From T. W. KNIGHT
John Emsley should not be too surprised if most of his students are
being grabbed by accountancy firms (‘Chemists as accountants’, Forum, 14
April). Although in Britain we train more accountants than the rest of Europe
put together, demand still outstrips supply. The result is that accountancy
is the highest paid profession. This is despite the fact that accountants
do not actually produce anything, but merely move abstract quantities around,
rather like John Emsely’s atoms, only less substantial.
I find this predominance of ‘bean counters’ (Lee Iacocca’s expression
– he of Ford and Chrysler fame) not so much alarming as deeply depressing.
I suspect that all these accountants are a symptom rather than the cause
of Britain’s economic decline. It is perhaps no coincidence that Britain
now employs the smallest proportion of its workforce in manufacturing of
any country in Europe (East and West) except Albania, and has a per capita
Gross National Product only slightly larger than that of East Germany.
There is a plus side to all this. Accountants are environmentally friendly,
producing marginally less greenhouse gases than industry.
TW Knight Manchester
Advertisement
