Excerpts from JUST WORDS

I owe my readers an apology. For some time ”Just Words – a sceptic’s glossary” has been sitting in my list of Ebooks – but, when clicked, drew a blank. I’ve now sorted this out. And by way of compensation let me offer some excerpts.

But first, let me explain the title – of which I’m rather proud. The title has two meanings – the first could be construed as half-apologetic, meaning these are mere words – some trifles. The second relates the title to the idea of justice and the 60 pages do offer a real treasure trove about how the literary world has challenged the powers-that-be – whether Jonathan Swift, Gustave Flaubert, George Orwell, Ambrose Bierce, J Ralston Saul or Anthony Jay. Apart from my own definitions of words commonly used by bureacrats and politicians (some 100) to deceive us, I’ve also found many other examples.

So here goes -

Assumptions; the things other people make – which cause problems. Parsed – “I think; you assume; (s)he fucks up”. Project management techniques do require us to list assumptions and identify and manage risks – but in the field of technical Assistance these are just boxes to tick. In any project, the best approach is to list the worst things which could happen, assume they will occur and plan how to minimise their frequency and effects.

Audit; something both overdone and underdone – overdone in volume and underdone in probity. A process more feared at the bottom than at the top as frequent recent scandals (Enron; global banking scandals have demonstrated). See also “Law”

Benchmark; a technical-sounding term which gives one’s discourse a scientific aura.

Best practice; one of the most dangerous terms of the English language – implying, aș it does, that the answer to our problems has a solution which fits all contexts.

Bottleneck; what prevents an organisation from achieving its best performance – always located at the top!

Capacity; something which other people lack

Communications; the first thing which people blame when things go wrong – parsed “I communicate; you misunderstand; he/they don’t listen”.

Consultation; the skill of bouncing other people to agree with what you have already decided.

Contract out; as in “put out a contract on” – to wipe out.

Decentralisation; creating local people who can be made scapegoats for deterioration in service.

Empower; a classic word of the new century which suggests that power can be benignly given – when in reality it has to be taken.

Evidence-based policy-making; a phrase which represents the hubristic peak of the generation of UK social scientism which captured the UK civil service in the late 1990s at the time its political masters succumbed to corporate interests and therefore were practising less rather than more evidence-based policy-making!

Evaluation; job-creation for surplus academics. An important part of the policy-making process which has been debased by it being sub-contracted to a huge industry of consultants who produce large reports which are never read by policy-makers.

Focus group; a supposedly representative group of voters who will give us a clue about what we should be doing.

Hubris; something which politicians and policy experts suffer from – ie a belief that their latest wheeze will solve problems which eluded the skills and insights of their predecessors

Human Resource management (HRM); treating staff and workers like dirt

Law; “the spider's webs which, if anything small falls into them ensnare it, but large things break through and escape”. Solon

Lobbyists; people who make the laws

Reform; to divert attention from core questions by altering organisational boundaries and responsibilities

Training; “surgery of the mind”. A marvellous phrase an old political colleague of mine used to describe the mind-bending and propaganda which goes on in a lot of workshops.

Trust; something which economists and their models don’t have and which, therefore, is assumed by them not to exist within organisations. As economic thinking has invaded public organisations, everyone has been assumed to be a “rent-seeker” – and a huge (and self-fulfilling) edifice of audits, checks and controls have been erected

Whistle-blower; a Jesus Christ figure who blows a whistle – but is subsequently crucified.

Neutralising Democracy

The pensions, special conditions and remuneration of eurocrats serve to insulate them from the general public – making them a breed apart. And I’m not just talking about the officials and the politicians – it’s also the judges, generals etc (whose pay levels have a profound knock-on effect on the relevant systems of countries like Romania and Bulgaria)

Let alone the hundreds of thousands of consultants and officials who work in bodies (like municipalities and institutes) funded by the hundreds of billions of euros of European funding. The morally corrupting effect of the special interests this develops was strongly argued by Robert Michels more than a hundred years ago

Most people are familiar with the Yes Minister" television series  screened by the BBC in the 1970s – less so with this magnificent short satirical article by its author, Anthony Jay - ”Democracy, Bernard, it must be stopped!” - the best analysis of power I know (apart from Lord Acton’s “Power tends to corrupt. And absolute power corrupts absolutely”).

The article takes the form of the advice given by Sir Humphrey (the retiring Head of the Civil Service) to his replacement – who, amazingly, turns out to be the guy who 30 years previously was the hapless Bernard. It captures the mechanisms which have been used over the past 50 years to undermine democracy far better than any book.

The first two rules for neutralising democracy are:

1.Centralise revenue. The governing class cannot fulfil its responsibilities without money. We, therefore, have to collect as much money as we can in the centre. In fact, we have done this with increasing effect over the years, with three happy results. The first is that we can ensure that money is not spent irresponsibly by local communities. By taking 80 or 90 per cent of the money they need in central taxes, we can then return it to them for purposes of which we approve. If they kept it for themselves, heaven knows what they might spend it on.

The second happy result is that the larger the sum, the harder it is to scrutinise. The ₤6,000 or so spent by a rural parish council is transparent and intelligible, and subjected to analysis in distressing detail. By contrast, the three or four hundred billion of central government revenue is pleasantly incomprehensible, and leaves agreeably large sums for purposes which the common people would not approve if it were left to them. It also means that a saving of ₤1 million can be dismissed as 0•0000003 of annual expenditure and not worth bothering with, whereas it can make a lot of difference to the budget of Fidelio at Covent Garden.

The third result is that the more the government spends, the more people and organisations are dependent on its bounty, and the less likely they are to make trouble. 

2.Centralise authority. It goes without saying that if Britain is to remain a country of civilised values, the masses cannot be trusted with many decisions of importance. Local government must be allowed to take decisions, but we have to ensure that they are trivial. Meanwhile, we must increase the volume of laws made centrally. We have an enviable record of legislation growth, with hardly any laws being repealed, which it is now your duty to extend. If you are under pressure to provide statistics showing your zeal in deregulation, you will find many laws concerning jute processing and similar extinct industries which can be repealed without too much harm. …

You will also want to ensure that every Bill contains wide enabling powers, so that unpopular provisions can be brought in later as statutory instruments which MPs rarely read and virtually never debate. You should be able to achieve three or four thousand of these in a good year.

The rest of the rules flow from the first two –

Rule	Reason
3.Capture the Prime Minister	Given the promises a PM makes, it is not difficult to persuade him that he needs more revenue and power
4. Insulate the Cabinet	They must be kept, as far as possible, well away from any contact with the sweaty multitude. This means avoiding public transport by use of private cars, avoiding the National Health Service by private health care etc
5. Enlarge constituencies	In the name of democracy, we have increased constituency size to 50,000 or 60,000, so that no MP can be elected on voters' personal knowledge of him. They vote for the party, and if the party does not endorse him, he will not be elected. His job, therefore, depends on the Prime Minister's approval and not on the respect of his constituents; a splendid aid to discipline
6. Overpay MPs	Even when MPs depend on the party machine for re-selection and re-election, some are occasionally tempted to step out of line. This risk can be significantly reduced if rebellion means not only loss of party support but also significant loss of income.
7. Appoint rather than elect	Government appointment is critical for control of society - so that proper care can be exercised in their selection of the thousands of positions available in Quangos - and so that the incumbents, when chosen, will know to whom they owe their new eminence, while those hoping for such posts (as with honours and peerages) can be trusted to behave responsibly in the hope of favours to come
8. Permanent officials – rotating Ministers	We have built an excellent system of a few transient amateur ministers who are coached, informed, guided and supported by a large department of permanent, experienced officials who enable them to take the correct decisions.
9. Appoint more staff	There are three reasons for this: it increases the volume of government revenue, it extends the area of government control, and it enlarges the pool of voters who have an interest in preserving the system that employs them.
10. Secrecy	Our success is based on the principle that no information should be disclosed unless there is a good reason why it should be. From time to time, opposition parties press for a freedom of information Act, but oppositions become governments and it does not take long for a government to discover that real freedom of information would make their job impossible.

The satire concludes by casting an envious eye at the European system -

Beyond this, I can only point you towards the breathtaking achievements of our colleagues in Brussels. To be frank, I do not see any prospect of our rivalling them.

• Their commissioners, like our permanent secretaries, do not have to endure the ignominy of grubbing votes from the plebs, and, unlike us, do not have to pretend to be subservient to a political master.

• Being answerable to 27 ministers from different countries, most of whom are hostile to each other, and would be even more hostile if they could understand each other's languages, gives them almost complete independence of action. They have also ensured that only the Commission can bring forward legislation, thus avoiding the tedious, irritating and ill-informed ministerial scrutiny we have to endure drafting Bills.

• And since the European electorate speaks so many different languages, it is impossible for genuine European political parties to form, thereby making any serious danger of democracy quite inconceivable.

Obviously, success on that scale is out of our reach, but we can look on Brussels as a guiding star which we must follow, even if we know we cannot land on it.

Further Reading

European Integration as an elite process – the failure of a Dream?; Max Haller (2008)

The Complete Yes Minister – the diaries of the Rt Hon James Hacker; Jonathan Lynn and Anthony Jay (1989)

Send in the Clowns

The new deadline of 31 October fixed by the EU at Wednesday night's Summit proves that the UK has indeed “lost control”..... 
John Harris, out on his illuminating Brexit travels again, visited the Prime Minister’s constituency of Maidenhead - and is left almost literally tearing his hair at one Conservative activist's refusal to moderate his charge that the Prime Minister was a "traitor"......

Recent posts have explored whether novelists or social historians have the better skill-set to make sense of what is going on these days in England’s green and pleasant land.

I had clearly forgotten about comedians – with the Little Britain characters (of a decade ago) being obvious contenders for the award of those who best exemplify the country….Except there is stiff competition from the Frankie Boyle New World Order insights – let alone the classic Basil Fawlty (of 40 years ago).

Fawlty Towers was, above all, an ensemble piece about isolation. It was a portrait of rage and frustration, an exploration of the impotence that results when the world as we wish it to be is so agonisingly at odds with the world as it is.

It was the Brexit mindset incubating in the shabby surroundings of a down-at-heel hotel that had seen far better days.What is Basil Fawlty, beyond the proprietor of this macabre hotel? Well, he is a snob, for starters: in the first ever episode, "A Touch of Class", he abruptly reverses his customary hostility on learning that a prospective guest is a lord, clearly hoping that a visiting toff will magically improve the hotel’s social standing (one of his first conversational gambits is to rave to Lord Melbury about the properties of fields of wheat, which may perhaps have stuck somewhere in Theresa May’s psyche). 

A man of somewhat mysterious origins, Basil Fawlty is acutely class conscious, at once mistrustful of the working classes and a Labour party that he sees as encouraging their propensity for industrial action, and anxious about his own lack of social status. Professionals – experts, one might say – frighten him; rules and regulations intimidate him; the need to ingratiate himself to foreigners infuriates him. 

The put-upon Spanish waiter, Manuel, is, for Basil, there to receive a last kick – usually up the backside – from imperial Britain. He is another outsider to be pushed, prodded, poked and communicated with through a loudhailer. But the British empire to which Basil wants to return is already a thing of the past; the world more complicated than his blinkered mind can admit. Watch Fawlty’s visceral horror as young people flaunt their sexuality, as the common people dare to holiday in sedate Torquay, and – in a moment that causes Fawlty to literally jump in disbelief – the NHS is staffed by doctors who are black.

Basil’s most celebrated meltdown comes, of course, when he is confronted with a touring group of well-to-do, articulate, friendly Germans. His psyche splits: he knows he must be welcoming, but cannot find the mental space or language that allows him to forget the second world war…….
 If only we had picked up that Basil – far from being a glimpse into the past – was a snapshot of the future, we might have been able to do something about it.

For the more cerebral amongst us, however, there is another, equally hallowed and longer running, series which captured the belief system at the heart of this blessed land – Yes Minister – which graced our television screens for most of the 1980s. There indelibly is Perfidious Albion in drag – the foibles of the political class exposed for all to see

What we didn’t know at the time was that the brilliant creator of the series – Anthony Jay – had based his script on the theories of the “public choice” economists who promulgated the view that all “public servants” were serving….their own interests…..

In  other words, the series was laying the ground for the neoliberal doctrine which has led to such cynicism about politics….(the last link is to a powerful short article supporting this thesis)

Despite this, I am a great admirer of Anthony Jay’s work which encompassed some great non-fictions books. “Management and Machiavelli” (1969) enthused me no end (I was battling a traditional bureaucracy at the time) - and he “almost single-handedly resurrected the academic study of that 15^th century genius. And Jay followed it up with an equally brilliant book – “Corporation Man” – based on his observations of the BBC…… His talents even extended to tossing off elegant guides to running an effective meetings! Indeed some of my more regular readers will know that I have been known to use his “Democracy, Bernard, it must be stopped” when discussing the workings of the political class. For my money, the article can’t be bettered…

I once found an edited transcript to the entire Yes Minister series which I left behind in Sofia but was delighted to find the entire work here for my permanent perusal!

Update

The role of the comic or jester in politics seems to be in the air these days since there were a couple of learned discussions of the issue this month – on both sides of the Atlantic. First, the NYR Daily gave us this nice walk down Memory Lane - What Koestler knew about jokes

William Davis is a very serious policy wonk whose The Funny Side of Politics also came to my attention only after this post. It surprised me in making no reference to Arthur Koestler who famously explored the dynamics of the joke in 1949 in the first part of Insight and Outlook – an inquiry into the common foundations of science, art and social ethics and updated his thoughts in The Act of Creation, (1964) devoting 100 pages to an exposition on The Jester. It mist have been the second book that I read in the 1960s and remember being bowled over by it.

His approach continues to attract attention as can be seen in this nice comparison with Bergson a few years back and this rather more ponderous  25 page analysis of his theory from the 1980s  

And, while we’re on the subject of politics as entertainment, let’s not forget Neil Postman’s brilliant Amusing Ourselves to Death; (1985) and Jerry Mander’s Four Arguments for the elimination of television;  (1978).

LRB also gave us a few years ago this great overview of the English satiric tradition - Sinking into the Sea - which took as its cue a little book entitled "The Wit and Wisdom of Boris Johnson" edited by Harry Mount

How they get away with it – being part 5 of the series on the political class

As you saw from the list of 20 odd books a few posts back, the journalists, political scientists and think-tankers have a lot to say about systems of power. Indeed, I often wish they would take an oath of silence – but then I remember they have families to feed…..This means, however, that we stand to be disappointed when we turn to books to help us understand contemporary issues. Several times this blog has gone so far as to urge readers to apply some simple tests when they are flicking books eg on the global crisis eg  early last year one suggested that you go the Preface/Introduction/end-notes/Index and award one point for each positive answer you can give to such questions as –

- Does it say why yet another book is needed to add to the huge pile we already have?

- Does it argue convincingly that the book has something distinctive to say?

- is anything said about the audience the author is aiming at?

- Does it list/identify different schools of thinking about the issue?

- does the author list what subjects (s)he has excluded?

- Is there an annotated further reading list in an annex?

Any book with less than 4 points is probably a waste of your time….

My next post will remind you of some advice I gave readers, authors and publishers earlier this year

But, for now, I want to share an important insight with you all – that after all my reading over the past 50 years the best critique of power is actually a short satirical essay by Anthony Jay (the highly successful scriptwriter of the "Yes Minister" television series of 35 years ago)

The essay is called Democracy, Bernard, it must be stopped and can only be read on my website.

It takes the form of the advice given by Sir Humphrey (the retiring Head of the Civil Service) to his replacement – who, amazingly, turns out to be the guy who 30 years previously was the hapless Bernard. It captures the mechanisms which have been used over the past 50 years to corrupt the political class far better than any book.

Here is the first section (the final section will follow)

The first two rules for neutralising democracy are:

1. Centralise revenue. The governing class cannot fulfil its responsibilities without money. We, therefore, have to collect as much money as we can in the centre. In fact, we have done this with increasing effect over the years, with three happy results. The first is that we can ensure that money is not spent irresponsibly by local communities. By taking 80 or 90 per cent of the money they need in central taxes, we can then return it to them for purposes of which we approve. If they kept it for themselves, heaven knows what they might spend it on.

The second happy result is that the larger the sum, the harder it is to scrutinise. The ₤6,000 or so spent by a rural parish council is transparent and intelligible, and subjected to analysis in distressing detail. By contrast, the three or four hundred billion of central government revenue is pleasantly incomprehensible, and leaves agreeably large sums for purposes which the common people would not approve if it were left to them. It also means that a saving of ₤1 million can be dismissed as 0•0000003 of annual expenditure and not worth bothering with, whereas it can make a lot of difference to the budget of Fidelio at Covent Garden.
The third result is that the more the government spends, the more people and organisations are dependent on its bounty, and the less likely they are to make trouble.

2. Centralise authority. It goes without saying that if Britain is to remain a country of civilised values, the masses cannot be trusted with many decisions of importance. Local government must be allowed to take decisions, but we have to ensure that they are trivial. Meanwhile, we must increase the volume of laws made centrally. We have an enviable record of legislation growth, with hardly any laws being repealed, which it is now your duty to extend. If you are under pressure to provide statistics showing your zeal in deregulation, you will find many laws concerning jute processing and similar extinct industries which can be repealed without too much harm. …
You will also want to ensure that every Bill contains wide enabling powers, so that unpopular provisions can be brought in later as statutory instruments which MPs rarely read and virtually never debate. You should be able to achieve three or four thousand of these in a good year. 

The rest of the rules flow from the first two –

Rule	Reason
3.Capture the Prime Minister	Given the promises a PM makes, it is not difficult to persuade him that he needs more revenue and power
4. Insulate the Cabinet	They must be kept, as far as possible, well away from any contact with the sweaty multitude. This means avoiding public transport by use of private cars, avoiding the National Health Service by private health care etc
5. Enlarge constituencies	In the name of democracy, we have increased constituency size to 50,000 or 60,000, so that no MP can be elected on voters' personal knowledge of him. They vote for the party, and if the party does not endorse him, he will not be elected. His job, therefore, depends on the Prime Minister's approval and not on the respect of his constituents; a splendid aid to discipline
6. Overpay MPs	Even when MPs depend on the party machine for re-selection and re-election, some are occasionally tempted to step out of line. This risk can be significantly reduced if rebellion means not only loss of party support but also significant loss of income.
7. Appoint rather than elect	Government appointment is critical for control of society - so that proper care can be exercised in their selection of the thousands of positions available in Quangos - and so that the incumbents, when chosen, will know to whom they owe their new eminence, while those hoping for such posts (as with honours and peerages) can be trusted to behave responsibly in the hope of favours to come
8. Permanent officials – rotating Ministers	We have built an excellent system of a few transient amateur ministers who are coached, informed, guided and supported by a large department of permanent, experienced officials who enable them to take the correct decisions.
9. Appoint more staff	There are three reasons for this: it increases the volume of government revenue, it extends the area of government control, and it enlarges the pool of voters who have an interest in preserving the system that employs them.
10. Secrecy	Our success is based on the principle that no information should be disclosed unless there is a good reason why it should be. From time to time, opposition parties press for a freedom of information Act, but oppositions become governments and it does not take long for a government to discover that real freedom of information would make their job impossible.

It takes only a few minutes to read the essay – and I would urge you to do so – just click Democracy, Bernard, it must be stopped

Now you can understand why I am such a fan of satire….Some analysts now argue that satire has made us politically cynical and undermined democracy – although I suspect it is more the slow drip of 24/7 news which has done that…..Politicians have certainly become too easy a target. But after wading through so many turgid books about power systems, I have to say we desperately need the gasp of clarity which good satirical writing brings…..

 A Resource on Satire

Satire has long been a powerful weapon against the pretensions of power – Voltaire’s Candide and Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels are well-known literary examples. Ralph Steadman and Gerard Scarfe are modern caricaturists in the tradition of Hogarth; and the Liverpool poets (Roger McGough, Adrian Henry) sustained the protestors of the 1960s. British people are not so familiar with the Bert Brecht’s City poems or the savage anti-bourgeois paintings of Georg Grosz in the 1920s and 1930s.

In 1987 Management Professor Rosabeth Kanter produced “Ten Rules for Stifling Initiative” which I have often used to great effect in Central Asian training sessions.

1999 saw the appearance of “The Lugano Report; on preserving capitalism in the twenty-first Century” which purported to be a leaked report from shady big business but was in fact written by Susan George.

Management guru Russell Ackoff’s great collection of tongue-in-cheek laws of management –“Management F-Laws – how organisations really work” ( 2007) As the blurb put it –

“They're truths about organizations that we might wish to deny or ignore - simple and more reliable guides to managers' everyday behaviour than the complex truths proposed by scientists, economists and philosophers”.

An added bonus is that British author, Sally Bibb, was asked to respond in the light of current organizational thinking. Hers is a voice from another generation, another gender and another continent. On every lefthand page is printed Ackoff and Addison's f-Law with their commentary. Opposite, you'll find Sally Bibb's reply. A short version (ALittle F-book - 13 Sins of management). A typical rule is – “The more important the problem a manager asks consultants for help on, the less useful and more costly their solutions are likely to be”.

Robert Greene’s "48 Laws of Power" may not be satire but it is a very salutary counter to the thousands of unctuous management texts which attribute benign motives to senior management. 

And, to bring this series back full circle to “The Triumph of the Political Class”, a spoof on the British Constitution – called The Unspoken Constitution ( 2009) – had a Preface written by "The Triumph’s...." author - Peter Oborne.

Peter Cook - the greatest of Britain’s post-war satirists - once apparently said, back in the 1960s, “Britain is in danger of sinking giggling into the sea,”