It follows close on the heels of the PPE procurement disaster. A disastrous central procurement model that left NHS workers short of PPE whilst firms holding vast stocks of kit that met the standards struggled against official deafness to offer it for sale; they were ignored, officials placed themselves beyond contact and hid behind websites and an RAF transport aircraft spent a week flying in a few boxes of gowns from Turkey.
And let's not even mention the central testing fiasco, or the manifest failures of Public Health England that left us so poorly prepared against the most basic and fundamental of risks. All of it, every disgraceful failure, every shaming bungle, stems from Whitehall's toxic grasp on central power at the cost of effectiveness. The command and control mindset that insists on trying to micromanage the entire nation's health response from Richmond House has been lethal.
The fall yesterday evening of Neil Ferguson can only improve the quality of the government's response. Like the departed Scottish CMO Catherine Calderwood, Ferguson thought the rules were only for little people. I'm sure these incidents aren't isolated; I'll bet that senior civil servants across the country are happily breaching the rules to visit their yachts, second homes, lovers or to receive hookers and rent boys at their lockdown dossholes, smug in their inviolability just so long as the press doesn't find them out. The hypocrisy is nauseating.
The one lesson we must take from both the Brexit fiasco and the Covid farce is that we must clear out this dross from Whitehall. We must localise and decentralise, we must trust regions, counties and lower tiers of government to be competent. We must increase democratic control, local scrutiny and accountability. If this nonsense has taught us anything, it's that we normal people can act responsibly, even if Whitehall can't.
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| We've had it with entitled and privileged technocrats |
20 comments:
Still blaming the civil service after ten years of the Tories?
Come off it.
THat's exactly it Radders.
Since the war the civil service has basked in its self conferred status of "smoothly purring rolls royce".
Confronted now with the most serious national crisis since then it is quite clear (although it has been for a long time to anyone who bothered to look) that it is in reality an appalling clunker that wouldn't even make it to the testing station let alone pass its MOT.
I suspect that even the BBC and the media classes will not be able to pretend otherwise for much longer as the citizens, in many ways better informed than ever before will know the truth.
Could be a battle royal on the horizon as they won't ride quietly into the sunset. Smug bastards.
Let us also not forget the SARS, MERS, Hong Kong and Asian flu epidemic/pandemics that had greater casualty lists but zero lock down.
Let us also not forget that the current situation is being (mal) managed to suit a narrative that we are yet to be party to.
There's a lot we will need to REMEMBER about the who and why of this whole farcical situation for those people should not be allowed to get away with it.
Over at longrider's blog you can vote for the app. Most give it a rude answer.
Anyone with any sense will avoid this thing like the plague. Not because it tracks but because it lumbers you with a problem you can't get rid of. Imagine getting a ping that you must isolate and get tested. You bell up the test site, sit in a queue and if lucky get a test Tuesday fortnight. Go for the test and wait for a response, and wait and wait. Then you might get an 'all clear' or some equivocal response or they lose the test.
Worse still the DM suggests there is nothing to stop folk self reporting they have CV symptoms without any test or verification. Bummer, the mal-inclined can lock down hundreds all for nothing.
This test is all downside and little upside.
The difficulty is the message; 'look chaps, all we have is a few masks and no medicine, some of you are going to have to die so that we (especially us) don't go broke'. Whether the numbers are in the tens or hundreds or thousands is unknown. This is a very hard message to get across and stand any chance of ever getting voted in again.
You forgot to mention Communities Minister Jenrick in your list of arrogant "public servants" who think the draconian rules the Government imposed on us don't apply to them.
Over two months ago Nigel Farage starting calling for the Government to stop dozens of flights a day coming to the UK from infection hotspots (Italy, Spain, NY, Iran) and the passengers - completely unchecked - allowed to disperse themselves around the country using the most overcrowded underground system in Europe and other public transport.
I wrote to my Conservative MP, who I reluctantly voted for when BP candidates were stood down and he replied, defending the "expert"/Government decision to leave our borders wide open with hundreds of thousands entering every day.
Now we're told Shapps is CONSIDERING a 14-day quarantine for incomers. And the "experts" have admitted that a wave of infections came in from Italy and Spain in March.
These "experts" and Ministers may have degrees, qualifications and plenty of letters after their names. But they don't have an ounce of COMMON SENSE.
I won't be downloading the Government's Surveillance App. Firstly, I well recall when the ENTIRE Child Benefit database was accidentally released and secondly, as the police demonstrated with their drones, it won't only be used how they claim it will. The Security Services, Police, HMRC and DWP must be salivating as the prospect.
Here's what localism can achieve:
4 weeks ago, me and 4 like minded friends formed a community interest company (CIC) called "Print for Victory". It is a bottom up approach to providing PPE (face visors in our case) 3D printed by local hobbyists and provided to local carers.
In week one, we had hired 600 printers from Stornoway down to Penzance; built a website and a database to trach production and deliver; built out the social media on Facebook #printforvictory.
In the following 3 weeks, we printed and distributed 18,000 visors right across the UK - all free of charge. And we're still going strong at about 1,000 visors per day.
Burke's little platoons hard at work.
I saw the BBC interviewing IOW residents who all seemed to think the app was a 'great idea' - of course that only applies if you think the BBC was an honest reporting medium and not a puppet of government propaganda....
Waiting to see some 'honest' responses!
Download it onto that old mobile you keep in the drawer as a reserve.
Careful PoisonC. Those that show independence, capability and efficiency are a threat to Government control.
OK, yes, I bang on about it all the time but FFS the lack of suitable contempt and derision for those that purport to 'rule' us is pathetic. Where are all the real Reporters who used to live for the opportunity to expose corruption and make a big name for themselves?
This plandemic farce has gone beyond parody and reached the point of 'cor blimey' (as my late father used to say) and it's past time we started being more cynical and questioning of the narrative.
Stop discussing the (fake) death numbers and start asking WHY?
Yeah, but actually being able to organise a piss-up in a brewery is "communism innit?"
There's an argument that the Middle Class is really two middle classes - the Yeomanry and the Clerisy ( https://quillette.com/2020/02/27/the-two-middle-classes/ ):
"First there is the yeomanry or the traditional middle class, which consists of small business owners, minor landowners, craftspeople, and artisans, or what we would define historically as the bourgeoisie, or the old French Third Estate, deeply embedded in the private economy. The other middle class, now in ascendency, is the clerisy, a group that makes its living largely in quasi-public institutions, notably universities, media, the non-profit world, and the upper bureaucracy."
If you squint a bit you can portray much of modern politics and life as a struggle between the Yeomanry and the Clerisy. The debate about neo-liberalism/globalism and the local, the debate about Big Government/Small Government all rest on this difference. It's 'Middle Class' civil war.
Labour are now run by and represent the Clerisy. The Conservatives are now run by the Clerisy too, but pay at least some attention to the Yeomanry. The Working Class don't figure in the debate.
So if you want to roll back centralisation, globalism, and po-faced virtue signalling identity politics then you should support the bourgeoisie and the private economy. We could start with a scorched march back through the organisations, reducing them as we go.
Sir, as the great JmE would have put it, you can't be serious.
governments never make mistakes. when their infallible policies do not obtain the wanted results is surely the plebs fault. they did not obey and comply as they should have, and they must be punished for it with more fines and harsher laws. or the policies were too tame, and must be amended, and made more strict and draconian.
"We must increase democratic control"
quite the contrary Sir. individual freedoms must be protected by the abuses of the screaming mobs. democracy is not supposed to be "control".
while for sure centralization is bad, the real problem is governments able to impose at gunpoint all their crazy schemes.
Raedwald said:
'The one lesson we must take from both the Brexit fiasco and the Covid farce is that we must clear out this dross from Whitehall. We must localise and decentralise, we must trust regions, counties and lower tiers of government to be competent. We must increase democratic control, local scrutiny and accountability. If this nonsense has taught us anything, it's that we normal people can act responsibly, even if Whitehall can't.'
Just been watching Hancock on Sky and for me at least he doesn't inspire confidence. I think the 'dross' feed off each other: politicians and civil servants alike. We used to run our own affairs until Heath decided otherwise and invalidated our self-determination. It's been downhill ever since. Austin Mitchell (Labour MP for Great Grimsby) is a good source for the Labour side of things regarding our membership; the effect it had and how we ceased doing the governing stuff, that really mattered, day-to-day. On his own party:
'..it has become a mob of cosmopolitan meritocrats who love the European Union more than those at the bottom of society’s top-heavy heap.'
That's what membership did to the Labour Party but it is even worse for the Tory Party who seem to have given up on conservatism altogether. If you think it (membership) was bad for the two major parties just look what it did to Whitehall? It made it dysfunctional so here we are, battling mediocrity in a time of crisis.
Steve
Discovered Joys - Superb reference, thanks!
Jim - James O'Malley in the speccie has a good piece on the shortcomings of the NHS app. It comes down to the fact that a decentralised app would created greater demand on local testing - and as we don't have local testing (the numpties having insisted on a single national lab) we can't have a working decentralised app. Europe, with its decentralised testing, can adopt the decentralised app easily. It's a textbook example of how one bad decision creates a whole host of failures.
It's not just Whitehall.
The Spiteful Nannying Party centralised all they could on Edinburgh, police, fire, ambulance, education,transport health etc etc as long as they could stick Scottish in the name somewhere.
As predicted, it was the reverse Midas touch, nothing they are involved with performs as well as South of the border let alone as competently as international competitors.
They have been quite vicous in stamping out any sign of local competence.
My experience of local government is that the full time employees and executives behave as the central mob. Again zero accountability, overpaid, never available to talk to and many "work" from home but do sod all!
Nothing performs as well as south of the border!
I didn't think that was possible. You have my deepest sympathies!
Passport to Pimlico it is then!
But, will they all have to be blue?
There's a face you'd never tire of slapping - ooops suppose I'll be getting a visit now!
NICE TRY
EXCEPT - that is the opposite to what is still called the tory party wants to do ..
[ The current tory party is nothing of the sort - they are fascist-lite thieves - a sort of mini-Trump coalition.
HINT:
A Conservative governments usual recipe for asset-stripping ( In the name of "eeficiency", natch ):
a) Appoint a (free-market doctrinaire) minister in charge
b) Cut the budget/demand efficiency improvements
c) Set the department up to fail, until a crisis ensues
d) Appoint lots of non-executive directors from the private sector "for their expertise"
e) Existing senior management are blamed/take early retirement.
f) Minister leaves. New "troubleshooter" minister arrives with a very public remit to Fix This Failing Organization.
g) Private sector execs go back to the private sector ...
g) New minister outsources operations to one of the usual private sector orgs, who just happen to have re-hired all those private-sector execs as management: they're parachuted back in to run the department
h) Finally, the previous minister is appointed as a board member of the private sector operator (as payback)
This is a tried-and-tested British government recipe for how to privatize something nobody in their right mind would privatize (air traffic control, the post office, the NHS, etc) for private/crony enrichment ... yes?
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