Surrey people are as much affected by big government failure as any.  But the totality of the problem is not represented in the single dimension of a particular policy or set of local circumstances nor prejudices about politicians and bureaucrats. The decision-making capacity of the whole has become a debt-building disaster. Here we are concerned with the UK but when magnified up in scale to the EU there is explanation of the real cause of our disillusion with the actual implementation of that great ideal.

 

Why has government been allowed to propagate itself uncontrollably ? There are the line functions and executive jurisdictions. They have become overlaid by quangos, commissions, monitoring agencies, select committees and so on.  The total conversation takes protracted time and wasted  money with little productive result. Why can’t an audited command and reporting structure suffice for actual ‘delivery’ ? Has political science also lost its way ?

 

Ministers, but mainly the mandarins seem 50 years behind the times. Matters of management  and the ‘counting house’ are beneath their dignity and best left to  clerks. Ministers know this but don’t know what to do about it.  They can only keep spouting ‘growth’ and ‘the economy’ when all they want is more tax to spend; even stay-at-home mothers are needed back at work to provide taxes “from hard-working people”. They may be in the vanguard with gay marriage but have not culturally moved on from fighting and paying for wars, and running an empire (with just District Commissioners on the ground !).  Increasing intervention in the domestic sphere has not been matched by suitable machinery and process. There has been lack of exposure to the tools of trade and industry and its spirit of enterprise which in large enterprises breeds high-intellect management techniques and skills. There have been many expensive and embarrassing mishaps: the West Coast main line franchising, the Rural Payments Agency, HMRC and others. The Chancellor and Treasury don’t really seem to understand what’s going on with all the numbers.  There seems nobody who will mend UK government. See here what the STAG says. I have just addressed my MP Jeremy Hunt as follows.

 

“You have given me, your constituent, information about debt and deficit recovery activity and fielded  fears for the future associated with that. But knowing of ministerial difficulties with the mandarinate and in spite of  reports by the PAC and comments by other informed and influential people nowhere do I see  comprehending official recognition of the fundamental governmental flaw centred on the  insufficiency  of HM Treasury.  I ….hope that you now find this definitive.

 

http://peterwebbtax.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/whowill-mend-uk-government-2-government.html

 

That has already been taken up by UKIP with a question about its policy on governance” and now placed with  the LibDems and Labour. Will they understand the question I wonder.