Cabinet Office – A paradigm of the current British Government
I recently went to an election planning meeting at the Cabinet Office, No. 70 Whitehall, which, as you see from the picture, has a grand classical frontage onto what is after all one of the grandest streets anywhere in the world. Once you get to the doorway you are quickly struck by what a sham the façade is. You are greeted by security people who, with their high vis jackets and scruffy dark uniforms, look no smarter than municipal car park attendants.Once into the building you discover that the original interior has been largely gutted and replaced, clearly at vast expense, with modern office accommodation, but laid out like a maze with even bridges going over the roof of old buildings, with courtyards enclosed and roofed over with bomb proof glass. So just like our whole government system we have a glorious façade and inside we have a highly expensive muddle of meeting rooms, committees, offices, corridor and lifts, none of which are coherently planned or even efficient. Both with the Cabinet Office building and with Government generally we have neither the grandeur of the original interior of the building, nor the efficiency of a wholly new structure.
During the course of our meeting to discuss election planning for the coming General Election, one party’s delegate pointed out that many returning officers were breaking the law in the way they compile the electoral roll. which is part of the muddle of an electoral system that we have got, where there is no-one overall in charge and the returning officers are often able to get away with their own illegal practices, which particularly matters when the returning officers are partisan like in many of the Labour one party state areas of the country.
In response to this I suggested that the Cabinet Office might wish to “fire a shot across their bows”. The remark was met with hushed shock that government would show any such firmness of action. The senior civil servant present said “No they would only be politely reminded of their legal duty”!
The façade of the building which is a remnant of the days of Empire is wholly at variance with the thinking of those that work in the building!
The senior civil servant concerned also certainly did not match the public’s outdated view of what a senior civil servant looks like. Not at all Sir Humphrey, but indeed a somewhat unkempt beard and hair, scruffy un-ironed shirt with shirt neck button undone, sleeves casually half rolled up and tie askew. But there we all were in a room overlooking our greatest imperial era parade ground at Horse Guards!
What do you think?
Firstly, it is no surprise that younger people than I buy old houses, say they love the period features and then rip everything out bar perhaps one cast iron fireplace, put down laminate floors and turn it into some imitation of New York style loft living if the government is allowed to do the same. This would never have happened on the Continent where they have much more respect for their history as opposed to American style modernity. Listed building status should apply equally to the interior of buildings as to the exterior.
ReplyDeleteSecondly, the European empires, for good or ill, are gone and all the high standards associated with them of discipline, order, stability, self-sacrifice, service not self, respect and self-respect. In today's Marxist world, the self is all and individualism, albeit under the umbrella of the absence of democracy and totalitarianism and a police state are all and everybody should be allowed to do their own thing. In her address on Remembrance Sunday our lady rector told an interesting story about a British prisoner-of-war in the First World War who wished to return home to see his mother who was dying of cancer. He gave his word to the Kaiser that he would return to the camp afterwards and the Kaiser believed him and so he did; the word of an officer and a gentleman. The point she made that freedom does not mean as today the freedom to do exactly as you please and blow everybody else. Here we have a problem with vandalism and schoolchildren behaving badly but nobody ever tackles them or their parents, who would probably be abusive, even though everybody knows who they are. We have reached the ridiculous point of the children controlling the adults and the latter fearing the former rather than vice versa.
As I have said earlier, I remark on the fact that the world was more stable and peaceful in the old European imperial days with the natives being fed, educated and clothed and stopped from fighting one another whilst being happy to stay home. Now we are sending aid, their countries are corrupt and chaotic and they flee to the safety of Europe and North America. Much of this has happened because of the stability of European populations versus the exponential growth of non-European populations with nearly 2b in the Indian Sub-continent and in Africa and 1.5b in China. And now there is exploitation in Africa by the City and its American subsidiaries with no corresponding care of the natives. As the European empires implode the tsunami is sweeping Europeans away. In Charles Emmerson's book on 1913 he quotes Europeans as believing they have the edge on the others. When they are gone we will see how correct such a view was. By the way, interestingly in South Africa at that time, Ghandi had no sympathy with the black population whom he referred to as kaffirs and inferior to Indians. And so is the case now, Asians and blacks only join forces against "white supremacism", otherwise like the blacks and the Jews they are at daggers drawn.
Meanwhile, we are opening a base on Bahrain to train the moderate opposition in Syria, who, apparently have now reached an agreement with Assad. Perhaps it is more to ensure that the arms that we sell to that corrupt and brutal state just make their way as now to the Islamic State so that Syria can be reduced to the same failed state as the rest of the Arab World where the Americans and the Crown Corporation have been spreading "democracy", mostly, it has been suggested, to further Zionist aims.
Brilliant analysis.
DeleteThis brings me to our "democracy"!!! "
The party system reminds me of that wheel cage trap with a mouse inside.
By participating in the party process you aid and abet and lend respectability to the one thing that is enslaving you.What needs to be done is to expose it.
A vote for a party consents to certain things. First, all your rights and liberties are at the mercy of a party government with a majority.
Since all party manifestos are "packages" while you vote for one or two policies you also have to have the rest of the package. There is no opt out!! Even a refusal to vote still lands you with some body's "package" chosen by the rest. All a trap.
Edward Heath used the 1970 "package" to include the EC con trick.They voted for all the usual things and got the bad bit too after he got his "majority"
Pllaying the party game is sheer folly. You deny to yourself the one weapon that can free you. Simple example:
You the taxpayer pay the party MPs wages and the party tells them how to vote(see my website www.camrecon.demon.co.uk "Warnings Past and Present") There is not man on earth who thinks that is a good deal.
A vote for party is consenting to "majority government" and as my website says, once you have done that "there is no power legal or Regal that can stop it". That is the declared purpose of party democracy. Your liberty flies out of the window. i.e the ability to accept or reject "one thing at a time".
When you vote for that party candidate your vote does not stay in his care or custody, to be exercised upon your behalf, he is already forsworn to obey the party. It has gone!!
In contrast when you vote for an Independent your vote stays in the care and custody of that person to be exercised on your behalf with care and to protect your liberty.
If you do it that way you get a triple whammy.
This MP is voting to protect your liberty, he is also voting to come out of the EU and against immigration AND is not aiding and abetting the party system. He is starting to reverse the process of the centralised power. They all claim they want power, quite unashamedly and we don't turn a hair!! Stoppng their game is axhieved by not playing it. Especially if there are three or four different patriotic parties all vying with each other and splitting the vote!!!!! We have all seen or heard about splits within various parties over the DECADES as little men fight with each other for power,e.g Nick Griffin. Even worse when it ends up in expensive litigation. Even worse when bang,the whole house of cards collapses, as happened to the NF. just before a General election a photo appeared in the Daily Telegraph of two skin-heads giving Nazi salutes. This was no doubt a manufactured picture but it destroyed the NF. The media are scum and they have no compunction. don't give them the chance.
What frightens people most is the image planted in their minds of Nazi rallies because the voters gave Hitler a MAJORITY!!!
A political party is wide open to mischief and infiltration, however wel run. The only safe alternative is Independents. Not only do you confine your level of activity to no higher than constituency probably with people you know and trust but you are not under the control of some remote policy committee, or a discipline code or anything totally un-neccessary like that. Even better an Individual candidate cannot be smeared with impunity as can a party and has redress to the courts for libel or slander.
To recap. A vote for an Independent is safe. It starts to destroy the party system and no one can be afraid of a candidate who is there to listen to them, not the party machines. It really is that simple. don't play party politics it is too dangerous. Do get in touch. Martin C
When people acquire power, retaining it becomes their first priority. Anyone with an understanding of right and wrong should be able to see that "it cannot be right" (David Cameron's words) that of the three countries comprising Great Britain, two have their own parliaments, whilst the third does not.
ReplyDeleteIt is not that the Westminster elite does not know that this situation is wrong; they do not WANT to acknowledge the injustice because to do so would jeopardise their power and their priviledges.
One of their standard objections to English home-rule is that an English Parliament would create an extra tier of politicians. They cannot, nay, DARE NOT invisage a political set-up that does not include fifteen hundred Commons and Lords at Westminster.
The truth is, that if they did the right thing and grant England its own parliament and First (Prime?) Minister, they would be voting themselves out of existence. We would not need Westminster, any more!
Retaining power is the first prioriy of those to whom power has been granted.
Clive,
Weston-super-Mare.
As a one time head office civil servant your description does not surprise me, especially the description of the senior civil servant.
ReplyDeleteUntil the late 1980s by when Thatcher had caused a good deal of upheaval through outright privatisation and the piecemeal privatisation of everything not nailed down through contracting out public services, there was a genuine Public Service ethos. By 1990 it was largely gone and today it is not merely dead as the dodo but forgotten.
Civil servants today live in a world in which they are frequently doing jobs for which they are utterly unfitted, for example, negotiating contracts, and and devoting inordinate amounts of time meeting the requirements of targets which cannot realistically be reached and observing politically correctness religiously either from ideological preference, ambition or fear of losing their job.
The senior civil servant you mention may well be one of those who are not career civil servants but an outsider parachuted in . This was another Thatcher innovation which gnawed away at the public service ethos. They may even have been a special adviser of a minister who has been awarded civil service status.