First impressions are often correct

LesAbbey on February 24, 2012 — 9 Comments

That's Emma Harrison of A4e, not Cherie Blair

I suspect if there was an objective way of checking if first impressions were correct, the result would be massively positive. Over my far too many years one impression I have learned to respect is the one where I feel if my wallet is still in my back pocket as the then present company strikes me as someone who wouldn’t think twice about lifting it out for themselves.

The first time I saw Emma Harrison on TV I had a feeling this was a women aiming at coining in as much as possible in as short a time as possible. Back then there was some sort of business relationship with David Blunkett which carries its own distinct smell. With the incoming Tory government the public purse was there for picking and Emma did just that. Her share of the profits last year was £8.6 million. What is the tax on dividends? Much less than the 50p rate I guess.

Anyway maybe first impressions are right as she has just resigned as a Cameron’s problem family tsar. The reason is it looks like her company, or people working for it, have been cooking the figures and the police have now got involved. The figures were about getting people back into work and her company was one of the private companies that the government has been giving lucrative contracts to.

Still that was all to be expected, but what did get my goat was Fraser Nelson in the Telegraph making excuses for her. In fact not only for her, but for corrupt private business everywhere, even including Enron. His argument is that the state sector is also corrupt, whether more or less I’m not sure, so we shouldn’t be too hard on corruption or self serving among business executives.

So first impressions again. Fraser Nelson is one, along with others like Toby Young, who comes across as a sneering bully boys, true Flashmans. You can’t call them apologists for the Tories because there’s no apology in them. They really do believe attack is the best form of defense. If they were dogs they would be pitbulls with their teeth clamped round your ankle.

Looking at A4e and Emma Harrison we are  getting a glimpse of the Cameron future for the NHS. Looking at Fraser Nelson we get a glimpse of how they will defend their policies.

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  • Anonymous

    I was sent down to see them, and it was not a great day out I can tell you, the people were all under twenty five for obvious reasons.

    They had no idea what so ever about disability or the problems of pain or to be honest jobs. They told me I had to wait for the manager to arrive, she was late, an hour later she came in and said I had to stop for a coffee late night last night bit of a hang over.

    It did not get better, first thing they did was sign on to the Job centre’s computer to look what jobs were available, after a month of being given  jobs they knew I could not do, and I knew were a waste of time I went back to the job centre.

    The idea of getting people back to work was to fit them to the employer, the young lady who was my so called specialist did not know who Balfour were, did not know what NASA was, or have any idea what so ever about disability, and they are supposed to help people.

    Money makes the world go around.

  • Anonymous

    Wow, Oracle Abbey tells us he is proved right again. If only you made your predictions before they happened, then we would see how many times you are calling it wrong.

    Go on, tell us you saw Eric Joyce was a drunken thug months ago. Or that your wallet tingled when David Chaytor, Elliot Morley, Jim Devine or Eric Illsley appeared on your TV screen before May 2009.

    • LesAbbey

       Trolling a bit aren’t you DC? What’s up? May have to go back to calling you DevonGirl again.

      • DevonChap

        Does the Oracle not like being contradicted? You just seem to come here to claim you are wonderful, superiority morality and the power of foresight. Sadly you are just showing selection bias. You only remember when you predict something and get it right, not the far more frequent times when you get it wrong. Nothing to be ashamed of, it is a very human thing to do. What makes you a dick is that you don’t realise that so you let your head expand thinking you have better judgement than the rest of us. If trolling is pointing out that you have feet of clay like the rest of us, then I’m a troll. At least my head fits through doorways.

        • LesAbbey

           I did think about why you are resorting to personal attacks the other day DC. I suspect it was because I was ignoring your comments. But as before it is your inability to argue rationally that caused me to do that. (In fact if you can remember it goes back to the argument about press ownership and the accusation you made that you had to apologise for. Do you remember  how long that took?) Anyway I think best I go back to ignoring you and you can show yourself in your true light possibly?

          Just to finish DC. I claim very little. If you read the post you would find it’s more about my feelings to Fraser Nelson, Toby Young and their ilk. I’m glad to say Young even managed to reinforce my first take in his latest twitter attacks on the Guardian on behalf of News International. Feet of clay? Most likely, but one of the benefits of blogging is you don’t look down too much, maybe not enough. You should try it yourself.

          Now I’m not going to call you a ‘dick’ or anything else. You seem to be able to imply that yourself without any help from me.

          ‘End of’ on my part.

          • Anonymous

            Les Les Les. Back on your high horse. Your  bias is working over time. Since I disagree with you my arguments are irrational. Not your inability to answer the point (like when I made a centuries old liberal point about not locking people up for crimes made unlawful retrospectively, you wibbled about how anything was possible under the law, true but not the issue.)

            You don’t like being called out. You claim you saw Emma Harrison as a bad ‘un from the start. I bet you see most senior business people bad ‘uns. That is your presumption. When you see one come a cropper you go ‘see I was right’ and it reinforces your prejudice. You fail to see because you are not looking for it that the vast majority of business people aren’t  crooks. Confirmation bias in action.

            I notice you attack with abandon the likes of Toby Young and Fraser Nelson but I don’t remember you doing the same for Mehdi Husan or George Monbiot or similar. Again with bias, those polemicists who disagree with you are
            Flashman bully boys, those who confirm your prejudices are fine (Let me guess, you decried them in 1974 somewhere and you are in fact totally constant and at all time correct).

            It is only when we have our assumptions challenged that we have a chance to look at them. However the human mind is very good at self justification so it is all too easy to let it construct defences, to claim unprovably that you don’t really think that. To find the one example in favour against the numerous ones against. It is the flexibility of the human mind to justify all sorts of selfish centredness that makes me very cagey about talking of morals and morality. So many times what one person deems as ‘moral’ or ‘immoral’ is mearly a justification of something that will benefit them. Putting political discussions into morals is a false argument. Morals in that context are too movable to mean anything other than to be either a  cheap stick with which to beat an opponent or a self delusion to make the holder feel superior. It is the measure of a man as to whether they can over come our monkey brains and be prepared to accept criticism and admit maybe their world view isn’t the only true one.

            Alternatively they could just post on a near moribund website of supposedly like minds hoping for congratulations and agreeing comments to confirm their biases and make they feel superior and ignoring those with which they disagree.

  • LesAbbey

    More dirt on how Emma has been milking her company and of course the public purse in today’s Sunday papers. The link below is from the Independent but there’s another in the Guardian about how A4e pays her and her husband for renting their properties. One greedy woman by the looks of it.

    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/exclusive-a4e-and-a-200m-backtowork-scandal-7440966.html

    • Anonymous

       We know what they are all like even the so called charities like Remploy , calling that lot a charity takes some  doing, the Shaw Trust bunch of cowboys.

      But hell if the labour party were willing to give money away  why not take it

  • http://www.tv-replay.fr/series-fictions-en-streaming/nc/nc/date/1.html Streaming serie

    It is not always true. Some people might have a bad day or something if they act in a certain way or another.