Shared an office today with a guy who worked from 8-2.45
I asked him what he does after. He said “3-6pm is my free time! I see friends, play sport”
I asked, what about evenings?
He said: “that’s my evening time! I relax”
Gotta hand it to the Danes when it comes to work norms
“
@MazzucatoM
& Collington show how consultants can harm entire countries…It may be a little heavy-going…But it’s worth the effort. The analysis is startling.”
I am blown away by the response to THE BIG CON - inc this
@thetimes
review from
@johnarlidge
📕👨🏻💼 feat George Clooney
I did not just spend a whole semester studying multilevel regression with post-stratification and a bunch of other complicated polling methods & statistics (inc for big data analysis in R) for
@HuffPost
to report on Tom Watson's fucking Twitter survey as if it was actually valid
one day I will write something about the joy, the mental peace, of living in a cooperatively-owned block of flats (no landlords, no rent, no market prices). no one can kick or price us out of our home.
for now, here is the xmas tree the families here put up in our communal yard.
In my new book,
@RosieCollingto
& I unpack the entrenched relationship between the consulting industry & how our economies are run.
We need a new system where govt & business develop internal capabilities & innovate towards the common good.
US pre-order:
.
@BBCNews
fix the headline. Over 50s being forced to move from houses to single rooms is not “beating rising rents” but, by definition, being beaten by rising rents.
A 239% increase in 55-65 year-old renters on SpareRoom since 2011!! 🤯
Fab to be featured in the
@FT
’s ‘Books to read in 2023’!
@MazzucatoM
And great to see progressive & radical writing recognized in these times - also feat. Brett Christophers (Our Lives in Their Portfolios),
@zeithistoriker
(Crack-Up Capitalism), &
@AyoCaesar
(Minority Rule)
I’ve written about the joy of living in a good housing cooperative, how Denmark’s coops are under threat from broader changes in finance, & why homes should be a means to security, autonomy & community – rather than rent extraction
@guardianopinion
reading a bunch of public economics textbooks at the moment. i am perpetually amazed at what is taught, how out of touch it seems with not just the actual dynamics of the economy but also with how government and politics work
Meanwhile, SOAS recently offered me (a PhD student) time & a half to mark essays covered by ASOS marking.
Obviously, I declined, said they should listen to striking staff - & let them know my thoughts on trying to coax job-seeking PhD students to scab like this!
✊🏻
#UCUrising
writing a PhD is wild because some days I wake up like "wow, 3 years of hard work, it's finally coming together woohoo" and others i wake up like "this is the worst thing anyone has ever written, i have nothing new to say, everything is terrible, who let me do a PhD"
My brother is a pub supervisor based in London who despite working full-time (w ~10 years experience) is on a zero hours contract. His employer has just told him they will not pay him at all for the foreseeable future.
The UK urgently needs a pandemic income net/UBI for workers
What was the most illuminating thing we learned while writing THE BIG CON?
For me, it’s that many consultants are also disillusioned with it. People go into consulting for good reasons - they’re told it has “impact”, purpose, saves the planet. But they soon become disappointed.
“A shocking indictment of how the consulting industry has made billions from public and private sources. But it’s an equally damning verdict on those institutions that have handed over these fortunes.”
Fab review in
@Independent_ie
today! 🤩
@MazzucatoM
Ok ok so my taxpayer-funded university in Denmark not only opens up all its (excellent) libraries to the wider public but gives students their OWN office space for 6 months to write up the BA/MSc thesis. None of this should be a big deal but it is so different to the UK wow
recently i learned that loads of privately-educated kids transfer to local sixth forms/colleges for their final year of a levels so they can cash in on the 'state school background' points for oxbridge entry and that my friends is a sore reminder of how rigged the system often is
📜 New working paper with
@MazzucatoM
: 'Beyond outsourcing: Re-embedding the State in public value production'
We develop a critique (& development) of Public Value Theory & the Third Way assumptions within which it emerged, drawing on inst & evo econ
“It’s time to invest in the collective intelligence of the public sector, and end the consulting con once and for all”
@MazzucatoM
and I have written for the
@Guardian
today
“Big government vs small government” is a misleading framing!
Trump was big government. Reagan was big government.
Instead we need to be talking about who the government acts for, what the it does & how it does it.
Great to chat with
@SamSeder
on
@majorityfm
yesterday
After 3 months in Chile, today I completed my final fieldwork interviews
Ive never been more convinced of interviewing as a method for studying the economy. Interviews have both helped to answer Qs I came w & (more importantly) unearth new Qs & directions to explore 👩🏼💻more soon!
As relieved as I am about the result of my PhD viva yesterday, it is impossible to feel any lasting joy when the university that awarded my degree maintains ties with firms complicit in Israel's genocide & scholasticide in Gaza.
@ucl
: this is not a neutral position. End it now.
@graceblakeley
Perhaps you can make the case for the first two (although accent is arguably the biggest class identifier in the UK!) but the latter three fundamentally alter your relation to capital (i.e. who can you rely on when things go to shit) - to say nothing of reproduction through them!
Only issue is this piece says we only have one page of “solutions” - it’s a whole chapter!
We call for:
1. Investing internally in public sector orgs
2. Politicians & media changing discourse on the state
3. Ending prime contracting
4. Contracts with ‘no excess profits’ clauses
“
@MazzucatoM
& Collington show how consultants can harm entire countries…It may be a little heavy-going…But it’s worth the effort. The analysis is startling.”
I am blown away by the response to THE BIG CON - inc this
@thetimes
review from
@johnarlidge
📕👨🏻💼 feat George Clooney
Today THE BIG CON launches in the US! 🥳
And later today I’m speaking with
@MHarrisPerry
about the rise of the consulting industry on
@NPR
’s
@TheTakeaway
and with
@meadwaj
for his podcast MACRODOSE
Order here:
Co-authored with
@MazzucatoM
a year ago i had no idea i would be spending the first semester of 2021 working as an external lecturer alongside my phd and then pausing my phd for 6 months to write a book with
@MazzucatoM
. i am feeling very grateful, and also very tired. we submit to publishers next week! 🍾
JUST LANDED 🤩 My copies of the beautiful US version of THE BIG CON.
American pals tell me it’s really obvious which cover is intended for the US audience 😅
Out on 8 March. Pre-order here
Outsourcing test-and-trace doesn't work.
So why has the UK government pursued this route? And why has it been able to do this?
In my
@guardian
piece today I look at the interests & ideas that have worked to slowly unpick our welfare state over decades.
So long as Labour is ruled by an economics of cost-cutting, short-termism & risk aversion, it remains firmly within the cult of consultancy.
@MazzucatoM
& I have written in
@NewStatesman
today on why reducing consultancy spend is welcome, but not enough.
🎉 Thrilled to share ‘Disrupting the Welfare State? Digitalisation & the Retrenchment of Public Sector Capacity’ open access🔓 in
@NPEjournal
.
The research analyses digitalisation reforms in the context of the political economy of the welfare state.
🧵
Second of all, does
@tom_watson
have no idea how dangerous this precedent is? This is Trump-level politics. It isn't based on facts (which the best polling stats at least try to get close to, even if they're often wrong in an age of - ironically - plummeting trust in politicians)
I’ve put down some thoughts on the rich's cosplaying of common people & what 'middle class' means in the age of precarity bc I haven’t been able to stop thinking about
@SamFriedmanSoc
et al’s study
(Only the first part is ~personal essay~, I promise)
Had a great time speaking at my first
#Folkem
ødet! Thanks to all the organisers & co-panelists 🫶🏻
I am nonetheless weirded out by how many of the biggest events are run by Denmark’s biggest firms.
At times it felt less like a “democracy festival” than a corporate away weekend…
13 years ago, Cameron slammed New Labour for its "regime of government by management consultant".
But outsourcing has only soared since then.
Today
@MazzucatoM
& I argue we must invest inside our public sector to build an economy for the common good
Over the moon to share that from 15 March I'll be joining
@ioa_cbs
for a 3-yr Post Doc in International Political Economy with
@LenSeabrooke
& the Organizations, Markets & Governance group!✨
Truly a dream role. Thanks
@IIPP_UCL
@MazzucatoM
@rainerkattel
for everything in my PhD
I've been trying to avoid venting on Twitter recently because I feel like it isn't productive but just WOW on so many levels. First of all, the Labour Party has actual democratic structures - no MP should get to undermine these by running rogue online polls that anyone can access
You don’t know what boring dystopia looks like until you’ve actively spent time reading management consultants’ LinkedIn posts and their congratulatory responses from other management consultants
Even after so many hours working on this together over the past couple of years, seeing my name on the cover of an Allen Lane book is 🤯🤯 - & next to
@MazzucatoM
who I will be forever so grateful to for having the faith to invite her PhD student as co-author 🌹 I am very lucky
This charade tells us nothing about how the Labour Party should approach Brexit, though it epitomises the type of politics that got us into this mess in the first place: a politics that does not respect democracy and is fundamentally built on lies.
Today I'm thinking of my brother, who is five hours into a fourteen hour shift at a London pub.
On Thursday there were as many Covid-19 deaths recorded in the UK as in the entire European Union.
In my interview with
@AlJazeera
yesterday, I discussed the linked between Britain's health crisis, the energy crisis, a decade of austerity and the long-term failure to invest in renewable energy infrastructure.
When public services have already been gnawed to the bone, where will “efficiencies” be found?
The answer: more privatization, weakening public employee conditions & the concomitant growth of financialised, predatory services firms.
Me for
@guardian
:
If you missed it last week, read our first of many pieces on the rise of the consulting industry and its effect on government capacity, business governance and democracy. Book out next year.
@RosieCollingto
Theranos was awful for many reasons and one of them is that as a blonde woman I can no longer put on a black roll neck without seeing Elizabeth Holmes staring back at me in the mirror
Imagine if Labour came out fighting. Imagine if, instead of meek slogans for cowardly New Public Management, the party went all in against the war on public services - in the media & on the ground. If it acted like doctors & nurses are on a frontline & not pawns in a policy game.
Thank you to everyone for all the support for the book! It’s been amazing 🤩
I’d like to think my younger self would be proud but honestly she would probably just be gutted I’m not living out my pop punk dreams
(Found this 2006 demo at my parents’ this morning)
I bought my first house when I was 28 and let me tell you kids how YOU can do it too
First, you need to quit your Netflix lifestyle (use someone else's). Second, you need your govt to ban property speculation, end landlordism & create coops. That's how we all get our own homes
Looking forward to presenting this paper written with
@MazzucatoM
at 'Shifting Narratives: The Political Economy of Public Services, Spending & Production' today at 12.30
It's an academic paper that provides some of the (theoretical & historical) context of our forthcoming book
NHS data is a valuable public asset.
We must act now to prevent Matt Hancock from opening it up to private interests if we truly want an NHS that works for the many – & not just the shareholders of Silicon Valley.
Me for
@openDemocracyUK
@OurNHS_oD
👇
4 reflections on doing a PhD as I enter PhD year 4:
1. You won't know what you're doing until you know what you're doing
2. Everything takes longer than you think
3. Writing a book = fun, insightful, also: will delay finishing PhD
4. Smoking does not help you concentrate. Quit.
One of the biggest shocks when I moved to Denmark 3 years ago was how, on the occasion I got an e-mail from a Scandi think tank/other org asking to "pick my brain" they would follow it up with an actual purchase order. Like they were offering to pay for my work?? (Subtweeting UK)
@hettieveronica
Interesting! But think there is another issue at play: Many traditionally mc jobs don't create traditionally mc conditions e.g. homeownership, so mc is more elusive today. Am sure (& know) there are many like Ella -almost def upper class if privately educated (the 7%!) cosplaying
we are moving to a new housing cooperative this week & I am once again reflecting on how much housing stability & freedom from the private rental market has improved my life quality.
re-upping this piece I wrote about Copenhagen's coop system a while ago
I have been listening to
@techwontsaveus
since Episode 1 so it was a huuuuge honor to join
@parismarx
today to talk all things government tech, outsourcing, creeping privatisation, open data & the Third Way (& why all these things are related).
Episode out some time next month!
@graceblakeley
Class *is* about empirical probability! That's the whole point. A working class person might by sheer fluke find a way to deal with getting evicted, but their *chance* of being able to do that versus a rich person is negligible
a bit more context: unlike in Silicon Valley, Danish coops aren't for the rich. my partner & i earn below median wage. we won't make money on our share of the coop (our flat is not an asset) but we don't lose money to a landlord every month either. we'll leave with what we put in
One unexpected consequence of the background anxiety that comes with publishing a book for the first time: working on my PhD has become a deeply meditative and welcome distraction rather than the thing that causes background anxiety
THE BIG CON is out in ONE WEEK! 📕
Pinching myself that in eight weeks I'm heading to Santiago for a few months! Interviews, fieldwork, archives, seminars in the new School of Government at UC Chile 🥳 Received the official acceptance letter last week - time to brush up on my Spanish 🇨🇱
pretty much everyone i've ever met in the years i've been engaged in access to meds policy & campaigns uses "big pharma" as shorthand for globally dominant companies - inc in meetings in the US (SEC, unis) & UK (parliament, DHSC). the industry doesn't like it - nobody else cares!
2 weeks after she got the jab, my granny contracted Covid-19. She's been in hospital with chest problems many times before - so we were initially terrified
But while the first dose didn't vaccinate her, it did protect her - she had minor symptoms, no cough & is now "100% fine"💉
Funny, they never talk about "increasing dependency" on the state when it's bailing out the banks, handing out billions to businesses, or outsourcing public services to companies they used to work for
Gov has lots of responsibilities: supporting the vulnerable, helping people to help themselves, balancing the books. Not as simple as you to make out Marcus. Extending FSM to sch hols passes responsibility for feeding kids away from parents, to the State. It increases dependency.
"The only solution to a 'Winners Take All' society is one in which winners get less. And we have to recognise that that's not going to happen voluntarily."
@AnandWrites
in discussion with
@MazzucatoM
This has been one of my favourite public events at
@IIPP_UCL
#IIPPWOWAW
There are definitely worse places to be invited!
Very much looking forward to talking about THE BIG CON co-authored with
@MazzucatoM
at
@EUI_EU
this evening.
Very excited we are hosting
@RosieCollingto
presenting her new book with
@MazzucatoM
'The Big Con' tomorrow, 17:00,
@EUI_Schuman
.
Join us if you'd like to learn more about the interplay of the consulting industry, governments and private businesses 👉
oh, in order to be able to sell your labour you have to give half your income every month to the person or company that owns where you live? sounds familiar 🤔
it blows my mind how, given the scale of govt spending around the world today, public attention on public services & outsourcing, the explosion of PhD programmes in pol sci & econ, there is so little engagement with theories of the state & capacity/power in contemporary academia
'owning' a home in most capital cities is a luxury only those with parental wealth can afford. coops are 1000x more egalitarian. people my age here can afford to think about having kids. the process of accessing a flat isn't perfect & there aren't enough of them, but it's a start
The energy crisis has been the worst of times for most Europeans, but the best of times for energy companies. When emergencies mean record profits in essential sectors, public and corporate interests are not aligned. We need a new playbook of emergency economics.
@EP_Petitions
Like many, I have previously experienced economic exclusion from academia so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that I think there should be more incentives & effort to communicate research beyond universities.
Step 1 is challenging the idea that academics who do so are “unserious”
“Consultants in business or finance recognise that they’re often brought in not to find the ‘correct solution’ to a problem but to legitimize a manager’s decision that’s already been made”
@BBCRadio4
’s doc about consultants is out (I’m in it!)
@MazzucatoM
"Collington &
@MazzucatoM
eschew a simple moral attack on a few parasitic firms in favor of a clear-eyed view of the industry's origins & drivers...Behind it lies a bigger warning to reshape social priorities in an age of crisis"
THE BIG CON in
@jacobin
I am so looking forward to & thrilled to have been accepted on the first
@MPIfG_Cologne
Summer School for Women in Political Economy in Sept!
Huge thanks to Saila,
@Ari_Tassinari
&
@bjoern_bremer
for organising! It couldn't have come at a better time...
Who benefits when the price of insulin soars?🧐
My working paper with
@INETeconomics
today finds that between 2009-2018, insulin manufacturers distributed $122 billion to shareholders.
So what does that mean for prices, patient access and innovation?👇