When enough is enough

This will be a bit of a ramble but stay with me as I think we will get to somewhere interesting. Some years ago I was a committed school governor. Then Thatcher brought in People Choice or whatever it was called. Suddenly school governors had a bag load full of obligations and responsibilities and even more than that the local area would expect to hold the governors to account for any consequences. The more I looked into it the more it struck me that the actual controls were all held upstream leaving the governors to manage the dirtyend and to be the front line for complaints. I gave up being a governor. We now have 'The Big Society'. Again this seems to a have a very familiar ring to it. Pass down to the lowest possible level, the dirty coal face of making things work and answering complaints about shortcomings, whilst leaving all the real controls at a much higher level. I could go on but that would be a distraction.

Putting the rosiest picture forward, our politician are not intellectual power houses nor consumed with a passion for a particular view of life. Just regular guys and girls. It could be chance that our new Prime Minister has read the past, learnt the lessons and is reapplying what worked. Possible but implausible. What I am getting here is an over-powering whiff of success management. My definition of success would be to be solely in control of the steering, the brake and the accelerator, to not get my hands dirty doing work and to be well off the line of fire when the spray shots of blame starts. Given that our politician are not those intellectual giants it is the civil service mandarins behind the scenes that actually run and set this countries agenda. Yes they have to work within the constraints of whatever is current political flavour but, I suspect, have long ago acquired the skills to find presentations which match political aspirations but still drive towards their own determined goal.

What I think I am sensing is a civil service that has decided to devolve power to the lowest possible levels whilst ensuring they retain a tight grip on real free decision taking. Why? We are moving towards a totalitarian society. What better confirmation than the images of citizens contained behind wire fences so as to not trouble their elected representatives, this is as cynical take on demcracy working by our leaders as you could wish for. You and I might argue the pace but the direction is irrefutable. When you view the populace as fraudster, cheats, skivers, shirkers, in all a shiftless bad lot, the only possible response is yet more control, more surveillance and more punishments. It trying to tie down and manage free spirit, it is an inescapable consequence, that government gets more and more complex, intrusive and finds it so hard to keep threads together. No wonder then that the mandarins are looking to simplify what they need to exercise that absolute control. We have a long game objective playing out here. Watch out in coming years for its manifestation in several different political disguises!

It is just another example of the glass half full or the glass half empty syndrome. If your starting premise is that citizens are liars and cheats you will readily find all the evidence to confirm it many times over. So justifying yet more control, surveillance and sanction. Sit firmly down on the can of worms. On the other hand of course if your starting premise is that citizens are proudly loyal, hard working, wanting opportunities to show and share their skills you end up with a different style of government. A style that sets out to enable, utilise and harness the energy and talent of the citizens to better themselves. For this view, only the lightest of hands is necessary and to a large extent it will self-discipline itself, leaving a minimalist government that mostly has to follow the will of its peoples. As against trying to suppress the will of the people to its objectives.

Yes of course we can all identify cheats and abusers amongst us but equally we can also identify the honest and self-sacrificing. You have to take a view, are we largely honest or largely cheats, half full or half empty? There is no doubt in my mind listening to the continual justification of measure after measure that relies on scare mongering about stopping cheats and fraudsters getting away with it, how our government see the issue!

Concomitant to the path to totalitarianism is an ever burgeoning bureaucracy that will eventually overwhelm and self-destruct. There are no cost savings down that road, the tools you need to manage grow ever larger and wider. What you save today you will spend double tomorrow. The proportion of government cost against the wealth of nation just rises and rises. We have too much government focused on the wrong end. We as a society need to sit back and rethink how we want go about governing ourselves, starting out with a much simpler model. There is of course a very entrenched and powerful voice that says you will never ever get to realise it.

Good Government

Right, lets have a go at setting out what good government might be about. Certainly this will not be the all definitive, but at least a starting off point.

In the begining. Having clawed your way to the top of the tree, once there, there is every reason to believe you have a unique insight. Otherwise you would not be there, someone else would, who fought better or with more winning ideas. Once there you have the controls to arrange and organise things. Those under you, no doubt still wanting to claw their way up, have to conform to your edicts else there get pushed off the tree. You are surrounded with people who to your face agree with the sagacity of your opinions for fear of displeasing the dispenser of favours. Other than defending your perch from aspiring claimants you rule the roost. Everything conspires to confirm your particular view of the world is the right view, the only view. Having the taste of power, it is a natural consequence to keep and preferably to grow that power. Your decisions are most likely going to be directed to gathering more power to you. The end result is a centralised form of government. Only the top of the tree for this central government has any idea what is necessary. So plans accordingly.

My starting position is that no one in central government has a clue how best to arrange and organise services for my local parish community. Their solutions might be just fine for the grand cosmopolitan capital of our country. I doubt whether they fit as well in Peterborough or Newcastle or Penzance or Inverness. Each region and within each region, each local community has unique demands and challenges that don't fit well with the global, capital city orientated, solutions. Local people have to be involved in running the things that matter within their own communities. Free from the leaden constraints and dictate from some remote out-of-touch Ministry. To connect with their community they have to know that what they says matters, has impact and they will get to directly experience the consequences of their decisions. Involvement matters deeply. It is not just some superficial add-on, for its feel good factor, where the actual reins of authority firmly held off-stage, right or left.

Basically I think the hierarchy, parish to district to county to national is about right. However rather than top down I think it should be bottom up. The money and decisions should rest with the people and the community that need, decide to spend and receive goods or services. They decide at the point closest to the affected community the when, where and how. Calling on District or County facilities as necessary or otherwise sourcing local. Clearly there will be a range of different responses depending on whether your are a London inner borough, a home counties parish, a parish in Somerset or in Assynt. The expectations and standards will rightly differ with regard to any community issues from street lighting, road repairs, parking enforcement, rubbish collection or provision of care and support or whatever.

Obviously not all community requirements are appropriate at such a small community scale. Whilst a primary school might be possible not every community could sustain a secondary school, or drop-out centre or hospital. So here we have the transference upwards of resource allocation from Parish upto District or County. Competing against each other and other adjoining areas to attract the highest uptake for their particular provision, with no doubt, rewards for long term commitment. Each higher level up, operating with the current segregation between operational matters and those of legislative enforcement. The Legislative side disseminating standards to aspire to, checking on standards adopted and challenging where standards are found not to comply. Nothing black and white, the community have the right to adhere to non-conformity (compliance) so long as they can argue their cause.

At District and County levels there are social provisions that are just a factor of scale, not arising out of any particular community want. To get in the line of thought, for example, planning for new routes or distribution of services, providing analytical skills, monitoring of erosion or pollution. Clearly from one community scale to the next one up there are some things that just have to be funded at the next higher level up. So a right to a precept to permit this to happen seems logical. Except it needs accountability and challenge. The lower level in granting the precept renewal is entitled to a report and an account of what was done and is planned to be done and a vote on its continuance. Earning the support of the communities contributing has to be an essential, not a presumptive, right.

All the way up to National Government. The Counties decide what precept to grant the National Government and agree to continuing support for whatever is in the Nations interest, be it Defense, a new Trade Treaty, Secret Services or setting new standards guidelines. Only after receiving a report and account for the previous year. Challenging most certainly, a central government always on its toes having to carry the Nation along with it, seeking agreement and consent, very limiting. But how refreshing, the actual power base, the consent of the people, actually in touch and able to influence what is proposed to be done in their name. Not a distance, hands off electorate putting their mark on a simplified choice presented to them as a done deed by an inner caucus. Instead a vital living democracy is the goal in sight. This is the concept of a Small Society.

Uniformity across the land, in such an interconnected world, has to be the norm. We surely cannot have one set of rules applying in Cornwall and another set in Peterborough in contradiction to the rules applying in the Assynt. We need a strong central government to ensure we are all in conformity, we can travel around the land and be equally at ease and familiar where so ever we land and put down our head to rest. Why? From the top down it is obvious but from the bottom up it is no longer so self-apparent. Uniformity only if it is useful and of benefit to the local community. If they choose to go out on a limb, deny support for many regional or national precepts, play the dangerous game of isolation. Why not, in principle. If they are wrong they will live to regret and the costs will come to haunt them. More likely, as we are at natural heart, conformists only wanting to be in agreement and accord with those around us it is an unlikely scenario. But the option, the scarce remotest possibility, that a community in defiance of conformity, could break away and set up a new role model for the rest of us to learn from is exciting. It is the best way to keep our State fresh and self-renewing. Bring on the small man in his local community striving for a better future.

Government, the Right to Rule

Now, depending on their business acumen, a sole principle can really fly a tight, lean ship and be very adaptive to changing circumstances. Their weak vulnerability is that they cannot grow beyond around the thirteen subordinates whose out and inflows can be safely monitored and should they become incapacitated, for even a brief period, it all falls apart.

To manage a big enterprise the leader, the top dog, has to delegate day to day running to sub-ordinates. The really successful managers, enpower their sub-ordinates to make their own calls, enthuse them with ever higher objectives and pick them up and encourage them when the inevitable stumble occurs. Top managers possessing these skills and qualities are rare, very rare to extent of almost being exotic.

Your President cum Prime Minister having been plucked from the street with no particular credentials and having won a beauty contest is unlikely, if not quite inconceivable, to possess such attributes. Likewise Cabinet members selected for favours given or clout within the rulings ranks have no firsthand experience of the departments they are left to run for a couple of years before being switched to another department incase they become too skilled.

So contrary to the public perception of a country led and run by their elected politicians the whole gargantuan hydra-headed government of this country is actually run by civil-servants who play a cat-n-mouse game of wrapping their day to day operational procedures in the current flavour of political party speak. Life really does just carry on same as before, just the words to describe it change.

Lets set this charade behinds us and accept that our political representatives just do not have nor ever will have the expertise, charisma or experience to actually manage and run a booze-up along the river let alone a District Council or the country! What they do have is a political view of how the disparate sectors of our communities may come together and be better able to live in some sort of goodwill and mutual benefit. The Civil Servants really must be left to run the country for the long term and not be beset by short term political goals which is today's norm. We desperately need a committed long term dispassionate governance that can lead us to be a more successful nation, run by the Civil-Servants who do actually do know all the ins and outs of how the country is managed, have the keys of access to minds and information that can keep this country running at full tilt, given a fair wind.

Which is not to say that the Civil Servants therefore have a freehand, far from it. Firstly they must be accountable, no more hiding behind a politicians skirt. If they initiate a course of action and it fails then that is the end of their career. Parliament alone sets or refines the political gaols and in consultations agrees the yardstick measure of achievement and gets to decide whether the set yardsticks have been met. The Civil Servants deliver the gaols and offer evidence of achievement and advise on amplification needed.

This seems to put the relationships back into a better and truer balance, the politicians, within their actual competence levels, set the moral or social agenda and the Civil Services adjusts its on-going long term strategy to show how it is meeting that agenda. A stable governance with a long term view but able to adapt to changing perceptions of societies wants and needs. Of course the Civil Service is more than capable of drowning any government, politician, Prime Minster or President in shed loads of obscuration, obstruction, delay, you name it, any machiavellian devices and they are sure to have employed it and no doubt will continue to do so as long as they exists as an organisation. But that is not the point. The point is, as is already rooted in the very soul of the Civil Services, their sole purpose is to run the country efficiently. At the moment they duck and dive behind the politicians that they use as Aunt Sallies, I want them to be out there in the open and answerable. It may even bring a new purposefulness to their operations.

The Political No Vote

Politicians are besotted with their own narrow view of how democracy works. They think the People vote for a Party and therefore the Party Leader. Not true.

To forego my independence I need assurance and the trust that someone speaks for me, I am even prepared to give up my own limited view and accept the majority decision as to who is best to speak for all of us, including me. Not a Party. Not a Party Leader. A person, of our community, a person who reflects my own society and the people within it, who understands the working lives and concerns of all those around me in my locality. That is called democracy. Someone selected and able to speak on my behalf and my concerns.


Of course the Political Parties put forward a 'local candidate' but the candidate's first and primary loyalty is to the Party that sponsors them and the Whips ensure they pay their dues. I don't get or want to vote in a political party. That is a convenience for those once elected to arrange and organise their business once elected, nothing democratic about that. The Party is selected, elected and organised by party faithfuls, nothing to do with representation of the wider community there. The Party Leader is selected from within the faithful circle by the faithful as the person most likely to bring them electoral success. Nothing to do with democratic representation there either. The Party and the Leader are only about the promotion of a narrow view with a populist brief to make it attractive to a wider audience. Nothing about promoting a vision of the community I live within.

To win over voters and to give them the power they desire, a manifest is offered with a commitment, if successful, to fulfil it during their five year term of office but it is worthless, worse than worthless as it raises expectations of objectives impossible to ever realise. You cannot commit yourself to a course of expenditure today when tomorrow you might discover you are unemployed, divorced, made homeless or win a million pounds on the lottery of life. Life is just too uncertain to be able to offer any such meaningful commitments. As soon as they take up power they discover the actual position inherited is of a totally different magnitude than they envisaged and its a certainty that other world events will throw all their best intentions completely awry during the course of their term. But the 'manifestos' are easy on the ear sound bites that can promoted and taken up in simple terms by the various media where differentiation can be marked out and maybe win over those elusive voters.

This is a long way down from the path origins where men with a strong political view and vision on how society is and might be shaped offered to promote that goal whilst sustaining the community putting him forward. It was an administrative convenience that men of similar view grouped together, formed a collective, which became a Party. That Party found it had access to money, power and influence, something they never relinquished and subverted the men of vision in the process.

This total domination of the electoral process by non-representative Political Party's and now more recently quasi-Presidential leaders, (no longer collective decision taking then) have usurped my rights to democratic representation. Not from apathy or lack of political interest, this is why I shall not be voting.