Giving engineers a voice in government

I was recently chatting to a colleague, putting the world to rights, and naturally we got onto the shower who are at present resident in the Houses of Parliament.

Whatever your political leanings please do not feel the need to be defensive, we ultimately concluded that we held all sides in equal contempt. However the main thrust of the conversation was related to how the mother of parliaments is currently run by Lawyers and career politicians. Both groups have something to offer but how on Earth can they make decisions on matters such as the future of industry when they have no direct experience of it?

Of course one doesn’t necessarily have to be directly involved to have a valid opinion or a good idea about something but the main parties are being led by groups within which no-one has any idea of day to day real world problems. They live in a bubble of self-regarding ignorance.

One would expect though that they at least have experts or advisors in differing fields on hand to guide them. This may actually be the case but they need to take the opinions of these people on board. For example the recent sweeping reforms by “Pob” Gove seemed to be entirely formulated by him and didn’t find any favour in the education sector that I ever saw.

Then there is the lack of passion for specific visions – rather than the broad rhetoric from all sides that tries to cover everything to some depth and only ends up covering nothing in any depth. Surely to intimately know the area that you seek to take into the future, to inherently understand its strengths and weaknesses, is to have a personal investment that informs and ignites? Instead we just have drab automatons reading from carefully prepared scripts.

What can we do about it? For a start we can engage in the political process and get involved in the parties at grass roots level with a view to ultimately seeking office.

There must be any number of engineers reading this who feel so strongly about the future of our country that they are only a step away from getting involved anyway. We are problem solvers by nature and, although inherently no more or less worthy than others regarding attaining high office because of this, it surely gives us an advantage?

Someone has to snatch back the reins of power for the wider electorate, why shouldn’t it be us who starts the ball rolling? Let’s face it; whether of the right, left or centre we can’t make a worse job of it than the current mob. So let’s get out there and make our voice heard in the corridors of power and remember, when the time comes, vote Secret Engineer for Prime Minister!