British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s top adviser wants to recruit “weirdos and misfits” as part of a drive to overhaul the way the government works.
In a 3,000-word blog post, Dominic Cummings said he is seeking an “unusual set of people with different skills and backgrounds” to work in Downing Street — and that he wants to be made “largely redundant” by the new intake.
Hinting at a wider restructuring of the civil service, he said that there are “profound problems at the core of how the British state makes decisions.”
“It is obvious that improving government requires vast improvements in project management,” Cummings said. “The first project will be improving the people and skills already here.”
Since Johnson won last month’s general election, the British media has been filled with speculation about which government departments might be scrapped, merged or overhauled. Cummings’ blog confirmed that the prime minister’s top team is looking at how to do it.
“One of the problems with the civil service is the way in which people are shuffled such that they either do not acquire expertise or they are moved out of areas they really know to do something else,” Cummings wrote.
The UK’s departure from the EU “requires many large changes in policy and in the structure of decisionmaking,” Cummings wrote, and there are people in government now prepared to take risks to “change things a lot.”
Johnson’s majority means there is “little need to worry about short-term unpopularity while trying to make rapid progress with long-term problems,” he added.
Cummings listed the qualifications he is looking for, and suggested videos and research papers candidates should be familiar with.
He is seeking to hire data scientists, software developers, economists and policy experts, as well as “weirdos and misfits with odd skills.”
Cummings expressed his disdain for political correctness, saying the government needs to hire people with “true cognitive diversity,” rather than “gender identity diversity blah blah.”
“True wild cards” are needed, he said, while the government must also “figure out how to use such people better without asking them to conform to the horrors of ‘Human Resources’ (which also obviously need a bonfire).”
One new hire could serve as Cummings’ personal assistant.
“This will involve a mix of very interesting work and lots of uninteresting trivia that makes my life easier which you won’t enjoy,” he wrote. “You will not have weekday date nights, you will sacrifice many weekends — frankly it will [be] hard having a boy/girlfriend at all. It will be exhausting, but interesting.”
Cummings even hinted at his own departure.
“We want to improve performance and make me much less important — and within a year largely redundant,” he wrote.
At the moment he is required to make decisions “well outside” his “circle of competence,” he said.
“We do not have the sort of expertise supporting the PM and ministers that is needed,” he wrote. “This must change fast so we can properly serve the public.”
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
ENTERTAINMENT: Rio officials have a history of organizing massive concerts on Copacabana Beach, with Madonna’s show drawing about 1.6 million fans last year Lady Gaga on Saturday night gave a free concert in front of 2 million fans who poured onto Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro for the biggest show of her career. “Tonight, we’re making history... Thank you for making history with me,” Lady Gaga told a screaming crowd. The Mother Monster, as she is known, started the show at about 10:10pm local time with her 2011 song Bloody Mary. Cries of joy rose from the tightly packed fans who sang and danced shoulder-to-shoulder on the vast stretch of sand. Concert organizers said 2.1 million people attended the show. Lady Gaga
SUPPORT: The Australian prime minister promised to back Kyiv against Russia’s invasion, saying: ‘That’s my government’s position. It was yesterday. It still is’ Left-leaning Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday basked in his landslide election win, promising a “disciplined, orderly” government to confront cost-of-living pain and tariff turmoil. People clapped as the 62-year-old and his fiancee, Jodie Haydon, who visited his old inner Sydney haunt, Cafe Italia, surrounded by a crowd of jostling photographers and journalists. Albanese’s Labor Party is on course to win at least 83 seats in the 150-member parliament, partial results showed. Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s conservative Liberal-National coalition had just 38 seats, and other parties 12. Another 17 seats were still in doubt. “We will be a disciplined, orderly
RSS