Thanks Sandra and I doubt if it is a coincidence that Cameron was up on 
his hind legs last night crapping on about the enemies of enterprise and 
removing bureaucracy---since the Tories put their share in place when 
last in government, I have some doubts about how far that will go but 
we'll see. I would expect that those companies with good Conservative 
connections will find their paths a bit smoother than others.

I agree with what you say and would have had similar ideas myself but 
doubted if they could be made work in the typical business cycle time 
scale.

I would also wonder if the long-term prize would be seen as worth that 
sort of work and time and investment? Given that one of the things which 
sunk our economies was/is short-term thinking? Tho on other hand, there 
are indeed companies who have taken the long view and hung in there, 
plenty of them here in N IReland who somehow managed to keep going thro 
the Troubles.

Over here we have Lidl. My wife finds them pretty good for fresh veg at 
low prices. M&S is better for some other things. ASDA comes somewhere in 
between.

Having said all that, I think the new discourse has been building up for 
a long time but I suppose my hope/fear is that the sort of shark-like 
entities who are trying to get in are in fact too overtly shark-like and 
too cheap to make it. Ref the Clacton situation. No discourse was able 
to hide the brutal fact that there weren't enough doctors or NPs 
available week after week after week.

Declan



<<Declan, sorry for the delay ... RL intervenes.
You are correct on barriers from regulation.
However, anyone who has something to gain from this has been carefully
planning how to get rid of barriers for some time.

Deskilling and asset-sweating is part of it but....
If I wanted to do it, I'd perhaps start by demonising legal protection as
'bureaucracy' and declaring war on 'regulation and red tape'.

Then I'd make sure I developed a new discourse in this market.  I'd take
pirates, predators and parasites and call them all "go-getters" and anyone
who opposed them "enemies of enterprise".

To reassure the faint-hearted, I'd insist on a focus on "quality" not just
price.  I'd omit to mention that, for example, both Aldi and M&S have
well-defined quality standards but they are different.  (Incidentally, in my
experience, Aldi quality is usually better but, nevertheless they are
different.) So, I'd be careful about how and by whom Quality was defined.
For example, I could insist that, to compete on quality, suppliers would
need to pick up the phone within x rings and turn around paperwork within y
hours and give excellent customer service all round.

And so on ad nauseam - literally.

In short, those who make the effort to think long-term and strategically
will win.  It's hard work though.
In which spirit I pass on Ben Goldacre's plea from this morning:>>