Thanks for providing an interesting and thoughtful article. We do need a bureaucracy, they are necessary evils in a country.
However, it would appear that you've ignored the role of psychology in this article and how it affects peoples behaviours and attitudes, along with the choices that they make. It is obvious and has been for a very long time that the civil service and most if not all NGOs and Quangos have been ideologically captured and subverted to serve and promote particular ideological interests. The same has happened across most of the West, as was the case in the Soviet Union and others socialist countries. All the institutions are vehicles of ideology and recruit, train and promote those who are adherents of the ideology and sideline, marginalise and remove those who are not. The only effective solution are to form alternatives as per Peter Hitchens suggestion about the police and as the Velvet Revolution in Czecheslovakia and Hungary proved necessary, at the time of the fall of the Warsaw Pact. Anyone tainted by the institutions cannot be trusted and therefore the things need to be removed and replaced in total.
As a former civil servant (sorry), what needs to be done first is to modernise and bring rigour to their hire and fire regime. It is pretty much impossible to discipline or remove anyone, except for gross misconduct. Every time jobs are threatened, the ones with initiative leave and you are left with even more of a concentration of incompetence and ideological activists. A lot of the time there is literally nothing to do, so make work flourishes and bosses are rewarded for the size of their command, rather than cutting waste.
The 'complexity of modern governmet' is the product of the size of modern government, not the other way round. If some of these departments were indeed indispensable and doing a good job, then these areas of our bureaucracy would function.
“As with most Tories there is no curiosity as to how the system works or what it’s actually for. They just have an ideological belief that the civil service should be of a certain arbitrary size - and that efficiency is an automatic consequence of amalgamating and cutting headcounts. ”
That seems to be the line that Labour’s Wes Streeting took when he announced NHS England was being brought back within his department and hoped to have savings of up to 50% in headcount? Perhaps it’s a common belief amongst politicians of all parties?
A family member works in NHS England, certainly no fan of bureaucratic bloat. Apparently, Streeting's 'pruning' is a total s-show. Bull in a china shop stuff. Not much prior policy work it seems. Thing is, doing this stuff badly tarnishes the idea of reducing the civil service for years ahead.
Unfortunately that’s so easy to believe. It appeared that Labour hadn’t done any prior work on policy. Just kept quiet, as everyone voted en masse against the Tories.
Grok repeats back what DEFRA says about itself, and from that it sounds likely that there are separate policy groups for each species of fish. In the context of a much diminished fishing industry, the bureaucracy in the background probably does need pruning.
It's very hard to believe that Reform will be able to reform very much, even if anyone did have a clue. Perhaps if they win a General Election (there will be another one surely, if only for form's sake), they may be able to achieve some shoring up here, a finger in the dyke there. No substantive permanent improvement in governance can however be achieved without massive, monumental change. The system is already visibly, tangibly crumbling. This makes the most likely outcome a massive mire of muddle, with constant failures in various sectors, leading to futile firefighting, further decay. and perhaps finally collapse - when all our constructive discussions will be rendered so much idealistic hot air.
Thanks for providing an interesting and thoughtful article. We do need a bureaucracy, they are necessary evils in a country.
However, it would appear that you've ignored the role of psychology in this article and how it affects peoples behaviours and attitudes, along with the choices that they make. It is obvious and has been for a very long time that the civil service and most if not all NGOs and Quangos have been ideologically captured and subverted to serve and promote particular ideological interests. The same has happened across most of the West, as was the case in the Soviet Union and others socialist countries. All the institutions are vehicles of ideology and recruit, train and promote those who are adherents of the ideology and sideline, marginalise and remove those who are not. The only effective solution are to form alternatives as per Peter Hitchens suggestion about the police and as the Velvet Revolution in Czecheslovakia and Hungary proved necessary, at the time of the fall of the Warsaw Pact. Anyone tainted by the institutions cannot be trusted and therefore the things need to be removed and replaced in total.
As a former civil servant (sorry), what needs to be done first is to modernise and bring rigour to their hire and fire regime. It is pretty much impossible to discipline or remove anyone, except for gross misconduct. Every time jobs are threatened, the ones with initiative leave and you are left with even more of a concentration of incompetence and ideological activists. A lot of the time there is literally nothing to do, so make work flourishes and bosses are rewarded for the size of their command, rather than cutting waste.
The 'complexity of modern governmet' is the product of the size of modern government, not the other way round. If some of these departments were indeed indispensable and doing a good job, then these areas of our bureaucracy would function.
You say:
“As with most Tories there is no curiosity as to how the system works or what it’s actually for. They just have an ideological belief that the civil service should be of a certain arbitrary size - and that efficiency is an automatic consequence of amalgamating and cutting headcounts. ”
That seems to be the line that Labour’s Wes Streeting took when he announced NHS England was being brought back within his department and hoped to have savings of up to 50% in headcount? Perhaps it’s a common belief amongst politicians of all parties?
A family member works in NHS England, certainly no fan of bureaucratic bloat. Apparently, Streeting's 'pruning' is a total s-show. Bull in a china shop stuff. Not much prior policy work it seems. Thing is, doing this stuff badly tarnishes the idea of reducing the civil service for years ahead.
Unfortunately that’s so easy to believe. It appeared that Labour hadn’t done any prior work on policy. Just kept quiet, as everyone voted en masse against the Tories.
Danny Kruger was apparently a bully at school according to my best friend who was at Eton with him briefly. Maybe he’s reformed? Like Farage?
Grok repeats back what DEFRA says about itself, and from that it sounds likely that there are separate policy groups for each species of fish. In the context of a much diminished fishing industry, the bureaucracy in the background probably does need pruning.
Possibly - but I don't know that, and neither does Kruger, because he hasn't done any policy work.
It's very hard to believe that Reform will be able to reform very much, even if anyone did have a clue. Perhaps if they win a General Election (there will be another one surely, if only for form's sake), they may be able to achieve some shoring up here, a finger in the dyke there. No substantive permanent improvement in governance can however be achieved without massive, monumental change. The system is already visibly, tangibly crumbling. This makes the most likely outcome a massive mire of muddle, with constant failures in various sectors, leading to futile firefighting, further decay. and perhaps finally collapse - when all our constructive discussions will be rendered so much idealistic hot air.
My policy recommendation is 'Sauve qui peut'