Thursday
(0)The Conservative Party (or as Monty Python would put it, the Silly Party) has a cunning plan to cut bureaucracy. Appoint bureaucrats to decide how much bureaucracy is really necessary!
Now why didn't I think of that? 
Well, he's not being employed by the government, and having been employed in the state sector, he probably knows where money is being wasted.
Posted by Alex Singleton at January 8, 2004 09:24 PM
"These are NOT cuts," I heard Howard say with anxious emphasis on R4 news, "they're about cutting waste..." I mean, perish the thought that Tories might want to reduce state spending.
Posted by Tony H at January 8, 2004 09:31 PM
Reminds me of the Labour Party plan, I heard of recently, to cut down on targets. Apparently there's a target to get the number of targets down by.
I wish I was making this up! :-)
Anyone got the link to it?
Posted by Andy Duncan at January 8, 2004 09:31 PM
This sounds an awful lot like the Department of Administrative Affairs from Yes Minister.
Posted by Francis W. Porretto at January 8, 2004 10:12 PM
One can be sure that this process will kick off with a meeting to plan the agenda for the premeeting to the teleconference which will discuss establishing a working group to evaluate the possibility of a permanent commission that will meet annually to review plans to cut the bureaucracy.
Posted by R. C. Dean at January 8, 2004 11:25 PM
One can be sure that this process will kick off with a meeting to plan the agenda for the premeeting to the teleconference which will discuss establishing a working group to evaluate the possibility of a permanent commission that will meet annually to review plans to cut the bureaucracy."
If only people like R.C. Dean would stop trying to ram through these hasty, quick-fix, knee-jerk solutions :-)
Posted by David Carr at January 8, 2004 11:48 PM
Our conservatives came up with a similar plan like 8 ago, establishing a Bureau for downsizing other bureaus. Obviously, the outcome was 0, and since the socialists took power, the number of state employees have been skyrocketing.
Posted by Tomas Kohl at January 9, 2004 08:33 AM
Don't call them state-workers call them coercion funded workers; as no-one would pay tax if there wasn't the threat of being punished.
All we ask is to opt-out of "the ant's nest" that is communism-lite.
Posted by Rob Read at January 9, 2004 04:13 PM
We had that too, Thomas Kohl. The last Tory government introduced a "Deregulation Taskforce" (not that it did very much), but when NuLab came to power in 1997, it was immediately renamed the "Better Regulation Task" and set to the task of finding areas lacking in regulation and new means of implementing more without troubling questions from Parliament or interfering judges.
You have the glorious Paperwork Reduction Act Notices, supposed to explain why each form is necessary. Our every piece of legislation now has a Regulatory Impact Assessment, supposed to demonstrate that the administrative hassle it causes is entirely necessary and appropriate. Neither has ever had an effect except to provide work for the bureaucrats who draft them. They are the civil service's equivalent of that declaration one fills in on entering the US that one doesn't plan to overthrow its government. Their very existence confirms their vacuousness.
Posted by Guy Herbert at January 10, 2004 08:25 AM
