Re-arranging The Deck Chairs

I have just sent for a copy of Chris Mullin's diaries now the book is available in paperback. It has been much praised as a revealing account of the realities of government. As a junior minister in the Dept of Transport & the Environment he set himself just three objectives. If he could achieve these, he would have considered his time in office a success. He wanted to eliminate night flights; to control leylandi hedges; and cancel his ministerial car. After 2 years he had managed to cut the cost of the ministerial car from £700 per week to £400 per week but that was all. Otherwise, he had made no progress whatsoever. Most of the time he had no idea what was going on unless he read it in the newspapers and finally he thought that his job was no more than re-arranging the deck-chairs. In near despair, he returned to the back benches.

He is not the first minister to realise that he was waisting his time. Government these days is controlled by the spin doctors and the civil servants and everything is a matter of presentation rather than reality. This is why we are in the mess that we are. So much is total incompetence and most of government seems to be re-arranging the deck-chairs more and more frequently.

None of this is really new. Michael Portillo, when asked what he thought was his greatest achievement as a government minister - and he was a senior minister - told us that it was keeping the Settle and Carlisle railway line open. It really was an achievement and he - as well as all the campaigners - had to work for years to get what they wanted. But, as Portillo says, the Settle and Carlisle line was something he could still visit and say "I kept this line open." Now the line is a great success; traffic is increasing and it brings tourist from all over the world. Most of what Michael Portillo did has been filed away buried in all the otter dead records of bureaucratic government. All meaningless, pointless, expensive legislative rubbish. Most legislation does little to change anything and always wastes buckets of money.

Is it surprising that the country is in such a mess? Who will pull us out of this gigantic hole?

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