MoG

With the recent and latest disgraceful elevation of the Lord of Hartlepool and Foy (two geographically distant areas to be Lord over, don't you think?) I was interested to read about the re-modelling of the fabulously glibly named government department - BIS - thus turning back the clock on the earlier de-merging of DIUS from the DTI. I'm sure I read in The Bun that this exercise cost an estimated £1,000,000 to complete, though the Graun is reporting what I think is the far more accurate figure of £9,000,000.

Having been at the very heart of similar changes myself, I would have to agree. There is, after all, more to consider than simply changing the stationery and the signage (though that in itself is a not insignificant task, carrying a not insignificant price tag) and most of the expenditure gets lost in the fog of crap that surrounds these decisions. The actual cost - in human as well as financial terms - is astronomical.

Not wishing to labour a point, but all of this against the continuing backdrop of the fallout from the global recession - though not perhaps as egregious as the expenses scandal - is
insulting to the thousands of people losing their jobs at the moment; the ones the politicos bleat unconvincingly about every day.

Again, this government seeks to model itself on (demonstrably failed) business patterns, even down to the constant obsession with branding, and loses sight of what it is supposed to be there for. All in the cause of self-aggrandizement at worst, and skin-saving at just-as-bad.

It just makes me so fucking enervated. That is all.