Another example of the Establishment / the Blob if you prefer which many of US will have seen, being as we are people who get involved with politics and sometimes elected to councils and or appointed to public bodies.
When a council is in no over all control or, when a public body is "impartial", who does the day to day running ? The council officers. In many ways the officers love it. They also love it when the council has "right on" leadership. It is a hell of a lot easier to put in hamster / hedgehog crossings than resurfacing the road or altering the M6 so J37 doesn't kill 1 or 2 people every year. Lets declare a climate emergency and have a group hug about it. Lets spend £300k warning people about the A684 being a bendy road - much better than straightening out the worst bends. Lets not worry about the bridge that has been closed over the Lune making the local population take a six mile detour twice a day. No lets put a nice shiny foot bridge over the Kent in Kendal within 100 yds of an existing bridge both up and down stream.
In many ways that is what Yes Minister was really parodying. Also, most councillors don't last two full terms so they really don't know what they are doing.
It is NOT the fault of the officers, although I have seen plenty who do take the piss. But it is a lack of REAL Leadership. It is going through the hoops, just like Starmer is doing and will do until someone has the balls to tell him his time is up. Next Wednesday perhaps ?
No, I've thought about it and decided that there's no such thing as The Blob: it's merely a fictional Behemoth invented by a generation of incapable Tory politicians to mask their many failings. That's the most plausible explanation.
No, I've thought about it and decided that there's no such things as The Blob: it's merely a fictional Behemoth invented by a generation of incapable Tory politicians to mask their many failings. That's the most plausible explanation.
Was it Blunkett who blethered on about the 'forces of conservatism?'
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.
I referenced something he said. I am listening to him. You would do well to actually listen to the crazy he puts out.
I listened to the podcast I linked yesterday. Don’t agree with all he says, but he does have some good ideas. I like listening to people willing to step outside the comfort zone of established political thought, whether on the left or on the right. Even people with whom I vehemently disagree on almost everything, will occasionally have a good idea in there somewhere.
Which of these Ramaswamy ideas do you think are good?
- raise the voting age to 25 - considering RFK as a running mate - that January 6 was an inside job - that the Democrats support a Great Replacement of Christian white Americans - that 9/11 was an inside job - ending US military aid to Ukraine - preventing Ukraine from ever joining NATO - letting Russia keep those parts of Ukraine it currently occupies - that the climate change agenda is a hoax
That’s clearly not an exhaustive list of his policies, as you missed off the biggest ones like significant reductions in headcount in the Federal burecracy, and the shuttering of whole departments such as Education.
Of those you mentioned, using opposition language, some of them he does have a point, while others I think are wrong.
- Raising the voting age to 25. Don’t completely disagree, and his proposals come with a much wider renewal of the concept of citizenship. - RFK, like any politician, has good and bad ideas. I agree with his ideas on food standards, which are terrible in the US, and disagree with his views on vaccines, for example. - There is a lot of evidence that there were at best a number of FBI informants around on J6, acting as agitators if not outright provocateurs. Many of those arrested have been treated terribly. - The Democrats are clearly supporting measures such as a massive increase in unskilled immigration, while simultaneously being big fans of abortions and gender transitions. I would not use such provocative language, but the evidence is there. - Obviously I’m a big fan of aid to Ukraine, but also have some sympathy with the view that others within NATO are not pulling their weight, and that there’s always money for overseas spending but little spent on disasters at home, for example the floods in Hawaii and the train derailment in East Palestine. - Ukraine joining NATO is a difficult one, but on balance I would be in favour of it. - I don’t know what a Ukranian peace deal looks like, but would prefer it be on the 1991 Ukraine boundary. If the Ukranian government and people are happy with something different, then I am in favour of their decision. - In an American context, there are a number of federal projects related to climate change, which have spent extortionate amounts of money that appears to have simply vanished, making the UK pandemic PPE scandal look like a drop in the ocean. For example, there was a $7.5bn project to install electric car chargers across the country, which after two years has yielded the grand total of eight chargers installed. https://www.autoweek.com/news/a60702457/federal-funds-yield-only-8-ev-charging-stations/ There was also a $40bn project for rural broadband that was originally awarded to Starlink, but after a lot of lobbying was given instead to the big telcos, who have installed a tiny fraction of the fibre that was promised, and almost no-one has seen new high-speed broadband as a result. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/biden-detail-plans-42-billion-investment-us-internet-access-2023-06-26/
Sandpit, these are lies. You are swallowing lies told to you by MAGA grifters. They are not connected with reality. You are slipping down a rabbit hole that leads to claiming that Haitian immigrants are vampires eating people (as with Roseanne Barr).
LOL. There’s a very long history of FBI agents being involved in infiltrating protest groups, dating back to the Civil Rights movement.
The FBI does have a long history. There is no credible evidence that there were FBI agitators at Jan 6.
I mean this in the very best way: your policy of watching diverse views online is leading you to start believing MAGA conspiracies. You are being sucked into lies. You are watching people with kooky views, many of whom are repeating Russian propaganda (be it unwittingly or wittingly). This isn't going to be good for your betting positions, nor is it going to be good for your social relationships with the bulk of people who still live in reality.
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.
Are we discussing the US or the UK?
If the US, it is worth remembering that - in total - for a country of more than 300 million people, it employs... checks... 4,400 people in total.
If the UK, are you planning on returning power to schools themselves (every school is independent), or to councils?
In the UK, you do - I presume - want to retain some degree of control over national qualifications? (I.e. a school can't just say "this is a GCSE?") So, you will need adminstration around qualifications, and about ensuring that bogus educational establishments are shutdown.
I'm part of the blob that viewcode describes. And I largely agree with his thesis. The advantageof blobbery is that the blob, largely, has a fair degree of expertise in its subject. Government is very, very complex and you can't just wade in inexpertly. BUT - if you did want to suggest an alternative course of action to what the blob suggests - it's almost impossible. You can go against the experts, but the legal arm will envelop you. You can fight off the legal arm, and the third sector will suck you in. The democratic levers don't work. Virtually the only thing you can do is choose to spend more or less money in one area or another.
It's worth noting that the blob isn't uniform in intent, and much of its energy is spent fighting other bits of the blob.
This is the most interesting part of the discussion - how does it change, because it must. That's a lot harder than diagnosing the problem.
How it must change, I think, is by behaviourism. Reward good behaviour, and punish undesirable behaviour. An elected Government must legislate to claw back the power to enforce the will of Ministers on the administration, including:
*The power to hire, promote and fire *The power to approve or disapprove all training received by civil servants *The power to decide who gets honours and titles
As a bare minimum.
The power to decide who gets honours and titles is a path that leads to honours and titles being handed out for political donations.
Ministers do not have the time to micromanage the civil service.
On this side of the Atlantic - and Pacific - the Blob was born and nurtured under Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, both in reality (sorta) and rhetoric (lotta).
Both due to rapid expansion of US federal government, which until 1933 played a limited role in lives of most Americans, aside from the Post Office Department.
One prominent feature of early Blobism, which soon leapt across the pond AND still thrives today, was the rise & rule of the Acronym "alphabet soup" of programs, agencies, commissions, bureaus, etc., etc. created, maintained and sustained in ever-increasing diversity (!), complexity and significance.
Some of these can still be seen, carved in stone and displayed on numerous New Deal infrastructure projects and other public works from sea to shinging sea.
For example, the swimming pool in my small hometown was built in 1930s thanks to PWA = Public Works Administration. Which was quite different and distinct from WPA = Works Progress Administration.
PWA being run under aspices of FDR's Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes, on a matching funds basis, with federal dollars matching (and often exceeding) state & local government spending with high standards for approval, bidding and compliance.
The more famous WPA was run by another in FDR's inner circle, Harry Hopkins for the express purpose creating AND funding jobs for individuals, families, communities hardest hit by the Great Depression. Standards here were looser (to put it mildly); note that HH is credited with the much-quoted (especially by Republicans) remark:
"We will tax and tax, and spend and spend . . . and elect and elect."
No, I've thought about it and decided that there's no such thing as The Blob: it's merely a fictional Behemoth invented by a generation of incapable Tory politicians to mask their many failings. That's the most plausible explanation.
What is the nature of your denial? You can't deny that it exists, because the massive growth of the state and its related institutions is a matter of payroll. Are you denying that it seeks to implement its own agenda, opposing and frustrating the agenda of elected Governments when the two are misaligned? That seems, well, an interesting perspective.
The leadership of the IRA can count themselves fortunate that they were up against Britain rather than Israel.
If the IRA had launched 9,300 rockets in a year into British towns and cities displacing around 1% of our population as Hezbollah has with Israel I doubt we'd have put up with them to the extent that we did.
I think even Corbyn and McDonnell might have thought twice about backing them then.
In this scenario, were we continually building new settlements across the island of Ireland and bullying out the local population?
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.
Are we discussing the US or the UK?
If the US, it is worth remembering that - in total - for a country of more than 300 million people, it employs... checks... 4,400 people in total.
If the UK, are you planning on returning power to schools themselves (every school is independent), or to councils?
In the UK, you do - I presume - want to retain some degree of control over national qualifications? (I.e. a school can't just say "this is a GCSE?") So, you will need adminstration around qualifications, and about ensuring that bogus educational establishments are shutdown.
Does that mean we should shut down OFQUAL? After all, they're the most bogus of all educational establishments...
Four unrelated thoughts: First, and most important, the Blob is a pretty good movie: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blob (For a cheap thriller, that is. And I see a famous scientist agrees with me.)
Second, in the US, teacher's unions are often the biggest obstacles to reform, not the education bureacracies, in both states and cities. For example, they might make it hard to hire math teachers -- who actually know math, because you would have to pay the math teachers more than other teachers. (For the record: I briefly belonged to a teacher's union; many of my relatives belonged for far longer.)
Fourth, FDR lamented the difficulty of changing bureacracies, once saying something like this: The State Department is like a pillow. You hit it again and again, and at the end it is the same as it was in the beginning. But the State Department is nothing, as compared to the Navy.
Four unrelated thoughts: First, and most important, the Blob is a pretty good movie: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blob (For a cheap thriller, that is. And I see a famous scientist agrees with me.)
Second, in the US, teacher's unions are often the biggest obstacles to reform, not the education bureacracies, in both states and cities. For example, they might make it hard to hire math teachers -- who actually know math, because you would have to pay the math teachers more than other teachers. (For the record: I briefly belonged to a teacher's union; many of my relatives belonged for far longer.)
Fourth, FDR lamented the difficulty of changing bureacracies, once saying something like this: The State Department is like a pillow. You hit it again and again, and at the end it is the same as it was in the beginning. But the State Department is nothing, as compared to the Navy.
I've just had a leaflet through the door. It looks like an envelope and says in big letters:
NEW HEATING BILL Do not ignore
You can guess what it actually is. A Conservative Party leaflet about how their MPs have voted against the Winter Fuel Payment for pensioners being restricted. I like to think such bogus tactics are ineffective. Such a misdirection hasn't made me feel any more positive towards the party.
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.
Are we discussing the US or the UK?
If the US, it is worth remembering that - in total - for a country of more than 300 million people, it employs... checks... 4,400 people in total.
If the UK, are you planning on returning power to schools themselves (every school is independent), or to councils?
In the UK, you do - I presume - want to retain some degree of control over national qualifications? (I.e. a school can't just say "this is a GCSE?") So, you will need adminstration around qualifications, and about ensuring that bogus educational establishments are shutdown.
Does that mean we should shut down OFQUAL? After all, they're the most bogus of all educational establishments...
No no no.
We just need OfQualOfQual. This will be the regulatory body that checks that OfQual is appropriately qualified to opine on whether the people awarding qualifications are appropriately qualified.
In time we will probably also need OfQualOfQualOfQual, but that's for another day.
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.
Are we discussing the US or the UK?
If the US, it is worth remembering that - in total - for a country of more than 300 million people, it employs... checks... 4,400 people in total.
If the UK, are you planning on returning power to schools themselves (every school is independent), or to councils?
In the UK, you do - I presume - want to retain some degree of control over national qualifications? (I.e. a school can't just say "this is a GCSE?") So, you will need adminstration around qualifications, and about ensuring that bogus educational establishments are shutdown.
Silly questions. People like Ramaswarmy haven't thought out the answers. It's just rich people wanting to keep more money to themselves, to the advantage of rich people. How it affects the poorer in society is of little interest to them.
Making money is what matters to them, and that includes lowering the taxes *they* pay. They don't give a damn about society.
After yesterday’s near-hurricane conditions, it’s an almost unreal and very serene start to today. Warm, sunny, no wind at all. Helene has turned west and is fizzling out over land, and I am now three hundred miles to the east. The only sign of yesterday’s turmoil is the extremely brown river here, and the occasional branch or lump of wood that slowly floats by.
Both NC and TN have been hit bad, with the worst of the flooding there likely still to come. I hear that Asheville, where I breakfasted yesterday, still has its state of emergency and now has a twelve-hour curfew over the whole city after dark.
@IanB2 so glad to hear that you are safe (and your dog of course) but overwhelmed by your earlier description of the devastation you managed to escape with the forecast of worse to come.
I'm part of the blob that viewcode describes. And I largely agree with his thesis. The advantageof blobbery is that the blob, largely, has a fair degree of expertise in its subject. Government is very, very complex and you can't just wade in inexpertly. BUT - if you did want to suggest an alternative course of action to what the blob suggests - it's almost impossible. You can go against the experts, but the legal arm will envelop you. You can fight off the legal arm, and the third sector will suck you in. The democratic levers don't work. Virtually the only thing you can do is choose to spend more or less money in one area or another.
It's worth noting that the blob isn't uniform in intent, and much of its energy is spent fighting other bits of the blob.
This is the most interesting part of the discussion - how does it change, because it must. That's a lot harder than diagnosing the problem.
How it must change, I think, is by behaviourism. Reward good behaviour, and punish undesirable behaviour. An elected Government must legislate to claw back the power to enforce the will of Ministers on the administration, including:
*The power to hire, promote and fire *The power to approve or disapprove all training received by civil servants *The power to decide who gets honours and titles
As a bare minimum.
The power to decide who gets honours and titles is a path that leads to honours and titles being handed out for political donations.
Ministers do not have the time to micromanage the civil service.
None of what I've listed is micromanagement. These are simple questions.
- Can all my staff go on xxxxx unconscious bias training course? - No.
- Can we give the boss of this department who has studiously failed to implement Government manifesto commitments a promotion and a knighthood? - No.
I am talking about giving the power of patronage and preferment in the civil service to ministers. They already have the power to give them to donors, so that wouldn't change.
Whilst 43 opportunities out of 100 is still way too high for comfort the post debate trend against Trump is continuing. It is, in my view, becoming increasingly difficult to see his path to 270 EC votes. He seems more likely than not to regain Georgia but is increasingly at risk of having this offset entirely by losing NC. He is more likely than not to regain AZ but progress elsewhere is limited. He can make 270 if he wins PA but the polling is edging against him there. WI and MI are both looking increasingly out of reach. Without PA he loses. Period.
Still, I worry that Trump is good at getting non-voters to turn out. In 2020 the Dems were further ahead and it was pretty white knuckle on the night.
It’s awfully close, and yes there’s more evidence of Republicans embracing early voting this time around. Their postmortem from 2020 had Trump’s rhetoric about early voting and postal voting as a significant factor in the defeat, now they’ve got more boots on the ground in swing states getting voters registered and voting early.
One of the interesting polling differences between now and 2020 has a been a gender split among young (18-30) voters. Young women are more Dem than in 2020, and young men more Rep, driven by abortion and wokeness respectively.
I remain of the opinion that, unless the Dems can pull off a massive coup in Florida or Texas, al roads to the White House lead through Pennsylvania, where both camps are spending a lot of time and money. It must be pretty horrible to live there, with the constant adverts and phone calls. Even online platforms can now target certain States and identify floating and independent-registered voters.
I think that there is a general consensus in the US media that Harris's GOTV operations are on a completely different scale to Trump's. She has more full time employees in PA than Trump has everywhere. She has a much larger set of offices from which to administer that effort. The massive new registration efforts should help them too and the demographics of those registrations greatly favour Harris.
Of course, that doesn't measure the self motivated non voter and this is where polling in previous elections has tended to underestimate Trump. Will this happen again or have the serious pollsters corrected that imbalance already? On that, and of course PA, the whole race turns. Harris is starting to cascade her wall of money into down ballot races across the US. It is unlikely that these efforts will turn pink states blue but it is stretching the Trump organisation which still seems more focused on selling trinkets for the personal gain of Trump family members.
The Harris campaign has more money at this point, which they’re putting into TV ads in the swing states. But how many people in swing states watch linear TV any more? Especially since they know they’ll be bombarded with political ads for the next five weeks.
I think that the Trump campaign is being smarter with the money they have, such as releasing ads on Twitter or Facebook which go viral. The problem is to work out which mediums are being seen by the floating voters. Twitter is notorious for forming echo chambers, and there’s no point preaching to the choir in an election campaign.
Hillary outspent Trump almost 2/1 in 2016.
Yes everything runs through PA, whoever wins that State is in the White House. Fingers crossed it’s not a repeat of Florida 2000, and there’s a clear winner.
I’ve been getting a lot of quality Harris stuff online in some of the states I’ve been in, so the Dems are using online and social media ads a lot as well. I’ve had personal appeals from everyone from Obama to Bernie Sanders, as well as a lot of locally focused stuff
I trust you're doing your bit over there, Ian, working on those undecideds.
If you try and talk about the election to a stranger, you get the same reaction as if you’d just released a particularly loud and malodorous fart.
The leadership of the IRA can count themselves fortunate that they were up against Britain rather than Israel.
If the IRA had launched 9,300 rockets in a year into British towns and cities displacing around 1% of our population as Hezbollah has with Israel I doubt we'd have put up with them to the extent that we did.
I think even Corbyn and McDonnell might have thought twice about backing them then.
In this scenario, were we continually building new settlements across the island of Ireland and bullying out the local population?
On this side of the Atlantic - and Pacific - the Blob was born and nurtured under Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, both in reality (sorta) and rhetoric (lotta).
Both due to rapid expansion of US federal government, which until 1933 played a limited role in lives of most Americans, aside from the Post Office Department.
One prominent feature of early Blobism, which soon leapt across the pond AND still thrives today, was the rise & rule of the Acronym "alphabet soup" of programs, agencies, commissions, bureaus, etc., etc. created, maintained and sustained in ever-increasing diversity (!), complexity and significance.
Some of these can still be seen, carved in stone and displayed on numerous New Deal infrastructure projects and other public works from sea to shinging sea.
For example, the swimming pool in my small hometown was built in 1930s thanks to PWA = Public Works Administration. Which was quite different and distinct from WPA = Works Progress Administration.
PWA being run under aspices of FDR's Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes, on a matching funds basis, with federal dollars matching (and often exceeding) state & local government spending with high standards for approval, bidding and compliance.
The more famous WPA was run by another in FDR's inner circle, Harry Hopkins for the express purpose creating AND funding jobs for individuals, families, communities hardest hit by the Great Depression. Standards here were looser (to put it mildly); note that HH is credited with the much-quoted (especially by Republicans) remark:
"We will tax and tax, and spend and spend . . . and elect and elect."
Yet to get the New Deal done, FDR had to ride roughshod over what passed for the establishment at the time, and assumed executive powers that prior the presidency either hadn’t had or hadn’t used. Yes, it shaped the nature of postwar politics and the active state, as such a contrast to the failure of laissez faire
After yesterday’s near-hurricane conditions, it’s an almost unreal and very serene start to today. Warm, sunny, no wind at all. Helene has turned west and is fizzling out over land, and I am now three hundred miles to the east. The only sign of yesterday’s turmoil is the extremely brown river here, and the occasional branch or lump of wood that slowly floats by.
Both NC and TN have been hit bad, with the worst of the flooding there likely still to come. I hear that Asheville, where I breakfasted yesterday, still has its state of emergency and now has a twelve-hour curfew over the whole city after dark.
That looks a lot better place to be than yesterday. Best of luck in avoiding the flooding to come.
High ground would be better, had I factored the hurricane into my travel plans, but I am probably alright here. It’s tidal so unlikely to flood due to water coming down from the mountains.
The guy who owns the boat claims that the drinking water is pumped from a spring used by some of the very first British settlers in the early 1600s. Whether that makes the water safe to drink is another matter…
All those people are dead. I wouldn't chance it if I were you...
I turned down the chance to review this piece before it was published, and I've never submitted an article myself, so I can't criticise it very strongly.
However, there are some quite big omissions. Yes Minister is a great programme that most of us are very fond of and that observes what most of us think are some truths, but as Foxy points out, it isn't evidence of anything.
It might have been good to explore the non-political role of the civil service - the system whereby Governments come and go with very few changes in personnell, as opposed to a system like America, where each new administration brings in thousands of its own political appointees. What worked about our system when it came into being? What might not work now that certain ethics, standards and behaviours within the civil service might have slipped away?
There is then a fair bit of what seems to be uncritical nostalgia for the era of post-war consensus, which sets the background for a fairly waspish section on Thatcherism, neither of which are wholly justified in my view. Posting on PB, I learned of the post-war civil service attack on Birmingham, banning it from opening new factories. When the dynamic business-people of Birmingham decided they would then create service businesses in offices, the civil service banned them from opening new offices. That is the blob writ large.
The post-war period was a period of massive growth in the power and role of the state, and a failure (directly attributable in my opinion) of the economy to regain its pre-war footing.
Moving forward, the European Union/EEC gets barely a mention. That institution ushered in hundreds of new laws, and structures to enforce them, including overseas courts. Those laws are still waiting to be repealed, after the blob fought tooth and nail, including issuing utterly unacceptable public statements, to keep them in place. Why were/are those laws embraced, gold-plated and officiously enforced to the degree that they were in the UK, when in France and Italy they were often cheerfully ignored? Why were the blob so desperate not to be parted from them?
These are a few points that occurred to me.
The EU is an enormous version of The Blob. In many ways it works better than our Blob, but in some significant aspects, it is even worse
Our blob worships the EU. Severing that umbilical cord by leaving seems to have traumatised senior civil servants and it seems obvious to me that they have been desperate to get us back in ever since. They will fail, especially because their tool (hehe) is Starmer. He hasn't got the political capital now to sign up for a library card, let alone get us back in to the single market.
So they'll end up having to contend with Jenrick, possibly with Farage in tow.
Yep, they now have the ultimate Remainery Blob Prime Minister, but precisely because he is Mr Blobby - cautious, unimaginative, clueless, hypocritical, intellectually quite lightweight (all quite common characteristic of Blob personae) - it turns out he is a shite prime minister. So they have screwed themselves
All this on the day when a huge Brexit Benefit hoves into view
No, I've thought about it and decided that there's no such thing as The Blob: it's merely a fictional Behemoth invented by a generation of incapable Tory politicians to mask their many failings. That's the most plausible explanation.
What is the nature of your denial? You can't deny that it exists, because the massive growth of the state and its related institutions is a matter of payroll. Are you denying that it seeks to implement its own agenda, opposing and frustrating the agenda of elected Governments when the two are misaligned? That seems, well, an interesting perspective.
I was recently speaking with a guy who, until his retirement a few years ago, was a leading Whitehall civil servant. He was despairing becuase the Civil Service - its neutrality and its processes - is being increasingly corrupted by government hacks with a partisan agenda. The complete opposite of the 'Blob' phenomenon in fact. This makes perfect sense from what we know of the 'new' political class and the its behaviour.
The leadership of the IRA can count themselves fortunate that they were up against Britain rather than Israel.
If the IRA had launched 9,300 rockets in a year into British towns and cities displacing around 1% of our population as Hezbollah has with Israel I doubt we'd have put up with them to the extent that we did.
I think even Corbyn and McDonnell might have thought twice about backing them then.
In this scenario, were we continually building new settlements across the island of Ireland and bullying out the local population?
Luckily the Plantations were several hundred years before any meaningful rocketry. A few pissed-of peasants with pikes and billhooks were easily dealt with.
On topic but I hate the term blob because it's victim blaming. The inability of governments to push through their agenda is down to their own cowardice and confusion not because of civil service obstruction. I've worked in the Civil Service for years (so special pleading I guess) and I've never met a senior civil servant who is any way unwilling to do what the government wants. The problem is that governments ask the Civil Service to do incompatible things. "Cut your budget but maintain every single service you currently provide as we don't want any criticism from the 500 people it would affect if we withdraw it". "We believe in slimming down the state but we've just created a massive expansion of your powers because of some ill thought out legislation". Governments that have a clear agenda and the courage to accept the political consequences of carrying it out get things done.
After yesterday’s near-hurricane conditions, it’s an almost unreal and very serene start to today. Warm, sunny, no wind at all. Helene has turned west and is fizzling out over land, and I am now three hundred miles to the east. The only sign of yesterday’s turmoil is the extremely brown river here, and the occasional branch or lump of wood that slowly floats by.
Both NC and TN have been hit bad, with the worst of the flooding there likely still to come. I hear that Asheville, where I breakfasted yesterday, still has its state of emergency and now has a twelve-hour curfew over the whole city after dark.
That looks a lot better place to be than yesterday. Best of luck in avoiding the flooding to come.
High ground would be better, had I factored the hurricane into my travel plans, but I am probably alright here. It’s tidal so unlikely to flood due to water coming down from the mountains.
The guy who owns the boat claims that the drinking water is pumped from a spring used by some of the very first British settlers in the early 1600s. Whether that makes the water safe to drink is another matter…
All those people are dead. I wouldn't chance it if I were you...
If they were still alive, I’d be gulping it down…
Really?
I’m not sure I’d want to live for ever.
Reminds me of the story about the foolish undergraduate who said to the university Chancellor "I wouldn't want to be 90" to which the Chancellor (Harold Macmillan) replied, "You won't say that when you're 89".
Whilst 43 opportunities out of 100 is still way too high for comfort the post debate trend against Trump is continuing. It is, in my view, becoming increasingly difficult to see his path to 270 EC votes. He seems more likely than not to regain Georgia but is increasingly at risk of having this offset entirely by losing NC. He is more likely than not to regain AZ but progress elsewhere is limited. He can make 270 if he wins PA but the polling is edging against him there. WI and MI are both looking increasingly out of reach. Without PA he loses. Period.
Still, I worry that Trump is good at getting non-voters to turn out. In 2020 the Dems were further ahead and it was pretty white knuckle on the night.
It’s awfully close, and yes there’s more evidence of Republicans embracing early voting this time around. Their postmortem from 2020 had Trump’s rhetoric about early voting and postal voting as a significant factor in the defeat, now they’ve got more boots on the ground in swing states getting voters registered and voting early.
One of the interesting polling differences between now and 2020 has a been a gender split among young (18-30) voters. Young women are more Dem than in 2020, and young men more Rep, driven by abortion and wokeness respectively.
I remain of the opinion that, unless the Dems can pull off a massive coup in Florida or Texas, al roads to the White House lead through Pennsylvania, where both camps are spending a lot of time and money. It must be pretty horrible to live there, with the constant adverts and phone calls. Even online platforms can now target certain States and identify floating and independent-registered voters.
I think that there is a general consensus in the US media that Harris's GOTV operations are on a completely different scale to Trump's. She has more full time employees in PA than Trump has everywhere. She has a much larger set of offices from which to administer that effort. The massive new registration efforts should help them too and the demographics of those registrations greatly favour Harris.
Of course, that doesn't measure the self motivated non voter and this is where polling in previous elections has tended to underestimate Trump. Will this happen again or have the serious pollsters corrected that imbalance already? On that, and of course PA, the whole race turns. Harris is starting to cascade her wall of money into down ballot races across the US. It is unlikely that these efforts will turn pink states blue but it is stretching the Trump organisation which still seems more focused on selling trinkets for the personal gain of Trump family members.
The Harris campaign has more money at this point, which they’re putting into TV ads in the swing states. But how many people in swing states watch linear TV any more? Especially since they know they’ll be bombarded with political ads for the next five weeks.
I think that the Trump campaign is being smarter with the money they have, such as releasing ads on Twitter or Facebook which go viral. The problem is to work out which mediums are being seen by the floating voters. Twitter is notorious for forming echo chambers, and there’s no point preaching to the choir in an election campaign.
Hillary outspent Trump almost 2/1 in 2016.
Yes everything runs through PA, whoever wins that State is in the White House. Fingers crossed it’s not a repeat of Florida 2000, and there’s a clear winner.
I’ve been getting a lot of quality Harris stuff online in some of the states I’ve been in, so the Dems are using online and social media ads a lot as well. I’ve had personal appeals from everyone from Obama to Bernie Sanders, as well as a lot of locally focused stuff
I trust you're doing your bit over there, Ian, working on those undecideds.
If you try and talk about the election to a stranger, you get the same reaction as if you’d just released a particularly loud and malodorous fart.
I turned down the chance to review this piece before it was published, and I've never submitted an article myself, so I can't criticise it very strongly.
However, there are some quite big omissions. Yes Minister is a great programme that most of us are very fond of and that observes what most of us think are some truths, but as Foxy points out, it isn't evidence of anything.
It might have been good to explore the non-political role of the civil service - the system whereby Governments come and go with very few changes in personnell, as opposed to a system like America, where each new administration brings in thousands of its own political appointees. What worked about our system when it came into being? What might not work now that certain ethics, standards and behaviours within the civil service might have slipped away?
There is then a fair bit of what seems to be uncritical nostalgia for the era of post-war consensus, which sets the background for a fairly waspish section on Thatcherism, neither of which are wholly justified in my view. Posting on PB, I learned of the post-war civil service attack on Birmingham, banning it from opening new factories. When the dynamic business-people of Birmingham decided they would then create service businesses in offices, the civil service banned them from opening new offices. That is the blob writ large.
The post-war period was a period of massive growth in the power and role of the state, and a failure (directly attributable in my opinion) of the economy to regain its pre-war footing.
Moving forward, the European Union/EEC gets barely a mention. That institution ushered in hundreds of new laws, and structures to enforce them, including overseas courts. Those laws are still waiting to be repealed, after the blob fought tooth and nail, including issuing utterly unacceptable public statements, to keep them in place. Why were/are those laws embraced, gold-plated and officiously enforced to the degree that they were in the UK, when in France and Italy they were often cheerfully ignored? Why were the blob so desperate not to be parted from them?
These are a few points that occurred to me.
The EU is an enormous version of The Blob. In many ways it works better than our Blob, but in some significant aspects, it is even worse
Our blob worships the EU. Severing that umbilical cord by leaving seems to have traumatised senior civil servants and it seems obvious to me that they have been desperate to get us back in ever since. They will fail, especially because their tool (hehe) is Starmer. He hasn't got the political capital now to sign up for a library card, let alone get us back in to the single market.
So they'll end up having to contend with Jenrick, possibly with Farage in tow.
Yep, they now have the ultimate Remainery Blob Prime Minister, but precisely because he is Mr Blobby - cautious, unimaginative, clueless, hypocritical, intellectually quite lightweight (all quite common characteristic of Blob personae) - it turns out he is a shite prime minister. So they have screwed themselves
All this on the day when a huge Brexit Benefit hoves into view
The blob feeds on whatever makes it grow. It's been historically pro-EU because of all that lovely extra red tape and bureaucracy that requires more administrators.
I wouldn't be surprised if we reach a point in a few years' time where we have so much home grown bureaucracy and red tape that losing some of that power to the EU would represent a diminution of the blob, therefore it will act against it.
The blob does what is good for the blob. I don't think it's ideologically pro anything other than itself.
This is possibly (?) the single most bonkers reply to a straight economic question Trump has yet come up with. (Listen to the clip for the full effect.)
Question:,What actions will you take to ensure that our jobs stay in America?
On topic but I hate the term blob because it's victim blaming. The inability of governments to push through their agenda is down to their own cowardice and confusion not because of civil service obstruction. I've worked in the Civil Service for years (so special pleading I guess) and I've never met a senior civil servant who is any way unwilling to do what the government wants. The problem is that governments ask the Civil Service to do incompatible things. "Cut your budget but maintain every single service you currently provide as we don't want any criticism from the 500 people it would affect if we withdraw it". "We believe in slimming down the state but we've just created a massive expansion of your powers because of some ill thought out legislation". Governments that have a clear agenda and the courage to accept the political consequences of carrying it out get things done.
Legislation, of course, is the way they can actually be seen to be doing these incompatible things. Which goes some way to explaining the amount of crappy legislation on the books.
No, I've thought about it and decided that there's no such thing as The Blob: it's merely a fictional Behemoth invented by a generation of incapable Tory politicians to mask their many failings. That's the most plausible explanation.
If it really has managed to thwart Tory politicians from implementing their bright ideas there's a lot to like there.
Football at its illogical best. My team had 19 shots with 7 on target and 4 blocked. Our opponents had 5 shots with 2 on target. The result - 2-1 to them.
No, I've thought about it and decided that there's no such thing as The Blob: it's merely a fictional Behemoth invented by a generation of incapable Tory politicians to mask their many failings. That's the most plausible explanation.
What is the nature of your denial? You can't deny that it exists, because the massive growth of the state and its related institutions is a matter of payroll. Are you denying that it seeks to implement its own agenda, opposing and frustrating the agenda of elected Governments when the two are misaligned? That seems, well, an interesting perspective.
I was recently speaking with a guy who, until his retirement a few years ago, was a leading Whitehall civil servant. He was despairing becuase the Civil Service - its neutrality and its processes - is being increasingly corrupted by government hacks with a partisan agenda. The complete opposite of the 'Blob' phenomenon in fact. This makes perfect sense from what we know of the 'new' political class and the its behaviour.
And we should value our generally non-political civil service, judiciary, and associated bodies such as the Electoral and Boundary Commissions, since in the US very little is non-political nowadays and, my, aren’t they suffering because of it.
Whilst 43 opportunities out of 100 is still way too high for comfort the post debate trend against Trump is continuing. It is, in my view, becoming increasingly difficult to see his path to 270 EC votes. He seems more likely than not to regain Georgia but is increasingly at risk of having this offset entirely by losing NC. He is more likely than not to regain AZ but progress elsewhere is limited. He can make 270 if he wins PA but the polling is edging against him there. WI and MI are both looking increasingly out of reach. Without PA he loses. Period.
Still, I worry that Trump is good at getting non-voters to turn out. In 2020 the Dems were further ahead and it was pretty white knuckle on the night.
It’s awfully close, and yes there’s more evidence of Republicans embracing early voting this time around. Their postmortem from 2020 had Trump’s rhetoric about early voting and postal voting as a significant factor in the defeat, now they’ve got more boots on the ground in swing states getting voters registered and voting early.
One of the interesting polling differences between now and 2020 has a been a gender split among young (18-30) voters. Young women are more Dem than in 2020, and young men more Rep, driven by abortion and wokeness respectively.
I remain of the opinion that, unless the Dems can pull off a massive coup in Florida or Texas, al roads to the White House lead through Pennsylvania, where both camps are spending a lot of time and money. It must be pretty horrible to live there, with the constant adverts and phone calls. Even online platforms can now target certain States and identify floating and independent-registered voters.
I think that there is a general consensus in the US media that Harris's GOTV operations are on a completely different scale to Trump's. She has more full time employees in PA than Trump has everywhere. She has a much larger set of offices from which to administer that effort. The massive new registration efforts should help them too and the demographics of those registrations greatly favour Harris.
Of course, that doesn't measure the self motivated non voter and this is where polling in previous elections has tended to underestimate Trump. Will this happen again or have the serious pollsters corrected that imbalance already? On that, and of course PA, the whole race turns. Harris is starting to cascade her wall of money into down ballot races across the US. It is unlikely that these efforts will turn pink states blue but it is stretching the Trump organisation which still seems more focused on selling trinkets for the personal gain of Trump family members.
The Harris campaign has more money at this point, which they’re putting into TV ads in the swing states. But how many people in swing states watch linear TV any more? Especially since they know they’ll be bombarded with political ads for the next five weeks.
I think that the Trump campaign is being smarter with the money they have, such as releasing ads on Twitter or Facebook which go viral. The problem is to work out which mediums are being seen by the floating voters. Twitter is notorious for forming echo chambers, and there’s no point preaching to the choir in an election campaign.
Hillary outspent Trump almost 2/1 in 2016.
Yes everything runs through PA, whoever wins that State is in the White House. Fingers crossed it’s not a repeat of Florida 2000, and there’s a clear winner.
I’ve been getting a lot of quality Harris stuff online in some of the states I’ve been in, so the Dems are using online and social media ads a lot as well. I’ve had personal appeals from everyone from Obama to Bernie Sanders, as well as a lot of locally focused stuff
Always good to get feedback from people actually in the States. Hope you’re having a fun holiday despite the weather. Love the dog photos!
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.
I referenced something he said. I am listening to him. You would do well to actually listen to the crazy he puts out.
I listened to the podcast I linked yesterday. Don’t agree with all he says, but he does have some good ideas. I like listening to people willing to step outside the comfort zone of established political thought, whether on the left or on the right. Even people with whom I vehemently disagree on almost everything, will occasionally have a good idea in there somewhere.
Which of these Ramaswamy ideas do you think are good?
- raise the voting age to 25 - considering RFK as a running mate - that January 6 was an inside job - that the Democrats support a Great Replacement of Christian white Americans - that 9/11 was an inside job - ending US military aid to Ukraine - preventing Ukraine from ever joining NATO - letting Russia keep those parts of Ukraine it currently occupies - that the climate change agenda is a hoax
That’s clearly not an exhaustive list of his policies, as you missed off the biggest ones like significant reductions in headcount in the Federal burecracy, and the shuttering of whole departments such as Education.
Of those you mentioned, using opposition language, some of them he does have a point, while others I think are wrong.
- Raising the voting age to 25. Don’t completely disagree, and his proposals come with a much wider renewal of the concept of citizenship. - RFK, like any politician, has good and bad ideas. I agree with his ideas on food standards, which are terrible in the US, and disagree with his views on vaccines, for example. - There is a lot of evidence that there were at best a number of FBI informants around on J6, acting as agitators if not outright provocateurs. Many of those arrested have been treated terribly. - The Democrats are clearly supporting measures such as a massive increase in unskilled immigration, while simultaneously being big fans of abortions and gender transitions. I would not use such provocative language, but the evidence is there. - Obviously I’m a big fan of aid to Ukraine, but also have some sympathy with the view that others within NATO are not pulling their weight, and that there’s always money for overseas spending but little spent on disasters at home, for example the floods in Hawaii and the train derailment in East Palestine. - Ukraine joining NATO is a difficult one, but on balance I would be in favour of it. - I don’t know what a Ukranian peace deal looks like, but would prefer it be on the 1991 Ukraine boundary. If the Ukranian government and people are happy with something different, then I am in favour of their decision. - In an American context, there are a number of federal projects related to climate change, which have spent extortionate amounts of money that appears to have simply vanished, making the UK pandemic PPE scandal look like a drop in the ocean. For example, there was a $7.5bn project to install electric car chargers across the country, which after two years has yielded the grand total of eight chargers installed. https://www.autoweek.com/news/a60702457/federal-funds-yield-only-8-ev-charging-stations/ There was also a $40bn project for rural broadband that was originally awarded to Starlink, but after a lot of lobbying was given instead to the big telcos, who have installed a tiny fraction of the fibre that was promised, and almost no-one has seen new high-speed broadband as a result. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/biden-detail-plans-42-billion-investment-us-internet-access-2023-06-26/
Sandpit, these are lies. You are swallowing lies told to you by MAGA grifters. They are not connected with reality. You are slipping down a rabbit hole that leads to claiming that Haitian immigrants are vampires eating people (as with Roseanne Barr).
LOL. There’s a very long history of FBI agents being involved in infiltrating protest groups, dating back to the Civil Rights movement.
The FBI does have a long history. There is no credible evidence that there were FBI agitators at Jan 6.
I mean this in the very best way: your policy of watching diverse views online is leading you to start believing MAGA conspiracies. You are being sucked into lies. You are watching people with kooky views, many of whom are repeating Russian propaganda (be it unwittingly or wittingly). This isn't going to be good for your betting positions, nor is it going to be good for your social relationships with the bulk of people who still live in reality.
Don’t worry, I’m not going completely mad.
I’m just trying to present a viewpoint of the Replublican campaign that few others here are espousing, which I think is important on a betting site. The vast majority of those here might think they’re mad/bad/crazy, but they are nonetheless polling in the high 40s nationwide and 50/50 in many of the swing States, representing increasingly mainstream opinions.
Personally I’d be an independent if I were in the US, I find both camps way too extreme in their own way.
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.
Are we discussing the US or the UK?
If the US, it is worth remembering that - in total - for a country of more than 300 million people, it employs... checks... 4,400 people in total.
If the UK, are you planning on returning power to schools themselves (every school is independent), or to councils?
In the UK, you do - I presume - want to retain some degree of control over national qualifications? (I.e. a school can't just say "this is a GCSE?") So, you will need adminstration around qualifications, and about ensuring that bogus educational establishments are shutdown.
My comment was with regard to the US DoE, which does very little but employs a lot of people. The UK DfE is just as bad, as some of our resident educators will no doubt attest.
No, I've thought about it and decided that there's no such thing as The Blob: it's merely a fictional Behemoth invented by a generation of incapable Tory politicians to mask their many failings. That's the most plausible explanation.
What is the nature of your denial? You can't deny that it exists, because the massive growth of the state and its related institutions is a matter of payroll. Are you denying that it seeks to implement its own agenda, opposing and frustrating the agenda of elected Governments when the two are misaligned? That seems, well, an interesting perspective.
I was recently speaking with a guy who, until his retirement a few years ago, was a leading Whitehall civil servant. He was despairing becuase the Civil Service - its neutrality and its processes - is being increasingly corrupted by government hacks with a partisan agenda. The complete opposite of the 'Blob' phenomenon in fact. This makes perfect sense from what we know of the 'new' political class and the its behaviour.
It might be delicately suggested to the person in question that Governments are meant to have a 'partisan agenda' - that's why we elect them.
No, I've thought about it and decided that there's no such thing as The Blob: it's merely a fictional Behemoth invented by a generation of incapable Tory politicians to mask their many failings. That's the most plausible explanation.
What is the nature of your denial? You can't deny that it exists, because the massive growth of the state and its related institutions is a matter of payroll. Are you denying that it seeks to implement its own agenda, opposing and frustrating the agenda of elected Governments when the two are misaligned? That seems, well, an interesting perspective.
I was recently speaking with a guy who, until his retirement a few years ago, was a leading Whitehall civil servant. He was despairing becuase the Civil Service - its neutrality and its processes - is being increasingly corrupted by government hacks with a partisan agenda. The complete opposite of the 'Blob' phenomenon in fact. This makes perfect sense from what we know of the 'new' political class and the its behaviour.
And we should value our generally non-political civil service, judiciary, and associated bodies such as the Electoral and Boundary Commissions, since in the US very little is non-political nowadays and, my, aren’t they suffering because of it.
The point is that such organisations as the judiciary can no longer claim to be non-political when they make take it upon themselves to wade into the political sphere.
As one example, it is not for The High Court to find Suella Braverman guilty of 'discrimination' because she decided not to implement 2 out of the 30 recommendations of a post-Windrush report that Priti Patel said she was going to implement when Home Secretary. The two recommendations (incidentally) were to strengthen the powers of an inspectorate (more blob) and to appoint a 'Migrant Commissioner' (new blob). And apparently Braverman had 'discriminated' by not doing that. Is it any wonder that we can't control our borders with the thicket of courts, inspectorates, quangos, the chattering media, and civil action groups growing ever denser and thornier by its own hand?
Thank you all for your responses, both pro and con. I cannot deal with all the points you raised, but some I've selected are as follows:
THE NAME Some pointed out that the name was unhelpful, or by naming it created an unhelpful concept. Well, yes, but I can't write an article about a subject without naming it. Perhaps "The Administrative State" would be better
EUROPE Europe was a notable omission (as was Green politics, which nobody noticed). This is a valid criticism. I couldn't squeeze it in for size reasons but I should have at least mentioned it.
ELSEWHERE AND ELSEWHEN Some pointed out that you can trace it further back to the Indian Office, or to other countries like the New Deal. My memories of PJ O'Rourke meant I was aware of the latter but not the former. Thse are good points but I had to start it somewhere, apologies.
TELEVISION The inclusion of "Yes Minister" was a mistake. As a fictional comedy show it just gave a hostage to fortune and it should have been removed. I note the mention of Vorlon v Shadows from "Babylon 5", and "A Very British Coup", two shows I adored. Being more obscure they would have been less well receieved than "Yes Minister", but I could have squeezed in a reference.
LENGTH The limit on articles used to be 800 words, then Cyclefree introduced longer articles at 1,200 words and was teased for it, unjustly as it turned out. Then I think it was Ydoethur (apols if wrong) who did a 1,800 word article, and my article at 1827 words meets this limit. Unfortunately its lengths means that the latter points went unnoticed (nobody mentioned Project2025). I don't know how to cure this problem other than to take out some bits
PRE-READERS LuckyGuy1983 makes valid points, but it would have helped if they had been done in his pre-read. The reason for pre-reading is to take out my obvious stupidities (kill your darlings), and ths has helped articles in the past - the "History of Gambling" article was 40% the size of its first draft and the better for it. I did ask for prereaders twice, but only one responded and didn't give feedback. Nevertheless the responsibility is mine (I'm the author!) and I'll change the extended cut accordingly.
NEXT STEPS So where are we? The "extended cut" will lose para 1 of part 2 and combine paras 1 and 3 of part 4 into one. I'll at least mention the EU and squeeze in a Babylon 5 reference ("and so it begins"?)
POTUS2024 demands an article and there are only 37 days to the election, so that's a priority for October. I've promised a syntactic analysis on the Cass Report by end-of-year so that's November/December sorted. I am badly behind on the extended cuts which will now have to be delayed to 2025. After that there will be a syntactic analysis on Project2025, and then an article on Growth/Technofeudalism and another on Solarpunk II. I have recently discovered Elite Theory and the Italian school of elitism, so there may be an Elites II: oh god, I'm doing sequels now. Fun, fun, fun.
Andrew Neil @afneil Keir Starmer was given an additional £16,000 worth of clothes by Lord Alli, which was declared as money for his private office. The donations by the Labour peer were not previously known and included £10,000 last October and £6,000 in February this year, taking the total in clothes donated to Starmer to £32,000.
So what? Alli is a Labour politician and a Labour donor. The fact that he donates to Labour is a truism.
because he wants something in return. He's not just donating from the kindness of his heart.
Comments
When a council is in no over all control or, when a public body is "impartial", who does the day to day running ? The council officers. In many ways the officers love it. They also love it when the council has "right on" leadership. It is a hell of a lot easier to put in hamster / hedgehog crossings than resurfacing the road or altering the M6 so J37 doesn't kill 1 or 2 people every year. Lets declare a climate emergency and have a group hug about it. Lets spend £300k warning people about the A684 being a bendy road - much better than straightening out the worst bends. Lets not worry about the bridge that has been closed over the Lune making the local population take a six mile detour twice a day. No lets put a nice shiny foot bridge over the Kent in Kendal within 100 yds of an existing bridge both up and down stream.
In many ways that is what Yes Minister was really parodying. Also, most councillors don't last two full terms so they really don't know what they are doing.
It is NOT the fault of the officers, although I have seen plenty who do take the piss. But it is a lack of REAL Leadership. It is going through the hoops, just like Starmer is doing and will do until someone has the balls to tell him his time is up. Next Wednesday perhaps ?
I mean this in the very best way: your policy of watching diverse views online is leading you to start believing MAGA conspiracies. You are being sucked into lies. You are watching people with kooky views, many of whom are repeating Russian propaganda (be it unwittingly or wittingly). This isn't going to be good for your betting positions, nor is it going to be good for your social relationships with the bulk of people who still live in reality.
If the US, it is worth remembering that - in total - for a country of more than 300 million people, it employs... checks... 4,400 people in total.
If the UK, are you planning on returning power to schools themselves (every school is independent), or to councils?
In the UK, you do - I presume - want to retain some degree of control over national qualifications? (I.e. a school can't just say "this is a GCSE?") So, you will need adminstration around qualifications, and about ensuring that bogus educational establishments are shutdown.
Ministers do not have the time to micromanage the civil service.
Both due to rapid expansion of US federal government, which until 1933 played a limited role in lives of most Americans, aside from the Post Office Department.
One prominent feature of early Blobism, which soon leapt across the pond AND still thrives today, was the rise & rule of the Acronym "alphabet soup" of programs, agencies, commissions, bureaus, etc., etc. created, maintained and sustained in ever-increasing diversity (!), complexity and significance.
Some of these can still be seen, carved in stone and displayed on numerous New Deal infrastructure projects and other public works from sea to shinging sea.
For example, the swimming pool in my small hometown was built in 1930s thanks to PWA = Public Works Administration. Which was quite different and distinct from WPA = Works Progress Administration.
PWA being run under aspices of FDR's Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes, on a matching funds basis, with federal dollars matching (and often exceeding) state & local government spending with high standards for approval, bidding and compliance.
The more famous WPA was run by another in FDR's inner circle, Harry Hopkins for the express purpose creating AND funding jobs for individuals, families, communities hardest hit by the Great Depression. Standards here were looser (to put it mildly); note that HH is credited with the much-quoted (especially by Republicans) remark:
"We will tax and tax, and spend and spend . . . and elect and elect."
(For a cheap thriller, that is. And I see a famous scientist agrees with me.)
Second, in the US, teacher's unions are often the biggest obstacles to reform, not the education bureacracies, in both states and cities. For example, they might make it hard to hire math teachers -- who actually know math, because you would have to pay the math teachers more than other teachers. (For the record: I briefly belonged to a teacher's union; many of my relatives belonged for far longer.)
Third, a related idea to the Blob in the US, is the "Iron Triangle", which also explains some patterns -- partially. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_triangle_(US_politics)
Fourth, FDR lamented the difficulty of changing bureacracies, once saying something like this: The State Department is like a pillow. You hit it again and again, and at the end it is the same as it was in the beginning. But the State Department is nothing, as compared to the Navy.
It's full of destroyers.
NEW HEATING BILL
Do not ignore
You can guess what it actually is. A Conservative Party leaflet about how their MPs have voted against the Winter Fuel Payment for pensioners being restricted. I like to think such bogus tactics are ineffective. Such a misdirection hasn't made me feel any more positive towards the party.
We just need OfQualOfQual. This will be the regulatory body that checks that OfQual is appropriately qualified to opine on whether the people awarding qualifications are appropriately qualified.
In time we will probably also need OfQualOfQualOfQual, but that's for another day.
Making money is what matters to them, and that includes lowering the taxes *they* pay. They don't give a damn about society.
- Can all my staff go on xxxxx unconscious bias training course?
- No.
- Can we give the boss of this department who has studiously failed to implement Government manifesto commitments a promotion and a knighthood?
- No.
I am talking about giving the power of patronage and preferment in the civil service to ministers. They already have the power to give them to donors, so that wouldn't change.
I’m not sure I’d want to live for ever.
All this on the day when a huge Brexit Benefit hoves into view
I wouldn't be surprised if we reach a point in a few years' time where we have so much home grown bureaucracy and red tape that losing some of that power to the EU would represent a diminution of the blob, therefore it will act against it.
The blob does what is good for the blob. I don't think it's ideologically pro anything other than itself.
(Listen to the clip for the full effect.)
Question:,What actions will you take to ensure that our jobs stay in America?
Trump: I was honored as the man of the year*. Maybe 20 years ago. The fake news heard about it and said, it never happened…
https://x.com/Acyn/status/1839817819070071073
*He wasn’t, of course.
Which goes some way to explaining the amount of crappy legislation on the books.
NEW THREAD
guesses?
I’m just trying to present a viewpoint of the Replublican campaign that few others here are espousing, which I think is important on a betting site. The vast majority of those here might think they’re mad/bad/crazy, but they are nonetheless polling in the high 40s nationwide and 50/50 in many of the swing States, representing increasingly mainstream opinions.
Personally I’d be an independent if I were in the US, I find both camps way too extreme in their own way.
As one example, it is not for The High Court to find Suella Braverman guilty of 'discrimination' because she decided not to implement 2 out of the 30 recommendations of a post-Windrush report that Priti Patel said she was going to implement when Home Secretary. The two recommendations (incidentally) were to strengthen the powers of an inspectorate (more blob) and to appoint a 'Migrant Commissioner' (new blob). And apparently Braverman had 'discriminated' by not doing that. Is it any wonder that we can't control our borders with the thicket of courts, inspectorates, quangos, the chattering media, and civil action groups growing ever denser and thornier by its own hand?
Thank you all for your responses, both pro and con. I cannot deal with all the points you raised, but some I've selected are as follows:
THE NAME
Some pointed out that the name was unhelpful, or by naming it created an unhelpful concept. Well, yes, but I can't write an article about a subject without naming it. Perhaps "The Administrative State" would be better
EUROPE
Europe was a notable omission (as was Green politics, which nobody noticed). This is a valid criticism. I couldn't squeeze it in for size reasons but I should have at least mentioned it.
ELSEWHERE AND ELSEWHEN
Some pointed out that you can trace it further back to the Indian Office, or to other countries like the New Deal. My memories of PJ O'Rourke meant I was aware of the latter but not the former. Thse are good points but I had to start it somewhere, apologies.
TELEVISION
The inclusion of "Yes Minister" was a mistake. As a fictional comedy show it just gave a hostage to fortune and it should have been removed. I note the mention of Vorlon v Shadows from "Babylon 5", and "A Very British Coup", two shows I adored. Being more obscure they would have been less well receieved than "Yes Minister", but I could have squeezed in a reference.
LENGTH
The limit on articles used to be 800 words, then Cyclefree introduced longer articles at 1,200 words and was teased for it, unjustly as it turned out. Then I think it was Ydoethur (apols if wrong) who did a 1,800 word article, and my article at 1827 words meets this limit. Unfortunately its lengths means that the latter points went unnoticed (nobody mentioned Project2025). I don't know how to cure this problem other than to take out some bits
PRE-READERS
LuckyGuy1983 makes valid points, but it would have helped if they had been done in his pre-read. The reason for pre-reading is to take out my obvious stupidities (kill your darlings), and ths has helped articles in the past - the "History of Gambling" article was 40% the size of its first draft and the better for it. I did ask for prereaders twice, but only one responded and didn't give feedback. Nevertheless the responsibility is mine (I'm the author!) and I'll change the extended cut accordingly.
So where are we? The "extended cut" will lose para 1 of part 2 and combine paras 1 and 3 of part 4 into one. I'll at least mention the EU and squeeze in a Babylon 5 reference ("and so it begins"?)
POTUS2024 demands an article and there are only 37 days to the election, so that's a priority for October. I've promised a syntactic analysis on the Cass Report by end-of-year so that's November/December sorted. I am badly behind on the extended cuts which will now have to be delayed to 2025. After that there will be a syntactic analysis on Project2025, and then an article on Growth/Technofeudalism and another on Solarpunk II. I have recently discovered Elite Theory and the Italian school of elitism, so there may be an Elites II: oh god, I'm doing sequels now. Fun, fun, fun.
PREVIOUS ARTICLES BY ME
https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2019/03/24/viewcode-on-the-chronicle-of-a-bet-foretold/
https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2019/09/15/the-bad-boys-of-brexit-a-review/
https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2019/09/22/chronicle-of-a-bet-foretold-part-2/
https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2019/10/06/national-populism-the-revolt-against-liberal-democracy-a-review/
https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2022/05/02/why-ukraine-was-particularly-vulnerable/
https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2023/01/29/the-intermarium/
https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2023/05/06/ceremonies/
https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2024/01/07/classification/
https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2024/01/13/elites/
https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2024/01/21/finland/
https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2024/04/07/transhumanism/
https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2024/04/21/the-history-of-gambling/
https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2024/05/12/solarpunk/
https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2024/09/28/the-blob/