Shock - bureaucrats undermine ministers

Thus the Sunday Times (£):

The uncooperative approach of some officials has driven ministers to take unconventional measures to circumvent them. One said he had asked for a briefing on a policy only to receive a single side of A4 paper.[1]  He was so desperate for information that he discreetly contacted a pressure group, which handed him a full dossier.[2] It later emerged the group’s data had also been sent to his officials. Another minister has started showing his civil servants’ reports to private sector experts because he is worried he is being selectively briefed. [3] He said: "Do I take my civil servants’ briefings at face value? No. Then I go outside to someone in the sector and say, 'Is this kosher?' and they say, 'Absolutely not'".

One must presume these unnamed ministers are LibDems who never though they would get a sniff of office, as surely every Conservative MP knows only too well that the civil service has its own self-serving tax and spend agenda and will work unceasingly to undermine a government committed to retrenchment.

But the quoted passage underlines another key point, which is that the apparatchiki have become as powerful as they are because what they ironically refer to as their "political masters" are lazy and unprepared.

1. Churchill dominated his officials and one of the methods he used was to require them to reduce all briefings to one sheet of paper to cut out the ifs, buts and maybes.
2. Any competent minister avoids seeking advice from his officials until he is as fully informed as possible about the alternatives from non-apparat sources. 
3. To depend on officials for information is indolent beyond the point of negligence.

Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel

So said Samuel Johnson. According to this NYT story it is the first - at least as it applies to the US Patriot Act, an Orwellian misnomer if ever there was one.

For eight years, government officials turned to Dennis Montgomery, a California computer programmer, for eye-popping technology that he said could catch terrorists. Now, federal officials want nothing to do with him and are going to extraordinary lengths to ensure that his dealings with Washington stay secret.
 
The Justice Department, which in the last few months has gotten protective orders from two federal judges keeping details of the technology out of court, says it is guarding state secrets that would threaten national security if disclosed. But others involved in the case say that what the government is trying to avoid is public embarrassment over evidence that Mr. Montgomery bamboozled federal officials.

Actually, if Samuel Johnson were alive today, he would modify his adage: what he meant was the abuse of patriotism that we now call National Security, in whose name so much evil has and will continue to be done for as long as we refuse to see that governments exaggerate external threats to justify internal repression.

Hat-tip Kinsla

Tim Worstall on planning

Worstall is often worth reading, but he misses the point in his latest ASI posting. Seeking to over-kill those who seem to have have blotted the 50s, 60s and 70s from their their minds, he ends with linked rhetorical questions:

. . . let me close with a little question to those who still think the UK economy should be "more planned" than it is at present. Just who do you actually trust to be able to do that planning among the current political crop?

And who in one of the political parties you don't currently support would you trust to do it when your favoured and anointed one loses office: as will surely happen in a democracy?

The answer is that such people hate competition because they are losers. Their ideal is an unchecked bureaucratic oligarchy staffed by people like themselves, which they came close to achieving under the Blair-Brown regime. They did not succeed in abolishing all civil liberties but they are still there, festering in the state sector and waiting for their time to come again - as it certainly will.

For them, the fact that their ideal of government has led to economic stagnation and brutal repression everywhere it has been tried is not proof of failure - those are the outcomes they wish to achieve. They hate freedom of any kind because only in a thoroughly "planned" society can resentful mediocrities such as they hope for power and wealth.