The first bureaucrat
David Cameron described bureaucrats in the Civil Service as ‘the enemy within’ and vowed to get their backs off business. It has been a very long battle. The term ‘bureaucracy’ was coined by the French economist Jean Claude Marie Vincent de Gournay (1712–1759). Son of a wealthy merchant in St Malo, Vincent spent many years as a bureaucrat himself, as intendent of commerce and honorary adviser to the grand conseil. It was in his work that he became appalled by the regulations concerning the sale of cloth, which ran to four volumes, and took new entrants to the trade several years to learn. State offices were not created, he observed, to serve the public interest; rather the public interest was created to justify the offices.
Leader worship
Colonel Gaddafi declared: ‘All my people are with me. They love me.’ Few world leaders are lucky to be so popular. Here are some recent approval ratings:
Barack Obama 49%
Angela Merkel 41%
David Cameron 38%
Nicolas Sarkozy 30%
Silvio Berlusconi 30%
Naoto Kan (Japan) 20%
Parliamentary seats
The Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa) was criticised for buying seven chairs at £538 apiece. So what’s the most public money someone at Westminster has spent on a chair?
Andrew George, Liberal Democrat MP for St Ives: £538
Shahid Malik, former justice minister (massage chair): £730
Sandra Osborne, Labour MP for Ayr: £749
Julia Goldsworthy, former Lib Dem MP for Falmouth and Camborne (leather rocking chair): £1,200
On penalties
An Islamic extremist who burned poppies on Armistice Day has been fined £50. What other offences have earned similar penalties?
For a man who dropped a £10 note on the street in Ayr (a littering offence): £50
For a pipe-smoker in Chesterfield who dropped a match which had burned his fingers: £50
For someone who got off a train three stops early in Eastleigh, Hampshire: £57
For an artist who pinned notices asking for information about lost paintings: £75
For a grieving mother who spent too long saying goodbye to her baby at a cemetery in Milton Keynes: £87
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