I watched Layer Cake and Serpico in the past couple of days and in both films the use or abuse of power was brought up. In Layer Cake it is the speech of taking less sh*t and in Serpico the idea that his superiors where so corrupt how could they clean up the force. It all leads me back to the pub in December. During one of those rare, but growing increasingly, moments of intelligent conversation down the pub with my friends, the notion of power was brought up. I think that question went like this would you rather be the man at the top; A recognisable face but with limited power. Or would you rather have more power but less recognisable? I wasn’t able to get in a word edgeways so I just resigned to chatting about Christmas holiday plans with Eva on the side. I’m not going to answer that question per se but instead talk about power and what it brings. Most of the following will probably be recycled twaddle that you may have heard me mention before but I felt like writing it down. I shall look at power in three forms and how it affects each person and how they manipulate it. So let’s start from the top. Imagine that you are the prime minister of this great country; you don’t really have to take any more nonsense from anyone. Britain has a pretty good economy and the powerhouse in the E.U. with only Bush to answer to on some points. I don’t have any fears about the Euro except it really is monopoly money. Seriously you have the power and guile to do anything you want. Spin works incredibly well in this country, in America all that the president needs is time. In France well, politics is in their blood, spin is probably the last thing you need. That is why Cameron wouldn’t work at all in France. John Reed would be a more popular choice. I realise that I am losing Americans with this chat so I’ll get back. Since Britain is one of the few economies that is pretty much based on banking and any other tertiary industry, the power is pretty much all based in London. Government contracts are more important than usual, not just the repercussions for the general public but also the companies who receive the contract. Since contracts are not really fashionable it doesn’t make it on the news. However, the situation involving the Saudi’s and the purchase of fighter jets meant that the government had to buckle under the pressure and chose not to investigate further. The money trail was left for dead and a few people breathed a sigh of relief. The government here has the power but with so much of this economy based in one sector, it couldn’t afford to rock the boat. I guess the other parallel I could draw would be that of America and the oil companies amazing profits this year. My only complaint with that would have been if I was a potentially corrupt morally bankrupt raping and pilfering multinational corporation who destroy not only the environment for our kids but destroy entire communities with half hearted often brazen attempts of patronising mess. I may, just hide my profits through things around and not look so fucking guilty. So I guess Layer Cake was wrong even if you are in the rarefied atmosphere where you cant taste shit you still have to try and keep it off your feet.

The second group I would like to talk about is middle management. With companies growing at amazing rates and people wanting to work less manual jobs and more public service jobs it is no surprise that companies seem to be awash with middle management. I have no real problem with this, if you work for someone for over 15 years you would at least like to know that you have someone below you. In the same way that those who want to leave school will stay on because that means that you are a senior above all the other years. Everyone needs to feel as if they are progressing no matter how small. Doing tedious repetitive work without any reward would be unsatisfying to say the least. You need to reassure your workers that they are progressing and that you are thankful for your work. If I was to run a company I would run it like an al qaeda terrorist cell. That way you get small teams working under a common banner but small enough to quash any real feelings of inadequacies. I’m not too sure how this would work in an office situation but maybe since technology is improving I would designate the team leader’s house as the office. I guess that the feeling of that we should be rewarded for our work comes from our childhood where we needed a gold star when we did well in a task. People are afraid of middle management because they can often confuse things and make it a lot harder for people than they really expected. They are the link in the chain where they have to listen to orders from above and below their station. They also have to learn to put up with the most shit from above and below. So by giving them a wider spectrum of power, these people will enjoy that position more than others. Of course the reason they are middle management is that you don’t trust them that much either due to lack of experience or just plain incompetence (on their part of course).So by having many little cells of workers means that you don’t really increase their power but just make their scope wider. The same amount of people but different offices makes pretty much everyone who would be an office manager a regional manager and in turn makes the position bigger than it really is. The secret to being a good business man is being a good middle man. – Layer Cake

There was supposed to be a third act but i couldnt finish it. Starting it up again 45 days later would not work either.