In a perverse way it's comforting to know that economic progress in other countries is also hampered by loony left wing thinking. Without wishing in any way to deny our own politicians credit for coming up with barmy social engineering plans it has to be said that many of them have been borrowed or adapted from our former colonial master, Great Britain.
For example the current obsession with the number of women on the boards of publicly quoted companies seems to concern leftie meddlers (most of whom have never run a business) more than it does the women who are apparently being denied the joys of sitting in endless meetings and answering damn fool questions from analysts at the AGM.
Maria Miller, the UK Women's and Equalities Minister has rightly dismissed calls from the Guardian reading Labour front bench that targets should be set for the number of women in top executive posts. In February 2011 a report from Lord Davies of Abersoch set a target of 25% female representation on the boards of Britain's Top 100 Companies by 2015.
The report was welcomed by ministers according to a report in The Sunday Times (London) and PM David Cameron went so far as to suggest that quotas could be introduced to get women top executive jobs. So the UK government, which at times seems to experience difficulty in running its own affairs, now presumes to tell private enterprise how to run their businesses. Loony tunes.
Presumably if Marks and Spencer or Waitrose don't have the necessary quota of women on the board then they will have to shut up shop because they would be trading illegally. Either that or they would be subject to a fine to help balance George Osborne's deranged quantitative easing experiments. And just supposing women said that they would rather not be on the main board thanks very much. Would they be press ganged into the job? Would their children be taken from them by social workers until they agreed? You can see how unworkable this is can't you?
There has to be a reason that there are now only two female executives in the FTSE Top 100 companies; Angela Ahrendts of Burberry and Alison Cooper of Imperial Tobacco. It probably has nothing to do with the imagined glass ceiling in the corporate structure and everything to do with the fact that most women don't actually want to be part of the cut and thrust of the corporate world at such a senior level. High flyers don't necessarily need to join the board to earn a fortune in the business world.