A "here today, gone tomorrow" politician (thank you Robin Day) - or indeed placeman/woman - is never going to 'defeat' an entrenched permanent bureaucracy
Having worked in a government administration as well as in small business and large corporations, I believe that the main difference between them is the profit motive. Government department heads prepare a budget based on what they are expected to do during the next year. Towards the end of a financial year, if they find that they have surplus funds, they try to find ways to spend them so that they don’t get their budget reduced for the next year. This is a completely different and opposing mindset from that of a small business and large corporations, where the incentive is to reduce costs as much as possible. Treasury officials try to introduce a requirement to be cost effective but this is difficult when demands on services are so elastic. The problem is also the general public’s mindset where they expect government to solve any or all of their problems instead of resolving them themselves. I think this is partly the problem with the NHS also because anything that is “free” to the public tends to get abused. Pete is generally correct in his assertion that many politicians don’t understand the complexity of the functions of government departments. However, there’s also a factor of “empire building” among some department heads. I don’t believe there will ever be a perfect solution to these problems because we are all just human beings with normal human emotions and motivations.
The evidence is very clear that ignorant, shallow and incompetent politicians achieve very little including cutting bureaucracy.
My second point is that demand five, of six, from The Harrogate Agenda demands that there is "No taxation or spending without consent' which in essences would see a government's annual spending plans being presented to the people for their approval.
A fundamental is the basic prosperity of the country. This, for very many years, has been pretty dismal, and much of the reason is a high electricity cost due to renewables.
Due to the contracts and their duration means that, even if a government reversed policy we are locked into high prices for years, or an expensive buy off of renewables generator companies.
In other words, even with a reduction in government expenditure, if that is even possible, the prognosis is pretty dire for our economy.
One of the reasons behind the current rise in disability payments is simple. Women are having children later in life. The prefrontal correct that is responsible for large amounts of variation in disability like ADHD and autism, is highly vulnerable to mutation in DNA, which is what happens to women's egg cells the later in life they have children. The older the mothers, the higher the autism and ADHD rate.
The NHS saw this coming decades ago and chose to do nothing about it. It had access to the data from the USA and other nations which began especially treating ADHD which just got stupid headlines about the columbine massacre being caused by ritalin in the press.
Now the public knowledge bomb of ADHD/autism has hit and people are going for treatment and it's a "sudden wave" that has been coming for generations. It's a sign of incompetent governance. Most people with untreated ADHD don't live past 40 due to lifestyle factors and risk taking or are locked up in jail. These people are rightly going to be demanding access to benefits to help out and the welfare bill is only going to grow due to it.
The main issue is how "siloed" the NHS is where it takes forever to get a diagnosis to effect treatment as early as possible to reduce the downstream risks to the public.
In reality, it is for politicians themselves to instruct civil servants and provide them with policy direction.
So
what you're saying is
When Gus O'Donnell, the then current head of the UK civil service, took it upon himself to say he regarded his job as looking after global rather than national welfare, this was "policy direction" given to him ?
Cutting bureaucracy seems to rarely work, but I do think ours is seriously flawed. Anecdotally, every civil servant I know has either become institutionalised and defensive or radicalised by his ineffective the system is.
These kinds of posts are very informative. I know bugger all about this kind of stuff. But I do believe that well-meaning intelligent people have tried to fix things and failed, so the problems should not be oversimplified.
Ultimately, my hunch is that the necessary changes will be unacceptable to the electorate, so circumstances will need to force those changes upon us. My guess is we are 5-10 years away from that day.
The fundamental problem with the UK economy is its dependence on house prices rising to control spending.
I’d like to see house prices halving which would allow young people to afford purchasing a property and to afford kids.
Disposable income would increase whilst benefit costs would reduce (lower rents, universal credits).
What’s good about a high priced property when either the government takes it off you for your health care or your family hover around waiting for your demise to solve their financial problems?
A "here today, gone tomorrow" politician (thank you Robin Day) - or indeed placeman/woman - is never going to 'defeat' an entrenched permanent bureaucracy
SELECT * FROM MPs WHERE Clue > 0
0 Row(s) returned
Having worked in a government administration as well as in small business and large corporations, I believe that the main difference between them is the profit motive. Government department heads prepare a budget based on what they are expected to do during the next year. Towards the end of a financial year, if they find that they have surplus funds, they try to find ways to spend them so that they don’t get their budget reduced for the next year. This is a completely different and opposing mindset from that of a small business and large corporations, where the incentive is to reduce costs as much as possible. Treasury officials try to introduce a requirement to be cost effective but this is difficult when demands on services are so elastic. The problem is also the general public’s mindset where they expect government to solve any or all of their problems instead of resolving them themselves. I think this is partly the problem with the NHS also because anything that is “free” to the public tends to get abused. Pete is generally correct in his assertion that many politicians don’t understand the complexity of the functions of government departments. However, there’s also a factor of “empire building” among some department heads. I don’t believe there will ever be a perfect solution to these problems because we are all just human beings with normal human emotions and motivations.
The evidence is very clear that ignorant, shallow and incompetent politicians achieve very little including cutting bureaucracy.
My second point is that demand five, of six, from The Harrogate Agenda demands that there is "No taxation or spending without consent' which in essences would see a government's annual spending plans being presented to the people for their approval.
For further details:-
https://harrogateagenda.org.uk/
A fundamental is the basic prosperity of the country. This, for very many years, has been pretty dismal, and much of the reason is a high electricity cost due to renewables.
Due to the contracts and their duration means that, even if a government reversed policy we are locked into high prices for years, or an expensive buy off of renewables generator companies.
In other words, even with a reduction in government expenditure, if that is even possible, the prognosis is pretty dire for our economy.
One of the reasons behind the current rise in disability payments is simple. Women are having children later in life. The prefrontal correct that is responsible for large amounts of variation in disability like ADHD and autism, is highly vulnerable to mutation in DNA, which is what happens to women's egg cells the later in life they have children. The older the mothers, the higher the autism and ADHD rate.
The NHS saw this coming decades ago and chose to do nothing about it. It had access to the data from the USA and other nations which began especially treating ADHD which just got stupid headlines about the columbine massacre being caused by ritalin in the press.
Now the public knowledge bomb of ADHD/autism has hit and people are going for treatment and it's a "sudden wave" that has been coming for generations. It's a sign of incompetent governance. Most people with untreated ADHD don't live past 40 due to lifestyle factors and risk taking or are locked up in jail. These people are rightly going to be demanding access to benefits to help out and the welfare bill is only going to grow due to it.
The main issue is how "siloed" the NHS is where it takes forever to get a diagnosis to effect treatment as early as possible to reduce the downstream risks to the public.
Auto correct, "prefrontal cortex"
In reality, it is for politicians themselves to instruct civil servants and provide them with policy direction.
So
what you're saying is
When Gus O'Donnell, the then current head of the UK civil service, took it upon himself to say he regarded his job as looking after global rather than national welfare, this was "policy direction" given to him ?
I don't think so
Cutting bureaucracy seems to rarely work, but I do think ours is seriously flawed. Anecdotally, every civil servant I know has either become institutionalised and defensive or radicalised by his ineffective the system is.
These kinds of posts are very informative. I know bugger all about this kind of stuff. But I do believe that well-meaning intelligent people have tried to fix things and failed, so the problems should not be oversimplified.
Ultimately, my hunch is that the necessary changes will be unacceptable to the electorate, so circumstances will need to force those changes upon us. My guess is we are 5-10 years away from that day.
The fundamental problem with the UK economy is its dependence on house prices rising to control spending.
I’d like to see house prices halving which would allow young people to afford purchasing a property and to afford kids.
Disposable income would increase whilst benefit costs would reduce (lower rents, universal credits).
What’s good about a high priced property when either the government takes it off you for your health care or your family hover around waiting for your demise to solve their financial problems?