The Scottish Soul – the insiders’ tale

And indeed, the literary did win out in the battle for the Scottish soul – although the non-fiction titles are anything but dull.

I start with a wonderful collection “Who Built Scotland? 25 journeys in search of a nation” (epub 2017) which showcases the local contemporary talent of poet/essayist Kathleen Jamie, writers James Robertson, Alex McCall Smith and Alistair Moffat and broadcaster James Crawford – with their evocations of Scottish architecture, libraries, archaeology and ruins.

My only beef is that their 25 selections are perhaps a trite too obvious – where, for example, is my home town of Greenock which boasts such luminaries as novelists John Galt,  George Blake and Alan Sharp; poet WS Graham and theatre director Bill Bryden ?

Kathleen Jamie was recently named Scotland’s “Makar” and can be seen here reciting a couple of poems here 

My second choice is slightly unusual in that it goes to an online magazine “The Scottish Review” whose anthologies of great short essays can be fully downloaded here. The weekly represents the true spirit of the country – with essays freely contributed by philosophers, historians, journalists, even the odd politician. It was started by journalist Kenneth Roy whose journalism lives on in The Invisible Spirit – a life of post-war Scotland 1945-75 (2013). Even his memorial service gives a certain sense of the society he lived in 

My third choice moves us into the non-fiction and is from a real original – historian Christopher Harvie who spent some 25 years at Tubingen University before returning to Scotland in 2007 to become a SNP member of the new Scottish Parliament (for 4 years only) He writes with extensive allusions and real panache. His Scotland – a short history was originally published in 2002 and later editions don’t really take account of the considerable scholarship which has taken place since.

But it’s still a great read – as is my final choice The Scottish Enlightenment – how Scotland invented the modern world by an American, Arthur Henman (2001) which can be read in full here. Reviewer have been a bit sniffy about this book – with its typically American sub-title – but it is well-crafted and holds the reader. I would love to know what Harvie made of the book - but can't unearth any comment

Kenneth Roy – a voice to renew faith in journalism - RIP

Most “names” that resonate with us are of famous people whose activities – whether celebrated in music, text or acts of courage – somehow send a tingle down our spine….

Kenneth Roy - who has just died mere weeks after revealing his terminal diagnosis - was not a "famous person", although he certainly had a profile in well-read Scottish circles. His was rather a “voice” (sadly almost unique in modern journalism) which measured the moral significance of public actions….

He was the founder and editor of a small Scottish journal – Scottish Review – to which ex-pats like me would look forward with great anticipation. It has a freshness matched by few other journals…The people who write for it did so because they had something to say – unlike most of the text which is inflicted on us these days….

His articles were a joy to read and represent what I imagine is the best of traditional journalism borne of the requirement in those days for new recruits to spend their initial years reporting the doings of the Police Court…. As the apparently self-penned obituary which announced his passing put it,

“he always maintained this experience gave him a dark view of human nature, particularly as his duties were sometimes combined with a night-time trawl of the city's police stations for copy”.

It was such training which must account for the powerful story he always tells – which generally mix in the personal aside and local colour. Ian Jack is another journalist of this ilk…. 

I didn’t know him – although we corresponded once a few years ago when it looked as if I might be able to pop into his offices on a rare visit to Scotland. But, somehow, the knowledge of his mere existence and continued activity kept my faith in humanity…

In his honour, I have started to reread his book The Invisible Spirit – a life of post-war Scotland 1945-75. It was a part of a trilogy he was doing – the second part of which was The Broken Journey - a life of Scotland 1976-99 which was reviewed by one of this little country’s many great authors

There is only one Amazon review but it is an excellent one which captures the essence of Roy’s style…..

This is a big book, physically and intellectually and a very important book too - but rest assured that it is an incredibly easy read. This is mostly because Kenneth Roy's prose is so clear and so elegant. Above all, it's a book that tackles complex and difficult subjects in an accessible and thought provoking way. Every chapter stays in your mind and makes you think. The subject matter may be serious, the analysis incisive, but it is also laugh-out-loud funny at times, mostly because Kenneth Roy can see a devastating humour in the most grim of situations.

He has a sharp and deadly wit and a very fine sense of the ridiculous. Ridicule may well be the best weapon against so much of the material contained within these pages. As the writer points out in his final chapter, 'the reason for re-assembling some of the more deplorable features of Scottish public life is not only to expose...the poor quality of so much of it. It is to make the general...point that the people of Scotland were on the whole badly served by their masters - and by what passed for a free press.'

I lived in Scotland through a significant number of these years and I can vouch for the essential truth of this account, although it is a salutary experience to read it all of a piece like this.
It's a sad and worrying book. Worrying because by the end, you are forced to the conclusion that pretty much anyone who aspires to be a politician, or even to play a significant part in public life, perhaps anyone who craves power, may well be constitutionally unsuited to the role: sic a parcel of rogues indeed. And it's depressing in its brilliant illumination and analysis of venality, disregard for suffering and parochial small-mindedness (almost in spite of the author - who tends to err on the side of fairness, if not quite kindness.)

There are precious few heroes or heroines in this book - although there are a few and what a relief it is to come upon them from time to time! It should be required reading for all Scots, whether for or against independence, or still undecided. It should also be required reading for anyone, anywhere in the world, with an interest in post-war Scottish, or even British history. A masterpiece. And an entertaining one, at that.

Catherine Czerkawska

This morning’s news of his death shocked me into recording this homage. It is at times like these that we both question - and need strongly to reaffirm - the significance of our brief lives….

His memorial service was held on 14 March 2019 at Glasgow City Chambers and can be seen here on Youtube. It is deeply evocative - not least for the reading by renowned Scottish actor Bill Paterson of some of Kenneth's texts. These tell us so much about the mix of insight and pawky humour which characterised Kenneth Roy's journalism. I highly recommend it 

The painting is "Whiteinch Library" by Scottish artist Frank McNab which adorns the cover of his "The Invisible Spirit"

What are public admin scholars up to?

I don't want to offend - but this is a 16th Century Albrecht Durer sketch - which seems quite appropriate for the theme.

Strange but refreshing weather in Sofia – starts well, then in late afternoon scudding grey clouds, wind and thunder.
I’m reading at last Basic Instincts – human nature and the new economics by Peter Lunn (who has academic qualifications first in neuroscience then in economics (with a considerable spell as broadcaster in between) and whose book gives a good critique of mainstream economics and introduction to the new behavioural economics which has been developing in the past decade and which already has many books, blogs and, as of last week, a world-wide Association of 3,500 members.
In March last year I suggested that, as both mainstream economics and psychology were undergoing major challenge, it was time that the scholastic discipline of public management had this sort of overhaul The only popular book on the subject I can think of was Reinventing Government (1991) by David Osbourne and Ted Gaebler – which did not, however, attempt an overview of the topic but was rather proselytise for neo-liberalism. For a book which had such a profound effect, it’s curiously absent from google scholar and those not familiar with it will have to make do with this useful riposte to its approach.

Economics and psychology, of course, are subjects dear to the heart of everyone – and economists and psychologists figures of both power and ridicule. Poor old public administration and its experts are hardly in the same league! As I said in yesterday’s post, not only does noone listen to them – but the scholars are embarrassed to be caught even writing for a bureaucratatic or political audience. And yet the last two decades have seen ministries and governments everywhere embark on major upheavals of administrative and policy systems – the very stuff of public administration. But the role of the scholars has (unlike the 2 other disciplines) been simply to observe, calibrate and comment. No theory has been developed by scholars equivalent to the power of the "market”, "competitive equilibrium” or "the unconscious” – unless, that is, you count Weber’s "rational-legal bureaucracy” or Robert Michels "iron law of oligarchy”. Somehow Lindblom's "disjointed incrementalism" never caught on as a public phrase!
Those behind the marketising prescriptions of New Public Management (NPM) were not from the public admin stable – but rather from Public Choice Economics and from the OECD – and the role of PA scholars has been map its rise and apparent fall and (occasionally) to deflate its pretensions. At its best, this type of commentary and analysis is very useful – few have surpassed Chris Hood’s masterly dissection of NPM 20 years ago. This sets out for the first time the basic features of (and arguments for) the disparate elements which had characterised the apparently ad-hoc series of measures seen in the previous 15 years in the UK, New Zealand and Australia – and then goes on to suggest that the underlying values of NPM (what he calls the sigma value of efficiency) are simply one of three clusters of adminstrative values – the other two being concerned with rectitude (theta value) and resilience (lamda value). 
Table 2 of the paper sets this out in more detail.

The trick (as with life) is to get the appropriate balance between these three. Any attempt to favour one at the expense of the others (NPM) will lead inevitably to reaction and is therefore unstable. This emphasis on the importance of balance was the focus of a very good (but neglected) paper which Henry Mintzberg published in 2000 (which I’ve mentioned before on the blog) about the Management of Government which starts with the assertion that it was not capitalism which won in 1989 but "the balanced model” ie a system in which there was some sort of balance between the power of commerce, the state and the citizen. Patently the balance has swung too far in the intervening 20 years!

Hood elaborates on these three sets of values in the book he published at the same time with Michael Jackson - Administrative Argument (sadly out of print) - when he set aut 99 (conflicting) proverbs used in organisational change.

In 2007, Russell Ackoff, the US strategic management guru, published a more folksy variant of this proverbs approach – The F Laws of management a short version of which can be read here We desperately need this sort of approach applied to the „reformitis” which has afflicted bureaucrats and politicians in the past 20 years. A book is needed which –
• Is written in a clear and accessible way
• Sets out the history of public admin thought (already available in many academic texts)
• Sets out the thinking which has dominated practice of the past 20 years; where it has come from; and what results it has had (already well done in academia see the Pal paper on the role of the OECD I referred to a few posts back)
• Gives case studies – not of the academic sort but more fire in the belly stuff which comes, for example, from the pen of Kenneth Roy in the great crusading Emag he edits and which today tells a tale which should be shouted from the rooftops of the collusion of so many public figures with the activities of the cowboys who run privatised companies which are trying to muscle in on (and make profit from) public services.

Perhaps I should try to produce such a book?