By: Blonde Two
If there is one phrase that gets my Blonde hackles up, it is that ridiculous non-rhyming, not-actually alliterative, politically-inept idiom ‘think tank’.
In fact I am not even sure if it is an idiom but it doesn’t deserve the time it would take for me to find out. We should definitely remove it from the English language.
Whoever decided that the best way to solve problems would be to assemble a random batch of people, and pay them to sit in posh hotels producing ideas about something in which they had no experience, deserves a really strong telling-off.
Imagine if a think tank had debated Francis Drake’s circumnavigation of the globe. It would have taken six years for a start and the resulting advice would probably have been:
Something obvious like, “Make sure you take enough biscuits.”
Something stupid like, “Have you thought of swimming instead?”
Or something defeatist like, “Don’t be silly the world is flat.”
I think it is quite likely that a think tank did get to Magellan 58 years earlier because he died before completing his circumnavigation. I imagine him lying in his bunk buried under the list of Ye Olde Thinke Tanke instructions that had been presented to him at the start of the journey. Like modern-day teachers, nurses and doctors, he probably just gave up!
Let’s not have any Think Tanks (doesn’t deserve capitals). They must be really expensive for a start, imagine the cost of paying and providing for all of those ‘very important’ people. I have a new idea, let’s give some time and support to those actually doing these jobs to get together, share ideas and come up with brilliant solutions.
Think Tank – Pink Plank – Blink Bank – Link Lank – Mink Mank – Rink Rank – Stink Stank!!!
If you want inspiring in this direction read Churchill’s Iceman – Henry Hemming. This is a biography of unsung, debatably hero, Geoffrey Pike who had the capacity to think backwards, sideways and upside-down, creating many new inventions and methods of approach to a wide range of problems helping us to win WW2. Apart from that Geoffrey had an incredible life including escaping from a German POW camp, designing an aircraft carrier built from ice, and founding a school based on groundbreaking learning/teaching techniques which I am sure would interest you. This is a seriously written, comprehensively researched book using a lot of material only recently released from classification by MI5.