The newspapers and telly are full of the brouhaha surrounding Peter Hain's failed bid to be deputy leader of the Labour Party. This puts our local idiocies into perspective: the amount of money "forgotten" about is the annual budget of any of our branch libraries -- staff, buildings maintenance and materiel -- and if any of us acted similarly we'd have had the bollocking of our lives.
The rules are different in the Westminster Village of course. Public library authorities across the country implement the People's Network (ouch! ouch! ouch!) and management systems migrations within time and within budget, something central government can only dream about. But their projects are always "successes" and we're always "inefficient and ineffectual."
Our friends across the water wouldn't know this but I would be breaking the law were I to comment further. As a local government officer I'm not allowed to publicly voice opinions that may be construed as political. This is one of Margaret Thatcher's laws which the Labour Party anathemised at the time but found convenient to hang onto once in power themselves. So I couldn't wonder whether somebody who can't manage his own private office should be running a complex department like Work & Pensions. It would be like making T.Aldous responsible for the Benefits Office.
No comments:
Post a Comment