It’s hardly a surprise that someone who spent almost her entire career as a civil servant and quangocrat – sectors not known for workforce efficiency and customer service – didn’t know how to steer a major retailer through a challenging period of change. The only mystery is why anyone thought Sharon White – the first black person and woman to serve as Chairman of John Lewis, from which she has announced she is stepping down after just three years – was the right person to lead the company at this time. Did they have factors other than the best person for the job in mind, perhaps? Alex Brummer in the Mail reflects on her ill-fated tenure as it comes to an end.
The choice of elegant, accomplished economics guru Sharon White as Chairman of John Lewis always seemed slightly bizarre. Previous high street superstars – think Archie Norman at Marks & Spencer or Simon Wolfson at Next – have retail in their veins.
Dame Sharon is a high-minded Cambridge and UCL graduate who rose through the civil service to become a Second Permanent Secretary at the Treasury before heading up media regulator Ofcom.
She might well have shopped in John Lewis when she took over in 2020 – the first woman at the top in the firm’s history – but her knowledge of the company’s inner workings probably didn’t go much further.
So it is sad, but no surprise, to hear she is throwing in the towel. She told the board yesterday that, after a disastrous reign at the store chain beloved of the well-heeled middle class, she will not seek a second term and will instead step down in February 2025.
White’s decision, after a single traumatic five-year term, is certain to be seen as recognition that it was a job beyond her competence. Bringing in outside finance to a partnership structure, in which the company is owned by a trust on behalf of its employees, and moving into new areas such as property (with plans to build 10,000 rental homes) will always be seen as mistakes.
Worth reading in full.
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And when all the jobs have gone the government will be the peoples saviour by introducing CBDC and universal basic income. Klaus will be happy, a model nation with an enslaved population.
..a model nation with a replaced and mongolised enslaved population …Klaus will have very sticky pants as his wet dream becomes reality .
Thanks Tories .You scum !!
This “Tory Scum” always makes me smile. They’re ALL scum. Every. Single. One. Labour would have just drove the country into the ground quicker. Anyone that thinks what’s happening is because of political allegiance hasn’t been paying attention.
That is why i find GB News tedious now, do they really think there is a real difference between Labour and Conservative!
However, the economy will be so shrunken that we will be very poor indeed. That may lead to violent reaction by the angry proles. Be warned,.political scum.
Reform UK recognise the scam that is Net Zero and will scrap the scheme.
People who consider the Net Zero agenda is both a huge scam and will inevitably impoverish them will be able to register their disgust at the general election later this year.
What will happen when industry is decimated, regular cars eliminated, living standards wrecked? Will they ever go: “Congratulations everyone, we’ve done it, we’ve finally reached the right level of CO2 and we can now sleep easy because catastrophic climate change has been averted.” Will they?
Of course not. This never ends. They’ll tell us we still haven’t reached the right levels of CO2. So, let’s see, what else emits CO2 and contributes to “anthropogenic climate change”? Well, the clue is in the name: humans.
Sorry guys, we’re going to have to cull the human population because we’re disgusting CO2 emitting creatures…
Manwhile is all the Brics countries there wil be deafening laughter !!
All the way to the bank….
“Sorry guys, we’re going to have to cull the human population because we’re disgusting CO2 emitting creatures…”
I have been banging this drum for at least the last two years.
Happy to cull them…..
I have been saying for years that the reason our treasonous Uniparty politicians push the Net Zero agenda has nothing to do with climate. They are doing it at the behest of their globalist overlords and paymasters to wantonly shackle and control the global populace through impoverishment, deindustrialisation, food deprivation and depopulation.
My most recent effort (October 2023) was addressed to several nonentity local politicians who needless to say didn’t reply but was primarily directed at my 100+ Bcc addressees: https://principia-scientific.com/what-rishi-sunaks-recent-net-zero-back-pedalling-really-means/.
The Party believes that ‘something must be done’, and no doubt the King is quite keen on Net Zero, so it (or they) are happy to do something that looks like NZ, whatever the outcome.
Following on from Stewart’s observation
– is there a correct measure that would allow us to say definitively at some point between now and let’s say 2040 ‘right you good people of Great Britain we have got the Co2 concentrations in this country down to 190 ppm. One big push and we can achieve 150 ppm in the next ten years.’
(And guess what we are beating the frogs.)
Is there firkin bollox and I don’t need to insult the intelligence of DS members explaining why.
And this explains why it is all a massive con.
Co2 is not a problem. Greenhouse gases – another load of nonsense – are not a problem, even the suggestion of Anthropogenic Global Warming is nonsense. The climate changes and the forces creating the changes are far too numerous and powerful for tiddly humans to worry about. What utter hubris to assume that we can regulate the temperature of this planet as if it was a domestic oven.
Club of Rome – Limits to Growth 1972.
Realistically the loss of 3,000 and probably more like 6,000 jobs, with supporting trades, at Port Talbot should be described as a Cull for that is most definitely what it represents.
The Port Talbot Cull.
Question to DS.
Why the picture of dark industrial smoke stacks to illustrate an article about Net Zero policy?
CO2 isn’t pollution.
If you want to illustrate British heavy industry, why not show the products, the useful output rather than the externalities?
If you show the pollution that industry produces you promote a negative image of heavy industry and worse still contribute to the erroneous conflation of CO2 with pollution.
Not to mention the fact that the cooling towers are emitting steam, not CO2.
It’s a nice stock image I expect.
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/dolans-digest-suddenly-trump-is-in-the-driving-seat/
The commendable Simon Dolan with his take on Trump v Biden.
What do the Dems and deep state do about Sleepy Joe?
Assassination and blame it on Trump?
It’s a repeat of the EU situation when the UK was still a member.
The only countries implementing Brussels’ demands to the letter were Germany and the UK.
One has to wonder what is wrong with these 2 nations and people?
Germany has surprised me the most. Its as if they had a death wish!
Befehl ist befehl!
Anyone who thinks the US is our friend is deluded. America continues causing chaos around the world and we continue holding onto its apron-strings. Meanwhile HMS Britannia is slowing but steadily sinking beneath the waves.
We must have the dumbest politicians ever in our history!
Well, the nation is run by a fifth column plotting its downfall. Or actually, rather not so much plotting its downfalls. It’s being sucked dry by parasites who’d rather carelessly kill their host and then die themselves than admit that they could ever have been wrong about something. And the name of these parasites is Democrats and their European lickspittles. My hope is, by the time that these people have managed sink the USA, we over here can dust ourselves off, shed a few crocodile tears and again worry about our own affairs.
We’ll see who makes the race, Mr Francis ‘wisecrack’ Menton. But remember that you had a head start.
“Net Zero is Dying – But it’s Taking Us Down With It”That is the intent.
“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?”
Maurice Strong
“Giving society cheap, abundant energy would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun”
Paul Ehrlich
“We contend that the position of the nuclear promoters is preposterous beyond the wildest imaginings of most nuclear opponents, primarily because one of the purported ‘benefits’ of nuclear power, the availability of cheap and abundant energy, is in fact a liability.”
Paul Ehrlich
“A cancer is an uncontrolled multiplication of cells; the population explosion is an uncontrolled multiplication of people. We must shift our efforts from the treatment of the symptoms to the cutting out of the cancer “
Paul Ehrlich
“Government in the future will be based upon . . . a supreme office of the biosphere. The office will comprise specially trained philosopher/ecologists. These guardians will either rule themselves or advise an authoritarian government of policies based on their ecological training and philosophical sensitivities. These guardians will be specially trained for the task”
David Shearman An IPCC Assessor for 3rd and 4th climate change reports:
Thanks for these.
They are a few from a very thorough collection of incriminating quotes here:
https://www.c3headlines.com/global-warming-quotes-climate-change-quotes.html
And how about this?
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/01/23/rain-is-caused-by-carbon/
Our net zero targets are fueled by Chinese coal.
it makes no difference to the climate which country the emissions come from
Our politicans are quite thick when it comes to the practical effects of their stupid and ignorant decisions. They have no mental horizon other than this week’s news cycle and whether they are in or out. Personal ambition has become the sine qua non of political existence whereas it was once the improvement and advancement of the nation. They are enemies of the people and must pay for their crimes.
This will only get worse under Stalin Starmer.
“the nation was run by a fifth column plotting its downfall.”? It is, with a sixth and seventh waiting in line to plunge in the knife.
The UK shows the world how to grow old and senile