Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[garbon]

Then I live in social housing.

[Josquius]

Then I live in social housing.

As it should be.

When I was growing up as a kid in my small working class town there was heavy discrimination against council estate people. It was seen as a lesser, scummier way to live. Because yeah, a lot of shit people there.
But the way it should be is as something for everyone.

I did find doing my work quite a lot of social housing people in London in really educated jobs. More than a few nurses struggling to support their kids, a doctor, various IT professionals, etc...
I wonder if its just the state of things there which makes it more acceptable to take whatever you can get or if there actually is a different outlook.

[crazy canuck]

That is a fair point, but if we wanted to go that route, we needed to keep building units through the 70s until present rather than government wiping their hands of it in the 70s.

We are not going to get 3.5 more units of housing in 7 years through government construction alone.

Yeah I expect that no single approach is going to cover the gap in a reasonable amount of time.

I don't agree.  We are definitely out of time for the social housing only solution.  But there are a lot of well capitalized developers who could build purpose built rental units which they own and operate that could be build quickly.  Look at the Liberty Village neighborhood of Toronto as an example.

The problem we face is zoning and permit restrictions.  And this is not a right/left thing.  This is the view of the NDP. 

I think government also needs to provide social housing.  But that is for other reasons.

[Savonarola]

That's comprehensive

It's a subject I've spent a lot of time on in the last four years.

Sounds like a typical example of a big problem you often see when people compare cars and trains (or indeed public transport in general). Not comparing like with like.

Sounds like the railways there are basically the equivalent of a rural dirt road whilst the roads have been hyper invested to be the road equivalent of a shinkansen.

A imperfect analogy of course. Roads and rails have different purposes. A railway can only get so poor, into bamboo railway territory, before it stops working at all whilst a road has an upper limit at which just constantly adding more lanes is dumb and useless.

Usually roads are optimum for rural areas whilst for areas of any reasonable density railways are the optimum.

There's two big factors at play here.  The first is that Canada has an enormous freight capacity and rail is mostly used to transport freight.  Of the 500 Km that MetroLinx operates on 200 Km are owned by freight carriers (either Canadian National or Canadian Pacific.)  Previously the freight carriers owned even more, MetroLinx has purchased territory in recent years.  This is a big part of the reason that there is no catenary; all regional trains are diesel.

The second is that there's no agreed upon Automatic Train Control (ATC) standard in Canada.  Today MetroLinx plans to adopt the European standard ETCS, but the surrounding freight carriers don't have a plan like that (or any plan, as far as I know, for that matter.)  So when even when MetroLinx adopts their ATC, they're still going to have to drop down to civil speeds and conventional signaling when they exit territory.  (There is a plan to build catenary as part of their project, but the locos will have to be hybrid so they can run out of territory.)

So this is a long way of saying the track in the Greater Toronto Area works well for what it was designed to do; mostly freight with occasional passenger trains, but it was built long before Toronto experienced the explosive growth of the last couple decades.

[Sheilbh]

Example 742 of Britain discovering that decades of underinvestment apparently have consequences
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/oct/15/water-metering-should-be-compulsory-in-england-advisers-likely-to-say

This is on every government since 1992, but I do feel it's a pretty catastrophic failure if England of all places needs compulsory water metering because we've not built a new reservoir in 30 years and also haven't invested enough in improving the water network to prevent leaks. We, as a country, should not need to "manage demand" for water

Especially as with underinvestment there's also been increased climate events - as all British governments since 1992 have acknowledged, there's no climate change denial there; and increased demand because of population growth - again presided over by all those governments.

It reminds me of energy where we've shut down gas storage, have problems with grid capacity but also haven't actually built enough new (low carbon) power plants like nuclear or enough grid connections for renewables (which we also haven't built enouogh of). Last year there was lots of talk that following the war it would be touch and go whether there'd be an energy crisis requiring blackouts (and other "managing demand") - we got through it without that, but it was a mild winter and my understanding is that one year on we're likely to face the same risk this year. Or for that matter housing and other infrastructure. We have generally ageing physical infrastructure and a growing population, which requires investment.

It reminds me of how we all had to learn about "just in time" supply lines for supermarkets during covid (and I think those supply lines held up incredibly well, all things considered) but it feels like we have a "just in time" state in all sorts of points. We've got enough energy, water, housing, NHS capacity etc if everything works out exactly as planned and there's no shocks or surprises and nothing goes wrong - which doesn't feel like a sustainable way to run a society. Another reason I think the Labour framing of their policies, including on infrastructure, around "securonomics" or an "age of insecurity" is a good idea.

Separately, the Commons watchdog has upheld six complaints against veteran Tory MP Peter Bone including bullying and sexual misconduct (basically indecent exposure):

The commissioner found the following allegations proved:

Allegation 1: Mr Bone "verbally belittled, ridiculed, abused and humiliated" the complainant, and this was bullying.

Allegation 2: Mr Bone "repeatedly physically struck and threw things at" the complainant, and this was bullying.

Allegation 3: Mr Bone "imposed an unwanted and humiliating ritual on" the complainant, namely instructing, or physically forcing, the complainant to put his hands in his lap when Mr Bone was unhappy with him or his work; and this was bullying.

Allegation 4.2: Mr Bone "repeatedly pressurised [the complainant] to give him a massage in the office" and this was bullying, but not sexual misconduct.

Allegation 4.3: Mr Bone indecently exposed himself to the complainant on an overseas trip, initially in the bathroom of the hotel room they were sharing and then in the bedroom. The commissioner concluded this was sexual misconduct.

Allegation 5: ostracised the complainant following the events subject to allegation 4.3, and this was bullying.

Disgraceful that the complainant went to the Tory party first (because he's an aide he will have been a Tory) in 2017 and they just sat on it or it meandered through various hands for five years, until he withdrew his complaint and made a complaint to the Westminster body so they'd have jurisdiction.

Bone has been suspended from the Commons for six weeks which is enough to trigger a recall petition. If he doesn't resign (and he absolutely rejects all the allegations), I'd expect that recall petition to be successful and cause a byelection. I think so far ever recall petition in GB has been successful, the only one that failed was in Northern Ireland and even it came close.

We know there's many investigations by that watchdog ongoing at the minute and active police investigations into the conduct (particularly sexual misconduct) of up to 60 MPs. Sadly it's a cross-party problem. For example, sadly, Labour have decided to return the whip to and re-admit Neil Coyle to the party after the allegations that he racially abused a journalist. An SNP MP defected to the Tories, she had challenged the SNP Westminster leadership over their Chief Whip who was found to have sexually harassed an aide - the Westminster leader had called on MPs to rally around and show support for the MP. She apparently pushed back on this and says she was then subjected to a campaign of bullying and intimidation that impacted her mental health.

I get that MPs have a direct democratic mandate, but there needs to be so much more suppoprt for the people they hire/who work in their office/Commons staff. It was particularly difficult when the Speaker who is in charge of the Commons was himself facing (later upheld) allegations of serious bullying as was the case with John Bercow and it's striking how many of the recent allegations have come forward in the few years that Lindsey Hoyle has been Speaker, which I think reflects very well on him that people feel they can make complaints.

Also striking is how many of these allegations, especially around sexual misconduct, have male victims. I always knew Westminster was incredibly gay (both Bone and the SNP Chief Whip) which may be part of it - I think it's the most LGBT+ parliament in the world in terms of MPs, but from friends I know a lot of aides and party workers are gay too. I don't want to pretend men have it worse than women but I wonder if the fact that the victims have so often been young men means that allegations weren't taken as seriously or there was a perception that they should have just stood up to the MP - when obviously it's the power difference which isn't solely about gender that makes that difficult.

[HVC]

How are forced massages not sexual misconduct?

[Josquius]

I guess the debate is why believe that kid looking for attention/an easy pay out over such a superior person as myself. It was all consensual. I did him a favour letting him do it. etc....

But yeah. It is curious that Westminster leans very gay.
Loads to analyse in there (ever seen anything doing this?)

[Sheilbh]

How are forced massages not sexual misconduct?

So the specific allegation was this:

4.2 The respondent repeatedly pressurised the complainant to give him a massage in the office (with nobody else present) on his shoulders and neck, at least six times and always with the door of the office shut and nobody else present. On one occasion, on 21 November 2012, the complainant reluctantly agreed, but only because he was worried about the consequences if he did not. The complainant's log for 21 November 2012 reads, 'Asked to give massage.'

That's before the indecent exposure. Also worth noting that while the indecent exposure was clearly sexual misconduct the report - and the complainant - don't think it was "sexual". On the massages the complainant wrote: "There was a sense of a king who expected people to serve him in all sorts of ways." Similarly on the indecent exposure it's described as being more about humiliation and control.

I guess the debate is why believe that kid looking for attention/an easy pay out over such a superior person as myself. It was all consensual. I did him a favour letting him do it. etc....

I think the debate was mainly around evidence. The complainant kept a log of bullying behaviour that was detailed and contemporaneous. The MP basically it didn't happen but can't remember specifics. The complainant was a more credible witness and had other credible witnesses to back him up.

It's not a million miles from court cases where it's about who has the more credible evidence. Written, contemporaneous evidence is particularly strong - why if things are ever going wrong or something's off at wrong keep a record..

But yeah. It is curious that Westminster leans very gay.
Loads to analyse in there (ever seen anything doing this?)

Not that I'm aware of - it is cross-party at both aides and MPs. I think it's about 65 MPs who are LGBT - both Tories and Labour have about 25.

I've known people who work in Westminster and the Tories have always had a reputation, especially at the aide/staffer level, as absolutely full of gay men

Edit: And of course there's form - go to any smells and bells, High Church CofE service and chances are 90% of the congregation (and the vicar) are gay They're not socially conservative in the homophobic, anti-abortion way - but sort of are in a general camp performance of young fogey-ness. It's all a little Norman St John Stevas who was a Tory MP in the 80s and flamboyantly gay but not out. Very close to Princess Margaret and the Queen Mother, but who always referred to Thatcher as "the Blessed Margaret" and "the leaderene". After politics he became dean of a Cambridge college which developed a strong preference for accepting slightly foppish public school boys and was nicknamed "Mein Camp" while he was there. It's a very Tory sort of gay - I'm not sure there's an equivalent in, say, right wing politics in the US.

I don't know how much of that is fair in reality. But I've also, from people I've known, heard complaints of Labour (especially under Corbyn actually) being a bit more "laddish" in a not very pleasant way if you're not a straight man in the gang.

[Sheilbh]

Interesting I think I'd back all of this. Hope Labour look at it too with Sue Gray - not entirely surprised to find there's "institutional resistance" to it in Whitehall

Not sure they necessarily would need to look for someone from the private sector. He's not wrong though that many of the issues he's wanting to fix are ones that have been identified with proposed remedies in numerous reports since at least the war....so I'm not holding my breath

Abolish cabinet secretary and break up Treasury, says Maude review
Former Cabinet Office minister submits list of recommendations that would upend Whitehall
Chris Smyth, Whitehall Editor
Monday October 16 2023, 5.00pm, The Times

The Treasury should be split up and the job of cabinet secretary abolished, a government-ordered review of Whitehall will recommend.

Ministers should have more say in appointing civil servants but undergo "360" performance reviews by subordinates and colleagues, under radical plans being studied by the government.

Civil service chiefs should also be held publicly to account for improving the workings of government to avoid focus on Whitehall effectiveness being sidelined by ministers, the review of civil service governance and accountability says.

Lord Maude of Horsham, a former Cabinet Office minister, was asked by ministers last year to review the wiring of Whitehall and is understood to have submitted a long list of recommendations — some of which would upend long-established government structures.

The conclusions were submitted to ministers more than a month ago, but publication has been delayed over claims of "institutional resistance" in Whitehall, which have been denied by civil service sources.

Ministers, however, are keen to publish the report without explicitly accepting or rejecting its recommendations.

Jeremy Quin, the Cabinet Office minister, is studying them closely as he works on plans for Whitehall reform, which were promised by Rishi Sunak last summer.

Sue Gray, Sir Keir Starmer's chief of staff, is also drawing up proposals to overhaul Whitehall, with both parties eyeing significant reform after the election.

Maude argues that the structure of Whitehall needs reform to implement solutions to problems that have been persistently identified for more than 50 years. These include over-reliance on generalists, prioritisation of policy development over operational skills and the rapid turnover of senior officials.

Arguing that little has changed because there is "no one in charge of the civil service", Maude told an event at the Conservative Party conference that the job of cabinet secretary should be split into two separate roles.

A No 10 permanent secretary would advise the prime minister as part of a "strategic centre of government" in which Downing Street absorbs most of the Cabinet Office. A separate head of the civil service, ideally recruited from the private sector, should then effectively become Whitehall's "chief operating officer", Maude believes.

Maude wants the new head of the civil service to run a separate "budget ministry" in charge of allocating money to departments and overseeing their performance. The Treasury would lose oversight of individual public spending choices but retain control of tax and the overall size of the state, as well as macroeconomic policy and economic growth.

Maude has complained that the centre of government is "archaic" and wants a system more closely aligned with countries such as Australia, New Zealand and Canada. "None of them have a single ministry of finance where control of public expenditure is housed in the same place as macrofiscal policy and economic policy, taxation," Maude told the conference.

The new head of the civil service would also be given direct management powers over the civil service to end a situation where the cabinet secretary must get his way through "drollery, charm and persuasion," Maude suggested. "You need power, you need authority, you need a map and that simply doesn't exist," he said.

In a recommendation that will be controversial in Whitehall, Maude wants ministers to have more say in appointing civil servants. He said it would reduce friction between politicians and officials, over whom they currently have little control.

He will argue that impartiality can be maintained if appointments are done in conjunction with the civil service commission. The commission would also have more powers to hold senior leaders to account for addressing problems, in order to provide clear incentives for officials under pressure to deliver ministers' day-to-day priorities.

Far-reaching reform proposals are unlikely to be implemented before an election, but other measures would be quicker to implement, including the suggestion that ministers be given training and also submit themselves to "360 reviews".

Common in the corporate world, such reviews involve feedback from subordinates and colleagues on the same level, as well as traditional assessment by the boss. Maude argues this will help ministers understand their effect on colleagues and how they might change their behaviour to enable work to be done more effectively.

In Whitehall, senior officials could assess ministers to improve working relationships following a number of tensions — including the resignation of Dominic Raab, the former deputy prime minister, after he was found to have bullied officials.

[Jacob]

Its a pity, Sheilbh, but it is not going to happen on Humphrey Appleby's watch.

[Gups]

These include over-reliance on generalists, prioritisation of policy development over operational skills and the rapid turnover of senior officials.

This is absolutely the worst thing. What this article doesn't mention (but I'm sure the actual report does) is that civil servants are more or less obliged to move departments every 3-4 years if they want promotion. They lose any expertise that they have started to built up, all their contacts in the area, any continuity and any accountability. A lot move into the private sector at this point.

It's absolutely crazy.

[Sheilbh]

This is absolutely the worst thing. What this article doesn't mention (but I'm sure the actual report does) is that civil servants are more or less obliged to move departments every 3-4 years if they want promotion. They lose any expertise that they have started to built up, all their contacts in the area, any continuity and any accountability. A lot move into the private sector at this point.

It's absolutely crazy.

Yep - I know a fast-streamer who I think has been in Health, Treasury and Home so far in a 10-12 year career. But she knows it is career-harming to stay for more than 3-4 years in terms of promotion.

I remember reading a former senior civil servant (who also had private sector experience) who was asked to do a report by the Civil Service to have a look at why procurement was so often fucked up by government - and I think it applies to an awful lot of the operational bits of government.

Basically he said the procurement teams were well-resourced and well-staffed compared to benchmarks, but it had the wrong people. It was full of too many "junior process administrators" from a generalist civil service background and not enough senior, experience commercial people to negotiate with vendors. But he said it's because of the one-dimensional traditional pyramid of the civil service. Well paid jobs must, in their view, be senior in the pyramid, senior people must, in their view, manage lots of people and spend their time with ministers on big policy issues. That produces a certain sort of person but it isn't necessarily the same skills a really good operational team needs - and in that example why would a commercial, procurement negotiator spend any time with ministers or be managing a large team?

But he said it reflected a bigger issue which was that procurement, IT, HR, operational roles were all basically seen by lots of the senior civil servants as "a bit like plumbing - necessary, but not intrinsically very challenging or important".

He did flag that there was a report on this in the 90s which wasn't really acted on. And a report in the 2000s which wasn't really acted on. And he wrote the report in the 2010s which wasn't really acted on. But he talked his time at the Treasury when he said there's really technically incredibly complex areas like, say, pensions or the energy market or corporate tax which were "perhaps not ideally suited to being left entirely to even brilliant 24-year old generalists". So he suggested creating new roles outside the pyramid who weren't managing people, should be well paid and wouldn't necessarily be spending much time with ministers - and those roles "died a quiet death". It was just too weird and alien, it was an entirely new career path.

I'm not sure if its changed but on the generalist point he noted that there were one or two exceptions (the Treasury and FCDO), but otherwise every other Permanent Secretary at the time had no more than one or two year's previous experience in the department they were running. And obviously don't receive much training.

Maybe Sue Gray will be able to change things because she has civil service experience from the inside. But I'm not confident

Total aside but I always think about this when I hear Tories especially talk about the private sector. Because they talk about it is like nothing I've ever experienced - and in fairness I've worked in well-paid professional settings. But it always strikes me as very old fashioned and like management or how business worked in the 80s (or possibly 1880s) - it does always sound a bit like what I hear about the civil service though, especially the very rigid pyramid etc. And many of those MPs have basically only been in politics so their experience is often largely running a small team as an MP and then a department as a minister - but I wonder if the public sector is actually the last hold out of that very old fashioned model, which Tories think epitomises private sector efficiency

Its a pity, Sheilbh, but it is not going to happen on Humphrey Appleby's watch.

Giving ministers training on their department and management does sound like a dangerous first step to them trying to do something.

[Josquius]

I wonder whether this is a British problem?
It does seem logical to just let people become super experts in health procurement and other countries would operate their civil service that way...
But then maybe that's just being especially negative on Britain's world famous ability to screw itself.

I've interviewed for public sector jobs before and I found it quite nightmarish. They seem to just use the same process they use for regular civil service jobs even for those in completely different fields. It doesn't fit.
I haven't done this in a while though- their pay at junior/lower mid is decent but at upper mid/ senior quite shit. The killing of GDS and switch over to a short term contractor model (at several times the cost and so many times less the effectiveness) probably helped too.

[Sheilbh]

I wonder whether this is a British problem?
It does seem logical to just let people become super experts in health procurement and other countries would operate their civil service that way...
But then maybe that's just being especially negative on Britain's world famous ability to screw itself.

I think it is, but I'm not sure. And you can see why the civil service - especially senior members would resist reform beyond normal organisation's dislike of change.

I think relatedly two areas where Britain is distinctive is in the very, very low proportion of political appointees to civil servants. I think across all of government (at the UK level) there are around 150-200 appointees which is low compared to most parliamentary democracies. Similarly the lack of a formal Prime Minister's Office or Department is, I believe, unusual.

I've interviewed for public sector jobs before and I found it quite nightmarish. They seem to just use the same process they use for regular civil service jobs even for those in completely different fields. It doesn't fit.
I haven't done this in a while though- their pay at junior/lower mid is decent but at upper mid/ senior quite shit. The killing of GDS and switch over to a short term contractor model (at several times the cost and so many times less the effectiveness) probably helped too.

Sort of relatedly Cummings proposed and set up a "Crown Consultancy" which I think was a really good idea - the thought was set up a consultancy within government of experienced people and bright young things. They'll have specific public sector experience but also it would reduce the civil service's (massive) use of (expensive) outsourced consultants like Deloitte, KPMG etc. Again I think it died a death because it would have been an alternative career path which the civil service isn't great at doing.

I think pay is probably the big issue. I remember posting the job listing for head of cybersecurity at the Treasury and the salary was about £60k, for a London based senior, responsible role. I think there is a trade off for pay if you are on the traditional civil service route - the pay isn't great (although the pension is) but you'll do interesting exciting work that affects the entire country and with the respect that comes with climbing the ladder internally. I don't think it's the same if you're in the service side (so HR, IT, procurement etc) where the pay is bad compared to equivalent jobs in the private sector but I also suspect it's not particularly respected internally in the same way or seen as a career path - and if you're going for head of cybersecurity jobs I'm not sure the Treasury is a destination employer.

[garbon]

There is also potentially a piece that people don't always want to be super specialized. Can make work become stale all the quicker as well as create a feeling of being trapped in that specialty if/when looking to move elsewhere.