The Tom Sawyer Principle (Politics)

[Mick Harper]

In victory, magnanimity.

[Mick Harper]

Boris Johnson and the Glasgow Climate Conference is a marriage made in heaven. It is always assumed that the host organiser should ideally be sympathetic to the issues, or at least competent. Not so. Haven't you been watching over the years? This is political theatre and requires a narcissist with a butterfly mind who is terrified of being found out on the world stage.

It is not the likeliest outcome but do not be surprised if Glasgow turns out be a cracker.

[Grant]

Note that Boris has taken the line of least resistance with every decision so far? Huawei - go ahead. Climate change - support the consensus. Next it will be yes to HS2.
Not saying any of that is wrong (actually it is) but it is clear he is reverting to his normal self.

[Mick Harper]

More fascinating detail on Housing Benefit during this week's big Universal Credit: Inside the Welfare State (BBC-2) series. The poor woman had to go through hoops just to get them to pay it direct to her landlord (as used to be universally the case). The rationale for not doing so was 'to teach the claimant to manage her money'. Let's think about that for a moment.

'Managing your money' in this case amounts to either paying your housing benefit to your landlord or not paying your housing benefit to your landlord. There is no other purpose for being given housing benefit. So either you do or you don't. You either don't get into arrears or you do. The landlord is either happy to rent to a claimant or he picks up the tab. The state has either discharged its duty to house a claimant or it has to pick up the tab when the claimant is evicted.

And all to teach the claimant to manage her money. There is nothing likelier to spiral someone into truly dire circumstances -- as this woman clearly understood -- than being given the opportunity to manage your money in circumstances when it is all too humanly tempting to spend your money, not manage it, and when somebody else is going to pick up the tab. Though they will insist you spiral down. "Well, you didn't manage your money, did you?"

"Yes I did. I specifically asked you to send that part of it that had to be paid to my landlord to my landlord. That is how I wanted to manage my money. It is no different from a salary coming in and then instantly going out again as a standing order. That is what most people do by way of 'managing' regular and essential outgoings. They don't want to have to think about it and, if they've got half a brain, they don't want to think about whether they want do it this particular week of this particular month, what with whatsit coming up and..."
"We decide what managing your money means, not you. Next!"

[Grant]

Ian Duncan Smith is an idiot. The reason many of these people are in trouble is that they can't manage money. It was obvious that many of them would struggle to keep the money long enough to pay the landlord.
Of course he now has a knighthood for this innovation

[Mick Harper]

I don't accept this. Duncan Smith is reasonably bright and made a commendable effort to master the social security brief in the days after he fell from the leadership -- apparently from a genuine desire to do a bit of good since there didn't seem anything in it for him at the time. Nor do I believe this would have been his idea -- it is a typical piece of mandarinate patricianship. But even if it was, so what? It is a perfectly reasonable idea -- the villains are all those twats, across the spectrum, and up and down the administrative hierarchy (including Mr Ian Duncan Smith), who refuse to see that it has turned out be a disastrous idea.

I am glad to see he got a knighthood for all his efforts. Doesn't cost us anything and made an old man happy.

[Mick Harper]

Poor old South Africans, they keep forgetting they've got a modern powerhouse industrial economy on their hands, yet insist on running it using a bunch of blecks. This is like trying to govern Britain by recruiting the ruling class from Brixton. [mmm ... put that one on the Big Board, Hatty.] The latest horror story is that Eskom, the nationalised electric utility (responsible for about half of all electricity produced in Africa to give you an idea of the scale of the problem) is thirty billion in debt, can't keep up and may go belly up.

Meanwhile, drumming their fingers upcountry, are the Afrikaners, the greatest administrators the world has ever known (o.n.o). If you can import the Chinese to run your industry, why can't you import your own people to run your government? You'll have no difficulty controlling both, they know who ultimately has the whip hand. Honestly, they'll both do a splendid job for you if only you'd let them.

[Wes Kit]

[Mick Harper]

Thank you and welcome, Mr Kit. I knew a Jim Kit once but my mum had sewn somebody else's name on it. My own, from memory. Traditionally you served time as an Assistant Stage Manager to get your ticket but since rep dried up I think it's why there are so many of these tiny politico/fringe theatres nowadays. But more, preferably from one who knows, would be welcome.

[Mick Harper]

[Mick Harper]

Replacing them just means you have a new bunch believing the same things as the old bunch only this time it is they who are the neophytes. Now, it is more a matter of getting everyone to do some actual hard intellectual graft (as opposed to diligently grafting) but oddly this does not necessarily make you unpopular in your department -- civil servants are like all human beings, they take direction very well. They also like being the centre of attention.

Which means you will be unpopular with all the other departments trying to get some limelight for their boring old policies. Especially the Treasury which believes it and it alone should be running the show. If you remember your Alan Clark Diaries you will appreciate that just getting one new policy through per political lifetime is a triumph of the will and mostly involves praying the Prime Minister won't reshuffle you for the sake of a quiet life.

Unless you are a Svengali-type figure who has a mysterious control over the Prime Minister but that is the stuff of television dramas not ministerial diaries.

[Mick Harper]

We have only had two radical governments in modern times i.e. not counting Cromwell (twice), Whigs (twice) and Peel (once), and that is the Labour government of 1945 and Margaret Thatcher's of 1979. The civil service was not a problem either time, presumably because the programme was brutally clear: nationalise everything in sight, privatise everything in sight. Once the parameters are nailed down, the civil service can be relied on to do the grunt work. What is Priti Patel bringing to the table? A great reforming zeal like Richard Crossman worked out after years in the opposition wilderness? We shall have to wait for her Diaries to find out. "Monday: rowed with Perm Sec about nowhere to keep my shoes."

As for Dominic Cummings it remains unclear what he intends to do. That's not necessarily a problem, Mrs Thatcher didn't know either. It's the knowledge that things must change and the cojones to bring it about that counts. The civil service can be relied on to do the grunt work, it's the rest of us I worry about. We're a conservative lot.

[Grant]

Most radical government ever was Tony Blair's. Whilst saloon bar bores droned on about how he was actually a conservative he proceeded to surrender to IRA terrorists, invite millions of immigrants and destroy the British middle class. Oh, and give home rule to the Scots which will ultimately lead to the breakup of the UK

[Mick Harper]

Yes, I'd forgotten what a good PM he was. Nice one, Grant.

[Mick Harper]

Sorry, but I've got to return to my beef about housing benefit. This is because of a surfeit of Can't Pay? We'll Take it Away in which there is generally one item when a family on benefit is being evicted, cue much misery for the family, much local authority money being spent rehousing the family, much money having been spent on interminable court hearings and bailiffs, and much less renting of houses to welfare claimants by landlords who will never get the rent arrears back.

What has usually brought this about is that word goes out that such and such level of housing benefit is to be imposed on such and such a district and, since the only purpose of such an edict is to save money, huge numbers of families find their housing benefit no longer covers their rent. Since pretty much by definition welfare claimants are already quite near subsistence (by British standards) this is going to lead to one of two things happening... more later