On not giving a damn

The FT columnist Lucy Kellaway (one of my fave writers on management) has this week written on not giving a damn. It's advice some of posters here who take themselves very, very seriously should perhaps take to heart. It's free to view a limited number of FT articles every month just by registering; if you're lucky it will become available unencumbered on another site within the next few days if you can be bothered searching for it

Here's the opening paragraph:

Long ago, when I was a trainee on Wall Street I would get on to the subway every morning at 68th Street with a fellow Brit who worked at the same bank. As we piled into the packed train, often slightly hungover, I would ask him the same question. тАЬNeil, what donтАЩt you give?тАЭ

To which he would always reply: тАЬA shit, Luce, a shit.тАЭ Then we would both laugh.

Neil didnтАЩt give a shit and neither, at the time, did I. Yet his not giving one has not got in the way of his success. In due course, he left the bank and co-founded a company which he subsequently sold to Sir Martin Sorrell. He became the first of my friends to get really rich, and the first to arrange his life exactly as it suited him. Now he chairs various grand organisations and invests in small businesses. As far as anyone can tell, he is very happy indeed.

[Smiles]

Frankly, my dear Kommintern, I don't give a damn.

[youtube:muu0w9zu]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLnTWxpTQt4[/youtube:muu0w9zu]

[scottish-guy]

Frankly, my dear Kommintern, I don't give a damn..

Surely you're confusing Kommentariat with the Communist International (Comintern) founded in 1919?

Though I suspect he may well date from that era, I have always thought of Kommie as a fascist rather than a communist.