Is this Government finally talking small government?

Rhoda Klapp

I think we know how the Cabinet Office*, in the form of Sir Humphrey Appleby, approached the problem of making government smaller. I seem to remember it involved hiring another 5,000 civil servants....

* it may have been the department of administrative affairs.

Willam Blake's Ghost

Well that's all very interesting but do you seriously believe that the Government intends to follow through on this?

Most likely it is just spin as always used to divert attention away from the Government's real intentions.

A bigger public sector, more state control, more intervention.

I just don't believe anything the Government say anymore......

David

Yawn, another white paper, more talk. Nothing meaningful ever done by this lame apology for a government...zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

oldtimer

The blindingly obvious answer to the question posed at the head of this blog post ("Is this Government finally talking small government?") is an emphatic no!

Some reasons for this:
1 Brown is a busted flush.
2 Brown`s word cannot be trusted.
3 Brown has just saddled this country with the biggest debt and risk obligations in its history.
4 This governments public service track record is execrable - grossly inefficient, millions of lost records and data etc etc.
5 Brown`s foreword repeats the same old stale and dicredited mantra.

The aim is, no doubt, worthy but the executioner is just that - an executioner of hope, wealth and enterprise. You need a new, different government in power to make this idea fly.

Tim Carpenter LPUK

The quotes given do not indicate a smaller government:

"Just as a strong government is required to steer the economy through the global recession, it is also the case that a responsive state should withdraw from areas in which it is no longer needed...

TRANSLATION: We think the State is needed everywhere, so no reduction.

...Now more than ever government must prioritise its interventions...

TRANSLATION: But to suit OUR agenda, not the public's

...We know that it is the effectiveness not the size of government that counts.”

TRANSLATION: but we will carry on regardless.

perdix

Looks like another bit of NuLabour spin with a few ideas stolen from the Tories.

David Ossitt

Never listen to what he says, 'he being Gordon' look at what he does.

No goverment in our history has had as many ministers and goverment paid jobswoths.

Or as many aids, helpers or
hangers-on.

This sh*t for brains does not do small, simple, easy to understand.

He just does big, bigger and massive.

Doug

The problem with you Andrew is that after 12 years of experiencing Brown you still believe he is an honest broker. The man cannot cut overall spending. It has never even entered his head.

jim

Talk about grasping at straws. How gullible are you?

Peter

Why should any other parties or anyone else waste any time on engaging in anything this waste of a government might come up with in its last months.

Alison C

I'm sure Brown said he would cut the civil service a few years ago. It's bigger than ever. He's known for repeating things like this; and then expects empty words to coalesce into fact. They don't.

Owen Morgan

Even now, opinion polls show that well over twenty per cent of voters are prepared to vote to re-elect this train-wreck of a government. The principal reason for that is that many of them are "employed" (using the term pretty loosely) by the state. The last thing Brown wants is for the state to become efficient.

chris

I heard him on the radio today trying to answer listeners' questions.
He's off his rocker.
He somehow memorises stuff which he uses to reply, whether or not it attempts to answer the question. Then when challenged, he goes straight into telling you mode, listen !
It must be a nightmare trying to work with him.

Searcher

"Reform
An independent, non-party think tank whose mission is to set out a better way to deliver public services and economic prosperity."
Translation - a few more useful idiots.

Andy

No, on the grounds turkeys don't vote for Christmas.

Fergus Pickering

But what would a Labour government DO if it didn't increase public spending? There is no other reason for such a thing to exist. Juts as Tories are there to cut it back again. It's a sort of Natura Law like Darwinian evolution.

Michael Booth

Did anyone see Jane Moore's 'Dispatches' programme the other evening which laid bare the amount of taxpayers' money wasted by this government? Absolutely disgraceful.

Mr Green

Will this be on top of the 100,000 reduction in headcount we were told about a few years ago, or instead of? Or neither!

I would say the opposition parties' sceptacism shows that they hold this government in contempt - perhaps you should too.

This government has made an art out of knowing what the public want - and therefore offering it, but then doing the exact opposite.

Charlie

The Labour Party is the party of middle class humanities educated state employees. Therefore Labour will never reduce the number of middle class humanities educated people employed by the State. The Labour Party has no time for working class craftsmen employed by industry or members of the Armed Services except as voting fodder.
There is hardly any Labour MP who is a craftsmen or labourer- they are a party of paper pushers.

Gordon Dalton

To Michael Booth: There is no such thing as "wasteful" expenditure, only misdirected, inappropriate expenditure. True "waste" would be tearing up £50 notes. How much does the private sector depend upon this so-called wasteful expenditure anyway? All entities - private as well as public - indulge in such expenditure. It is naive to assume that the private sector is uniquely subject to the sanctions of competition and necessary efficiency; I think that the banking farrago has exposed that one!

The Huntsman

"...it is also the case that a responsive state should withdraw from areas in which it is no longer needed..."

This Socialist Government deciding it is no longer needed anywhere the control of which it presently exercises is about as likely as a full and frank apology being forthcoming for Brown's Armageddon from its creator.

Roger Thornhill

To Gordon Dalton

If the private sector - and by that I mean the real one, not the fake one living mostly off Government contracts - indulges in too much "waste" then customers will abandon it and withhold there custom.

We cannot easily abandon the Taxman. And don't try and use that hopeless all-or-nothing tyranny of the majority called elections either.

David Ossitt

Gordon Dalton.

To Michael Booth: There is no such thing as "wasteful" expenditure, only misdirected, inappropriate expenditure. True "waste" would be tearing up £50 notes.

What are you talking about this potty goverment actively encourages the shredding of money.

I will give you one example; I have a number of medical conditions that require me to visit hospitals in two different towns. After a first appointment at a particular clinic I mentioned to my wife that the furniture in the waiting area was of a much better standard in every way than that in use at the three other clinics that I have occassion to visit.

On a return visit a few weeks later I arrived early to find the waiting area was empty of furniture but in the corridor outside waiting to be unpacked was entirely new replacement chairs.

I asked for the reason why the origional furniture was being replaced.

The answer was shocking, it was near the year end and the budget needed to be spent or else they would suffer a reduction in next years budget.

That's socialism, that's Brown and his silly targets, that's irresponsible.

It would never ever happen in the true private sector.