Niyamath Parveez

Life must be tough when you are angry or stupid and unfortunately, it is even harder when you are both. The dumbing down of Western civilization has been happening at a great rate in recent years but in the United Kingdom, it has been extremely noticeable as what was once the loud minority is now giving way to the vocal majority. If it’s not crying over reality TV shows or losing sleep over celebrities, there has been a creeping tendency for the right wing element to rise again and this is shown nowhere better than the Daily Mail newspaper. Quite frankly, the paper is an abomination and nothing more than a shell for racist articles and hatred of all things non-British. With the current economic crisis, any business or organization that didn’t look to protect itself and ensure it has a future would not be doing its job but it seems that even this is not good enough.

The latest issue that has the Daily Mail readers and writers up in arms, clearly the BBC hasn’t put a foot wrong this week, revolves around the British Council and their plans to outsource over 100 jobs to India in order to reduce their costs and help them operate more effectively. The posts are in the finance and IT sectors and are being carried out as part of the larger cost-cutting exercise that the British Council is undertaking. On one level, it can be seen that these jobs are being lost to the British economy and it will be a terrible time for the people directly concerned in losing their jobs. However, this is on a purely personal level, overall, the benefit for the British tax-payer is one of greater benefit by the fact that these services will be run as efficiently for a much lower cost. There obviously has to be a cut off at some point and if all the jobs went this way, there would be a justifiable outrage but for a situation such as this, it would be hailed as a positive move in any company or organization.

Given that the department is concerned with the interaction abroad with other nations, there may well be ancillary benefits to be gained from outsourcing these posts to India which otherwise would not have been available to the British Council in their previous working style. Striking the balance between getting the best working relationships and opportunities to grow needs to be struck with looking after number one but this is something that is not taken on board by a number of people, particularly those who want to rail and rally against anything which may benefit foreigners.

With the perilous state of the economy, anything which shifts the job market is going to grab attention and make people notice it but there are always two sides to every story. It is unlikely you will see any stories or articles praising the British Council for their brave move in outsourcing a number of jobs but these are the moves that will allow them to continue providing a valuable service for many years to come. When it comes to outsourcing, there is always a need to look at the bigger picture and if you have a narrow outlook on life, this is something that you just won’t see.