The demise of the vast Carillion Construction Empire did not amaze me, but greater still the incompetence of Government and Whitehall did not amaze me even more.

Indeed having had a stint with the latter over a period of two years with the old dti with nearly one-hundred of the world’s leading scientists, engineers and technologists including eight Nobel Laureates in the sciences, we came to the conclusion that these people lived in a ‘bubble’ remote to reality and were we renamed Whitehall, the ‘don’t rock the boat steady-state’, where change was an anathema to them. 

But the sad indictment of this informed comprehension is that the people of this great innovative nation have to put up with the system that does not enhance the lives of the majority of British people through their naivety of how to create a dynamic economy, as they are insular always looking inside themselves not to others from the outside and in other words, they have no chance of seeing the wood for the trees ever. 

But this we found literally held the country back and did not enhance the nation’s prosperity one bit. Indeed it regressed it For all ministers rely on these people for their so-called advice and base for their white papers et al and where ministers have not the knowledge or intelligence to challenge their idea of the world. 

This is where it all goes so horribly wrong and why concerns like Carillion were given huge government contracts when it was known that they were in a terrible financial state.

That is how intelligent Whitehall and government reality is and it is about time for the country’s own long-term state, that these places of power had people with an inclination of commercial in-depth understanding of the world and primarily, common-sense. 

As without these two determinants of success out of a set of seven, how can anyone I would ask make decisions that affect the people in a advancing prosperous way instead of the negative way we always seem to find ourselves.

Indeed in 2009 the chief economist of PwC issued a projection of the nation’s debt based on average intelligence at that time (and things have become even worst than the base assumptions at that time), that the UK’s total debt (everything) would be in the order in 2015 of some £11.5 trillion (over 5-times our total GDP today) and where our bank’s debt alone would be £4.5 trillion of that. 

Unfortunately the figures have not been updated for some strange reason and I wonder why, as things since 2009 have become increasingly worse because of the compounded effect on the debt built up in the Blair/Brown years which by opening the flood gates for the ‘Markets’, created a lot of how we are today in economic terms. 

Therefore for the good of the whole country, government and Whitehall has to change, not in political colour as that would be more of the same as history has shown clearly, but in who runs these establishments with the right knowledge base that derives success and not continual debt for over nine out of ten people.

It simply has to stop if there is any wisdom at all in the UK.

Dr David Hill, CEO of World Innovation Foundation