To the Financial Times
While it is heartwarming to see the concern of Simon Walker of the Institute of Directors for other countries struggling to rebuild their economies, perhaps he may like to address a problem closer to home. The UK has twice as many managers (which includes directors) in proportion to total employment as the average for the rest of the EU. This is not matched by twice the gross domestic product per head.
Promptly shedding the surplus 1.6 million, presumably without extended notice periods and excessive severance pay, should directly improve overall productivity and cut the employment cost in the UK economy by perhaps around £80bn a year. Subsequent re-employment as direct labour should add output.
Ian Gascoigne, London

Good letter!  You see this everywhere, starting with the people in suits, carrying clip-boards, in the supermarket. “Managers” everywhere . Inventory control is computerized these days, or should be, but there they all are, looking important, wandering around , being asked where the customer can find the yogurts and so on, while apparently checking the stock of baked beans.

Empire building is as old as human history.  The trick is not to have the buck stop with you, so you ensure that there is an assistant manager beneath you to take the blame.  In turn, he/she finds an ingenious reason for why the burden of work is too great, and in no time you have an assistant-assistant manager.  But when you want to phone or email a company to complain about something you get a half- trained newcomer who can tell you the name of her supervisor, and who has to deal with all complaints, poor kid.  Management  is AWOL when it comes to interacting with customers.

In America the only known qualification for being a manager is being able to speak Spanish, so that you can supervise the poor people on an unliveable minimum wage.  Otherwise, American managers are “missing in action” as well.  So I agree with Mr. Gascoigne (above).  Fire a whole load of them – and raise that minimum wage.