Public service cuts

Good vid from the Taxpayers' Alliance. Too subtle for the average punter, though.

In the States they call it the 'Washington Monument Gambit'. That is, whenever Congress tries to force the grotesquely bloated Department of the Interior to slim a bit, the first thing the bureaucrats do is close iconic monuments and what they call 'front-line services' in Britain.

The military analogy is peculiarly apt in Britain, which has more generals than infantry battalions, and many more admirals than warships. Ruritania, Ruritania rules the waves . . .

The last thing any bureaucracy will ever do is cut administrative over-manning. It's the nature of the beast. The only way to reduce the state payroll is to abolish whole departments, leaving the rest untouched. There's not much solidarity among parasites.

Unfortunately that would also reduce the offices that can be given to favoured members of whatever faction is in power. So it's not going to happen.