logo

Boggart Blog Central

Frightening Lack Of Imagination And Merit


While we old dinosaurs at Boggart Blog and The Daily Stirrer grump and grumble about bogus science (stopping mice getting alzheimers disease by giving them mobile phones for example) in fact the creation of useless science projects is linked to the work of another government department that is in the forefront of creating jobs to drive the economic recovery... the Ministry of DOISBUM.

DOISBUM Shows Frightening Lack Of Imagination And Merit
by Ian R Thorpe
2007-11-30
CREATIVE COMMONS: Attribute, non commercial, no derivs.
KEYWORDS: science, education, government, scientist, brown, britain, humour, humor, satire

The scariest thing about Blair’s meritocracy was the distinct lack of merit, just as scary, Brown’s new vision for Britain lacks imagination as well as continuing the lack of merit. Consider the complete and utter lack of imagination shown by that vital cog in the machine of Government, the Ministry Of Dishing Out Important Sounding But Ultimately Meaningless (DOISBUM) job titles. We were totally underwhelmed to learn this week the government’s chief scientific advisor has the DOISBUM job title of The Chief Scientist.

The job of chief scientist was created during the foot and mouth disease outbreak a few years back. Would a chief vet not have been more appropriate? Amazingly, we begin to realise that a job created to provide support for ministers during a crisis in agriculture has now expanded and the job holder not only pokes his nose into agricultural matters but advises on heath and wellness, computers and electronic technology, microbiology and for all we know rocket science. One of the big mistakes has been to conflate science with education in a single government department. Since then, probably because politicians like saying science as it is all soft vowels and sibilants and makes a sound that reminds us of foldling an attractive bottom through fine silk, all the emphasis in schools has been on "science" leaving the past decade's school leavers culturally denuded.

Its bad enough that ministers and civil servants don’t know what “science” means but while taunting the boy-scientists who do science scientifically because they are scientists over the past few months I have learned that scientists don’t either. You can’t DO science, it is an abstract generalised term covering a wide range of specialities. So to give a job the handle of "scientists is just a DOISBUM.

So Chief Scientist is a meaningless and dull title for one of those jobs governments create now and again to reward people who have covered their arse for them. It is all part of the Bullshit Industry that the global economy has become so dependent on. The job holder in such a post does nothing and is not even required to turn up very often. If we must employ such people, what is wrong with those grand old titles for officers of the government like Red Dragon Pursuant, Maltravers Herald Extraordinary or Master of the Rolls? Even the more modern Paymaster General (who was not actually responsible for paying for anything, not even his own drinks), sounds impressive compared with The Chief Scientist.

We must remember though the job of The Chief Scientist is nothing to do with knowledge or experimentation and everything to do with giving the government teflon shoulders so that none of the shit they help drug manufacturers and food processing companies shovel into us actually sticks to our elected representatives.

So what would be an appropriately traditional sounding title for such a function?
The Lord High Poisoner,
Magister Emeritus to the Court of St Fabricius,
Darth Vader?

RELATED POSTS:

Your Shit Is Unique: More Shit Science From The No Shit Sherlock School Of ScienceScience is always looking for new worlds to explore, final frontiers to cross. We have reported on many branches of sciene, mouse, hockey stick, crocoldile and other but none more unappealing thaty the universe that exists up you arse. Now science has taken a great leap up the arse of humankind to explore the life of the shit uinverse and its many unique and individual life forms...
Homeopathy Overdose Protest
Another Breakthrough In Hogwash
Bullshit Factor
Climate Change Science Scam
Evolution Classes In Junior School
Goodbye Analogue
The Guardian Is Getting Weirder
Ignobel Science
Looking At The Stars
Man Of Mouse
Obama's Nasty Nazi Science Czar
Psychological Warfare
Ritalin To Improve Humankind
Science Is A Career For Tossers
Science: Who Can You Believe
Scientists In Denial
The Swine Flu Conspiracy
Who Needs HDTV
Dr. Strangelove's Secret Weapon
Science & Technology Menu
Lack Of Imagination And Merit
Madness Gone Politically Correct
Legacy
Giving Up On Work
BBC Weathermen To Be Sacked?
Scientists Reinvent The Wheel
Scientists Have Not Made Sperm
Stone Throwing Chimp Shocks Scientists
Crocodile Snack Science
Pavlov's Cat

If you liked this, please give it a boost

Bookmark and Share Permanent Link

Close Window and return to menu
SITE SEARCH
find keywords on this site

Enter keywords& choose search engine:

Google: Yahoo: MSN:

This free script provided by
JavaScript Kit

INFORMATION & NAVIGATION

navigate

navigate

CATEGORIES

Fiction
Wide World - travel
Health / Wellbeing
Nature
Real Lives - biography
Past Perspectives
Philo & Sophia
Fools & Dreamers
Comment & Opinion Faith And Spirituality
Poetry Life And Times
Books
Entertainment
Music
Arts & Crafts
Environment
Food
Science & Tech.
Bog of Blogs

Visit The
BLOG INDEX
and keep up with our
comments around the
web

TAGS
Climate Change
BLOGS
Boggart Blog

Little Nicky Machiavelli

Boggart Network News

BOGGART BLOG ARCHIVES

BBselect001 BBselect002 BBselect003 BBselect004 BBselect005 BBselect006
MULTI MEDIA
Spoken Word
Video
Music
Graphic Art

Home
Top Of Page
Back Catalogue
Our Comments
FEATURESThe Daily Stirrer
Boggart Blog Central

Comedy Main
Comic Verse
Cartoons
A Tale Told By An Idiot
General
Fiction
History
Thought
Poetry
Science & Technology
Elsewhere

Boggart Blog Daily
Little Nicky Machiavelli
This writer at Authorsden Gathering
Delicious Greenteeth
Boggart Network News

More From Around The Labyrinth

LATEST POSTS & COMMENTS

BULLETIN
New Posts

September 2010 Uptight - The Blood Donor Experience
by fatsally
Once upon a time giving blood was easy, the atmosphere relaxed and people were encouraged to feel as is they were doing something good and worthwhile. Now, acording to fatsally's latest experience, a visit to the blood bank to offer a life saving armful is like The Prisoner meets Orwell's Big Brother. Bureaucracy has taken over and nobody is allowed to fel relaxed. Rules are rules.

August 2010

Uptight
by fatsally

Just been along to blood donors.
I've been going for years.
Loads of changes have occured over the time.

The first time I went, to a permanent centre in London, you could have a tin of Guinness as your post donating drink if you wished. A splendid idea but unfortunately it tended to attract the alcoholics, especially as ...

2010-09-01
Hello Saillor
by fatsally

The chattering classes are up in arms about the news that Britain and France are to pool their resources and share aircraft carriers.
The Mail today carries an excellent ...

Court Victory For Anti - MMR Campaigners.
It is the medical scandal that refuses to go away. Since its introduction controversy has surrounded the MMR vaccine because in a small number - and we must stress, a small number - of cases children develop serious and permanent side effects after reveiving the vaccine. Now at last, after following a tactic used successfully in the USA and keeping the word autism out of their case, lawyers working for the family of Robert Fletcher have won the first award of compensation for 'brain damage' reslting from the MMR vaccine.

Property Prices To Fall Again?Despite government eforts to talk up a recovery the economy remains stubbornly stagnant. It is unsurprising really, the UK economy still relies far too much on the housing and property market and with incomes being squeezed and house prices remaining so high they are beyond the reach of first time buyers there is little change of increased activity while unemployment continues to rise.

Food Will Cost The Earth
A bid by Australian mining giant BHP Billiton to buy Potash Corp of Canada draws attention to food price inflation, rising commodity prices in world markets and an impending global food supply crisis. It is not just potash, essential in food production, but other finite resources like oil that corporate giants are bidding to gain control of that should concern us. It's The Smell Of Alpha Males That Attracts Women
Women Can't Resist The Smell Of Alpha Males according to new research reported in today's Daily Mail science section. (If you think DSaily Mail and science should never appear in the same sentence just read on, this is good stuff.)
Alpha males have a smell all of their own, one that triggers certain hormonal reactions in women, the research paper reports ...

Last Of The Summer Whine
The zombie of British television will finally be decapitated and laid to rest this weekend, thirty years after the show was pronounced dead by everybody under ninety. The final episode of this ‘national institution’ will be shown sometime over the weekend but I don’t know when ...

... Conflicting Views On The Economic Recovery Little Nicky Machiavelli writes: Nobody seems to know what is going on in the global economy. Take these two articles on the state of the recovery ...
read full post Conflicting Views On Economic Recovery

Cameron in Babygate Puzzle
The birth of a healthy child is always a happy event but the birth of a child to the wife of a serving national leader is bound to attract close scrutiny. So do certain contradictions in reporting of circumstances surrounding the birth of David and Samantha Cameron's daughter mean the conspiracy theorists will soon be at work?

Do We Need GM Salmon
US authorities today began the process to approve the first GM animal for human consumption.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced a 60-day period of consultation and public meetings over whether to permit a GM strain of salmon to be eaten by humans, even though it has been called a "frankenfish" by critics. The approval process could take less than a year, and if it gets the green light the fish could be on the market in 18 months.
Environmentalists and scientists see the decision as marking a threshold. If it is approved it is likely to open the door to a large range of ...

GO TO Boggart Blog Back Catalogue for links to older posts...

COMMENTS AND RECOMMENDED READING AROUND THE WEB

Dumb Science Story Of The Week: Old People Forget Things
This week's bombshell from the world of science comes in a study of the behaviour of old people. One of the things the study looked as was the way old people repeat the same stories over and over. The scientists concluded this is because as people get older they become more inclined to forget things.

64% of Women Would Release A Sex Tape To Get Ahead
According to a survey of Generation Y users of the dating website Can Do Better, 64 percent of women would release a sex tape if it would help advance their careers.
The survey found that 45 percent of women also answered that they would sleep with their professor to pass a

Ageing Star Wallows In Steam Bath Not a celebrity sex scandal but an astronomy story as the Herschel telescope reveals a cosmic mystery that challenges existing ideas about the Universe

Hawking Says God Not Needed The Big Bang was the result of the inevitable laws of physics and did not need God to spark the creation of the Universe, Stephen Hawking has concluded. The scientist has claimed that no divine force was needed to explain why the Universe was formed. Crisis Boosts London's Dominance In Currency Trading
London, the world's leading centre for foreign exchange, increased its dominance of currency trading during the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression The average daily turnover in the City this year was $1.85 trillion (£1.2 trillion) - or 37pc of global turnover, according to a three-year report into currency dealing by the Bank of International Settlements.
Around $4 trillion changed hands around the world every day in April, up from $3.3 trillion in April 2007. ..

Brown Was Maddening Says Blair

Main talking point in today's news is the publication of Tony Blair's memoirs of his time as Prime Minister. Everybody in politics has been eager to find out what Blair would say about his successor Gordon Brown and their relationship during the ten years Brown served as DChancellor while Tony Blair was Prime Minister.

William Hague Denies Relationship with a man

Is There A Need For HD Audio
We wrote some time ago on the marketing of HD TV as the latest 'must have.' and on the great internet scam which involves development in internet technologies putting pressure on users to constantly upgrade hardware and software.

Darwin's Secret Experiment Acenscion Island is a lush tropical paradise 1000 miles from Africa and 2000 from South America. According to the laws of nature it should be barren and so it would be had the orginator of evolutionary science Charles Darwin not begun a great experiment there, one that is still running almost 200 years later...

The Frogs Are Starting To Simmer In The Land Of The Free
Savez Vous Que Vous Parlez Tres Mal Francais
Philip Salter at the Adam Smith Institute laments the lack of French taught in schools, and attributes this to schools preferring that children take easier subjects that will reflect well in the league tables.
There may be an element of truth in this, in that French or German at ‘O’ level is on a par with mathematics – there is either a right or a wrong answer. ‘Religious Studies’ on the other hand, require that you ...

A Solution To Company Pensions Crisis
The latest dismal news about company pensions should not obscure the simple fact that if you want to be sure something is done properly you should do it yourself. Saving for retirement is no exception to this rule. If you rely on your employer or pension scheme managers to do the job for you, the…

Obama Caves To UN Over Arizona Immigration Law
There can be few sights more humiliating for the American people than that of a US president kowtowing to a foreign leader or to supranational institutions. Continental Europeans are used to this sort of thing after decades of dominance by unelected bureaucrats in Brussels, and have grudgingly accepted over time the gradual and undemocratic erosion…

The BBC Pretended To Be Balanced On Climate Change
I have just been listening to Uncertain Climate, the first in BBC “Environment Analyst” Roger Harrabin’s two-part Radio 4 investigation into the politics of climate change. The announcer introduced it as a programme “on an unusual aspect of global warming that you won’t have heard in the news headlines”. This was touching, but would only… 31 August
Labour Leadership Soap Opera as Millibands Battle Each Other
As a major union hints that it may withdraw financial support for the party if either David Milliband or Ed Balls is elected as leader Labour leadership candidate Ed Balls has criticised the "daily episodes" of the "soap opera" surrounding fellow contenders Ed and David Miliband.

House Owners In Negative Equity For Another Four Years
Homeowners who bought their houses at the top of the prtoperty boom could face face four more years of negative equity, a housing group said.
The National Housing Federation (NHF) said the average buyer in England paid £216,800 for a home in 2007. Those people may now have to wait until 2014 before prices recover enough to make their homes worth more than they paid the federation added.

Afghan Bomb Attack Kills Four US Soldiers A roadside bomb attack in eastern Afghanistan has killed four US soldiers, Nato sources revealed yesterday.AFP quoted spokesman James Judge as saying that a home-made bomb, one of the main weapons of the Taliban, was used in the attack.The attack comes a day after seven US soldiers were killed in two bomb attacks in southern Afghanistan.These deaths add to the rising trend of casualties for Nato's International Security Assistance Force (Isaf). June and July were the worst months for foreign troop deaths since the

FOR OLDER COMMENTS from our blog index click here. MORE FAVOURITES