Category: Election 2010

The next ten words

Can’t claim to be the first to post this today – there are doubtless countless versions of this being uploaded onto blogs across the country.  Here’s my contribution to the Bartlet tsunami.  If only tonight was going to be half as much fun.

And here’s a question I’ve been waiting for someone to ask since this woeful campaign started:

Moderator: Governor Ritchie, many economists have stated that the tax cut, which is the centerpiece of your economic agenda, could actually harm the economy. Is now really the time to cut taxes?

Gov. Ritchie: You bet it is. We need to cut taxes for one reason – the American people know how to spend their money better than the federal government does.

Moderator: Mr. President, your rebuttal.

Bartlet: There it is. That’s the ten word answer my staff’s been looking for for two weeks. There it is. Ten-word answers can kill you in political campaigns. They’re the tip of the sword. Here’s my question: What are the next ten words of your answer? Your taxes are too high? So are mine. Give me the next ten words. How are we going to do it? Give me ten after that, I’ll drop out of the race right now. (Debate Camp)

What has the public sector ever done for us?

I was intrigued by yesterday’s story  that the Tories will save money by capping pay  at the top of the public sector so that no-one earns more than 20 times the lowest paid.   They also say they won’t fill vacancies in public sector back-office functions when they arise.

Apparently bosses at 10 of the companies supporting the Tory plans for NI would take a combined £74m pay cut if the rule were to be applied to them.  Or, as one letter in the Guardian points out, Stuart Rose can have his way on CEO’s pay as long as shelf-stackers at M&S get £750,000.  Sadly, this doesn’t seem likely.

I don’t have a problem with slimming down government.  Some public sector pay packages are excessive.   Of course there will be cuts, and there is waste to be eliminated – although not as much as is being claimed.  I’ve worked with  officials on very high salaries who couldn’t manage their way out of a paper bag  and that isn’t acceptable.  My problem is  with the sense that the private sector is  to be protected at all costs, while the  public sector is for  losers who can’t hack it in the real world, and who don’t do anything important anyway so no-one will  miss them when they’re gone.

There’s certainly an argument that government can no longer afford to do everything.   The politicans’ job is to make some principled choices about what work needs to continue and what should stop, so that the important areas that remain can be properly supported.   Announcing what these priorities will be would allow the electorate to make an informed choice about what might happen after an election.  Fudging that  issue pre-election, or pretending that the problem can be solved by screwing down pay in the public sector and allowing services to be run like a giant game of musical chairs  is dishonest.

Purdah, in the dark

When I worked in government departments purdah always came as something of a relief.  Purdah is the period before an election when new government business or announcements about new business are put on hold so as not to sully the fairness and purity of the democratic process.  It means that for almost a month government communications departments can come off the announcement-a-day, got-to-look-busy treadmill and catch up on refreshing the website, doing something about planning for later in the year and generally doing those things that never rise far enough up the To Do list to actually get done.

On the outside,  purdah is a curse.  There are no hard and fast rules as to what can and can’t be done or what forms of communication are OK and what has to stop,  The range of possible activity is so vast that no rule book could  cover everything.  Instead there is general guidance, guidance for civil servants, and dire warnings about what happens if you get it wrong.  Because no-one understands the rules, everyone takes the most cautious possible approach to applying the guidance.  Pretty much all activity stops.

I’m currently doing some work for an NDPB  (non-departmental public body, close relative of the ALB – arms-length body,  descendants of the great mother goddess Quango .)  My client has just informed me that everything I’m doing MUST stop next week – which is the best guess as to when the election is going to be called –  even though the calling of the election isn’t the  start of purdah.  My stuff can in no way be considered to be public communication, but so great is the fear of getting it wrong that even  useful development activity is stopped until hostilities are over (I sympathise with their point of view, by the way, even though I disagree that the guidance fits this particular case.)

At the moment no-one knows when the election is going to be, and the shadow of purdah has been limiting what new work is commissioned since the turn of the year.  At one point March 25 was considered a possible election date, so purdah would have kicked in at some point in February (and presumably started up again three weeks before the local elections in May).  The general election might still be pushed back to June 3, which means  full-steam ahead until May, and I will have wasted a couple of hours of  Good Friday finishing off stuff which could have waited until next week.

I appreciate that allowing freelancers to enjoy their bank holidays may not be the most important reason to back fixed-term parliaments, but a bit of clarity would help  everyone and would at least mean that  business can be planned around a timetable that has some relation to reality.