A week ago I noted that the FT had published a letter from me criticising PWC for moaning about their recruitment problems. I suggested that if they brought audit into the 21st century by tackling climate change, amongst other things, then young people might want to work for them.
This morning the FT carries a reply from some called Andy Thompson of Worcester Park, who says:
Heaven forbid that there be a social purpose for audit! Mr Thompson is quite sure that there is not:
We should be grateful for what crumbs of information that we might get from accounts, and not complain, is the message.
After another paragraph which rambles on whilst suggesting that we should rely on other regulators from 'police fraud squads to health and safety inspectors, environmental authorities, tax officials and many others' to ensure climate change compliance by such companies, all of whom will, I am sure, be pleased to learn of their new roles in this area, Mr Thompson concludes:
Now I get it! Climate change is not a real issue. Lefty professors talking about it as if it might have an impact on business is the real problem.
There are moments when you have to despair at the stupidity of people unable to comprehend the crisis that they and the businesses in which they are invested are facing. This letter provided one of them.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
In a word: ‘Asinine’.
So – accounting is not really for the real world it seems.
No wonder we’re in a mess.
I’ve had around 18 letters published in the FT over the years. The one above seems, poor, perhaps standards have dropped in the FT bit that handles letters?
It’s fairly obvious someone has decided your sustainable accounting debate is subversive. There is no logical riposte and so the best tactic is to tell you to go back to bookkeeping.
We can be pretty sure that Andy is a Brexit voting, climate change denying, libertarian kind of guy. Probably works in the City.
Definitely does not look up.
So basically he’s saying accountants should not be accountable….
and I thought it was just economists who didnt seem to relate to the real world
Its simply a one dimensional version of the stakeholder theory of the firm
just leave the writer to his manual ledgers
pass us the quill pen & ink, Rees-Mogg
The final quote “does it depend on who has been teaching them?” really makes me despair. It’s why I have supported the much maligned Curriculum for Excellence in Scotland since its inception. Its emphasis is on encouraging learners to question everything, find out truth for themselves, think rationally, ask themselves if what they are hearing is logical. It’s what I tried to do for 35 years as a teacher. The effects of indoctrination are all around us and they terrify me.
I so agree with you
I am only interested in people thinking for themselves
So, so true. The ability to look at all information with a critical perspective. Absolutely essential in a social media age with a mass of ‘information’ available, much of it plain misleading and all of it reflecting a perspective.
The Goveian emphasis on the rote learning of ‘facts’ is the very worst kind of education for today’s world.
So true
Facts without understanding, or worse, imagination are dead, useless data
Last night /early morning there was BBC news special on global warming looking at a number of geographical areas such as Canada and Iraq. The Canadian slot was about a town that got burnt off the map in an area of British Columbia that had had record high temperatures but where there is also logging of older mature trees being allowed (these are huge trees, soaking up carbon). Canada had a record year last year I believe of people being arrested for global warming protests.
In Iraq, higher than normal ground temperatures are preventing nomadic people from settling, growing a few crops and keeping animals. The desert is getting too hot to live in – even for resourceful peoples who have lived in it for generations.
But what astounded me – having watched the BBC report it all – was the voice over summary at the end – as if it was all inevitable.
That is how capitalism I think us going to play the game you know: ‘Oh well, its going to happen – we’ve broken it, lets get used to it’ – from denial to accommodation and normalisation.
And now we’re seeing ‘I wish I not had kids’ letters and the like in the Guardian.
Population levels might be a concern – but its really about HOW we choose to live on this planet not that there is human life that is the problem. These letters literally throw babies out with the bath water.
It is how we choose to deal with our sewage.
How we choose to deal with our waste materials (if we should be making plastic at all).
How we choose to move around (from fossil fuels to mass versus private transportation).
All these have involved bad short term decisions and planning because making money has come first.
And our desire and action to invest has come last.
And democracy which could play a huge part in solving this has become stymied as it has in much else.
Yes – we are in big trouble.