A tsunami of slurry

Matt Wardman wrote to my blog this morning.

“It looks to me that the Mail will now work through senior government figures covering each in liquid slurry. They won't get my total sympathy as that was what they helped do to Major & Co - though he did walk into it as well, and bloggers need to move it beyond "cynical nihilism" :-) to get into creating a new future.’  On his blog later he describes the brave new bicycling parliament based on the Norwegian model.

Another correspondent recalls the John Major days. The sex scandals were appearing at weekly intervals. Major sent out an edict that at the first hint of a scandal resignations should be sent in. This was to avoid protracted publicity. This became ridiculous when Hartley-Booth resigned for 'coitus non-startus'.

We  have forgotten the lesson. Jacqui Smith is probably doomed as a Home Secretary. Why linger? Why endure another week of embarrassing revelations? It's hard to convince anyone, but most MPs are as surprised and outraged by some of the claims as the general public is.r

Jackie Ashley has a dire warning. “Tens or hundreds of thousands of claims by MPs are shortly to be released publicly. Most are unexceptional and within the rules. But according to plugged-in government sources, some are "awful, just worse than you can imagine" and likely to destroy careers.

Voters are going to be furious at some of the wheezes used. I am told that many of the 1997 intake of MPs have been particularly brazen. Incumbents at the next election are going to face opponents waving copies of their expense claims. The cost of DVDs, sofas, garden gnomes and nights out will crowd centre-stage, elbowing aside quantitative easing and the future of higher education.’

I thought Jacquie Smith was an exception the drip feed of the publication of the names  of  top ministers, who also behaved badly, continues. What horrors are to come? I did the Channel Four item to wake up my own party from its torpor. This is not personal or trivial. It’s fundamental to the democratic process. The Guardians can no longer longer be trusted to guard the Guardians.

Much has been exaggerated but the public perception of selfish greed is now deeply ingrained. Democracy is in peril.

Will the publications of the full receipts expose tsunami of greed that will poison the reputation of the politicos of all parties?  What then?

Severn fear

Anyone of a worrying disposition who travels regularly through the Severn Tunnel should not read this. After all, we all have more than enough to worry about.

A friend of many years contacted me this morning about a worry he has had for 40 years. He is a former miner and railwayman. He is also an excitable polymath with a fascinating theory about the Severn Tunnel. The widow of Thomas Walker the man who appointed the first builder of the Severn Tunnel deposited papers in the records office in 1890. My friend was the first person to see those papers in 1990.

Building the tunnel was a dreadful nightmare. Walker said, 'Sub-aqueous tunnels have recently become quite the fashion. One such experience as the Severn Tunnel, with its ever-varying and strangely contorted strata, and the dangers from floods above and floods below, has been sufficient for me. One sub-aqueous tunnel is quite enough for a lifetime.'

To this day water is pumped from the Great Spring that would rapidly inundate the tunnel from below if the pumps failed. My friend has another concern. As a former miner he can smell coal. There are coal seams in the strata from the North Somerset coalfields. Walker was in financial trouble and my friend is convinced that he mined coal from the tunnel sides to eke out his disappearing budget. If so, they could still be weaknesses behind the tunnel walls.

He tells me that there was an earthquake with the epicentre a few miles from the tunnel towards the end of the nineteenth century. ‘The bricks were popping out of the walls like bullets from a gun’ he tells me. They were replaced in the walls and cemented in.

My friend’s long researches have intensified his worries. In 1607 a tsunami wave hit the Severn estuary causing widespread flooding. Earthquakes of up to seven on the Richter scale have occurred in the area. My tentative raising of this issue in the past has failed to stir any ripples of interest.

Nevertheless, last Thursday, as always, I give a great sigh of relief when my train emerged from the tunnel.

Comments

[Kay Tie]

"I don't see how a chief executive of a local council is in any manner accountable at present"

Indeed: not even the councillors can control them. How does voting for a councillor give an power to the voters?

"crime rates, recycling rates, absentee days by council staff to name but three"

All three of those can be gamed very easily because the people who set those targets are bored, stupid and lazy. Just look at the Home Office targets for the police: sanctioned detected crimes is one of the big ones. This leads to officers creating crimes that they can then "solve", which is why they are so keen to arrest-then-caution kids fighting in the playground. It also explains why the crime we care about - mugging, burglary, etc. - never gets a priority: it ties up too much time for too few Home Office target points.

Recycling rates is another one of the regularly gamed targets, which leads to unsorted wasted shipped to China in containers and then dumped. In any case, there's plenty of evidence that recycling emits more CO2 and costs more money. Not only a gamed target, but a counterproductive one too (in the best tradition of New Labour, no?).

Absentee days? Ah, but I bet those are gamed all the time. They probably get to be classified as "working at home" days, or "ad hoc self-certified training" days. Most of the civil service operates on retrospective sick days (i.e. if you were on holiday and fell sick you can retrospectively cancel those as holiday days). Expect a lot more retrospective home training days..

" I'd actually go further and say that less the government interferes with idiotic targets and unqualified 'managers', the happier everyone will be."

Except for the Guardianistas, who would have nothing to do. Some people are never happy.

Government everywhere is awful at doing things. This is self-evident, and even Guardianistas would agree. Why they can never make the leap to "well we should have less of it then" I simply do not understand. They bang on about "fairness" and "poverty" and never think that these things can be addressed by other means that do not involve government (for example, a citizens basic income can provide an alternative to the means-tested welfare state, helping poor people out of their poverty).

[greg]

Kay Tie - you've no argument from me!

I don't see how a chief executive of a local council is in any manner accountable at present; however I could think of several ways I could happily impose targets on individuals in that sort of position - crime rates, recycling rates, absentee days by council staff to name but three. I'm sure you'd see the 800 100K+ earners decimated pdq.

As for healthcare - couldn't agree more. As someone working in healthcare, the day I escaped the NHS was day I started enjoying my profession again. I'd actually go further and say that less the government interferes with idiotic targets and unqualified 'managers', the happier everyone will be.

P.J. O'Rourke talked about a 'dictatorship of boredom' - a ruinously expensive public sector legislating the life out of society, and I honestly feel this the situation the UK has arrived at in the past decade or so.

[Kay Tie]

"Maybe performance-related pay rather than the gulags, Kay Tie? They'd probably eat better if they chose the latter, because I think minimum wage is over-reaching for certain individuals."

And how do you measure performance in the public sector? Why, our old friend, targets. That led directly to people being killed in the Stafford NHS trust. No, I don't think performance-related pay will do the job.

The only thing that keeps anyone in line is democracy. For most companies in the private sector, it's an election every single day. When you decide to shop at Tesco instead of Asda, you're voting. When you buy Fairtrade coffee instead of regular coffee, you're voting. We need to extend this to the public sector and give us the power to vote: vote out the venal Chief Exec, fire the target-driven Chief Constable, say no to the bin police.

[greg]

Maybe performance-related pay rather than the gulags, Kay Tie? They'd probably eat better if they chose the latter, because I think minimum wage is over-reaching for certain individuals.

[Kay Tie]

"to be put on the minimum wage until the country can afford any more."

You've got to laugh at lefties, haven't you? One minute they are bleating about how the public sector is so much more moral than the immoral free market, and the next they are demanding their apparatchiks to be yanked off to the Lubyanka.

[greg]

I'm amazed there hasn't been more interest in the 800 local government employees on 100K a year or more - it strikes me as more of a outrage than MP's salaries and expenses.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1583136/Over-800-council-staff-earn-100000-a-year.html

How exactly administrators in fairly staid and low-risk organisations that empty bins twice a month (if you're lucky) can compare themselves to CEO's of private companies with a straight face is beyond me.

[patrick]

PF
I see Darling has announced " a squeeze on public spending".
As the country is in debt to 39 Billion Pounds perhaps it's as good a time as any for all council chiefs, MPS , the 'TOP' wow 195 civil servants etc to be put on the minimum wage until the country can afford any more.

[Paul Flynn]

'Don't know ' is the answer to DG. Some obscure parliamentary sub-committee may have made upo the rules. I cannot recall any of them being approved in the past as a result of a parliamentary vote - until very recently

[Paul Flynn]

Thanks Jeff Jones. It's open season against MPs by those fine upstanding virtuous paragons - the journalists.

I must confess that my select committee PASC is off on a jaunt in two weeks. It will be to Newport and Cardiff. Cannot get more exotic than that.

We also interviewed a witness last month by satellite link from America. It worked well.

[Paul Flynn]

That's strong stuff Patrick. There is more than a grain of truth in it. Having worked until my mid fifties in low paid jobs on shiftwork, I can assure you that I am still well grounded in working class values.

[DG]

I'm probably missing something, not being involved in politics, but can anyone explain to me how these expenses ever got approved in the first place? Does the Central Office (or whoever) just sign them off blindly?

[Jeff Jones]

Reading today's Evening Standard on the web which concentrates this time on the foreign travel of select committees it seems that the drip feed will continue until urgent reform is introduced.As a democrat I was frankly shocked and worried when I read Jackie Ashley's article yesterday and the comment from an unnamed senior cabinet minister that some MPs might have to resign when their expenses are published. Before Parliament rises for the summer some sort of reform must be introduced for the sake of democracy in this country. The anti politics mood abroad at the moment should worry any democrat whatever their political persuasion.Only extremists on both the right and the left of the political spectrum have an interest in not reforming as a matter of urgency the present expenses system . Having looked at the BBC website story on Europe's MPs'pay packages it seems that once again we in the Labour Party can learn a great deal from our colleagues in the Swedish Social Democrats.

[patrick]

The Country needs a total overhaul of not just the sleezeridden house but the entire fiasco of public sector pay.
The liam donaldsons with pensions weighing in the millions. The 195 'servants' earning more than the PM.
Is it not an irony that the party voted in starring a grinning chimp ' things can only get better' in '97 then brought us the delights of tuition fees, illegal wars and the 10p , just to mention three?
Labour have lost the desire to fight for the low earners because they have no connection with them.
What chance is there for a Labour MP who's children are in private education, who dines at top venues , stays in hotels with stars , has many outside interests , losing any sleep about tuition fees that only affect poor people.
Labour = Lost Plot!

[Kay Tie]

Very interesting post. I'm glad you've woken up to the threat to democracy itself - the Germans actively threw away their freedom in 1933. I hear stories of massive support for the BNP just under the surface. We are living in interesting times and I'm starting not to like them very much.

Very interesting too the words about the Severn tunnel. If you hear more on this please relay.