry requirements into the game, and these are also backdated, mind you. Why should you decide today that things are now different and to play we must adopt entry requirements that we have already passed by dint of experience and relentless continuing education? This is akin to writing to a motorist demanding a fine for parking in a street ten years ago that now boasts a yellow line. Oh yes, you are egged on by the consumerist lobby. But what Which knows when you embark on this is how they will profit it from it. Not how it will help the public or when or why.
I predict that this latest initiative, among the most stupid, will fail. It will go over-budget. It will take a lot more time. But unlike Kevin’s heroes you will not absolutely have to finish it. You will find after spending all this time and our money that it does not work and quietly bury it. Its one result will be the destruction of a lot more of other people’s wealth and the livelihoods of a lot of entirely innocent and hard working and honest small businessmen.
So a word from the wise. Stop it now. Stop wasting everyone’s time. Just stop it.
Here is a lesson for all bureaucrats. We know what to do. We do not need you to tell us. Because you can’t. You do not know what we do and how we resolve the millions of small equations necessary to complete even the simplest negotiation let alone a complex product like a trophy house.
And yet here you are again embarking on another risible attempt to have us bend to your will to do what you say is what we should do, quite against the grain of our superior knowledge. Here you come arriving with the laughably named Retail Distribution Review. The title simply camouflage for another bureaucratic Grand Design for retail financial markets. And just like most of the dreamers observed by Kevin McLoud it is clear that you have absolutely no clue as to what you are about. Like other initiatives - stakeholder products, revised banking capital ratios, treating customers fairly, and others – it will fail. It will fail because it is bureaucratic and it will fail because you are wrong. Likely the outcomes will be diametrically opposite to what you intend.
I am one of thousands of people working in the retail financial services game that knows by custom and practice what works and what does not. I am one of thousands carrying out millions of those small transactions that secure efficient delivery of financial services to our millions of diverse clients who are all individuals with unique demands and requirements. How can you possibly know what they all want? How can you be sure that what you propose does not result in massive consumer detriment as the mad bureaucracy you inflict on us pours carborundum into the smoothly oiled machinery of the existing market developed over centuries?
You have required us to respond to your consultation paper on this risible proposal, and we have responded. But clearly it is pointless to do so. By doing we give spurious legitimacy to these ridiculous proposals. We let you bog us down in the trench warfare of the minutiae when we need to be using blitzkrieg to go round these bureaucratic blockages. To advance to a place where the costs are lower and customers benefit and do not suffer bureaucratic detriment.
But you are clever. A lot of your proposals hand further cartelising advantage to some of my peer group who are only too happy to have competition limited by the application of arbitrary entry requirements into the game, and these are also backdated, mind you. Why should you decide today that things are now different and to play we must adopt entry requirements that we have already passed by dint of experience and relentless continuing education? This is akin to writing to a motorist demanding a fine for parking in a street ten years ago that now boasts a yellow line. Oh yes, you are egged on by the consumerist lobby. But what Which knows when you embark on this is how they will profit it from it. Not how it will help the public or when or why.
I predict that this latest initiative, among the most stupid, will fail. It will go over-budget. It will take a lot more time. But unlike Kevin’s heroes you will not absolutely have to finish it. You will find after spending all this time and our money that it does not work and quietly bury it. Its one result will be the destruction of a lot more of other people’s wealth and the livelihoods of a lot of entirely innocent and hard working and honest small businessmen.
So a word from the wise. Stop it now. Stop wasting everyone’s time. Just stop it.
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