On the face of it, we should be delighted with the news here that a bonfire of quangos is being planned. However, while we may be looking a gift horse in the mouth here, to commit the cardinal sin of mixing metaphors, I smell a rat. Having spent more of my life energy than I would care to admit researching the theory of deregulation (so much so that I never got round to publishing), my crucial finding was that every cyclical bout of deregulation presaged a further spate of regulation.

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Ah, the genome of authoritarianism. But you have a dissenter here who says tolerance and fairness is in the "national DNA". The two views are incompatible. Only one of you is right.

So what you are saying is the reaction actually necessary for making the regulation stronger. Regulation building is like muscle building. You work out, you lose muscle mass. Body rebuilds more in its place. State uses regulation, loses some in process of enforcement, builds more in its place to better do what it intended, and more. What allows this process is that information can be saved, in capital and acquired knowledge. The rule book is never erased clean, so you get an evolutionary process, which may be slightly different in different places.

If the BBC is to be believed (that would be a first) 127 of the quangos listed are being "merged". Not scrapped, but merged. So they are still there but with a different name over the door. I predicted we would get spin and spin is what we have got. The count of named quangos will fall. The ConDems will claim they have fullfilled their promise to cut quangos.

I will believe that only when the the headcount of quangos falls and their respective budgets disappear and not pass into larger quangos. Such is the cynicism that we are expected to be taken in by the headline cut.

Sir Humphrey would be proud.

More smoke and mirrors in advance of the party conference.

Just as St Vince was allowed (with the approval of Downing Street) to sound off about the evil bankers to his adoring fans at Liverpool, the apparent "bonfire of the quangos" is all about giving the Tory faithful something to warm their cockles and ignore all the evidence that their first government for 13 years has little intention of sticking to any of its stated principles.

As Richard and others have already stated, the likelihood is that the Quangos' responsibilities will be shared out beween other organisations, and the best we can hope for is that some of their most useless politically-appointed heads will be sent packing. (However, since we live in the real world, this means that they will only drift into other well-paid employment on the fringe of the public sector.)

How will the Great and the Good fill their diaries now? That nice little 2 day a week "job" got through a friend on another quango paid for Tamsin and Olly's school/university fees/gap year/renovating the gite. Think of the loss of advertising revenue in the Appointments Section of the Guardian. Oh, the humanity!
At least their unchallenged experience of managing foreign cleaners provides the skillset required to sort out the Commonwealth Games Village.

A question for the English language pedants out there ...

... shouldn't that be "A rat is smelled" ?


In the last year or two, I seem to keep getting the feeling that everyone is using smelt, learnt, etc. when they should be using smelled, learned, etc ... have I been reading too many American sites, or something ?

I bet there's a large element of settling old scores in all of this. Certain people who were a bit prominent in batting for the other side will find the quangocracy a closed shop as far as they are concerned.

I'd like to take it at face value.

I used it to be ornery ... there is also a vague pun there ...

http://www.gma.org/fogm/osmerus_mordax.htm

The trouble is now that we read so many US websites that the normal antennae on correct useage get blunted by exposure to so much abuse.

I suspect there is another wheeze the civil service deploy these days - seconding staff to charities who receive their funding from Government departments and councils while also lobbying the Government and councils. The taxpayer still picks up the bill and the policy making process is even less accountable but the department can claim to have reduced the headcount.

Pedants' corner.........
Not much concerned about the spelling as long as it is correct in common usage of the country of origin....the development of a language is unstoppable & comes from the street.
I draw the line with 'nite' & 'lite' but I'm a wrinkly...and balk at the idea of Ebonic for example; but it's only another Creole patois....and will either develop or not.
Amusingly, Portuguese for mouse is 'rato'...and that translates into computer-speak. (it also has a very different & pungent slang meaning.)
Rather have a smelt for supper than a rat

"... shouldn't that be "A rat is smelled" ?


Well, of all the smells I ever smelled
I never smelt a smell that smelt
like that smell smells.

Or something like that.

I assume the rat that was smelt is the press rabbiting away over a red herring. It's all rather fishy to me.