For the Populist Right, the Civil Service is the Perfect Scapegoat: Visible Enough to Attack, Powerless Enough not to Fight Back. But Dismantling it Comes at a Price.
You haven’t lost your voice at all dear Bear - you are back to it with laser like focus. I’ve worked in the Civil Service and Local Government and every reorganisation I have been through has made the whole edifice more complicated and more cumbersome. Those at the coal face are working harder and harder until they break under the strain. Agree wholeheartedly with your analysis. Welcome back and have a coffee!
Every word. And I too live it every day, with local government officers (who are not civil servants but not everyone knows that) as well as civil servants, all desperately trying to do the right thing and demonstrate to the latest crop of elected wannabes that no, the law does not permit that or the consequence of A is B, have you thought of that?
But one day we’ll have another Cameron or a mango imitation who says I don’t like that law, scrap it.
Nothing to argue with there. My criticism switched to the privatised utility companies many years ago. There was an obvious inefficient side to use of the national organisations before privatisation but the rush to privatise and introduce competition (more like cartels) saw the sale of surplus land and assets with few noticing that the proceeds were treated as profits distributed to shareholders instead of ploughing it back to replace obsolete or leaking distribution networks. Now politicians are expressing surprise that, for example, Thames Water has gone from having no debts to owing about £2 billion in repayable loans and agreeing a 36 percent price rise over 3 years. So was it more efficient or less efficient before privatisation? Our old civil servants may have been a little slower but they were generally solid and reliable and never paid as much as their private enterprise equivalents.
The Thatcherite mood music was that the Public Sector is inefficient whilst the Private sector is.
Well that has been proven false.
The right wing private sector enthusiasts are motivated to extract public funds to line their own pockets.
And most of them have never run, and like Farage are incapable of running, complex organisations that are multi layered and expected to deliver complex services at huge scale.
What concerns me is that the examples abroad that you mention in your, as ever, excellent article, only go to confirm that a big enough proportion of the population appear to be gullible enough for long enough to allow these worse case scenarios to take hold. I will continue to have the conversations with those who seem persuaded by these charlatans but I confess I do despair.
Excellent analysis, as usual. The willingness of so many to believe so many lies about pretty much everything would be laughable if it weren't so alarming.
You haven’t lost your voice at all dear Bear - you are back to it with laser like focus. I’ve worked in the Civil Service and Local Government and every reorganisation I have been through has made the whole edifice more complicated and more cumbersome. Those at the coal face are working harder and harder until they break under the strain. Agree wholeheartedly with your analysis. Welcome back and have a coffee!
Every word. And I too live it every day, with local government officers (who are not civil servants but not everyone knows that) as well as civil servants, all desperately trying to do the right thing and demonstrate to the latest crop of elected wannabes that no, the law does not permit that or the consequence of A is B, have you thought of that?
But one day we’ll have another Cameron or a mango imitation who says I don’t like that law, scrap it.
Yep, been there.
Spot on 🐻 having worked in local government for most of my working life and my father in law who was a top senior Civil Servant....perfectly summed up
Brilliant piece.
I'd like to explain more, but there's no need. Your words say it better than I could
Nothing to argue with there. My criticism switched to the privatised utility companies many years ago. There was an obvious inefficient side to use of the national organisations before privatisation but the rush to privatise and introduce competition (more like cartels) saw the sale of surplus land and assets with few noticing that the proceeds were treated as profits distributed to shareholders instead of ploughing it back to replace obsolete or leaking distribution networks. Now politicians are expressing surprise that, for example, Thames Water has gone from having no debts to owing about £2 billion in repayable loans and agreeing a 36 percent price rise over 3 years. So was it more efficient or less efficient before privatisation? Our old civil servants may have been a little slower but they were generally solid and reliable and never paid as much as their private enterprise equivalents.
The Thatcherite mood music was that the Public Sector is inefficient whilst the Private sector is.
Well that has been proven false.
The right wing private sector enthusiasts are motivated to extract public funds to line their own pockets.
And most of them have never run, and like Farage are incapable of running, complex organisations that are multi layered and expected to deliver complex services at huge scale.
Just not up to it.
What concerns me is that the examples abroad that you mention in your, as ever, excellent article, only go to confirm that a big enough proportion of the population appear to be gullible enough for long enough to allow these worse case scenarios to take hold. I will continue to have the conversations with those who seem persuaded by these charlatans but I confess I do despair.
Excellent!
100% correct again! Your voice should be on all media channels dear Bear ❤
IMHO probably one of your best 🖖
Excellent analysis, as usual. The willingness of so many to believe so many lies about pretty much everything would be laughable if it weren't so alarming.
Bravo dear Bear 🐻!!!!!