How to be a successful failure
I recently looked up the biography of Ian Fleming. Until he wrote some really good books he was pretty much a failure, but a very successful failure.
He went to Eton and that is about all you need to know.
After that he was kicked out of Sandhurst, for catching gonorrhoea from a prostitute, was a failed stock broker, failed banker, and a failed journalist. Every time he failed mummy stepped in and got him a job with another friend, a very well paid job, with short hours, and little work and still he failed.
He got a safe wartime posting via family contacts and when the war was over got a job managing journalists which included 3 months off a year to spend in Jamaica. Like you do.
I was amazed at the ease with which such people used to swan through life with no qualifications or ability while millions of others were struggling through appallingly hard times and trying and often failing to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.
Then I woke up and realised that nothing has changed. We can all name politicians, very senior executives, journalists, directors and all the rest; who do exactly the same now. Swanning from one highly paid job to another, with utter self confidence and no qualifications or experience or ability whatsoever.
Job interviews fail to spot them, minimum requirements never apply, experience is unnecessary, ability assumed, and pay increased.
They leave behind a mess but move on quickly enough to dodge responsibility, they frustrate the ambitions and the ability of better qualified and harder working but less well connected staff. They lord it over the little people, paying themselves huge bonuses, promoting their mates, and making sure their profile is always hyped, they never leave a paper chain and years after they have gone the mess remains. But no one can ever lay a glove on them, because “it was so long ago”, and their “memory is different”.
Some make it to be PM by exactly this method, in fact at least 4 or the last 5 PM’s made it to the top in the same way that Ian Fleming managed to float through life. Boosted by the self confidence that only a private education and/or Oxbridge can give you the lazy, self-entitled incompetents have taken over.
The price we pay for this , as a nation, is huge; people without the skills set to run a whelk stall are in charge of huge organisations, with budgets of billions or even run the country.
At least Ian Fleming eventually wrote some books, but today’s Old Etonians can retire or get fired and just give a few speeches and have books and articles ghost written for them and become millionaires. There is never a down side.
Until we have a meritocracy we are doomed to repeat all these mistakes again and again.
Economics, trade and Brexit, not necessarily in that order but the dog always comes first.
By Jonty Bloom Media