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October 15, 2006
Whitehall flim flam
Richard Charkin's blog this morning refrains the speech by David Lammy last week.
Mr Lammy used the new Government White paper on communities and local goverrnment as his theme and indicated his belief that it would provide some new ideas to save the public library service.
Even I, from the outside, can see that the White paper is essentially just a sad fading piece of Whitehall flim flam which will have about as much effect as any central government initiative on the operation of local government as all the others since 1997- absolutely nil. The reason, I'm afraid, is that the Civil Service management and administration of this country is in a state of absolute shambles and incompetence: in order to solve a problem you first have all have to understand what it is- and that is a step that civil servants do not seem to understand.
The horrible consequence of this low standard of public administration is that the tax burden will continue to rise and rise.. from what I have deduced from my experience of government watching, this country needs a total re-think of it civil management from top to toe. It is fifty years out of date. It is a far greater problem than any political, international or sectarian divide and must be addressed urgently.
Posted by Tim Coates at October 15, 2006 10:42 AM