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Civil Service Out, Incompetence In?
20 January 2008 .
From the moment when the Dear Leader was elected a decade ago, he consciously changed the way that the executive in this country did its business - sofa cabinet and (unelected) political appointments in place of many senior professional civil servants, to give two examples.
(I'm not sure that I hold a brief for the status quo ante - government had often been pretty dire long before blair appeared. But I have heard it suggested that Britain's adventure in Iraq might have been a lot less precipitate if the old order had still pertained, and I'm certain that apparatchik ministers up to the most exalted level are in large part the result of blair's 'presidential' style.)
There was always incompetence, of course; but what has occurred to me, increasingly, is that the emasculation/decapitation of the civil service is at the centre of the quite breathtaking collapse in competence in government and administration over recent years...
...along with the flood of legislation, of course.
'sofa cabinet' 'civil service'
And Today's Rant Goes To LloydsTSB.
02 January 2008 .
I have banked with Lloyd's for forty years. For the first twenty, it was a good bank for a young man.
I was in the local branch the other day, and it occurred to me just how shabby it looked. In the normal course of things I wouldn't even much notice, let alone bother to write about it; but it came to me that in the last couple of weeks I've visited a friend in a shabby hospital, watched teachers and children doing their best in a shabby school, travelled on a depressingly shabby train (with not a single working toilet) and on shabby buses - one of which appeared to be a toilet - and listened to endless shabby muzak. And all those banal graffiti... (they may have more in the US, but they're a damned sight more artistic.)
It's like we just don't care.
20 years ago, La Thatch went to Jerusalem and came back twittering about how clean it was. Very patronising, I thought, but there you go. She was right - Jerusalem shamed us; so did, and does, every wealthy country (even most of the US) and many that aren't.
But to get back to Lloyd's. I'd left my pens at home, so I needed to use one from the bank to write a cheque; there were several in the bank, anchored by a cable to thin wooden shelves about three inches wide. None of the pens worked. Even if they had worked, the shelves are so gouged and rough that it is almost impossible to write on them anyway. But you can't take the pens to the nearby table (on which you could write... but where there are no pens).
It was two and a half years ago, when I was chatting to a manager, that I mentioned to her that I had asked the cashiers several times when there might be new pens to replace the ones which - already, then - didn't work. I said the shelves were unusable, too. And I asked why the pens needed to be anchored ('They get nicked,' she told me); I asked if she had used banks in other countries, where a small attrition of cheap pens is accepted as part of the normal cost of running a branch. I didn't expect that anything would change - it really was just conversation - and it hasn't.
I wouldn't mind if it weren't for the massive profit which the banks make, not through natural assets but by what often proves to be an unsustainable multiplication of our deposits. (If you've never looked at an analysis of a bank's balance sheet, you really should: 'eye-opener' doesn't begin to describe it.)
No... it's not even the profits; it's the insouciant way they treat their customers, down to the very environment. I venture to suggest that no bank in Germany (or most of western Europe), the US or Japan would present itself so lackadaisically. I've not seen any such, outside the UK, in 30 years.
I still haven't quite got there, yet.
Now I have: this branch of Lloyd's pinned up a mission statement to customers a couple of years ago. It promised that we could expect cashiers
and so on in a similar vein (I think one of the items said that they would be suitably dressed and another that they would listen while we spoke).
Every item was one which I would expect as a matter of course from any shop I might visit. Every one was one which I would assume that the employees of the bank would take for granted before they ever even thought of applying to work there... etc. etc. At best, the list might have been a reminder to the cashiers - if it had been pinned up away from customers' sight-lines.
To this day, I can't quite explain why I found this notice so patronising, so banal and so pointless. But I do hope someone from Lloyd's will see this rant. Not that they'll take any notice.
But they'll still expect billions from the taxpayer when they mess up.
LloydsTSB 'mission statement'
Sixty Billion Pounds. (Northern Rock)
18 December 2007 .
It's become Monopoly money.
The government's admissions today show that exposure of the British taxpayer in supporting Northern Rock will be almost L60 billion. Which, on past form, almost certainly means more. This for a company which was predicting annual profits of no more than L500 million (and that on the basis of some pretty shaky practices that quite recently would have caused outrage).
The taxpayer has taken over responsibility - to all intents and purposes, ownership - of the company's liabilities.
But the assets of the company are still owned by the shareholders and directors.
Our 'investment' in the company is secured, we're told, by all those houses. Well, I can only know what I see in the papers, but that's not my reading. However, what do I know? So allow that I'm wrong; is the government going to turf thousands of mortgage defaulters into the street (immediately to rehouse them)? Politically impossible. And even if the government gets its hands on all those repossessed houses, does it expect to sell them? How firm would housing prices be if the situation ever came to that? There could be no hope of realising anything like their present, inflated, paper value. The government could not hope to recover more than a small fraction of our 'investment' in anything but the very long term - and even that would be pretty uncertain.
Mr. King, at the time Governor of the Bank of England, is still in office and is treated by some as the guru. This is the man who, when alarmed officials pointed out to him - two years ago - that Northern Rock's banking practices were unsustainable, poo-pooed them.
But then, the Chancellor of the time has become Supreme Leader.
We mustn't use the 'I' word about such elevated persons. Although it is okay to refer to a 23-year-old as incompetent.
60 billion quid. It staggers the imagination. Without more luck than we perhaps deserve, this could dwarf every financial disaster since World War II. It's not impossible that, by a domino effect, it could precipitate a fundamental, permanent and extremely unpleasant change in the economic environment of this country. And yes, there were other ways to manage this crisis and maintain confidence (the whole purpose of this exercise) - or even deflect it, especially two years ago!
By the way: this is the second time I've written this item - the first was better, but a Microsoft alert while I was backing up (to tell me about unused icons!) wiped both the file being saved and my backup. Strangely, my settings confirm that I had unticked the 'alert me' boxes. Thanks again, Microsoft. I'm going back to my Mac.
The things we've put at risk because of that L60 bn commitment... (For figures, c/f: education budget, environmental budgets, aid budgets etc.)
The rest of Europe, unburdened by brown and king, have come through this year's difficulties comparatively unscathed, touch wood. And it's not being tied into the global system that did for us, Mr. King; it's our poor management - and playing fast and loose against the laws of Economics.
Sixty billion. What can you say?
'Mervyn King' 'Governor of the Bank of England' 'Monopoly money'
Ruth Kelly.
17 December 2007 .
Another Blair Babe clone, another government department, another private sector corporation (in Iowa, this time - what are our data, given at the government's demand, doing in Iowa?): 3 million names and details disappeared, this time, finally reported to Parliament after over six months.
Comment by some ex-ministerial ass from a back bench today: the fact that we hear about these cases shows how rare they are. Oh, yeah?
So Ms. Kelly, during an interview (Paxman, BBC2), says that no data-management system can be 100% secure. But later she says that nothing about this episode suggests any reason to rethink the national ID scheme. Does the brain listen to what the mouth is saying?
She also says that responsibility for the disappearance of this particular batch of data is primarily that of the company in Iowa. No, it isn't. I doubt if 3 million people thought they were giving their data to Americans: they gave it to a British government department. Presumably assuming good faith.
It just goes on and on.
Added 04.06.08: I happened to refer back to this item - and found that I hadn't mentioned which data had been lost this time. After six months, I can't remember for sure, because so much was going astray. Data loss has (almost) dropped out of the news in the last month or so (April/May): is that because the systems are working (almost) 100% now or because the media have lost interest? [I think this one was the driving licence data.]
'Ruth Kelly' 'Blair Babe' 'Data loss'
Jacqui Smith.
16 December 2007 .
I was told off today for being dismissive of Ms. Smith, the Home Secretary. I was reminded (or at least a vague bell was rung) that, as Chief Whip, she was a highly regarded by the Parliamentary Labour Party.
I sometimes get my facts wrong on this site*; I sometimes get my opinions wrong, too, in the sense that what I write with great fervour on Monday is an opinion which may have changed completely by Tuesday. I'm inclined to correct factual mistakes if I find them - which gets me wondering why I'm doing so, i.e. (once again) whom I think I'm writing for.
*The other day I said that the police force is under strength. Apparently the government says that it is up to complement; www seems to be divided. However, right or wrong, that fact stays in: it is certainly my perception that there is a shortage of cops; otherwise where are they? why can't they respond to emergency calls? and why are police stations closing hand over foot - 500 in 10 years?
If I make a mistake which is actually unjust to a person, even to a politician (!), I feel I must correct it (whether I want to or not) if there is the slightest possibility of someone I don't know reading it and being unacceptably misinformed.
Otherwise, I tend to let my items stand, even if I've subsequently changed my opinion. They are, after all, a record of their particular moment. So; do I change what I've written about Ms. Smith being a suit, an instantly forgettable New Labour apparatchik? I don't even have to think about that one; even if she turned out to have been one of the Spice Girls and a Nobel Prize winner, she is still no more than a bland, indistinguishable mouthpiece.
Still, she does stir me to one bit of speculation. I imagine that having been a New Labour Chief Whip probably explains exactly why she's the party functionary she appears to be as Home Sec.
Incidentally: what is it about so many of the Blair Babes that makes them so crass?
'blair babe' 'new labour apparatchik' 'Jacqui Smith'
Who needs The Graces? We have Jacqui Smith and Jack Straw!
15 December 2007 .
We have a police force that is under-strength; it also suffers from at least a degree of demoralisation. The government, presumably in recognition of these facts, awards it the highest pay-rise in the public sector (or so I believe, in combination with other rises in the last 10 years). This makes a nice change, since serious and dedicated officers feel that they have not been able to do their job because of the endless initiatives and targets from the self-same government.
Then, having made the award, the government delay it: the consequent reduction in pay to each officer is comparatively small, but it's enough for many officers to regard it as a gratuitous discourtesy. It seems likely that their federation would call a strike - if the police were allowed to come out.
But the police are not allowed to strike.
However; the prison officers (who are allowed to strike) seem to be heading for one next year.
So Straw comes up with a solution, which Smith will go along with. We'll put police officers in to run the prisons - in effect, as blackleg labour.
I imagine that the obvious, inherent, crashing insensitively - and sheer, unbelievable stupidly - of this coincidence of events will be written about at great length. I only mention it here because I think it may the sort of mind-bogglingly ill-considered government action for which society will be paying in a very big way for a long time.
Just to be clear: I'm not saying the police shouldn't take over prison duties in the event of a prison strike - I don't know what else the government could do in those circumstances; I am saying that the government should not be choosing such a moment to muck around with police pay rises.
Jacqui and Jacky... neither seems to have the brains they were born with.
'police right to strike' 'Jacqui Smith' 'Jack Straw' 'police officers in prisons'
Accountability.
13 December 2007 .
In a similar vein to the Promiscuous Data-Management item ( Classified - ID Cards, 13 December):
I am often critical of members of the government on this site, and sometimes downright hostile. I intend to continue to be so for as long as they seem to merit it. I have to say that I learned a degree of contempt, for the Dear and Supreme Leaders along with Blunkett and some others, partly by direct experience (which no doubt will gradually be unfolded for the benefit of yourselves) and partly by having lived in that laboratory for New Labour, Islington, long before !997. I'm glad to be mentioning this, because I don't want to be thought of as following the media or some bandwagon in the opinions I express; but that's not my point just now.
The fact is that the government must be allowed to govern. There has to be a degree of careful consideration - by the media and even by ordinary folk like me - as to how aggressive or even negative we as critics allow ourselves to be; the line may well change almost from day to day.
However, the reasons why I believe that this government must be criticised include:
1) There is not only a lack of accountability but a perversion of it: the various inquiries connected with the invasion of Iraq are perfect examples of this, being as they were hobbled by their terms of reference before they even started and arguably going downhill from there. Memory escapes me just now, but I think it was the Hutton report that produced evidence all in one direction but a conclusion in the other: that was also true in the H&E case against the Metropolitan Police re Menezes. The Father of the Nation has continued in this vein in other areas too, for example with his citizen juries. I should say that don't think there's anything particularly new in all this.
2) There is officious and burdensome legislation, in an ever-increasing flow, and less and less clarity that it is in the interests of the country or the public. This is not new either, but it has worsened since 1997. (The degree to which legislation is political rather than scientific has been a painful one all my adult life.)
3) Core to our contemporary politics is the war against terror, and core to that is the fact that this 'war' is largely self-inflicted. Whether that and the progressive loss of our liberties and control-freakery are one and the same issue is arguable.
4) There is a widespread feeling that Parliament is not fulfilling the duty - which would reduce the burden on the rest of us - of balancing the arrogance of the executive (which, due to the changes in the civil service as well as the nature of recent cabinets, means 'arrogance of the PM'). I was never asked to vote for or against a 'presidential' style of government.
There's more, but I've just been invited out for a drink. So, a quick conclusion:
I think I have just succeeded in justifying my site... it can't be that easy, surely!
The enticing smell of good Kentish hops is calling me away. Maybe a Part 2 in the next few days.
'New Labour, Islington' 'Government accountability' 'officious and burdensome legislation'
a24.