Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Ongoing omnishambles...


Omnishambles in general, a phrase coined for New Labour but used effectively against the Coalition. David Davis on ConHome this morning gives us a very good explication of why we appear to have an omnishambles - relating to Steve Hilton's California dreaming ("Did he actually think Yes Minister was fiction?" The Week). Although we know that most politicians have struggled with the Civil Servants Davis adds meat to the bones: "There was, throughout the Blair years, a serious corrosion of the standards of the Civil Service. It started with the now infamous Order in Council, allowing political appointees, in the form of Alistair Campbell and Jonathan Powell, to give orders to civil servants."... ..."So the problem has got worse, to the point that the reality has overtaken the “Yes, Minister” caricature. The comedy has become the training film." And finishes with a sucker punch for David Cameron:
"But what Mr Hilton needs to remember is that either car [great/good government machine] will get you to your destination, so long as the driver knows where he is going."
Ouch!

2 comments:

Paul said...

Quite timely this post because I happened to be looking back at the reaction to the second 2010 budget this morning (there was a reason!) and one of the recurring themes was that it wasn't radical enough and was watered down. The reason for that was that the Conservatives had/have to appease the LibDems.

Now this is relevant because at work I get an RSS Feed when new legislation comes on board and it's always struck me how little real government is actually happening, everything is either EU driven or from one of the various Govt. departments that just seems to be tinkering at the edges. In some respects it makes sense though (not in a good way) because the Civil Servants are the one constant across the years so they must be doing the donkey work all the time and they are a little like the employee who has been in a job for ever and won't change their ways because 'they' know best.

Perhaps smaller Government really could start with losing a few MP's.

Span Ows said...

a few? About 200 would be about right! especially if the bastards want a 30% pay rise!