We have our own motoserras and we’re not afraid to use them
One of the proofs that we are not a party political organisation is that we welcome good policy wherever it stems from. We do not indulge in the idea that only one portion of the foetid swamp of politics is capable of GoodThought: rather that any bubble to the surface of something good and useful is worthy of support. Simply on the grounds that good policy is good policy:
Ministers could introduce legislation to abolish a swathe of quangos in one go as part of the UK government’s plans to restructure the state and cut thousands more civil service job cuts, the Guardian understands.
Government sources said they were considering a bill that would speed up the reorganisation of more than 300 arm’s-length organisations that between them spend about £353bn of public money.
Pat McFadden, the Cabinet Office minister, has written to every Whitehall department asking them to justify each quango or risk being closed, merged, or having powers brought back into the department.
Ministers will have to demonstrate the necessity of each one, operating under the presumption that these bodies will be affected unless there is compelling justification for their separate existence, sources said.
This is sometimes known as “zero-based budgeting”. Rather than the usual process of inflation was x, population growth y, a bit for luck is z so therefore the budget of every individual part of government should rise by xyz. Plus a bit.
It’s also known as taking a chainsaw to the bureaucracy. Which is good, for this means that we are all motoserristas now.
Not all heroes wear a cape
We don’t, not normally, use this site - or any other - to beg for a job in government: see above about foetid and swamps. But we’ll make an exception in this case. We have our own motoserras and we’re not afraid to use them. Therefore allow us in to do this deed. We’ll sort out the quangocracy in double quick time. The Arts Council, the BBC, all the commissars of this and that, Natural England, anyone at all to do with Section 106 impositions - in fact, the entire Town and Country Planning Act 1947 and successors apparatus. Plus the many hundreds and thousands more with which the melting ice cream sundae of the British state is sprinkled.
We’d not even ask for wages while doing so - we’d do it for the sheer joy.
Well, nearly. As everyone knows there is no such thing as free, everything gets paid for somehow. So we would insist on being able to look each quangista in the eye as we personally signed their P45. Allow us that and we’d even pay for our own chainsaw oil.
Tim Worstall