Government call for science ‘weirdos’ prompts caution from researchers
We want to hire an unusual set of people with different skills and backgrounds to work in Downing Street ...
Of the top 20 people in the world who best understand the science of climate change and could advise us what to do with COP 2020, how many now work as a civil servant/spad or will become one in the next 5 years?
G. Super-talented weirdos
People in SW1 talk a lot about ‘diversity’ but they rarely mean ‘true cognitive diversity’. They are usually babbling about ‘gender identity diversity blah blah’. What SW1 needs is not more drivel about ‘identity’ and ‘diversity’ from Oxbridge humanities graduates but more genuine cognitive diversity.
We need some true wild cards, artists, people who never went to university and fought their way out of an appalling hell hole, weirdos from William Gibson novels like that girl hired by Bigend as a brand ‘diviner’ who feels sick at the sight of Tommy Hilfiger or that Chinese-Cuban free runner from a crime family hired by the KGB. If you want to figure out what characters around Putin might do, or how international criminal gangs might exploit holes in our border security, you don’t want more Oxbridge English graduates who chat about Lacan at dinner parties with TV producers and spread fake news about fake news.
By definition I don’t really know what I’m looking for but I want people around No10 to be on the lookout for such people.
We need to figure out how to use such people better without asking them to conform to the horrors of ‘Human Resources’ (which also obviously need a bonfire).
Send a max 1 page letter plus CV to ideasfornumber10@gmail.com and put in the subject line ‘job/’ and add after the / one of: data, developer, econ, comms, projects, research, policy, misfit.
