Who is in charge of the clattering train?

RF

The terrible problem is that when a situation is as serious as this one is, its very scale of seriousness serves to diminish the effect that it has on the public. So we tend to shake out heads in the face of it (which is exactly what would not have happened when we ran an empire and exemplified administrative genius) and simply bumble on.

John East

Nulab are certainly in this up to their necks, but booting this useless shower out of office and replacing them with another lot of fresh faced politicians, Cameron and his pals, would not change much. Our problems are now very deep rooted. Civil service personel are poorly educated, cannot think for themselves, and function under a distorted work ethic in which job delivery is lost under layer upon layer of career development and management. Add to the mix constant change and re-organisation plus the ever present hand of nanny state and permanent crisis is guaranteed.

Hereford

This is a big Government/Small Government issue. I keep asking myself, what is it critical to keep under direct government control. Although I am not thinking too hard only collection of taxes and defence of the realm come to mind. In all other aspects, I believe that Government intervention is not only unecessary, but undesireable. We have an economist thinking up new ways of educating children and regulating families. A school teacher deciding how we should deal with crime and various lawyers running departments which have nothing to do with law making. The Government, in both its institutions and its personnel is not competent to do what it is doing. And as for the Civil Service. It is largely union driven and populated by people who think a single task constitutes a job. I say reduce Governments involvement in anthing other than taxation and defence. Make it a funding agency. Disband the UK Civil Service (over time obviously) and replace the department with delivery agencies which are headed by acknowledged experts in the relevant field. That's my two pennyworth anyway.

Jan Maciag

It seems bewildering but if you have read ‘The Triumph of the Political Class’ by Peter Osborne you would understand that the country’s leadership now consists of people whose sole skill is the ability to talk. They have had absolutely no experience of running anything as complex as a whelk store before they are catapulted from some dubious think tank into ‘running’ huge government ministries (just look at Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper). The civil service is now too confused to achieve anything much and the electorate will vote for anyone who looks good on TV. I think there is a lot worse to come.

Robin Davies

John East puts his finger on the nub of the issue. It was always the case that whilst governments came & went, at least there was some administrative cohesion due to Civil Service consistency. Part of the problem with the current government is that many of its members, cronies & hangers-on (sometimes called advisors) lack relevant experience. That relevant experience is not politics - where people go from school to uni to Students' Union to political party membership and work - thus not being part of our "real" world. No, the missing experience is perhaps military experience; running a business; not being related to or married to a government minister. One could go on. Labour's current desire to control everything removes initiative and destroys self-confidence. The recent fuss about bottled water demonstrates the paucity of thinking within the government and is a perfect example of Soviet-style thinking. Clearly NuLabour think that they know best. This example of misplaced data demonstrates that (a) they know nothing and (b) their advisors can't think either.

kate b

Yes, give the PM a sick note, or is it a 'well' note, or 'fit' note, and what work is he 'fit' to do?

osama

Brown ran from an election, he ran from a referendum and he ran from Iraq. Brown the new yellow.

Grahame Priest

Re the Dutch data request, it's perhaps interesting to note that there is going to be yet another 'inquiry' to find out what went wrong. Given they found the disk on someone's desk where it had sat for a year, what's to inquire about? We have an endemic, top down culture of avoiding responsibility and of avoiding decision making where it's a) difficult, or b) heaven forbid someone might get blamed. But do we really need an inquiry to fire the person who ignored the disk for a year? Or if they were absent for a year through illness, sack the twit who put the disk on that particular desk in the first place? An inquiry sounds better though. Then pound to a penny we'll have a procedural review. Then an assessment of appropriate disciplinary procedures. Then a post-assessment consultation to see if the procedural review resulting from the inquiry has been effective. Finally we'll follow that with pointless legislation designed to send a 'signal'. Personally, I'd just find someone to fire – then sack them. Much more effective.

Michael B

A reflection, if a particularly notable one, of a much broader set of phenomena.

Danielle

Local government employees and Whitehall bureaucrats now spend most of their time focused on presentation, working out how to work their way up the ladder and making sure everything they say and do is politically correct and elf'n'safety compliant. Where on earth are they supposed to find the time to roll up their sleeves and get on with what they are supposed to be doing? New Labour's modus operandi has now infected every level of government. The only consolation is the hubris of seeing Brown inherit the mess he did so much to create. What a shambles.

Hereford

i have been working with the Civil Service for 3 years now. I am, daily, steggered by the waste, inefficiency, profligacy and financial incompetence of the so called Senior Civil Service. They seem incapable of rigorous thinking or of dealing effectively with the endemic marginal performance of their largely shiftless workforce. mind you, like ministers, very few of them are professionally qualified in the discipline they manage. a good degree, in any subject, preferrably from an Ivy League university zeems to be the sole requirement for the highest of office.

JJS

But what can we DO about it?

field

Hmmm...I think this is missing up a couple of different points. Yes, I have no doubt that Gordon Brown is, as the Blairites warned us, "psychologically flawed" and not up to doing the PM job well. Too much of a meddler, uninspiring and lacking in a coherent vision (only someone generally agreed to be an Americophile could be so anti-American?) As for public administration, my view is it has improved tremendously over the last few decades. Does Melanie really think files never went missing in their hundreds in the pre-computer age? What we have here is really organisations (and I am sure this is true of the private sector as well, though they have to deal with less huge amounts of personal data) struggling to create a culture fitted to the age of computers, discs holding huge amounts of data and laptops that can take info out of aa office building and into the public realm. It's not that easy to deal with, without creating huge bureaucracies devoted to maintaining new rules. The opposition are right to have a go, but I don't think public administration is worse than in the old days.

alan stoddart

I note story in Computer Weekly that Blair brought forward the projected start time for the NHS computer system to enable all patients records to go online in order to fit in with the 2005 election timetable. This is a project that costs at least £16bn and could cost up to £40bn due to delays according to the Guardian...that's if it works at all. This is a government that won't provide helicopters to the troops despite promises, a government that has reduced the navy to a flag waving role and the Air Force that would embarrass many a third world country...at a time when we are fighting in two war zones, and now Kosovo. What were the benefits to be derived from the NHS computer ....saving lives...how many more lives would be saved by providing the troops(and having real policemen on the streets, not ones who hide from 13 year old thugs) with the best gear avilable. Just how far would £16bn or £40bn go? After all I thought the idea of the internet and secure email was that you could send data all around the world...why re-invent the wheel?

Andrew Gower

So now it seems Mr Brown's actions have come back to haunt him! The man who has practically managed all domestic policy for the last decade and who hid behind the Blair facade cannot face being centre of attention, and neither it seems, accept any criticism. As a result of his mismanagement of the last 10 years Gordon Brown has almost single handedly managed to decimate what remained of public services in Britain. Yes, he successfully managed to swindle millions of Britons of their hard earned cash and stick the boot in as far as the private pension funds were concerned. But his belief that you can buy success and national prosperity has been completely shown up. Sadly we currently have no opposition to undo the damage that Brown has and will continue to cause.

Stray Dingo

Field, What are you on about ... look at any major Global company and they are operating businesses spread across all corners of the earth with millions of customers. If they operated at the same level of competencies as the current Government and its Civil Service they would be bankrupted. The fact is, in the private sector if such bunglings occur Shareholders and customers will demand that senior heads roll, and that the root cause of the error is identified and solved.

QED

Stray Dingo is right: bunglings like that do not happen in the private sector because people know in advance what will happen to them if they did! Unlike the public sector, the private demands a certain level of competence from employees - and an apology is just not good enough a response to a cock-up.

George Steiner

All this is harsh criticism of poor Mr. Brown and poor Mr. Labour. But didn't the British wote for them for a decade now in very large numbers. It is not Mr. Brown ho has "lost it" but the great citizens of Great Britain.

Danielle

George, the voting system in Britain is somewhat complicated and Labour has devised a way of using votes from Scotland (where it has quite a few seats) to vote in the English Parliament (where it would fare much worse against the Conservatives in a straight head to head General Election). The reverse, of course, is not true - English MPs have no vote on Scottish issues. It really is a case of having your cake and eating it. This is why the Conservatives are so paralysed. There's very little they can do. This has enabled acres and acres of socialist ideas, normally kept out of harm's way in nutty university lecturers' heads, to be unleashed as never before in any European country. Look where it's led us: terrorists having a knees up on our benefits and Legal Aid system and the most warped thinking imaginable on the way the state is run generally. In a fair world, Labour wouldn't have dared to allow such waste and exploitation, but they can get away with it and - I suspect - will continue to. Oh, and having a state-funded, disgracefully pro-Government broadcaster helps them too. And, you guessed it, we can't do anything about that either. The BBC licence fee is mandatory. Stinks, doesn't it?

Peter

Remember all those Loony Left local councils a few years ago? Well the are the government now!

field

Stray Dingo and others - I can't believe how naive you are about the private sector. Have you forgotten about the many problems with private sector banks releasing personal details on line and private data being found dumped or lost? You lot are so prejudiced but in this case we can see it is a load of bull. The private sector is just as subject to this sort of problem. And they DON'T go bust when something like releasing millions of bank details comes to light. They just carry on. Also don't forget there is serial fraud going on with their clearing houses in India and elsewhere - fraud which has been exposed on TV (you can easily buy private info on credit cards and all the rest). Going back to Melanie's post, incidentally, some of the older contributors here might recall a programme from BBC radio called "The Men from the Ministry" dating back to at least the 1960s. Very jolly little programme it was as well. But the whole premise of the programme was that the Civil Service was useless, idle and incompetent. Listeners obviously responded to that. So her idea that there was once this public administration operating with Teutonic efficiency is a case of "retro-glow". And if Melanie wants a list of c*** ups from our "glorious" Imperial history I'd be glad to supply them starting with the Indian Mutiny and maybe ending with the Kenyan Groundnut scheme.

Roy

The information we never seem to get is in who's charge were all these discs of delicate data. If they were lost in the post, who posted them? If this is known (seems reasonable) then down the road with them, quick march.

George Steiner

To Danielle. Good try Madam but no cigar. The population of Scotland is about 5 million. The population of the UK is about 60 million. It is hard to believe that even if all the Scots voted Labour, it would metter a hoot, if most of the 55 million English did not also vote Labour. In addition the Conservatives are that in name only, with a political pigmy as the leader. Try organizing a real Conservative party with a solid leader. See what happens.

Sergey

It seems that this is not only an administrative or political issue anymore, but a moral bankruptcy of a nation, and, first of all, of the whole political class. Crises of this scale could be resolved only by people awakening like one that heralded Victorian era advent, with complete reshaping of political landscape.

field

George Steiner - GO and do some research rather than guessing. At the last General Election more English voters voted for Tories than Labour. The Scottish MPs more or less account for Labour present majority. Really the Tories need to give up Scotland as a lost cause and with it their sentimental unionism. Scotland has been more or less independent for the last 8 or more years. It's either Labour or SNP. The Tories need to convert themselves into a vehicle for English nationalism - watch their vote zoom then. But unfortunately their ideological roots prevent this.

David M.

Blair and his gang gerrymandered their way to a third term in office as the following results for England prove: http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/vote2005/html/england.stm. In England Labour polled less votes and obtained 92 MORE seats than the Conservatives. On average it took 28,124 votes to elect a Labour MP but 41,836 to elect a Conservative MP. This was how the UK 2005 election was lost.

Salvatore

It is right for Melanie to question who is in charge of the country, and also right for correspondents to question the effectiveness and role of the Civil Service.
Hardly a week goes by without this governments shortcomings being exposed, and covered with explanations that many commentators, and observers regard as laughable affronts to common sense.
Still the clapped out government train rolls on to an often arrogant or irrelevant timetable administered by people many regard as political apparatchicks.
I doubt if this government has any real credibility.
You have to ask why the Conservatives are not very much further ahead in the opinion polls.
There may be several answers but two that occur to me are these.
The Government is not asked the right questions, or made to provide satisfactory answers.
On Northern Rock the government have been able to avoid answering important questions about its knowledge and actions.
When an MP is recorded speaking to his constituent in prison, no one seems to have checked the degree to which the visit was screened in advance or enquired about whether their relationship was mentioned in their meeting.
When it emerges that a government department failed to act on a Dutch request for enquiries about serious criminals, it is suggested that sick absence might be part of the excuse. Does the opposition know the levels of sickness absences, and gardening leave in the Civil Service? I suspect not.
And last ,because I do not mean this list to be comprehensive, the government is incapable of persuading the USA to reveal that it had used UK territory for rendition flights for almost 4
years,and everyone is supposed to accept this was merely an oversight, and make no further enquiries into reports filed at the time.
The second reason is connected.
Because The Conservatives have felt able to wound but too timid to strike, they have not yet given the public the impression that they offer the country something fresh and different.
They need to offer clear alternatives, and to do so soon, before the public perception becomes so deep rooted it is difficult to change.
Breathing some life into the Europe/ Referendum debate might be a start.

Fabio P.Barbieri

Both major parties are guilty as Hell on this matter. The policy in Britain for decades has been to privatize everything that moves - with a mandate to the purchasers to "reduce costs", that is to cut the wages bill - and to reduce costs on everything that could not be privatized, except of course the wages of ministers and top bureaucrats. Every so-called "reform" of ministries and public authorities regularly involved the sacking of thousands of employees, and they were always chosen among the most expensive - that is those with most seniority and qualification. Work did not decrease, so the underlings who had not been sacked (or taken the opportunity to walk out of a declining situation) had more to cope with in the same amount of time. New employees were always of the least expensive type possible: walk into any public office today and count all the recognizable first-generation immigrants - curious names, thick accents, occasional lack of familiarity with British realities. (I have nothing against employing first-generation immigrants anywhere, but in public offices, where a certain self-identification with the needs of the public and the nation should be necessary, it seems to me risky to hire them so indiscriminately.) And because Tories first, Nulab later, had developed this genuine detestation for their own employees, they rushed the public administration into an avalanche of experiments at computerization, in the hope that more machines might mean less workers. Anyone who has followed the matter in Private Eye knows how well these are turning out. Count it all up, and remember the good old business saying: if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys. If you make public employment the dump of the hopeless and prospectless, do not be surprised if they do the work they are supposed to do without taking any interest in it.

Thothal, Budapest

Field - you wrote "And they DON'T go bust when something like releasing millions of bank details comes to light." But of course. And they DON'T go bust when they lose one or two milliard pounds - they will be rescued by taxpayers. That is they are PINOs - private in name only - and behave as such.

Ann

Nonsense, Fabio. We had a working government under John Major. Of course there was a lot of cynicism after 18 years in office, but with "Labour" the total corruption and total incompetence started from day one. --- I am glad to see that finally, someone else is saying what I have been saying for years: Brown is an incompetent and barely sane idiot. His supposed reputation for prudence and capability is a pure myth, one that many people believed for a long time - but for the life of me I can't see why. His destruction of the economy by way of dishonest taxation and simple theft and incompetent waste was there in plain sight.

Fabio P.Barbieri

Ann calls my description of what happened to public service "nonsense", but does not bother to say anything that refutes my contention that both main parties are to blame for a "sack everything that can be sacked and privatize anything that can be moved" policy that destroyed competences and reduced the public sector to an unsteady berth for the illiterate and hopeless. The reason why is obvious: she desperately wants to believe that there is any difference between Lubber and Thuggery, and that there is something especially bad about Grubdown Brown that was not there under Sleaze Major or Meg Thug. To which I answer: is that what they think on the planet you come from?

Jack R

Brown is has been left to pick up the bits after ten years of Blair's New Labour. Far from being a great "cock-up", as the main oposition sees it, it has been a rampant success. That is the total destruction of a nations self esteem. The climate of permanent change and the total dismantaling of the nations institutions, demonising the indigenous people and creating a climate of fear are all straight out of the Marxist/Trotskiite handbook. Brown is the back-room guy who took over when the great con-man left the stage, just as the truth began to surface. Brown would and should come-out as the dedicated Marxist that he is and be proud of his acheivements. Then we would have something to aim at. Trouble is it was all built on lies and we all live within the illusion built up by Cambel and the rest.

Ann

Calling him Sleaze Major proves one thing only: during the Major years you didn't live on the same planet as the rest of us. The sleaze was nothing to do with him being the PM: it's what happens to every government after 18 years, which I said quite plainly (not plainly enough for some, evidently). --- Your epithets for Thatcher say more about you than about her. She made this country a nation with self-respect. The disgraceful lot in power now have been making it a nation with no self-respect. If you can't see that, I am not surprised that you can't see any of the other great differences.

Fabio P.Barbieri

Ann, kindly keep to the point. I said that a certain process of destabilization and destruction of the British civil service began with the Tory governments and went on with the Labour ones. There was no difference between them. If you want to tell us how "proud" you felt in the Thugcher time, that has nothing to do with whether Meg "there is no such thing as society" Thug had to do with the process I described. That you felt proud about her could have as much to do with your tribal attitudes as with any reality. In my view, it has; but whether it has or not, kindly let us have some relevant points. Did She Of The Strident Voice And Humourless Personality start the process of privatization and casualization of the civil service - yes or no? Did He Who Promoted Jonathan Aitken And The Other Sleazoids And Eventually Retired To A Mysteriously Acquired Mansion In Huntingdon carry on with the same process? Yes or no? Did the Tory Blur speed up the process? Yes or no? Did Burden Grown have a central part in the process? Yes or no? Incidentally, to imagine that "all governments" become sleazy after 18 years is to show that you live on another planet. The B-liar government showed its sleaze on day two. (Remember the Bernie Ecclestone affair?) And the perceptions of sleaze in Major's time were due to people whom he had personally promoted, after - one has to admit this - they had been kept out of government for as long as Meg ran the ship. This is what the grown-ups saw while you were frothing at the mouth about tribal pride.