Rumsfeld’s Rules

Donald Rumsfeld’s Rules (Advice on government, business and life) may have been around for a while, but I only found them today, courtesy of a link in one of Kevin O’Keefe’s tweets and Rick Klau’s weblog. As Rick Klau comments, “They are, put simply, brilliant”. Read them: this is the link.

I particularly enjoyed this one,

Reduce the number of lawyers. They are like beavers. They get in the middle of the stream and dam it up.

Some 30 years ago, I was the gofer to one of the corporate partners in the firm that then employed me. We were advising a merchant bank, in turn advising the independent directors of ATV. It was (or seems) a very long time ago, but I have two vivid memories of that particular transaction.

The first was the appearance, very late one night, of the irrepressible Lew Grade. He, and his cigar, came through the double doors that led off into the Executive Suite at the top of the building. He just wanted to know that we were all being looked after; and as he left, he executed a couple of steps just to let us know that he was still a hoofer at heart.

My second memory, and this was triggered by reading Rumsfeld’s advice about lawyers, was of Robert Holmes à Court walking unannounced into an all parties meeting: clients, merchant bankers, stockbrokers, accountants and a fair number of lawyers. His Bell Group had just emerged as a buyer. Holmes à Court looked at the suits sitting round the table: there were probably some 20 plus people in the room, and he slowly worked round the table, asking everyone who they were, who they were with, and what they were doing. Depending upon the answer given it was either a “You may leave now” or “You may stay”. All very courteous but nonetheless there was steel in his eyes.

I was one of the last he got to.

“Well, what are you doing?”

“Taking the notes.”

“You had better stay”

And stay I did. Holmes à Court was himself originally a lawyer, and had a very well-developed sense of who and what was needed.

Playing the football card

What is it about Labour politicians and football? Is it the need to demonstrate their ‘man of the people’ credentials, and that they are in touch with, and true to, their roots (whatever these may), or is it that they are just like any other politician, and think they know best about everything?

Whether it was Harold Wilson and the 1996 World Cup, or Tony Blair telling us that he used to watch Newcastle United as a boy (even if his hero Jackie Milburn had hung up his boots quite a few years before), over the years no Labour politician has been able to resist playing the football card.

The latest to do so is Mike O’Brien, the health minister.

O’Brien chose Twitter as the medium, and what he offered in his 140 characters was “The sacking of Terry is crass. Capello has bowed to tabloid pressure. Infidelity is bad but I saw no signs of fatigue in his football”. Having looked at his tweets, the one about Terry is possibly the most interesting unless you are one of O’Brien’s constituents (although glass houses and stones comes to mind, as I don’t think many of mine would pass Tammy Erickson’s test “Are you fun to follow on Twitter?”: see her HBR article). But why tweet about it all?

And why the strange linkage between infidelity and fatigue? Is there something he knows as health minister he isn’t telling us!

No more gunboats

China’s decision to press ahead and execute Akmal Shaikh is repellant : for once Gordon Brown speaks for us all when he says, “I condemn the execution of Akmal Shaikh in the strongest terms, and am appalled and disappointed that our persistent requests for clemency have not been granted”.

But there are two things that have most forcibly struck me about this case: the impotence of the United Kingdom and its diplomatic effort, and China’s intemperate reaction to criticism.

From the FT.com report this morning

A Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman said in Beijing that no country has the right to comment on China’s judicial sovereignty. “It is the common wish of people around the world to strike against the crime of drug trafficking. We express our strong dissatisfaction and opposition to the British government’s unreasonable criticism of the case. We urge the British to correct their mistake in order to avoid harming China-UK relations,’’ she said.

There is no mistake; and, whether China likes it or not, any country has the right to comment on China’s judicial sovereignty.

Whether as at Copenhagen, or as in this sad case, it seems that the unspoken excuse of the Chinese leadership for the actions it takes, or more often does not, is its domestic situation. That should not deter us from condemning it.

Another lame excuse

You would have thought, with five children between us, that there is very little any of them might now do or say that would surprise us. By and large this is the case, but #5 (the only boy) is the exception.

He has just finished his first term at Loughborough, mainly, if his Facebook photos are to be believed, spent in the usual manner (this involves liberal amounts of alcohol, body paint and attractive fellow students). This was followed by a week snowboarding in France. Earlier today, with Christmas a scarce three days away, his thoughts turned to buying Christmas presents for his siblings. But who wanted what? He decided to call home.

His conversation with #4 did not go well, as she chided him for failing to get his act together, and order things sooner. He remarked that while in France there had been no internet access. Why hadn’t he sorted things out sooner, she asked. Quite a reasonable question, you would have thought. Apparently he didn’t.

“I have had a very busy term” was his reply. Somewhat ill judged to someone in her final year, struggling to get her dissertation finished, essays in and reading completed. He will learn.

Truss loses support

If New Labour is finding the re-emergence of its Union paymasters uncomfortable to live with, David Cameron’s Tory-lite party has problems of its own past. The report in this morning’s Sunday Telegraph of the goings-on (possibly, given the story, the wrong expression) in Norfolk takes us back to the wonderful alternative world of Tory backwoodsmen and Sir Tufton Bufton (although in this case Sir Jeremy Bagge).

This, if Melissa Kite who interviewed him for the Telegraph heard him correctly, is his take on the role of women in the modern world:

Sorry, no, I have never said I’m anti-women. I have got absolutely nothing against women.

Who cooks my lunch? Who cooks my dinner? How did my wonderful three children appear? Women, you can’t do without them. My god, take my wife.

What does she do for a living?

What does she do? She looks after me. Looks after the children. Runs the house.

Well, thank goodness we’ve got that straight: keep her in the house and not the House.

Apparently Sir Jeremy is to speak tomorrow at an emergency meeting of the Swaffham Conservative Club, supporting a motion to remove Elizabeth Truss as the candidate for true blue South West Norfolk. In his own words, “I might make a complete bloody idiot of myself but I will have done my bit and not done a u-turn.”

I have news for you, Sir Jeremy, you have already succeeded with the first bit. NFN springs to mind.