Let us clebrate Britain’s DIE disaster hires (Part 1)

Sunday-Monday blog

(This blog is my ignorant personal opinion, so please don’t sue me)

As the brilliant, widely-respected and dyamic boss of NHS England, Amanda ‘penpusher’ Pritchard, leaves her job and the government decides to abolish her whole 13,500-employee organisation, I thought it might be worth spending just a few minutes looking at the carnage caused by some of our country’s most disastrous (IMHO) diversity hires. In this blog I’ll just do two here otherwise the blog will be rather long. I’ll do a couple more in a future blog

Dame Cressida ‘Dickless’ Dick

Dame Cressida Rose Dick DBE QPM is a British former police officer who seems to have risen effortlessly up the ranks of our pathetically ineffective Metropolitan Police ending up as Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis from 2017 to 2022. Cressida was, as far as I understand, both female and a lesbian. So she ticked a couple of important diversity boxes. If only she’d also been Asian or Black she’d have had a ‘full house’. Under Dame Cressida’s less than impressive leadership, crime in London rose relentlessly (though it did fall during the fake plague lockdowns):

Here’s Dame Cressida getting some kind of medal or something like that for her heroic efforts in making London less safe for its citizens:

Dame Cessida’s performance was so abysmal, that eventually even that champion of diversity, London’s diminutive mayor, demanded she go:

No doubt Dame Cressida got a huge pile of our money and a massive pension as her reward for wrecking London’s once-respected police service.

So impressed was I by Dame Cressida’s contribution to our country, that I even made a YouTube video to celebrate her brilliant career (link at the end of this blog)

Dame Sharon ’empty-shelves’ White

According to Wikipedia, Dame Sharon Michele White, Lady Chote, DBE is a British businesswoman who served as the sixth Chairman of the John Lewis Partnership, having previously held a variety of roles in the Civil Service. Though, as far as I am aware, Dame Sharon didn’t have any significant experience in any business until she was mysteriously made big boss of the John Lewis Partnership. Being a woman and being black, Dame Sharon ticked two key diversity boxes. If only she had been a lesbian like Dame Cressida, she’d have had a ‘full house’. White would be awarded an annual salary of £990,000 for her role at the John Lewis Partnership – a significant increase on her previous salary, which was £341,700 as head of the useless woke Ofcom.

Dame Sharon was big on woke. Here’s an email I got from Dame Sharon’s company:

“It’s Pride month, and we’re looking forward to celebrating with family, friends and colleagues and of course, delicious food and drink! At Waitrose and John Lewis, we’re committed to inclusion and our LGBTQIA+ network, Pride in the Partnership, is always busy. So far this year, we’ve celebrated LGBTQIA+ History month in February and International Trans Day of Visibility in March with events and educational packs for Partners.“

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with a company bringing in a new boss with a new perspective and new ideas. And Sharon, I believe, proposed things like destroying the John Lewis partnership structure by bringing in new investors who will want to be paid dividends every year and also building flats above or instead of stores. But before coming up with brilliant new ideas, it could be useful if the new boss could prove they were capable of successfully running the basic business for which they are responsible.

Apparently Waitrose used an Indian IT company to ‘upgrade’ their IT systems. Probably they used an Indian company because it was significantly cheaper that any UK-based business. As usual with any IT ‘upgrade’, chaos ensued. One tech website reported:

“A bungled system update has left the chain?s stores with a shortage of fresh produce, while customers have also reported problems using its app and securing slots for deliveries. Waitrose, which is part of John Lewis, has 329 stores across the UK. Waitrose customers started reporting problems over the May Bank Holiday weekend. A system update took longer than expected, which interfered with the delivery of fresh produce.“

Tech Monitor contacted Waitrose to find out more information, but a spokesperson for the chain told the Daily Telegraph that the problem had been fixed. “We’re really sorry for the disruption that some customers faced. We?ve fixed the cause of the problem, and have regular daily deliveries going to all our branches,” the spokesperson said. “Many shops now have good availability, and we?re addressing localised issues as quickly as possible.“

Well, I went to a Waitrose store after the problems had supposedly been fixed and this is what I saw:

However, in March 2023, the magazine Retail Gazette reported: “John Lewis Partnership has plunged to a loss of £234 million and admitted it could not afford to pay staff their traditional annual bonus.“

The Retail Gazette also reported: “John Lewis Partnership chairman Sharon White has pledged to return the retailer to profit before 2026, adding that staff bonuses would only return ‘when affordable’. Following three years of losses, White’s five-year plan, kicked off back in 2021, would ‘get the partnership back to sustainable profit’.

And Dame Sharon is quoted as saying her recovery plan would create: ‘a broadly based business with brilliant retail at the core, built on excellent customer service, quality and ethics’. 

In October 2023, White became the shortest-serving John Lewis boss in the company’s history when she announced that she would be stepping down from her role at John Lewis Partnership several years before her promised ‘return to profit by 2026’.

Dame Sharon White, the former chair of John Lewis, is now European head of the Canadian public pension fund manager that holds investments in companies including Eurostar and Heathrow.

White has been given the official title of managing director and head of Europe at Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec (CDPQ).