Quiet flows the Don
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Lord Bullock, a Don of St Catherine's College, Oxford, and biographer of the late and great Ernie Bevin, will by now be reflecting on the first effects of his voluminous committee report. Its content has hardly met with national approval among industrialists. Indeed, they have been quick and loud in ther disapproval.
The present boardroom members are not convinced by the conclusion that trade union appointed directors would benefit their shareholders. Perhaps they've been looking at 30 years of nationalisation. Certainly, there seems little to support the argument that non-qualified, inexperienced people should find themselves in a decision-making role.
Indeed, there is nothing to support an argument that inexperienced, unqualified people should find themselves at the workbench, the steering wheel or the traffic desk.
Perhaps when the Commons come to consider the report, they will write in a clause that the nominees must be professionally qualified by examination and under 65 years of age. Otherwise the boardrooms of Britain could become an extension of the PM's list honours.