Is AJ misleading us? Not in his mind.
The little fella can only say that 'reducing the workforce by 1000' will fix the problem. Why doesn't he outline the actual root cause of the alleged 'mainline fiasco' for all to see, including a breakdown of poor management decisions and related issues that have contributed? If you are going to wield an axe, start chopping at the core of the problem. The way the execs are acting you would think that they feel they are immortal, have been filled with divine holy spirit and are some sort of Elliot Ness ? Its time to remove the head of the fish.
I had a very interesting email from a colleague who is closely associated with Irish Business. It is his opinion that we are all labouring under our Australian beliefs and teachings. AJ isn’t attached to, or constrained by, these beliefs, teaching or our history. He is not an Australian and had been brought up in a Country where intellectual betrayal, or more specifically, mental reservation, casuistry and equivocation are accepted practice.
As he (my colleague) explained, the Collins Dictionary defines mental reservation as....’a tacit withholding of full assent or an unexpressed qualification made when one is taking an oath, making a statement, etc.’ Casuistry is ....’ reasoning that is specious, misleading, or oversubtle’.
The doctrines of mental reservation and casuistry were developed in the middle ages and are most often associated with the Jesuits. Mental reservation involves truths "expressed partly in speech and partly in the mind," relying upon the idea that God hears what is in one's mind while human beings hear only what one speaks. Verbally, “I did not steal any sheep on Tuesday”, mentally continuing, “it was on Wednesday”. It is a way of telling lies while being able to claim that you’ve been completely honest. For instance, the Primate of Ireland, Cardinal Desmond Connell, was comfortable with telling journalists that diocesan funds are not used to pay off the victims of clerical abusers, and he was very pleased with the subtlety of his language. He took great satisfaction in explaining that he didn’t say such funds were not used in the past, and if the journalists happened to be hoodwinked by his clever use of language, why that was just their own misfortune for not being as slippery smart as the Cardinal!
In our culture the statement, “Mr. Boyce is not in the office” typically means that Boyce is not taking phone calls right now (or, at least not this particular phone call). The caller understands (or should understand) that this is a polite way of saying, “Boyce is not available to you at this moment, even though he is actually in the office.” No one is really fooled by this expression using ambiguous language; we simply take it for what it is.
President Bill Clinton was educated at the foremost Jesuit training centre, Georgetown University. According to Clinton's biographer David Maraniss, the President owed his formidable skills as a criminal defendant to 'his training in casuistry at Georgetown University'. Casuistry is equivocal to rationalization, “to cause something to seem reasonable, to provide plausible but untrue reasons for conduct”. We all recall Bill Clinton, a former Rhodes Scholar, insist that he did not have sexual relations with that woman, when most guys in his position would be more than happy to think of what he got up to as just that!
Closer to home there was the Australian Spycatcher affair. Sir Robert Armstrong, now Baron Armstrong, produced the magnificent phrase “economical with the truth”. The world loved the patent absurdity of Armstrong’s phrase, and laughed at it, because we all understood what he meant. Economical with the truth! Every parent knows who took the sweets, or put a football through the window. It was Mister Nobody or maybe a kamikaze.
The question that should be asked of AJ and the QF spin doctors is, ‘Do you have a mental reservation in respect of your statement?’
Last edited by Pundit; 16th Aug 2011 at 13:43.