And your long piece is essentially about regulation. I’m happy with regulation, although it could be smarter and better enforced and in some areas less risk averse.
Dayum, it went up early: I was expecting it to go up around noon. Ah well, not a problem. Thank you for publishing it, @TheScreamingEagles . I need to go back to bed so any questions I will answer them later.
So the evidence for the existence of "The Blob" is a 40 year old sitcom?
Its just an excuse used by politicians to explain their failures. It can't be that their plans were half arsed and undeliverable, or that the teenage scribblers in their think tanks don't know what they're doing.
OFSTED…[was] not installed by evil geniuses but by good people and politicians to achieve a specific goal.
At least in that case, that is arguable. Ofsted was not created by Woodhead but in its current form is essentially his project.*
And Woodhead was not a good person. He was sacked from two teaching roles at Newent and Gordano for gross incompetence - he only got the second by lying on his application form. He was a sexual predator and liar. He was also a serial political trimmer who had no principles worthy of the name and would say or do whatever would accrue more glory to himself. Finally, he was not only a nasty piece of work but notoriously stupid, getting a poor degree in a uni going through a bad patch and being pretty much universally derided for his attempts at academic work.
I think the premise could do with working on here. The issue is that if you create such systems people who want power will gravitate to them. And these are the people often least suited to hold and wield it, through ignorance or arrogance or both.
I suppose the best example of the blob from that point of view is not Woodhead but Cummings. Which is ironic given he thought of himself as an outsider taking on the blob.
*Incidentally this is not to deny many changes have taken place at Ofsted since his time, a large number of them for the better, or that it fulfils an important role and has at times done it well.)
What are the rules on linking to a very naughty interview given on talktv yesterday by Isabelle Oakeshott, about the thing that no one is supposed to talk about?
Viewcode’s article argues that the Blob has been ever increasing in size (as its cinematic namesake did). There are notable trends, as with the expansion of arms length bodies. However, the article perhaps doesn’t consider enough other explanations. For example, whether some of this is a growth in the complexity of government rather than, necessarily, a growth in an antagonistic Blob. Or whether the Blob is a convenient story.
I was struck by the reference to SAGE, which is implied to be an example of Blobbery. I was in two SAGE subcommittees. I have participated in several subsequent research studies on scientific advice during the pandemic, and I had to write a witness statement for the COVID-19 Inquiry. SAGE was an advisory committee, it was not a power behind the throne. Government had no difficulty in ignoring things SAGE said. If the advice from SAGE ever felt imperative to Government, that was merely because SAGE was the messenger for the effects of a devastating pandemic. It was COVID-19 that forced the Government’s hand, not SAGE.
Yet, for some, SAGE is a scapegoat. Maybe much of the apparent Blob is the same. It is a convenient excuse politicians can assert when they fail. It wasn’t that their ideas were bad, it was the system that stopped them. Liz Truss presents a tour-de-force in this approach.
What are the rules on linking to a very naughty interview given on talktv yesterday by Isabelle Oakeshott, about the thing that no one is supposed to talk about?
TSE was pretty clear that it's an instant dismissal for anyone who does.
So the evidence for the existence of "The Blob" is a 40 year old sitcom?
It's just an excuse used by politicians to explain their failures. It can't be that their plans were half arsed and undeliverable, or that the teenage scribblers in their think tanks don't know what they're doing.
That last line is in my experience quite a good description of many civil servants as well.
Viewcode’s article argues that the Blob has been ever increasing in size (as its cinematic namesake did). There are notable trends, as with the expansion of arms length bodies. However, the article perhaps doesn’t consider enough other explanations. For example, whether some of this is a growth in the complexity of government rather than, necessarily, a growth in an antagonistic Blob. Or whether the Blob is a convenient story.
I was struck by the reference to SAGE, which is implied to be an example of Blobbery. I was in two SAGE subcommittees. I have participated in several subsequent research studies on scientific advice during the pandemic, and I had to write a witness statement for the COVID-19 Inquiry. SAGE was an advisory committee, it was not a power behind the throne. Government had no difficulty in ignoring things SAGE said. If the advice from SAGE ever felt imperative to Government, that was merely because SAGE was the messenger for the effects of a devastating pandemic. It was COVID-19 that forced the Government’s hand, not SAGE.
Yet, for some, SAGE is a scapegoat. Maybe much of the apparent Blob is the same. It is a convenient excuse politicians can assert when they fail. It wasn’t that their ideas were bad, it was the system that stopped them. Liz Truss presents a tour-de-force in this approach.
(Foxy said this more pithily.)
It's just that government is difficult, complex, and involves choices that will be unpopular at times, as the Labour party is finding out.
The idea that the Supreme Court preventing an illegal suspension of democracy by the executive was "The Blob" (part 8) in action is absurd. We do not live in a society that allows the executive unlimited power. We deliberately have checks and balances so that Parliament cannot be ignored. We fought a bloody Civil War in order to establish this.
It's autocrats we need to guard against not some mythic "Dark State" conspiracy.
What are the rules on linking to a very naughty interview given on talktv yesterday by Isabelle Oakeshott, about the thing that no one is supposed to talk about?
TSE was pretty clear that it's an instant dismissal for anyone who does.
Fair dinkum. Sounds like the story is coming out sooner or later anyway.
The size of the State is a point of contention in the US election.
Here’s former presidentail candidate Vivek Ramaswarmy talking to Lex Fridman about the problem. Ramaswarmy reckons that around 75% of Federal employees, including whole departments, could be lost without significant impact on services. Most of the Federal agencies simply send money to States with strings attached, and the federal department exists only to implement and monitor compliance with the strings.
What are the rules on linking to a very naughty interview given on talktv yesterday by Isabelle Oakeshott, about the thing that no one is supposed to talk about?
TSE was pretty clear that it's an instant dismissal for anyone who does.
Fair dinkum. Sounds like the story is coming out sooner or later anyway.
Sounds more like "the Blob" trying to damage a Labour leader...
The size of the State is a point of contention in the US election.
Here’s former presidentail candidate Vivek Ramaswarmy talking to Lex Fridman about the problem. Ramaswarmy reckons that around 75% of Federal employees, including whole departments, could be lost without significant impact on services. Most of the Federal agencies simply send money to States with strings attached, and the federal department exists only to implement and monitor compliance with the strings.
I'm not going to listen to 12 minutes of Jacob Rees Mogg so sorry if I'm missing something but I feel like this discussion would benefit from some specifics. What are some things that some government wants to do but they're prevented from doing by the hypothetical blob?
The piece mentions getting rid of quangoes. I think this is something that the voters don't care about either way and ministers don't want to do, because if they took more decisions themselves they'd get the blame when things went badly and not much credit when they went well.
Then it mentions freedoms from Brexit but this was always obviously made up, because if you looked at the EU rules that the Brexit campaigners were bitching about it usually turned out that the British government was instrumental in passing them in the first place, so there was no reason to think they'd do anything different.
It mentions the prorogation thing but that was about the executive trying to get one over on parliament. They were perfectly capable of dissolving parliament by the established means (get parliament to vote for dissolution) and passing their Brexit legislation by the established means (get parliament to vote for it). It was clear at the time that the executive wasn't supposed to be able to just shut down parliament to stop them voting for things they wanted to vote for, it just wasn't clear whether anybody would stop them, and it turned out that the monarchy doesn't work for stuff like that any more so the courts have to do it.
Has anybody got any proper functional "the blob stopped X" examples where there aren't other more obvious reasons why X didn't happen?
What are the rules on linking to a very naughty interview given on talktv yesterday by Isabelle Oakeshott, about the thing that no one is supposed to talk about?
TSE was pretty clear that it's an instant dismissal for anyone who does.
Fair dinkum. Sounds like the story is coming out sooner or later anyway.
Sounds more like "the Blob" trying to damage a Labour leader...
Mr mashed potato face is doing a good enough job of harming himself
This talk of the blob is a quaintly British phenomenon. Our deeply rooted embrace of amateurism and suspicion of professionalism. It’s a product of our public school system.
Play up, play up, and play the game. How hard can it be?
It’s Scott vs Amundsen. “Dogs? Pah!”. Botham downing a couple of beers and striding out to face the Aussies. Drake breaking off his bowls to tackle the Armada.
This talk of the blob is a quaintly British phenomenon. Our deeply rooted embrace of amateurism and suspicion of professionalism. It’s a product of our public school system.
Play up, play up, and play the game. How hard can it be?
It’s Scott vs Amundsen. “Dogs? Pah!”. Botham downing a couple of beers and striding out to face the Aussies. Drake breaking off his bowls to tackle the Armada.
How many of the 'blob' (if we're referring to the higher echelons of government) remain amateurs?
The likes of, for example, Case, who spent his time at Cambridge rowing and was promoted because Cummings saw him as lazy and inefficient?
The size of the State is a point of contention in the US election.
Here’s former presidentail candidate Vivek Ramaswarmy talking to Lex Fridman about the problem. Ramaswarmy reckons that around 75% of Federal employees, including whole departments, could be lost without significant impact on services. Most of the Federal agencies simply send money to States with strings attached, and the federal department exists only to implement and monitor compliance with the strings.
As ever, 'impact on services' is taken to mean 'services I use and need'.
These techbroes and their hangers-on want to reduce the power of the state, because the state is a barrier, preventing them from doing what they want to do. But what they want to do might not be in the interests of the average US citizen. Witness Musk's latest screeching over the FAA.
Musk and the techbroes are part of society, not above it.
Kemi Badenoch: I don’t care if Tory rivals have a pop at me
The Conservative leadership hopeful believes she is the victim of a ‘dirty tricks’ campaign by other candidates but insists she has Labour in her sights instead
The size of the State is a point of contention in the US election.
Here’s former presidentail candidate Vivek Ramaswarmy talking to Lex Fridman about the problem. Ramaswarmy reckons that around 75% of Federal employees, including whole departments, could be lost without significant impact on services. Most of the Federal agencies simply send money to States with strings attached, and the federal department exists only to implement and monitor compliance with the strings.
I know a very smart lady in the US DoE. She's a scientist, who is an expert on the organic absorption of hydrocarbons and chose government work over Shell.
And you know what: in 10 out of 12 years, she produced (a lot of) research papers, and could easily have not worked for the US government without any impact on its efficiency.
But when Deepwater Horizon blew up, she was at the forefront of "it's going to be OK, and this is the plan we need to make sure that the oil is recycled into the ecosystem without causing major damage."
The size of the State is a point of contention in the US election.
Here’s former presidentail candidate Vivek Ramaswarmy talking to Lex Fridman about the problem. Ramaswarmy reckons that around 75% of Federal employees, including whole departments, could be lost without significant impact on services. Most of the Federal agencies simply send money to States with strings attached, and the federal department exists only to implement and monitor compliance with the strings.
The size of the State is a point of contention in the US election.
Here’s former presidentail candidate Vivek Ramaswarmy talking to Lex Fridman about the problem. Ramaswarmy reckons that around 75% of Federal employees, including whole departments, could be lost without significant impact on services. Most of the Federal agencies simply send money to States with strings attached, and the federal department exists only to implement and monitor compliance with the strings.
As ever, 'impact on services' is taken to mean 'services I use and need'.
These techbroes and their hangers-on want to reduce the power of the state, because the state is a barrier, preventing them from doing what they want to do. But what they want to do might not be in the interests of the average US citizen. Witness Musk's latest screeching over the FAA.
Musk and the techbroes are part of society, not above it.
In the last sentence you seem to have a typo, "are" has somehow replaced "should be".
As somebody who has been accused of being part of the blob (vile banker who ousted Liz Truss) I can tell you the blob doesn't exist, free markets exist, the financial markets exist.
She practiced Corbynomics.
You go to the bank where you're borrowing lots from and you tell them you're going to increase your spending massively and want to reduce your income a bit as well and they are going to tell you to jog on.
The Seldon book shows Truss was cosplaying Thatcher without any of the hard work Thatcher (and Howe) did at the start.
Don't even get me started on the prorogation crisis, the rule of law matters.
Also would you like me to list all the times SCOTUK has ruled in favour of the UK government?
So the evidence for the existence of "The Blob" is a 40 year old sitcom?
Its just an excuse used by politicians to explain their failures. It can't be that their plans were half arsed and undeliverable, or that the teenage scribblers in their think tanks don't know what they're doing.
Parliaments are surely not bound by The Human Rights Act 1998, the Climate Change Act 2008 and the Equality Act 2010? They can legislate to remove them if desired? What they can't do is pretend that things that don't comply with them do comply with them, although Sunak did even achieve with that with the law that Rwanda was a safe place even if it wasn't err, safe.
The size of the State is a point of contention in the US election.
Here’s former presidentail candidate Vivek Ramaswarmy talking to Lex Fridman about the problem. Ramaswarmy reckons that around 75% of Federal employees, including whole departments, could be lost without significant impact on services. Most of the Federal agencies simply send money to States with strings attached, and the federal department exists only to implement and monitor compliance with the strings.
@viewcode This is a very good article as usual. Whilst I think your historical trajectory is insightful I think the 'blob' is a bit of a nebulous concept though and defies theorisation. Notwithstanding this, I would say that it can be usefully thought of as an overpowering administrative state that uses process to thwart political will. In response to some other posts, if you want to follow 'blob failure' my suggestion is to watch the current attempts at planning reform unfold. The planning reforms are straight from the blob and the politicians have clearly bought in to it, but they are almost certainly destined to fail in achieving their objectives. In terms of how this may develop, an old civil service boss used to reminisce fondly of the days of 'mad cow disease' - DEFRA were never going to issue enough permits and fast enough; the army had to go in to shoot the cows and burn the carcasses.
The size of the State is a point of contention in the US election.
Here’s former presidentail candidate Vivek Ramaswarmy talking to Lex Fridman about the problem. Ramaswarmy reckons that around 75% of Federal employees, including whole departments, could be lost without significant impact on services. Most of the Federal agencies simply send money to States with strings attached, and the federal department exists only to implement and monitor compliance with the strings.
And you consistently ignore the massive elephant in the room:
Do you really believe that the Russians did not feed them pro-Russian and anti-Ukrainian editorial lines, even if you accept that the 'talent' had no idea they were working for the Russians?
Of course they did; just look at some of Tim Pool's output to see how he parroted pro-Russian lines.
The size of the State is a point of contention in the US election.
Here’s former presidentail candidate Vivek Ramaswarmy talking to Lex Fridman about the problem. Ramaswarmy reckons that around 75% of Federal employees, including whole departments, could be lost without significant impact on services. Most of the Federal agencies simply send money to States with strings attached, and the federal department exists only to implement and monitor compliance with the strings.
Ramaswamy has floated 9/11 conspiracy theories. He’s not exactly credible.
You can call him what you like, but there’s a good chance he could be in the US Cabinet next January, so he’s probably worth listening to even if you disagree with what he has to say.
The size of the State is a point of contention in the US election.
Here’s former presidentail candidate Vivek Ramaswarmy talking to Lex Fridman about the problem. Ramaswarmy reckons that around 75% of Federal employees, including whole departments, could be lost without significant impact on services. Most of the Federal agencies simply send money to States with strings attached, and the federal department exists only to implement and monitor compliance with the strings.
Ramaswamy has floated 9/11 conspiracy theories. He’s not exactly credible.
You can call him what you like, but there’s a good chance he could be in the US Cabinet next January, so he’s probably worth listening to even if you disagree with what he has to say.
The size of the State is a point of contention in the US election.
Here’s former presidentail candidate Vivek Ramaswarmy talking to Lex Fridman about the problem. Ramaswarmy reckons that around 75% of Federal employees, including whole departments, could be lost without significant impact on services. Most of the Federal agencies simply send money to States with strings attached, and the federal department exists only to implement and monitor compliance with the strings.
And you consistently ignore the massive elephant in the room:
Do you really believe that the Russians did not feed them pro-Russian and anti-Ukrainian editorial lines, even if you accept that the 'talent' had no idea they were working for the Russians?
Of course they did; just look at some of Tim Pool's output to see how he parroted pro-Russian lines.
Pool, Rubin, Johnson and others have said that there was no editorial control, and a quick review of the actual output of these programmes the vast majority were pop-culture tyre shows with little to no political content at all.
Their main shows on their own channels are mostly political in nature, but not the Tenet Media shows.
@viewcode This is a very good article as usual. Whilst I think your historical trajectory is insightful I think the 'blob' is a bit of a nebulous concept though and defies theorisation. Notwithstanding this, I would say that it can be usefully thought of as an overpowering administrative state that uses process to thwart political will. In response to some other posts, if you want to follow 'blob failure' my suggestion is to watch the current attempts at planning reform unfold. The planning reforms are straight from the blob and the politicians have clearly bought in to it, but they are almost certainly destined to fail in achieving their objectives. In terms of how this may develop, an old civil service boss used to reminisce fondly of the days of 'mad cow disease' - DEFRA were never going to issue enough permits and fast enough; the army had to go in to shoot the cows and burn the carcasses.
Hang on is "The Blob" behind planning reforms, or is "The Blob" stifling them?
Of course in the UK Parliament is sovereign. So if a government with a majority in Parliament wished to take back power from the courts, reverse privatisation, scrap devolved parliaments and scrap quangos and take back control from the blob it could do so.
However we don't want an over centralised and unchallenged government either
The size of the State is a point of contention in the US election.
Here’s former presidentail candidate Vivek Ramaswarmy talking to Lex Fridman about the problem. Ramaswarmy reckons that around 75% of Federal employees, including whole departments, could be lost without significant impact on services. Most of the Federal agencies simply send money to States with strings attached, and the federal department exists only to implement and monitor compliance with the strings.
And you consistently ignore the massive elephant in the room:
Do you really believe that the Russians did not feed them pro-Russian and anti-Ukrainian editorial lines, even if you accept that the 'talent' had no idea they were working for the Russians?
Of course they did; just look at some of Tim Pool's output to see how he parroted pro-Russian lines.
Pool, Rubin, Johnson and others have said that there was no editorial control, and a quick review of the actual output of these programmes the vast majority were pop-culture tyre shows with little to no political content at all.
Their main shows on their own channels are mostly political in nature, but not the Tenet Media shows.
LOL. Russia wants to spread discord. These nasty idiots did that for them. And gullible fools lapped it all up. And what makes you think they would only follow the money on the Tenet shows?
The size of the State is a point of contention in the US election.
Here’s former presidentail candidate Vivek Ramaswarmy talking to Lex Fridman about the problem. Ramaswarmy reckons that around 75% of Federal employees, including whole departments, could be lost without significant impact on services. Most of the Federal agencies simply send money to States with strings attached, and the federal department exists only to implement and monitor compliance with the strings.
And you consistently ignore the massive elephant in the room:
Do you really believe that the Russians did not feed them pro-Russian and anti-Ukrainian editorial lines, even if you accept that the 'talent' had no idea they were working for the Russians?
Of course they did; just look at some of Tim Pool's output to see how he parroted pro-Russian lines.
Pool, Rubin, Johnson and others have said that there was no editorial control, and a quick review of the actual output of these programmes the vast majority were pop-culture tyre shows with little to no political content at all.
Their main shows on their own channels are mostly political in nature, but not the Tenet Media shows.
LOL. Russia wants to spread discord. These nasty idiots did that for them. And gullible fools lapped it all up. And what makes you think they would only follow the money on the Tenet shows?
(Apparently many of the videos have been taken down, so an 'independent' quick review of them might not show anything.)
I’ll continue to stick with what the DOJ and FBI have to say, and you can continue to stick with LOL Russia how did they not know this was all a set up Russia LOL, and we can agree to disagree.
OFSTED…[was] not installed by evil geniuses but by good people and politicians to achieve a specific goal.
At least in that case, that is arguable. Ofsted was not created by Woodhead but in its current form is essentially his project.*
And Woodhead was not a good person. He was sacked from two teaching roles at Newent and Gordano for gross incompetence - he only got the second by lying on his application form. He was a sexual predator and liar. He was also a serial political trimmer who had no principles worthy of the name and would say or do whatever would accrue more glory to himself. Finally, he was not only a nasty piece of work but notoriously stupid, getting a poor degree in a uni going through a bad patch and being pretty much universally derided for his attempts at academic work.
I think the premise could do with working on here. The issue is that if you create such systems people who want power will gravitate to them. And these are the people often least suited to hold and wield it, through ignorance or arrogance or both.
I suppose the best example of the blob from that point of view is not Woodhead but Cummings. Which is ironic given he thought of himself as an outsider taking on the blob.
*Incidentally this is not to deny many changes have taken place at Ofsted since his time, a large number of them for the better, or that it fulfils an important role and has at times done it well.)
Woodhead actually did a lot of good work in education pushing for higher standards and supporting parental choice.
The size of the State is a point of contention in the US election.
Here’s former presidentail candidate Vivek Ramaswarmy talking to Lex Fridman about the problem. Ramaswarmy reckons that around 75% of Federal employees, including whole departments, could be lost without significant impact on services. Most of the Federal agencies simply send money to States with strings attached, and the federal department exists only to implement and monitor compliance with the strings.
I know a very smart lady in the US DoE. She's a scientist, who is an expert on the organic absorption of hydrocarbons and chose government work over Shell.
And you know what: in 10 out of 12 years, she produced (a lot of) research papers, and could easily have not worked for the US government without any impact on its efficiency.
But when Deepwater Horizon blew up, she was at the forefront of "it's going to be OK, and this is the plan we need to make sure that the oil is recycled into the ecosystem without causing major damage."
Ditto, the environmental impact of Chernobyl. When it blew there were a bunch of Government funded scientists who knew exactly what needed to be measured to understand the impact on Britain and its people.
I find the claims of a blob to be another expression of simplism. The cancer of our times.
@viewcode This is a very good article as usual. Whilst I think your historical trajectory is insightful I think the 'blob' is a bit of a nebulous concept though and defies theorisation. Notwithstanding this, I would say that it can be usefully thought of as an overpowering administrative state that uses process to thwart political will. In response to some other posts, if you want to follow 'blob failure' my suggestion is to watch the current attempts at planning reform unfold. The planning reforms are straight from the blob and the politicians have clearly bought in to it, but they are almost certainly destined to fail in achieving their objectives. In terms of how this may develop, an old civil service boss used to reminisce fondly of the days of 'mad cow disease' - DEFRA were never going to issue enough permits and fast enough; the army had to go in to shoot the cows and burn the carcasses.
Hang on is "The Blob" behind planning reforms, or is "The Blob" stifling them?
Or is it both, or perhaps neither?
The blob is the gap between what ministers promise and what they deliver. Nothing to do with ministers of course.
The size of the State is a point of contention in the US election.
Here’s former presidentail candidate Vivek Ramaswarmy talking to Lex Fridman about the problem. Ramaswarmy reckons that around 75% of Federal employees, including whole departments, could be lost without significant impact on services. Most of the Federal agencies simply send money to States with strings attached, and the federal department exists only to implement and monitor compliance with the strings.
I know a very smart lady in the US DoE. She's a scientist, who is an expert on the organic absorption of hydrocarbons and chose government work over Shell.
And you know what: in 10 out of 12 years, she produced (a lot of) research papers, and could easily have not worked for the US government without any impact on its efficiency.
But when Deepwater Horizon blew up, she was at the forefront of "it's going to be OK, and this is the plan we need to make sure that the oil is recycled into the ecosystem without causing major damage."
Ditto, the environmental impact of Chernobyl. When it blew there were a bunch of Government funded scientists who knew exactly what needed to be measured to understand the impact on Britain and its people.
I find the claims of a blob to be another expression of simplism. The cancer of our times.
As somebody recently observed, replaced the words the blob/deep state with the word 'Jews' and you can see how ridiculous it is.
@viewcode This is a very good article as usual. Whilst I think your historical trajectory is insightful I think the 'blob' is a bit of a nebulous concept though and defies theorisation. Notwithstanding this, I would say that it can be usefully thought of as an overpowering administrative state that uses process to thwart political will. In response to some other posts, if you want to follow 'blob failure' my suggestion is to watch the current attempts at planning reform unfold. The planning reforms are straight from the blob and the politicians have clearly bought in to it, but they are almost certainly destined to fail in achieving their objectives. In terms of how this may develop, an old civil service boss used to reminisce fondly of the days of 'mad cow disease' - DEFRA were never going to issue enough permits and fast enough; the army had to go in to shoot the cows and burn the carcasses.
Hang on is "The Blob" behind planning reforms, or is "The Blob" stifling them?
Or is it both, or perhaps neither?
They are the product of the administrative state, this time in co-operation with politicians. My sense is that the government don't have any ideas at all so they are easy work for the blob. I went out for dinner with some friends in the labour party early in the week and they were in strong agreement with this analysis. The Labour party are characterised by an obsession with control and order (perhaps understandably given recent history) which has come at the expense of ideas which can be outsourced to the blob.
Kemi Badenoch: I don’t care if Tory rivals have a pop at me
The Conservative leadership hopeful believes she is the victim of a ‘dirty tricks’ campaign by other candidates but insists she has Labour in her sights instead
If she said that the sky is blue and the sun rises in the East, you would say it was nonesense.
Meanwhile, the only negativity in an otherwise polite campaign so far has been furious anti-Kemi briefing to hacks on an almost daily basis - because a small group of MPs know she’s popular among the membership, and are trying desparately to knock her out before it gets to that stage.
Kemi Badenoch: I don’t care if Tory rivals have a pop at me
The Conservative leadership hopeful believes she is the victim of a ‘dirty tricks’ campaign by other candidates but insists she has Labour in her sights instead
If she said that the sky is blue and the sun rises in the East, you would say it was nonesense.
Meanwhile, the only negativity in an otherwise polite campaign so far has been furious anti-Kemi briefing to hacks on an almost daily basis - because a small group of MPs know she’s popular among the membership, and are trying desparately to knock her out before it gets to that stage.
Polite campaign!
You should see some of the WhatsApp messages her team have been sending out.
"The Blob" is structural, and one we've created. And it extends well beyond the civil service.
It makes it very easy for vested interests and those opposed to something to gum up and slow down reform, and that's even easier when lots of people oppose it, and very hard to achieve meaningful change.
The size of the State is a point of contention in the US election.
Here’s former presidentail candidate Vivek Ramaswarmy talking to Lex Fridman about the problem. Ramaswarmy reckons that around 75% of Federal employees, including whole departments, could be lost without significant impact on services. Most of the Federal agencies simply send money to States with strings attached, and the federal department exists only to implement and monitor compliance with the strings.
And you consistently ignore the massive elephant in the room:
Do you really believe that the Russians did not feed them pro-Russian and anti-Ukrainian editorial lines, even if you accept that the 'talent' had no idea they were working for the Russians?
Of course they did; just look at some of Tim Pool's output to see how he parroted pro-Russian lines.
Pool, Rubin, Johnson and others have said that there was no editorial control, and a quick review of the actual output of these programmes the vast majority were pop-culture tyre shows with little to no political content at all.
Their main shows on their own channels are mostly political in nature, but not the Tenet Media shows.
LOL. Russia wants to spread discord. These nasty idiots did that for them. And gullible fools lapped it all up. And what makes you think they would only follow the money on the Tenet shows?
(Apparently many of the videos have been taken down, so an 'independent' quick review of them might not show anything.)
I’ll continue to stick with what the DOJ and FBI have to say, and you can continue to stick with LOL Russia how did they not know this was all a set up Russia LOL, and we can agree to disagree.
No.
You believe that the Russians gave them this money out of the kindness of their hearts, and it is a pure coincidence that the lines these shits took was coincident with Russian interests.
I'd argue that is a ridiculous position to take. And interestingly, it isn't contradicted by that link you give. They may not have known it was Russian money, but they sure as heck knew they were pro-Russian lines.
What are the rules on linking to a very naughty interview given on talktv yesterday by Isabelle Oakeshott, about the thing that no one is supposed to talk about?
TSE was pretty clear that it's an instant dismissal for anyone who does.
Fair dinkum. Sounds like the story is coming out sooner or later anyway.
The size of the State is a point of contention in the US election.
Here’s former presidentail candidate Vivek Ramaswarmy talking to Lex Fridman about the problem. Ramaswarmy reckons that around 75% of Federal employees, including whole departments, could be lost without significant impact on services. Most of the Federal agencies simply send money to States with strings attached, and the federal department exists only to implement and monitor compliance with the strings.
I know a very smart lady in the US DoE. She's a scientist, who is an expert on the organic absorption of hydrocarbons and chose government work over Shell.
And you know what: in 10 out of 12 years, she produced (a lot of) research papers, and could easily have not worked for the US government without any impact on its efficiency.
But when Deepwater Horizon blew up, she was at the forefront of "it's going to be OK, and this is the plan we need to make sure that the oil is recycled into the ecosystem without causing major damage."
Clearly it’s important to keep expertise in areas like energy and transport, where disasters can happen when things go wrong. That doesn’t mean that entire departments such as education can’t be scrapped in their entirety.
What are the rules on linking to a very naughty interview given on talktv yesterday by Isabelle Oakeshott, about the thing that no one is supposed to talk about?
TSE was pretty clear that it's an instant dismissal for anyone who does.
Fair dinkum. Sounds like the story is coming out sooner or later anyway.
What story? That's a rhetorical question, but iirc Oakeshott said she did not know what the full story was or if it is true, but she denied the host's clear (and hopeful?) implication it was about his sexuality. So, again rhetorically, what story?
In any case, as we learned from Jim Hacker, never believe a story until it has been officially denied or embellished by Leon wittering on about a Finnish necklace.
So the evidence for the existence of "The Blob" is a 40 year old sitcom?
Its just an excuse used by politicians to explain their failures. It can't be that their plans were half arsed and undeliverable, or that the teenage scribblers in their think tanks don't know what they're doing.
It can be that.
It can also be a hidebound, inept, generalist, complacent, lazy and above all extremely risk-averse government machine refusing to consider new ways of doing things.
I worked in government for many years. I've seen both.
Boots or Tesco already know when your wife buys lady products so why not tell Big Brother? Although I doubt Lord Sainsbury will lock up your daughter if she skips a couple of months' shopping, so there's that difference.
The size of the State is a point of contention in the US election.
Here’s former presidentail candidate Vivek Ramaswarmy talking to Lex Fridman about the problem. Ramaswarmy reckons that around 75% of Federal employees, including whole departments, could be lost without significant impact on services. Most of the Federal agencies simply send money to States with strings attached, and the federal department exists only to implement and monitor compliance with the strings.
And you consistently ignore the massive elephant in the room:
Do you really believe that the Russians did not feed them pro-Russian and anti-Ukrainian editorial lines, even if you accept that the 'talent' had no idea they were working for the Russians?
Of course they did; just look at some of Tim Pool's output to see how he parroted pro-Russian lines.
Pool, Rubin, Johnson and others have said that there was no editorial control, and a quick review of the actual output of these programmes the vast majority were pop-culture tyre shows with little to no political content at all.
Their main shows on their own channels are mostly political in nature, but not the Tenet Media shows.
LOL. Russia wants to spread discord. These nasty idiots did that for them. And gullible fools lapped it all up. And what makes you think they would only follow the money on the Tenet shows?
(Apparently many of the videos have been taken down, so an 'independent' quick review of them might not show anything.)
I’ll continue to stick with what the DOJ and FBI have to say, and you can continue to stick with LOL Russia how did they not know this was all a set up Russia LOL, and we can agree to disagree.
No.
You believe that the Russians gave them this money out of the kindness of their hearts, and it is a pure coincidence that the lines these shits took was coincident with Russian interests.
I'd argue that is a ridiculous position to take. And interestingly, it isn't contradicted by that link you give. They may not have known it was Russian money, but they sure as heck knew they were pro-Russian lines.
Jeez this is getting difficult.
The FBI and DOJ said that the presenters of shows on Tenet were victims, who were unaware that the company was partly financed by RT, and were lied to by the (Canadian) directors of the company. The programmes themselves were mostly non-political, and the creators have said themselves that there was never any editorial control over the programmes being shown.
Here’s Dave Rubin being interviewed by Megyn Kelly about Tenet. And Here’s Tim Pool being interviewed by Ben Shapiro about Tenet.
A real conspiracy theorist might suggest that the whole thing was set up by the Biden-Harris administration, to try and discredit mainstream online voices who are supporting Trump, with stories of how the Russians are funding conservative commentators, just as they spent two years after the 2016 election trying unsuccessfully to tie Trump to Russia.
@viewcode This is a very good article as usual. Whilst I think your historical trajectory is insightful I think the 'blob' is a bit of a nebulous concept though and defies theorisation. Notwithstanding this, I would say that it can be usefully thought of as an overpowering administrative state that uses process to thwart political will. In response to some other posts, if you want to follow 'blob failure' my suggestion is to watch the current attempts at planning reform unfold. The planning reforms are straight from the blob and the politicians have clearly bought in to it, but they are almost certainly destined to fail in achieving their objectives. In terms of how this may develop, an old civil service boss used to reminisce fondly of the days of 'mad cow disease' - DEFRA were never going to issue enough permits and fast enough; the army had to go in to shoot the cows and burn the carcasses.
Hang on is "The Blob" behind planning reforms, or is "The Blob" stifling them?
Or is it both, or perhaps neither?
They are the product of the administrative state, this time in co-operation with politicians. My sense is that the government don't have any ideas at all so they are easy work for the blob. I went out for dinner with some friends in the labour party early in the week and they were in strong agreement with this analysis. The Labour party are characterised by an obsession with control and order (perhaps understandably given recent history) which has come at the expense of ideas which can be outsourced to the blob.
The Labour Party has always believed in centralised top down government control, one of the reasons that I don't vote or support them, but that is very different to believing in "the Blob".
I'm increasingly coming round to my wife's view, who is a Jewish person who even knows a couple of the lefr-wing Israelis protesting against Netanyahu outside the U.N., that if the Americans cannot bring him to heel, his government should be subject to international sanctions, and travel bans.
There's also the question of the ICC indictment against Netanyahu, as I recall it, and the ICC is not the "U.N. Pro-Arabists'l", as his far-right ministers like to call it. The Israeli population at large need to understand that if their nation continues on this kind of trajectory, then it's heading for South African-style, pariah status in the world
Utter rubbish, Israel has every right to defend itself and to seek to destroy Hamas and Hezbollah.
For the war to end only requires Hamas and Hezbollah to surrender and lay down their arms. If they don't, then war it is until they do. That's the nature of war, its sad but the world has wars and Hamas and Hezbollah are attacking Israel which has every right to defend itself and they need to be comprehensively and completely defeated.
What do you think about the way in which Israel is fighting this war?
In Gaza they seem not to be occupying territory and establishing an occupation authority that would have responsibility for looking after civilians and would create a sense of a positive future for Gaza being possible, but instead they go into an area, trash everything, then retreat, let Hamas come back, then repeat.
It seems to be a recipe for permanent war, rather than for a complete defeat of Hamas. We are close to one year in and Hamas still have large numbers of hostages. The Israeli strategy has failed, except insofar as it keeps Netanyahu safe from a corruption trial.
I don't agree at all with the way Netanyahu is running the country or conducting the war.
I think Israel is being far too soft with Hamas and Hezbollah under Netanyahu as I agree that I think he wants the war to be ongoing and not won. Similarly he was way too soft with Hamas before October last year leading to those tragic events.
Netanyahu is like Chamberlain, only much worse. Israel needs its Churchill who can lead them to victory and actually destroy Hamas and Hezbollah.
Netanyahu is indeed making things much too easy for Hamas and Hezbollah.
He is providing them with all the recruits and worldwide sympathy they could ask for and need to make sure the war goes on for another generation.
Indeed.
Israel needs to replace Netanyahu with a Churchill-like figure that will win the war by killing those recruits until the enemy surrenders unconditionally, just as the Nazis did after they were defeated, and then we can move on from war.
Instead Netanyahu is doing just enough to continue the violence but not enough to win. Israel needs to fight much harder than it is doing to win.
But many of those recruits won't become active for years or decades. They will hate Israel internally until then. So short of an outright genocide, Israel/Palestine will never be able to "move on" from war without the legitimate grievances of the more persuadable Palestinians being addressed, which Netanyahu has stubbornly and totally failed to do. But every bomb or civilian casualty means there are fewer of those and many more fanatics sadly.
Israel's war is totally self-defeating in the medium-long term no matter how successful it is in the short term. But tragically that's par for the course in that part of the Middle East.
"The Blob" is structural, and one we've created. And it extends well beyond the civil service.
It makes it very easy for vested interests and those opposed to something to gum up and slow down reform, and that's even easier when lots of people oppose it, and very hard to achieve meaningful change.
Where gumming up and slowing down reform is often about pointing out the complex consequences of implementing ‘simple’ ‘common-sense’ ideas.
And your long piece is essentially about regulation. I’m happy with regulation, although it could be smarter and better enforced and in some areas less risk averse.
I hate him being called Pog, as he is in some places.
The only POG I have known was Mr P O Gershon, who was a rather capricious and viewed-as-thuggish head of the GEC company. The grind over a number of years of 5-10% of the workforce going annually at the major site where I worked is not something I wish to recall.
BREAKING: Israeli army confirms Hassan Nasrallah, longtime Hezbollah leader, was killed in Beirut strike last night
Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah has issued a stern warning to Israel, threatening a war with “no restraint and no rules and no ceilings” in case of a major Israeli offensive against Lebanon.
I'm increasingly coming round to my wife's view, who is a Jewish person who even knows a couple of the lefr-wing Israelis protesting against Netanyahu outside the U.N., that if the Americans cannot bring him to heel, his government should be subject to international sanctions, and travel bans.
There's also the question of the ICC indictment against Netanyahu, as I recall it, and the ICC is not the "U.N. Pro-Arabists'l", as his far-right ministers like to call it. The Israeli population at large need to understand that if their nation continues on this kind of trajectory, then it's heading for South African-style, pariah status in the world
Utter rubbish, Israel has every right to defend itself and to seek to destroy Hamas and Hezbollah.
For the war to end only requires Hamas and Hezbollah to surrender and lay down their arms. If they don't, then war it is until they do. That's the nature of war, its sad but the world has wars and Hamas and Hezbollah are attacking Israel which has every right to defend itself and they need to be comprehensively and completely defeated.
What do you think about the way in which Israel is fighting this war?
In Gaza they seem not to be occupying territory and establishing an occupation authority that would have responsibility for looking after civilians and would create a sense of a positive future for Gaza being possible, but instead they go into an area, trash everything, then retreat, let Hamas come back, then repeat.
It seems to be a recipe for permanent war, rather than for a complete defeat of Hamas. We are close to one year in and Hamas still have large numbers of hostages. The Israeli strategy has failed, except insofar as it keeps Netanyahu safe from a corruption trial.
I don't agree at all with the way Netanyahu is running the country or conducting the war.
I think Israel is being far too soft with Hamas and Hezbollah under Netanyahu as I agree that I think he wants the war to be ongoing and not won. Similarly he was way too soft with Hamas before October last year leading to those tragic events.
Netanyahu is like Chamberlain, only much worse. Israel needs its Churchill who can lead them to victory and actually destroy Hamas and Hezbollah.
Netanyahu is indeed making things much too easy for Hamas and Hezbollah.
He is providing them with all the recruits and worldwide sympathy they could ask for and need to make sure the war goes on for another generation.
Indeed.
Israel needs to replace Netanyahu with a Churchill-like figure that will win the war by killing those recruits until the enemy surrenders unconditionally, just as the Nazis did after they were defeated, and then we can move on from war.
Instead Netanyahu is doing just enough to continue the violence but not enough to win. Israel needs to fight much harder than it is doing to win.
But many of those recruits won't become active for years or decades. They will hate Israel internally until then. So short of an outright genocide, Israel/Palestine will never be able to "move on" from war without the legitimate grievances of the more persuadable Palestinians being addressed, which Netanyahu has stubbornly and totally failed to do. But every bomb or civilian casualty means there are fewer of those and many more fanatics sadly.
Israel's war is totally self-defeating in the medium-long term no matter how successful it is in the short term. But tragically that's par for the course in that part of the Middle East.
And it's also where the analogy with the Nazis in 1945 breaks down. They were embodied in individuals and encircled, so it was possible, by sufficient effort, to trap and destroy them.
Th enemies of Israel are on the outside of the doughnut and far too numerous. Besides, anti-Semitism is an idea, and those are much harder to destroy. And the actions of the Netanyahu are fortifying the idea, even as they are the destroying the military leaders of the idea.
And, no matter the rightness of the cause, there is a point where fighting an impossible war in that cause becomes unjust. And it's not obvious that the Israeli state didn't cross that line some while back.
@viewcode This is a very good article as usual. Whilst I think your historical trajectory is insightful I think the 'blob' is a bit of a nebulous concept though and defies theorisation. Notwithstanding this, I would say that it can be usefully thought of as an overpowering administrative state that uses process to thwart political will. In response to some other posts, if you want to follow 'blob failure' my suggestion is to watch the current attempts at planning reform unfold. The planning reforms are straight from the blob and the politicians have clearly bought in to it, but they are almost certainly destined to fail in achieving their objectives. In terms of how this may develop, an old civil service boss used to reminisce fondly of the days of 'mad cow disease' - DEFRA were never going to issue enough permits and fast enough; the army had to go in to shoot the cows and burn the carcasses.
Hang on is "The Blob" behind planning reforms, or is "The Blob" stifling them?
Or is it both, or perhaps neither?
They are the product of the administrative state, this time in co-operation with politicians. My sense is that the government don't have any ideas at all so they are easy work for the blob. I went out for dinner with some friends in the labour party early in the week and they were in strong agreement with this analysis. The Labour party are characterised by an obsession with control and order (perhaps understandably given recent history) which has come at the expense of ideas which can be outsourced to the blob.
The Labour Party has always believed in centralised top down government control, one of the reasons that I don't vote or support them, but that is very different to believing in "the Blob".
The argument against that is devolution, which demonstrates that the Labour Party wants to have control at all levels of government
I found Viewcode's piece hard to follow. There seemed to be as many examples of the "blob" being rather useful as the opposite. And a number of examples when the blob was easily dismissed or ignored, such as during Brexit and Truss' budget.
The one recent example of the blob that concerns me is the legal challenge to the removal of WFP. In Edinburgh and Inverness, it's the use of consultation processes by groups based and funded outside these cities (and indeed the UK) to stifle things we voted for, such as LTNs and cycle lanes. But the government could always legislate to change or remove those processes.
The ultimate example of the blob is arms-length but publicly owned transport providers, which ride rough-shod over local democracy and are largely unaccountable. By virtue of their managers incentive to survive in their cosy roles, they end up providing a profitable and good service.
But thanks - something to exercise the brain this morning.
BREAKING: Israeli army confirms Hassan Nasrallah, longtime Hezbollah leader, was killed in Beirut strike last night
Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah has issued a stern warning to Israel, threatening a war with “no restraint and no rules and no ceilings” in case of a major Israeli offensive against Lebanon.
BREAKING: Israeli army confirms Hassan Nasrallah, longtime Hezbollah leader, was killed in Beirut strike last night
That’s the whole management board of Hezbollah taken out over the last couple of weeks. There must be a mole or moles with a lot of access to movements of senior Hezbollah figures, passing their future locations to the Israelis.
Realistically, “the blob” is just another word for technocracy. There is probably an ideal number of technocrats, an equilibrium state. Too few, and you get governments doing silly things and messing up the public realm. Too many and you get the gumming up of infrastructure investment and change.
What side of this equilibrium we’re on depends on whether the technocrats appear to be on your side or not.
Captain Darling: So you see, Blackadder, Field Marshall Gove is most anxious to eliminate all these members of the blob. General Melchett: Filthy woke weasel experts, fighting their dirty underhand war! Captain Darling: And fortunately, one of our SPADS… General Melchett: Splendid fellows, brave heroes risking life and limb for Blighty!
The size of the State is a point of contention in the US election.
Here’s former presidentail candidate Vivek Ramaswarmy talking to Lex Fridman about the problem. Ramaswarmy reckons that around 75% of Federal employees, including whole departments, could be lost without significant impact on services. Most of the Federal agencies simply send money to States with strings attached, and the federal department exists only to implement and monitor compliance with the strings.
The size of the State is a point of contention in the US election.
Here’s former presidentail candidate Vivek Ramaswarmy talking to Lex Fridman about the problem. Ramaswarmy reckons that around 75% of Federal employees, including whole departments, could be lost without significant impact on services. Most of the Federal agencies simply send money to States with strings attached, and the federal department exists only to implement and monitor compliance with the strings.
And you consistently ignore the massive elephant in the room:
Do you really believe that the Russians did not feed them pro-Russian and anti-Ukrainian editorial lines, even if you accept that the 'talent' had no idea they were working for the Russians?
Of course they did; just look at some of Tim Pool's output to see how he parroted pro-Russian lines.
Pool, Rubin, Johnson and others have said that there was no editorial control, and a quick review of the actual output of these programmes the vast majority were pop-culture tyre shows with little to no political content at all.
Their main shows on their own channels are mostly political in nature, but not the Tenet Media shows.
LOL. Russia wants to spread discord. These nasty idiots did that for them. And gullible fools lapped it all up. And what makes you think they would only follow the money on the Tenet shows?
(Apparently many of the videos have been taken down, so an 'independent' quick review of them might not show anything.)
I’ll continue to stick with what the DOJ and FBI have to say, and you can continue to stick with LOL Russia how did they not know this was all a set up Russia LOL, and we can agree to disagree.
No.
You believe that the Russians gave them this money out of the kindness of their hearts, and it is a pure coincidence that the lines these shits took was coincident with Russian interests.
I'd argue that is a ridiculous position to take. And interestingly, it isn't contradicted by that link you give. They may not have known it was Russian money, but they sure as heck knew they were pro-Russian lines.
Jeez this is getting difficult.
The FBI and DOJ said that the presenters of shows on Tenet were victims, who were unaware that the company was partly financed by RT, and were lied to by the (Canadian) directors of the company. The programmes themselves were mostly non-political, and the creators have said themselves that there was never any editorial control over the programmes being shown.
Here’s Dave Rubin being interviewed by Megyn Kelly about Tenet. And Here’s Tim Pool being interviewed by Ben Shapiro about Tenet.
A real conspiracy theorist might suggest that the whole thing was set up by the Biden-Harris administration, to try and discredit mainstream online voices who are supporting Trump, with stories of how the Russians are funding conservative commentators, just as they spent two years after the 2016 election trying unsuccessfully to tie Trump to Russia.
I'm quite happy to accept, for now, that they're just Putin's useful imbeciles. Like Trump.
But let's wait for the investigation outcome before coming to a final judgment.
"The blob" exists as a narrative where you see the adminstration of the state as a conspiracy to block whatever change you want to make. I don't personally find it a useful narrative. Change it's always hard across a system with so many vested interests and normally you should engage if you want effective change.
@viewcode This is a very good article as usual. Whilst I think your historical trajectory is insightful I think the 'blob' is a bit of a nebulous concept though and defies theorisation. Notwithstanding this, I would say that it can be usefully thought of as an overpowering administrative state that uses process to thwart political will. In response to some other posts, if you want to follow 'blob failure' my suggestion is to watch the current attempts at planning reform unfold. The planning reforms are straight from the blob and the politicians have clearly bought in to it, but they are almost certainly destined to fail in achieving their objectives. In terms of how this may develop, an old civil service boss used to reminisce fondly of the days of 'mad cow disease' - DEFRA were never going to issue enough permits and fast enough; the army had to go in to shoot the cows and burn the carcasses.
Hang on is "The Blob" behind planning reforms, or is "The Blob" stifling them?
Or is it both, or perhaps neither?
The blob is the gap between what ministers promise and what they deliver. Nothing to do with ministers of course.
That's exactly the point.
"The Blob", which politicians love to blame for their failures, is just civil servants or quangos trying (diligently, competently, or otherwise) to carry out government policy. Which generations of politicians have legislated into existence.
It's a generalised, amorphous, and largely meaningless abstraction used a a scapegoat for bad policy.
On topic- thanks for an interesting piece @viewcode, even when I disagree with it.
I think that comes down to the difference between the conservative right and the radical right. One of the stories conservatives tell themselves is Chesterton's one about the fence- basically, don't get rid of something until you have established the good reason it was put there in the first place.
Yes, the complexity of the state is infuriating, as is its combination of F1 brakes and C5 motor. But, as you note in your conclusion, there is a good reason for that, alongside several bad ones. Most people prefer safety over freedom. And for most people, that's probably sensible.
When he was only quirky rather than whatever he is now, Matt Ridley wrote nicely on the evolution of everything. You don't need plans or controls, just let natural selection do its thing and the species or art will advance. Well, up to a point. That's true at species level, but not at individual level- there, natural selection is a very high probability of an early death.
Very many advocates of state slashing are people who are happy to gamble because they (accurately) judge that they are largely insulated for the downsides of things going wrong. You have to be very comfortable to do that, living off the interest on the interest.
It's the contradiction that Farage has never really tried to resolve. At elite level, his vision is about deregulation and state-slashing. But the movement mostly wants safety from things. Escape from the cage vs. pull up the drawbridge and hunker down.
What are the rules on linking to a very naughty interview given on talktv yesterday by Isabelle Oakeshott, about the thing that no one is supposed to talk about?
TSE was pretty clear that it's an instant dismissal for anyone who does.
Fair dinkum. Sounds like the story is coming out sooner or later anyway.
What story? That's a rhetorical question, but iirc Oakeshott said she did not know what the full story was or if it is true, but she denied the host's clear (and hopeful?) implication it was about his sexuality. So, again rhetorically, what story?
In any case, as we learned from Jim Hacker, never believe a story until it has been officially denied or embellished by Leon wittering on about a Finnish necklace.
Probably giving this so called "story" more than the zero prominence it deserves, but I would consider the trustworthiness of the source, who blames Starmer personally for presuming to lock up the brave heroes who were trying to burn asylum seekers alive.
"The blob" exists as a narrative where you see the adminstration of the state as a conspiracy to block whatever change you want to make. I don't personally find it a useful narrative. Change it's always hard across a system with so many vested interests and normally you should engage if you want effective change.
It does give politicians who don't have decent ideas for reform an easy out, though. "Let's just scrap the state." Etc
BREAKING: Israeli army confirms Hassan Nasrallah, longtime Hezbollah leader, was killed in Beirut strike last night
Its properly on like Fat Pat thong now...In 2 weeks, the Israelis have wiped out the top 3 levels of Hezbollah leadership and killed / injured 1000s of their terrorists. They have a reported of 100k men willing to fight for them.
I am actually surprised the Grand Wizard was actually in country. Given he always gives his rants via Zoom, I presumed he was probably smuggled away in Syria or Iran, like the way Hamas leadership are in Turkey and Qatar.
"The Blob" is structural, and one we've created. And it extends well beyond the civil service.
It makes it very easy for vested interests and those opposed to something to gum up and slow down reform, and that's even easier when lots of people oppose it, and very hard to achieve meaningful change.
People seem to have a short memory. May was labelled very right wing at one point, way to the right of Cameron / Osborne, with her go home vans and ran a totally disastrous GE campaign.
I was on a peasant wagon yesterday and two oldies were talking about how they are using Gemini for talking to their foreign relatives...I think AI might have some cut through. Don't fancy chances for all these other translation and foreign language learns apps.
@viewcode This is a very good article as usual. Whilst I think your historical trajectory is insightful I think the 'blob' is a bit of a nebulous concept though and defies theorisation. Notwithstanding this, I would say that it can be usefully thought of as an overpowering administrative state that uses process to thwart political will. In response to some other posts, if you want to follow 'blob failure' my suggestion is to watch the current attempts at planning reform unfold. The planning reforms are straight from the blob and the politicians have clearly bought in to it, but they are almost certainly destined to fail in achieving their objectives. In terms of how this may develop, an old civil service boss used to reminisce fondly of the days of 'mad cow disease' - DEFRA were never going to issue enough permits and fast enough; the army had to go in to shoot the cows and burn the carcasses.
Hang on is "The Blob" behind planning reforms, or is "The Blob" stifling them?
Or is it both, or perhaps neither?
The blob is the gap between what ministers promise and what they deliver. Nothing to do with ministers of course.
That's exactly the point.
"The Blob", which politicians love to blame for their failures, is just civil servants or quangos trying (diligently, competently, or otherwise) to carry out government policy. Which generations of politicians have legislated into existence.
It's a generalised, amorphous, and largely meaningless abstraction used a a scapegoat for bad policy.
Worse than that, the blob is what politicians blame even before they've tried to enact or even formulate any policy. Sometimes this is to excuse failure. Often to justify appointing cronies.
People seem to have a short memory. May was labelled very right wing at one point, way to the right of Cameron / Osborne, with her go home vans and ran a totally disastrous GE campaign.
See also Sunak.
That figures who would have been on the right of most modern iterations of the Conservative Party are now very definitely on the left shows how far the party's centre of gravity has shifted.
Not saying whether that's a good or bad thing, but it seems silly to deny that it isn't a thing.
People seem to have a short memory. May was labelled very right wing at one point, way to the right of Cameron / Osborne, with her go home vans and ran a totally disastrous GE campaign.
See also Sunak.
That figures who would have been on the right of most modern iterations of the Conservative Party are now very definitely on the left shows how far the party's centre of gravity has shifted.
Not saying whether that's a good or bad thing, but it seems silly to deny that it isn't a thing.
I don't think Sunak is a good example. I don't think he has any sort of real strong politicial ideology, a weak leader (leader is really too generous), he just followed what he was told was a good strategy for GE, which seemed to be made up every night at 9pm in order to brief the Telegraph. The policy platform of the Tories was totally incoherent and you could tell they hadn't thought much of it through as they couldn't explain it past the headline, be it National Service or cutting mickey mouse degrees.
He is a middle manager that was fast tracked to the top because of Boris and then Truss failures he then became the default option. They used to criticism Cameron for not having a strong vision, but Osborne definitely did and that is what drove a lot of things. Sunak, its was nothingness, surrounded by a team of either the useless or the right wing, and he was just there in the middle being overwhelmed.
@viewcode This is a very good article as usual. Whilst I think your historical trajectory is insightful I think the 'blob' is a bit of a nebulous concept though and defies theorisation. Notwithstanding this, I would say that it can be usefully thought of as an overpowering administrative state that uses process to thwart political will. In response to some other posts, if you want to follow 'blob failure' my suggestion is to watch the current attempts at planning reform unfold. The planning reforms are straight from the blob and the politicians have clearly bought in to it, but they are almost certainly destined to fail in achieving their objectives. In terms of how this may develop, an old civil service boss used to reminisce fondly of the days of 'mad cow disease' - DEFRA were never going to issue enough permits and fast enough; the army had to go in to shoot the cows and burn the carcasses.
Hang on is "The Blob" behind planning reforms, or is "The Blob" stifling them?
Or is it both, or perhaps neither?
The blob is the gap between what ministers promise and what they deliver. Nothing to do with ministers of course.
That's exactly the point.
"The Blob", which politicians love to blame for their failures, is just civil servants or quangos trying (diligently, competently, or otherwise) to carry out government policy. Which generations of politicians have legislated into existence.
It's a generalised, amorphous, and largely meaningless abstraction used a a scapegoat for bad policy.
Worse than that, the blob is what politicians blame even before they've tried to enact or even formulate any policy. Sometimes this is to excuse failure. Often to justify appointing cronies.
We’ll see Labour ministers starting to complain about it towards the tail end of their time in office, whenever that happens (5 years, 10 years, 15…). At that point Tories will find themselves learning to love the blob again.
"The blob" exists as a narrative where you see the adminstration of the state as a conspiracy to block whatever change you want to make. I don't personally find it a useful narrative. Change it's always hard across a system with so many vested interests and normally you should engage if you want effective change.
It does give politicians who don't have decent ideas for reform an easy out, though. "Let's just scrap the state." Etc
See just now, for example, Ramaswamy.
The "blob" conspiracy is lazy thinking.
Suppose a politician wants to increase power transmission for economic growth but your grandmother who is in the politicians constituency association has a petition going opposing power pylons in the village because they get in the way of her rather nice view of the countryside.
Is your grandmother part of the "blob" ?
Rishi Sunak implemented a bunch of measures to prevent anti pollution controls in cities because he felt that played well electorally with vested interests. Is he part of the "blob" ?
I don't feel this is useful in making things better
Thanks for the article. Most interesting. A couple of points.
The 'blob' in the sense of a huge civil admin set of hierarchies (whether stricto sensu governmental, local authority, quango or privatised) is just inevitable in any modern state.
Our basic legal system is ancient and organic, like a 1000 year old tree. A modern state is placed within it as a new and massive growth. Common law is its history, so complexifying is certain, and simplifying more or less impossible. I have been out of the law now for exactly 40 years and have watched the massive complexification from outside with awe. These days even in a small provincial area - where I now live - local solicitors specialise in this or that little area, and more or less know nothing outside their specific field. This is a much wider truth too.
Finally: Grenfell. This answers the question of do we want safety or freedom? We want safety. What we get is neither.
What we want is a civil order ('blob' is tempting but not in the end quite fair) which works. The issues around this are most intellectual (too many dim people and jobsworths) and moral (too many people not properly brought up to discern between right and wrong, too little clarity about with whom the buck stops).
Everything we need to know and put right is encapsulated in Grenfell.
BREAKING: Israeli army confirms Hassan Nasrallah, longtime Hezbollah leader, was killed in Beirut strike last night
Its properly on like Fat Pat thong now...In 2 weeks, the Israelis have wiped out the top 3 levels of Hezbollah leadership and killed / injured 1000s of their terrorists. They have a reported of 100k men willing to fight for them.
I am actually surprised the Grand Wizard was actually in country. Given he always gives his rants via Zoom, I presumed he was probably smuggled away in Syria or Iran, like the way Hamas leadership are in Turkey and Qatar.
It’s quite astonishing that they were all there. You’d have expected at least one of the three layers to be somewhere remote, as with the Hamas leaders staying in a large international hotel in Qatar, somewhere you can’t just lob a missile without causing a rather large escalation, as well as the possibility of all sorts of other nationalities getting caught as collateral damage.
Thanks for the article. Most interesting. A couple of points.
The 'blob' in the sense of a huge civil admin set of hierarchies (whether stricto sensu governmental, local authority, quango or privatised) is just inevitable in any modern state.
Our basic legal system is ancient and organic, like a 1000 year old tree. A modern state is placed within it as a new and massive growth. Common law is its history, so complexifying is certain, and simplifying more or less impossible. I have been out of the law now for exactly 40 years and have watched the massive complexification from outside with awe. These days even in a small provincial area - where I now live - local solicitors specialise in this or that little area, and more or less know nothing outside their specific field. This is a much wider truth too.
Finally: Grenfell. This answers the question of do we want safety or freedom? We want safety. What we get is neither.
What we want is a civil order ('blob' is tempting but not in the end quite fair) which works. The issues around this are most intellectual (too many dim people and jobsworths) and moral (too many people not properly brought up to discern between right and wrong, too little clarity about with whom the buck stops).
Everything we need to know and put right is encapsulated in Grenfell.
That’s an interesting case study. Perhaps people wouldn’t care too much about an excessive and overburdening State, if it actually worked.
Instead, what we have is a system that generates thousands of pages of paperwork, and generates lots of time billed by consultants and lawyers - yet utterly fails at what it’s primarily supposed to do, in this case make sure buildings aren’t cladded with flammable materials.
I was on a peasant wagon yesterday and two oldies were talking about how they are using Gemini for talking to their foreign relatives...I think AI might have some cut through. Don't fancy chances for all these other translation and foreign language learns apps.
I was talking to a school mum this morning after my daughter’s sleepover. She’s a teacher and has been getting trained on all sorts of AI. Got it to “do” the party activities last night, including the kids cocktail recipes and all the art work - 5 minutes. That sort of thing would have taken hours before.
And AI supported search is getting much better. I was trying to get information on Lake Chad refilling as a result of this year’s mega Sahel rainfall. All I got on Bing and Google was articles about flooding and aid agencies. Asked copilot the question and got a nicely sourced, well written answer to exactly what I’d been looking for.
Copilot has been recording meetings at work recently and writing excellent notes and action logs. 10x better than anything our junior staff could manage.
On topic- thanks for an interesting piece @viewcode, even when I disagree with it.
I think that comes down to the difference between the conservative right and the radical right. One of the stories conservatives tell themselves is Chesterton's one about the fence- basically, don't get rid of something until you have established the good reason it was put there in the first place.
Yes, the complexity of the state is infuriating, as is its combination of F1 brakes and C5 motor. But, as you note in your conclusion, there is a good reason for that, alongside several bad ones. Most people prefer safety over freedom. And for most people, that's probably sensible.
When he was only quirky rather than whatever he is now, Matt Ridley wrote nicely on the evolution of everything. You don't need plans or controls, just let natural selection do its thing and the species or art will advance. Well, up to a point. That's true at species level, but not at individual level- there, natural selection is a very high probability of an early death.
Very many advocates of state slashing are people who are happy to gamble because they (accurately) judge that they are largely insulated for the downsides of things going wrong. You have to be very comfortable to do that, living off the interest on the interest.
It's the contradiction that Farage has never really tried to resolve. At elite level, his vision is about deregulation and state-slashing. But the movement mostly wants safety from things. Escape from the cage vs. pull up the drawbridge and hunker down.
Yes. How many votes would Reform get if it had policies to massively increase personal responsibility, such as phasing out state pensions and an insurance based health system?
Given Gove's part in popularising the idea of The Blob in UK discourse, seems topical that this story has bubbled up the education agenda again;
The Lilac Sky Schools Trust was closed in 2016. Its nine schools were rebrokered as the government investigated financial “impropriety”.
Last year the government barred the trust’s founder and chief executive Trevor Averre-Beeson and his successor Christopher Bowler from managing schools, citing “inappropriate conduct”.
How do you balance the opportunity of things going right with the risk of them going wrong? Somehow the risk-loving and risk-averse gave to live alongside each other.
Excellent article and amusing to see the views on it splitting to some extent along political lines. Broadly those on the Left like the systems that fix in and limit change whilst those on the right are more concious/crictical of the Blob.
On thing I would say is that this is an issue that goes back considerable further than WW2. I have been doing alot of research on The Indian Office betwen the wars and that was in effect a completely separate civil service with very little political oversight in reality. I wonder if the ending of British rule in Indian and the reassignment of all those civil servants and administrators post war had some impact of the way the Civil Service operated.
@viewcode This is a very good article as usual. Whilst I think your historical trajectory is insightful I think the 'blob' is a bit of a nebulous concept though and defies theorisation. Notwithstanding this, I would say that it can be usefully thought of as an overpowering administrative state that uses process to thwart political will. In response to some other posts, if you want to follow 'blob failure' my suggestion is to watch the current attempts at planning reform unfold. The planning reforms are straight from the blob and the politicians have clearly bought in to it, but they are almost certainly destined to fail in achieving their objectives. In terms of how this may develop, an old civil service boss used to reminisce fondly of the days of 'mad cow disease' - DEFRA were never going to issue enough permits and fast enough; the army had to go in to shoot the cows and burn the carcasses.
Hang on is "The Blob" behind planning reforms, or is "The Blob" stifling them?
Or is it both, or perhaps neither?
The blob is the gap between what ministers promise and what they deliver. Nothing to do with ministers of course.
That's exactly the point.
"The Blob", which politicians love to blame for their failures, is just civil servants or quangos trying (diligently, competently, or otherwise) to carry out government policy. Which generations of politicians have legislated into existence.
It's a generalised, amorphous, and largely meaningless abstraction used a a scapegoat for bad policy.
"The Blob", which politicians love to blame for their failures, is just civil servants or quangos trying (diligently, competently, or otherwise) to carry out government policy.
But the issue is when they don't carry out government policy, deportations to Rwanda being one of them, when the blob is personally opposed to it.
Comments
And your long piece is essentially about regulation. I’m happy with regulation, although it could be smarter and better enforced and in some areas less risk averse.
Its just an excuse used by politicians to explain their failures. It can't be that their plans were half arsed and undeliverable, or that the teenage scribblers in their think tanks don't know what they're doing.
OFSTED…[was] not installed by evil geniuses but by good people and politicians to achieve a specific goal.
At least in that case, that is arguable. Ofsted was not created by Woodhead but in its current form is essentially his project.*
And Woodhead was not a good person. He was sacked from two teaching roles at Newent and Gordano for gross incompetence - he only got the second by lying on his application form. He was a sexual predator and liar. He was also a serial political trimmer who had no principles worthy of the name and would say or do whatever would accrue more glory to himself. Finally, he was not only a nasty piece of work but notoriously stupid, getting a poor degree in a uni going through a bad patch and being pretty much universally derided for his attempts at academic work.
I think the premise could do with working on here. The issue is that if you create such systems people who want power will gravitate to them. And these are the people often least suited to hold and wield it, through ignorance or arrogance or both.
I suppose the best example of the blob from that point of view is not Woodhead but Cummings. Which is ironic given he thought of himself as an outsider taking on the blob.
*Incidentally this is not to deny many changes have taken place at Ofsted since his time, a large number of them for the better, or that it fulfils an important role and has at times done it well.)
I was struck by the reference to SAGE, which is implied to be an example of Blobbery. I was in two SAGE subcommittees. I have participated in several subsequent research studies on scientific advice during the pandemic, and I had to write a witness statement for the COVID-19 Inquiry. SAGE was an advisory committee, it was not a power behind the throne. Government had no difficulty in ignoring things SAGE said. If the advice from SAGE ever felt imperative to Government, that was merely because SAGE was the messenger for the effects of a devastating pandemic. It was COVID-19 that forced the Government’s hand, not SAGE.
Yet, for some, SAGE is a scapegoat. Maybe much of the apparent Blob is the same. It is a convenient excuse politicians can assert when they fail. It wasn’t that their ideas were bad, it was the system that stopped them. Liz Truss presents a tour-de-force in this approach.
(Foxy said this more pithily.)
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/09/27/boris-johnson-diary-covid-vaccine-invade-netherlands/
(It was probably the Blob that stoped him.)
By and large it’s a no to this.
When some come along who do or want to challenge it, like Cummings, it ends badly for them.
A guy I used to work with in Derby many years ago said once ‘whoever wins the election it’s always the government that gets in’ and he’s right.
As you say people like safety and this ‘blob’ is large and keeps many people in paid employment. It’s not going to cheerfully give any of that up.
We have to live with it and accept,to a degree, our politicians are in office but hamstrung.
A fridge too far.
Edit and he revealed that like a day after the eightieth anniversary of the end of Market Garden.
The idea that the Supreme Court preventing an illegal suspension of democracy by the executive was "The Blob" (part 8) in action is absurd. We do not live in a society that allows the executive unlimited power. We deliberately have checks and balances so that Parliament cannot be ignored. We fought a bloody Civil War in order to establish this.
It's autocrats we need to guard against not some mythic "Dark State" conspiracy.
The size of the State is a point of contention in the US election.
Here’s former presidentail candidate Vivek Ramaswarmy talking to Lex Fridman about the problem. Ramaswarmy reckons that around 75% of Federal employees, including whole departments, could be lost without significant impact on services. Most of the Federal agencies simply send money to States with strings attached, and the federal department exists only to implement and monitor compliance with the strings.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8Qk_3a3lUw
But, we’ve reached a point where “due process” makes it hard for central and local government to achieve anything worthwhile.
The piece mentions getting rid of quangoes. I think this is something that the voters don't care about either way and ministers don't want to do, because if they took more decisions themselves they'd get the blame when things went badly and not much credit when they went well.
Then it mentions freedoms from Brexit but this was always obviously made up, because if you looked at the EU rules that the Brexit campaigners were bitching about it usually turned out that the British government was instrumental in passing them in the first place, so there was no reason to think they'd do anything different.
It mentions the prorogation thing but that was about the executive trying to get one over on parliament. They were perfectly capable of dissolving parliament by the established means (get parliament to vote for dissolution) and passing their Brexit legislation by the established means (get parliament to vote for it). It was clear at the time that the executive wasn't supposed to be able to just shut down parliament to stop them voting for things they wanted to vote for, it just wasn't clear whether anybody would stop them, and it turned out that the monarchy doesn't work for stuff like that any more so the courts have to do it.
Has anybody got any proper functional "the blob stopped X" examples where there aren't other more obvious reasons why X didn't happen?
Play up, play up, and play the game. How hard can it be?
It’s Scott vs Amundsen. “Dogs? Pah!”. Botham downing a couple of beers and striding out to face the Aussies. Drake breaking off his bowls to tackle the Armada.
The likes of, for example, Case, who spent his time at Cambridge rowing and was promoted because Cummings saw him as lazy and inefficient?
As ever, 'impact on services' is taken to mean 'services I use and need'.
These techbroes and their hangers-on want to reduce the power of the state, because the state is a barrier, preventing them from doing what they want to do. But what they want to do might not be in the interests of the average US citizen. Witness Musk's latest screeching over the FAA.
Musk and the techbroes are part of society, not above it.
Kemi Badenoch: I don’t care if Tory rivals have a pop at me
The Conservative leadership hopeful believes she is the victim of a ‘dirty tricks’ campaign by other candidates but insists she has Labour in her sights instead
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/kemi-badenoch-interview-tory-rivals-6r7sz5vk3
I know a very smart lady in the US DoE. She's a scientist, who is an expert on the organic absorption of hydrocarbons and chose government work over Shell.
And you know what: in 10 out of 12 years, she produced (a lot of) research papers, and could easily have not worked for the US government without any impact on its efficiency.
But when Deepwater Horizon blew up, she was at the forefront of "it's going to be OK, and this is the plan we need to make sure that the oil is recycled into the ecosystem without causing major damage."
Meanwhile, in Austria: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cr4xz013zx7o
Sounds like an unpleasant party if they're aligned with Orban.
She practiced Corbynomics.
You go to the bank where you're borrowing lots from and you tell them you're going to increase your spending massively and want to reduce your income a bit as well and they are going to tell you to jog on.
The Seldon book shows Truss was cosplaying Thatcher without any of the hard work Thatcher (and Howe) did at the start.
Don't even get me started on the prorogation crisis, the rule of law matters.
Also would you like me to list all the times SCOTUK has ruled in favour of the UK government?
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/two-rt-employees-indicted-covertly-funding-and-directing-us-company-published-thousands
This is a very good article as usual.
Whilst I think your historical trajectory is insightful I think the 'blob' is a bit of a nebulous concept though and defies theorisation.
Notwithstanding this, I would say that it can be usefully thought of as an overpowering administrative state that uses process to thwart political will.
In response to some other posts, if you want to follow 'blob failure' my suggestion is to watch the current attempts at planning reform unfold. The planning reforms are straight from the blob and the politicians have clearly bought in to it, but they are almost certainly destined to fail in achieving their objectives.
In terms of how this may develop, an old civil service boss used to reminisce fondly of the days of 'mad cow disease' - DEFRA were never going to issue enough permits and fast enough; the army had to go in to shoot the cows and burn the carcasses.
Do you really believe that the Russians did not feed them pro-Russian and anti-Ukrainian editorial lines, even if you accept that the 'talent' had no idea they were working for the Russians?
Of course they did; just look at some of Tim Pool's output to see how he parroted pro-Russian lines.
Their main shows on their own channels are mostly political in nature, but not the Tenet Media shows.
Or is it both, or perhaps neither?
However we don't want an over centralised and unchallenged government either
https://www.wired.com/story/influencers-tenet-benny-johnson-tim-pool-russia-propaganda-videos/
(Apparently many of the videos have been taken down, so an 'independent' quick review of them might not show anything.)
I find the claims of a blob to be another expression of simplism. The cancer of our times.
Trump Camp Says State Menstrual Surveillance Programs are A-OK
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/trump-camp-says-state-menstrual-surveillance-programs-are-a-ok
Meanwhile, the only negativity in an otherwise polite campaign so far has been furious anti-Kemi briefing to hacks on an almost daily basis - because a small group of MPs know she’s popular among the membership, and are trying desparately to knock her out before it gets to that stage.
You should see some of the WhatsApp messages her team have been sending out.
It makes it very easy for vested interests and those opposed to something to gum up and slow down reform, and that's even easier when lots of people oppose it, and very hard to achieve meaningful change.
You believe that the Russians gave them this money out of the kindness of their hearts, and it is a pure coincidence that the lines these shits took was coincident with Russian interests.
I'd argue that is a ridiculous position to take. And interestingly, it isn't contradicted by that link you give. They may not have known it was Russian money, but they sure as heck knew they were pro-Russian lines.
In any case, as we learned from Jim Hacker, never believe a story until it has been officially denied or embellished by Leon wittering on about a Finnish necklace.
It can also be a hidebound, inept, generalist, complacent, lazy and above all extremely risk-averse government machine refusing to consider new ways of doing things.
I worked in government for many years. I've seen both.
The FBI and DOJ said that the presenters of shows on Tenet were victims, who were unaware that the company was partly financed by RT, and were lied to by the (Canadian) directors of the company. The programmes themselves were mostly non-political, and the creators have said themselves that there was never any editorial control over the programmes being shown.
Here’s Dave Rubin being interviewed by Megyn Kelly about Tenet.
And Here’s Tim Pool being interviewed by Ben Shapiro about Tenet.
A real conspiracy theorist might suggest that the whole thing was set up by the Biden-Harris administration, to try and discredit mainstream online voices who are supporting Trump, with stories of how the Russians are funding conservative commentators, just as they spent two years after the 2016 election trying unsuccessfully to tie Trump to Russia.
Israel's war is totally self-defeating in the medium-long term no matter how successful it is in the short term. But tragically that's par for the course in that part of the Middle East.
BREAKING: Israeli army confirms Hassan Nasrallah, longtime Hezbollah leader, was killed in Beirut strike last night
The only POG I have known was Mr P O Gershon, who was a rather capricious and viewed-as-thuggish head of the GEC company. The grind over a number of years of 5-10% of the workforce going annually at the major site where I worked is not something I wish to recall.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/6/19/hezbollah-chief-nasrallah-says-israel-should-be-scared-of-all-out-war
Got what he threatened.
Autumn has definitely arrived. The temperature here was down to 1 C last night.
It's time to spend time to collect the rest of the apples.
Th enemies of Israel are on the outside of the doughnut and far too numerous. Besides, anti-Semitism is an idea, and those are much harder to destroy. And the actions of the Netanyahu are fortifying the idea, even as they are the destroying the military leaders of the idea.
And, no matter the rightness of the cause, there is a point where fighting an impossible war in that cause becomes unjust. And it's not obvious that the Israeli state didn't cross that line some while back.
I found Viewcode's piece hard to follow. There seemed to be as many examples of the "blob" being rather useful as the opposite. And a number of examples when the blob was easily dismissed or ignored, such as during Brexit and Truss' budget.
The one recent example of the blob that concerns me is the legal challenge to the removal of WFP. In Edinburgh and Inverness, it's the use of consultation processes by groups based and funded outside these cities (and indeed the UK) to stifle things we voted for, such as LTNs and cycle lanes. But the government could always legislate to change or remove those processes.
The ultimate example of the blob is arms-length but publicly owned transport providers, which ride rough-shod over local democracy and are largely unaccountable. By virtue of their managers incentive to survive in their cosy roles, they end up providing a profitable and good service.
But thanks - something to exercise the brain this morning.
What side of this equilibrium we’re on depends on whether the technocrats appear to be on your side or not.
Captain Darling: So you see, Blackadder, Field Marshall Gove is most anxious to eliminate all these members of the blob.
General Melchett: Filthy woke weasel experts, fighting their dirty underhand war!
Captain Darling: And fortunately, one of our SPADS…
General Melchett: Splendid fellows, brave heroes risking life and limb for Blighty!
But let's wait for the investigation outcome before coming to a final judgment.
"The Blob", which politicians love to blame for their failures, is just civil servants or quangos trying (diligently, competently, or otherwise) to carry out government policy. Which generations of politicians have legislated into existence.
It's a generalised, amorphous, and largely meaningless abstraction used a a scapegoat for bad policy.
I think that comes down to the difference between the conservative right and the radical right. One of the stories conservatives tell themselves is Chesterton's one about the fence- basically, don't get rid of something until you have established the good reason it was put there in the first place.
Yes, the complexity of the state is infuriating, as is its combination of F1 brakes and C5 motor. But, as you note in your conclusion, there is a good reason for that, alongside several bad ones. Most people prefer safety over freedom. And for most people, that's probably sensible.
When he was only quirky rather than whatever he is now, Matt Ridley wrote nicely on the evolution of everything. You don't need plans or controls, just let natural selection do its thing and the species or art will advance. Well, up to a point. That's true at species level, but not at individual level- there, natural selection is a very high probability of an early death.
Very many advocates of state slashing are people who are happy to gamble because they (accurately) judge that they are largely insulated for the downsides of things going wrong. You have to be very comfortable to do that, living off the interest on the interest.
It's the contradiction that Farage has never really tried to resolve. At elite level, his vision is about deregulation and state-slashing. But the movement mostly wants safety from things. Escape from the cage vs. pull up the drawbridge and hunker down.
"Let's just scrap the state." Etc
See just now, for example, Ramaswamy.
Still, it has stopped raining, for what feels like the first time in forever.
I am actually surprised the Grand Wizard was actually in country. Given he always gives his rants via Zoom, I presumed he was probably smuggled away in Syria or Iran, like the way Hamas leadership are in Turkey and Qatar.
Interesting, but very different to my thesis on the blob.
I must finish my piece.
Theresa May makes a thoroughly sensible case for the Tories to stay in the centre ground.
https://x.com/theobertram/status/1839948541386449282
Far easier to blame someone else.
That figures who would have been on the right of most modern iterations of the Conservative Party are now very definitely on the left shows how far the party's centre of gravity has shifted.
Not saying whether that's a good or bad thing, but it seems silly to deny that it isn't a thing.
He is a middle manager that was fast tracked to the top because of Boris and then Truss failures he then became the default option. They used to criticism Cameron for not having a strong vision, but Osborne definitely did and that is what drove a lot of things. Sunak, its was nothingness, surrounded by a team of either the useless or the right wing, and he was just there in the middle being overwhelmed.
Suppose a politician wants to increase power transmission for economic growth but your grandmother who is in the politicians constituency association has a petition going opposing power pylons in the village because they get in the way of her rather nice view of the countryside.
Is your grandmother part of the "blob" ?
Rishi Sunak implemented a bunch of measures to prevent anti pollution controls in cities because he felt that played well electorally with vested interests. Is he part of the "blob" ?
I don't feel this is useful in making things better
The 'blob' in the sense of a huge civil admin set of hierarchies (whether stricto sensu governmental, local authority, quango or privatised) is just inevitable in any modern state.
Our basic legal system is ancient and organic, like a 1000 year old tree. A modern state is placed within it as a new and massive growth. Common law is its history, so complexifying is certain, and simplifying more or less impossible. I have been out of the law now for exactly 40 years and have watched the massive complexification from outside with awe. These days even in a small provincial area - where I now live - local solicitors specialise in this or that little area, and more or less know nothing outside their specific field. This is a much wider truth too.
Finally: Grenfell. This answers the question of do we want safety or freedom? We want safety. What we get is neither.
What we want is a civil order ('blob' is tempting but not in the end quite fair) which works. The issues around this are most intellectual (too many dim people and jobsworths) and moral (too many people not properly brought up to discern between right and wrong, too little clarity about with whom the buck stops).
Everything we need to know and put right is encapsulated in Grenfell.
Instead, what we have is a system that generates thousands of pages of paperwork, and generates lots of time billed by consultants and lawyers - yet utterly fails at what it’s primarily supposed to do, in this case make sure buildings aren’t cladded with flammable materials.
And AI supported search is getting much better. I was trying to get information on Lake Chad refilling as a result of this year’s mega Sahel rainfall. All I got on Bing and Google was articles about flooding and aid agencies. Asked copilot the question and got a nicely sourced, well written answer to exactly what I’d been looking for.
Copilot has been recording meetings at work recently and writing excellent notes and action logs. 10x better than anything our junior staff could manage.
The Lilac Sky Schools Trust was closed in 2016. Its nine schools were rebrokered as the government investigated financial “impropriety”.
Last year the government barred the trust’s founder and chief executive Trevor Averre-Beeson and his successor Christopher Bowler from managing schools, citing “inappropriate conduct”.
https://schoolsweek.co.uk/labour-promises-to-publish-lilac-sky-academy-scandal-investigation-but-wont-give-a-date/
Also coming to Radio 4 on Monday,
https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/proginfo/2024/39/superhead
How do you balance the opportunity of things going right with the risk of them going wrong? Somehow the risk-loving and risk-averse gave to live alongside each other.
On thing I would say is that this is an issue that goes back considerable further than WW2. I have been doing alot of research on The Indian Office betwen the wars and that was in effect a completely separate civil service with very little political oversight in reality. I wonder if the ending of British rule in Indian and the reassignment of all those civil servants and administrators post war had some impact of the way the Civil Service operated.
But the issue is when they don't carry out government policy, deportations to Rwanda being one of them, when the blob is personally opposed to it.