GEOFF BOTTOMS relishes a profoundly human portrait of a family as it evolves across 55 years in Sheffield
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False gods
BINOY KAMPMARK lifts the veil on bad and costly advice supplied by the consultancy class
SNAKE OIL: Javid, Johnson and Sunak visit Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Herts 6/4/2022
[Pic: Simon Dawson/CC]
PAUL DONOVAN applauds an excellently crafted new musical that explores the life and death of Ruth Ellis
PAUL DONOVAN is tickled by the excruciating take-downs of one of the funniest, wittiest, political writers around.
RON JACOBS points out, via a transcription of Kissinger’s secret recordings, that Trump could never have existed without Nixon and Kissinger
ELLIS RAE is persuaded that the advantages of the ‘talking cure’ are superior to the treatment of mental illness with drugs
JOHN GREEN, MICHAL BONCZA and BELLA KATZ review The Good Boy, Broken English, and Don't Be Prey
The Big Con: How the Consulting Industry Weakens our Businesses, Infantilizes our Governments and Warps our Economies
by Mariana Mazzucato and Rosie Collington, Allen Lane, £25
CONSULTANCY companies have become the mandarins of outsourcing, and have served to degrade expertise in the public sector while diminishing the quality of services.
Along the way, they have charged astronomical fees in giving repeatedly flawed advice. Consultants, packaged as all-wise gurus, have become the great confidence tricksters.
Embracing the inner voodoo of consultancy had the effect of discouraging in-house contributions and solutions within government and the broader economy. The result has been a strange plea to those outside the public sector, resulting in what can only be described accurately as the consultacracy.
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