Do we exist only to serve government, or does government exist to serve us?

We grow up believing government exists to make life possible. To build, to protect, to maintain, to enable. To stand between us and the things that would otherwise overwhelm us.

But somewhere along the way, that relationship inverted.

Government stopped facilitating life. Life began facilitating government.

Not because government suddenly changed its intentions, but because the tools it once used to shape the country were quietly dismantled by a financial and monetary system that came to control everything.

For decades, that system rewarded extraction over production, leverage over labour, and financial performance over real capability. It told us stories about modernity – stories about efficiency, globalisation, competitiveness – and it sold myths that made decline feel like progress.

The service economy was one of those myths. A story that said Britain didn’t need to make things anymore, that production was old‑fashioned, that skills were optional, that capability could be imported, that resilience was unnecessary.

And while the country embraced that story, the wheels of productivity were quietly removed.

Factories closed. Skills faded. Infrastructure aged. Supply chains stretched across oceans. Local capability thinned to the point of transparency.

None of this felt dramatic. It felt like modern life. It felt like the world moving forward.

But the financial system wasn’t building the future. It was hollowing out the present.

And when government finally looked up, it realised the tools it once relied on – the tools that made governing possible – were gone.

By then, the productive foundations that once made governing possible had eroded. Government could no longer easily rebuild what had been dismantled, repair what had been neglected, produce what had been offshored, or control many of the systems on which it depended.

But government could not easily admit this. It could not stand before the public and say: “We no longer have enough of the tools required to shape the country.”

So it clung to the only lever it had left.

Taxation.

Taxation is not a sign of strength. It is a sign of limitation.

When a government still has capability, taxation is one tool among many. When a government has lost capability, taxation becomes the only tool left.

And that is where Britain now finds itself.

Increasingly, government appears to rely on taxation to compensate for a diminishing ability to build, repair, produce, grow, and prepare for what is coming.

Taxation becomes the way government sustains itself when it can no longer sustain the country.

If economic growth remains weak while obligations continue to rise, governments eventually face a narrowing set of options: higher taxation, deeper borrowing, monetary intervention, or external assistance.

At the far end of that path lies the possibility of IMF involvement.

IMF involvement would not rebuild capability. It would not restore resilience. It would not protect the public.

It would impose austerity of a kind that might keep politicians in their posts and government departments running, but for real people already struggling, the worst would still be to come.

Because IMF austerity protects the institution, not the population.

And all of this – the hollowing out, the loss of capability, the reliance on taxation, the looming austerity – is happening before external shocks hit.

Before supply chains fracture further. Before infrastructure failures accelerate. Before geopolitical instability intensifies. Before the next global downturn. Before the next energy crisis. Before the next financial contraction. Before the next systemic break. Before something as simple – and as devastating – as the real consequences of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

Many within government can see the pressures gathering ahead. Yet the institutions themselves may lack the capacity, political consensus, or time required to respond effectively. They know they cannot rebuild fast enough. They know they cannot deliver everything that has been promised. They know they cannot easily escape the system they inherited.

So it turns to the public – not to protect them, but to sustain itself.

And this is where the moral reckoning begins.

A government that can no longer facilitate life has no moral right to ask the population to bear ever-greater burdens simply so that the institution itself can endure.

The legitimacy of government has never rested on its ability to survive. It has rested on its ability to serve.

Once that distinction is lost, citizens inevitably begin asking a simple question:

Who exists to serve whom?

Which brings us back – inevitably, unavoidably – to the question we began with:

Do we exist only to serve government, or does government exist only to serve us?

Because if government is no longer here to serve us, then what is this all now for?

Do we exist only to serve government PDF_Vers1_17Jul26 Download

When Legality Replaced Morality

We’ve reached a point where the law is treated like a moral compass, even though it no longer points anywhere near true north. People talk as if legality and morality are the same thing, as if the moment something is written into legislation it becomes right by default. But anyone paying attention can see that the law no longer serves the best interests of the public in any meaningful way. It has become a tool – a flexible, shape‑shifting instrument that bends to the will of those who write it, not those who live under it.

And this is happening at the very moment when we should be thinking more independently than ever. We have endless information, endless access, endless opportunity to question what we’re told. Yet somehow, we’ve drifted further away from genuine independent thought.

People feel that something is wrong – you can hear it in conversations everywhere – but they haven’t yet reached the point of understanding why.

That’s why the times feel so strange. It’s not that people can’t see the cracks. It’s that they’ve been conditioned to doubt their own instincts, to assume that if something is legal, it must be normal, and if it’s normal, it must be acceptable.

Meanwhile, the lid on the septic tank – the one that hides the real workings of the system – is rattling harder than ever. And every time it shakes, more people catch a glimpse of what’s really going on underneath.

Because when you look around, so much simply doesn’t add up. We’re told the system is fair, yet money is consistently prioritised over people, even when the human cost is obvious.

We’re told decisions are made for the “greater good,” yet the outcomes rarely reflect anything other than the interests of those who benefit.

We’re told to trust the process, even when the process produces results that defy common sense. And the more people try to reconcile what they’re told with what they see, the more they feel that something fundamental is off.

Over the past few days, this disconnect has been thrown into even sharper relief. The latest events in the Eastern Mediterranean, the Persian Gulf, and Iran have pushed the lid on that septic tank to the point of shaking loose. And the most revealing part hasn’t been the prospect of a US‑led war. It’s been the behaviour of our own government.

The Prime Minister has looked out of step, slow to approve US use of bases in Diego Garcia and the UK, and hesitant even about basic security commitments in Cyprus. The obsession in Number 10 seems to be whether the war is legal – as if legality is the highest moral test – rather than what leadership requires or what is right.

This should tell us everything. Yet many people still trip over the question of legality, when the deeper question – the one that should always come first – is morality itself.

The PM’s behaviour suggests a belief that if something is legal, it is automatically right. But that mindset is dangerous. It allows those in power to hide behind the law, using it as a shield for decisions that may be questionable, harmful, or outright wrong. Once something is made legal, it becomes almost impossible to challenge – even when it hurts the very people the law is supposed to protect.

And this isn’t new. Governments and the establishment behind them have been doing this for decades, if not centuries.

The idea that legality equals morality has become so ingrained that all a government needs to do is pass a rule, and suddenly the policy it supports is treated as ethically sound.

But law and morality are not the same. They cannot be the same. Laws are rail tracks laid by those in power, pointing society in the direction they choose. They are not – and must never be confused with – personal agency, independence, sovereignty, or genuine freedom of choice.

Real freedom of choice means decisions made without pressure, manipulation, or engineered constraints. Only in that space can morality exist. Only there can individuals decide what is genuinely right or wrong – and only from that foundation can society do the same.

Yet today, fixed direction is imposed everywhere. People believe they have freedom, but most of their choices have already been made for them. They’re offered false options that maintain the illusion of autonomy while keeping them on rails laid by someone else.

And here’s the heart of it: people have been conditioned to accept things that are wrong – even things that harm them – simply because a law exists that allows those things to happen. If it’s legal, it must be normal. If it’s normal, it must be acceptable. And if it’s acceptable, why should anyone question it?

This is how we end up with everyday absurdities that everyone recognises but few challenge. Healthy food becomes too expensive for the poorest to eat, yet nobody in authority calls that immoral – because the pricing is legal. Councils charge residents to park on their own streets and fine them when they don’t comply, and we’re told this is “policy,” as if that makes it right. Entire communities are reshaped to suit the aims of people who have no connection to them, and somehow their objectives are treated as the standard the rest of us should follow.

None of this happens by accident. It’s what you get when every new layer of legal complexity is built to serve an agenda rather than the public. And every time another pillar is added, the consequences are ignored – because selfish actions never look downstream. They don’t consider who gets hurt, who gets priced out, who gets silenced, who gets left behind, or the gaps that are created for more unscrupulous operators to hide behind. They only consider the goal.

Worse still, the legal system and our legislative processes have become a tool for gaslighting the public. They make ordinary people doubt their own moral instincts. It teaches them to override what their natural conditioning tells them is fundamentally right. If the law says it’s fine, then who are you to question it? If the law says it’s normal, then your discomfort must be the problem.

But nobody can learn what is right if all guidance comes from authority. And while those in authority may have the power to create laws, those laws cannot be considered legitimate unless they clearly and undeniably serve the best interests of everyone.

Within this context, it’s absurd to argue that any war can be morally justified simply because it is legal. At the same time, the right to defend ourselves or others should never be questioned – even if that defence requires full engagement in conflict. The difference lies in motive, not legality.

This is why the world feels upside‑down. It’s why so many things that are obviously wrong are treated as if they’re perfectly fine. Laws have been shaped and reshaped to make questionable policies appear right, and people have been taught to override their own moral instincts in favour of whatever the rulebook says today.

But that spell is breaking. People are waking up to the fact that a system built on extraction, complexity, and self‑interest cannot possibly have their wellbeing at heart.

They’re beginning to see how the law – the very thing they trusted to protect them – has been used to confuse them, restrain them, and in many cases exploit them.

They’re realising that the discomfort they’ve been made to feel isn’t a flaw in their thinking; it’s a sign that their natural sense of right and wrong is still intact.

And once people understand that, they start asking the questions they were never meant to ask. They start looking for the people who hid behind legal language to justify selfish decisions. They start recognising that morality doesn’t come from legislation – it comes from freedom of choice, from agency, from the ability to think without being pushed down a predetermined track.

When enough people reach that point, the system that relied on their compliance begins to lose its power. And that is exactly what we’re watching happen now.

When Legality Replaced Morality PDF_Vers1_5Mar26 Download

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No, MPs should NOT have second jobs. After all, being an MP is NOT a job anyway

The ongoing row over second jobs for MPs has certainly proven to be an interesting one. Yet it has also become increasingly concerning, as it has become ever more obvious that so very few journalists, commentators and people working around the political sphere have any real consideration or respect for what the role of an MP and public representative should actually be about.

Arguments in favour of second jobs range from the suggestion that MPs with outside work enrich their links with, and understanding of, the real world, to claims that additional money is the only way to make the role worthwhile. Those against argue that banning second jobs would be acceptable, but only if MPs were given a ‘realistic’ salary.

Nobody seems to have mentioned that being an MP or public representative is not a job.

Being an MP is a responsibility to others. It is not a role that should be taken if the individual concerned cannot guarantee that their responsibility to others will not be compromised by prioritising income, career opportunities, fears, influences of any kind, or any other motivations that put their own needs before anyone else’s at any time, at any level or in any way.

It is part of the human condition that we can only be loyal to one master. MPs are no different to anyone else. If an MP’s priority is income or career at any level, their focus will not be on anyone else.

There are simply no grey areas with this. It really is very black and white.

If an MP can be swayed in their decision-making by any factor that reflects on them personally at any level and in absolutely any way before anything or anyone else, they can be bought. As such, they cannot be relied upon to represent the general public and the voters within the constituency who elected them.

Being an MP or elected politician of any kind requires people who have the life experience, understanding of others and are at a stage in their lives where they can willingly and unswervingly put the needs of others before themselves in every meaningful way.

It is because we have for so long had a Parliament full of MPs on all sides of the political divides who are ruled by self‑interest at some level and in some way that the British political system – and, as a result, the whole of the UK – is in the mess it is in today.

Public service can be the only master of any politician who wants to fulfil the obligations of the role with which they have publicly been entrusted. There simply is no other way.

For as long as we keep electing politicians in this country and allow them to frame their own roles as careers and jobs, their attitude will continue to focus on nothing other than the impact and consequences of their actions for their future and for themselves before anything else.

There will be many who suggest that this is the way the system works and that you can only change the system from within. The regrettable truth is that this is a myth perpetrated solely for the benefit and furtherance of the interests of those already within that system – people who have a massive investment in ensuring that nothing happens that could bring about the comprehensive systemic change that would help and benefit us all.

Sadly, until we all come together and accept that the people leading this country in government, the establishment and the wider public sector are not working to put our collective best interests first, we are doomed to live the same experience. Public policy today is created in all areas of life where decisions have been made not with us as the priority, but with what is important to the people we elected always put first.

We only have ourselves to blame for each and every day that this sordid and perverse idea of democracy continues to rule, impinge upon and inflict avoidable pain and chaos in our lives.

None of the political parties we have on offer today are focused on all of us in the way they should be.

It is we who must make the decision to elect MPs and politicians of all kinds who will make promises and then keep them – because they are in Parliament as politics is a calling or a vocation for them, rather than just an interpretation of a career or a job. One that, to them, is nothing more than getting the maximum return for themselves for the least amount of work.

We need a real choice in politics. We need MPs who understand and genuinely care. We need #ANewPartyForAll for the next General Election.

To achieve this, we need to start thinking differently and begin to build the alternative to the madness we have right now.

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Jail terms for public servants who overlook their safeguarding responsibilities sounds tough. But if the cause of the problem is actually government wide, should David Cameron be volunteering himself for 5 years in prison rather than another jolly in No. 10?

Rotherham has already reached such levels of notoriety in local government that the place name has itself become synonymous with the darkest aspects of our society and the lack of responsibility taken by those who we all somehow know simply should have done much better.

At first account, David Cameron’s announcement that any public official – whether an officer or politician – who is shown to have overlooked child safety issues may soon face a jail term, sounds exactly like the kind of tough-minded policy making that we all really want to have coming out of Westminster.

Many of us will agree with the sentiment.

But then, what if those responsible didn’t actually see a problem? What if they didn’t ask questions, because they didn’t see it as their job to do so? What if those individuals were more sure of difficult consequences as a result of speaking out than they were of being any help to others by doing so?

We do not know the specific circumstances and chronology of all the events and actions that contributed to Rotherham. But neither are we likely to do so, given that inquiries will reflect the often-accepted perception that all decisions are black and white in nature, and that the evidence will speak for itself.

On one level it will, and particularly so when there is a kneejerk response from Central Government to the idea that an individual can always be blamed.

However, the thought processes we all have are still thankfully just our own. Very few of us would willingly provide a word-by-word account of what we have ever at any one time thought – even if we could remember the exact detail for long enough to do so.

Regrettably, in terms of getting tough on those who neglect their responsibilities to the public is concerned, the PM’s plan is a measure which neither accounts for the inadequacies of the government system as it exists today, nor the people who are and who have been in the position to actually do something about it – even now.

Let us be in no doubt, child abuse is horrific however you consider it. Public officials failing to protect, safeguard and prevent the abuse of vulnerable people of any age within our communities is an inexcusable act in every sense.

But it has happened, and it is probably happening in places where we wouldn’t dream it to be even remotely possible, right now. And it may well have been missed because public servants were doing exactly what they understand their job requires them to do.

Whilst this one emotive subject has captured the public imagination and the vote-seeking cynicism of one political party as it thinks of the General Election in May, lack of responsibility on the part of public servants extends way beyond the realms of what government currently calls ‘safeguarding’.

There is an institutional failure at work, which permeates every part of the political, executive and administrative tiers of government, NGO’s and public services.

Decisions effecting the lives of you and I are in no way guaranteed to be made in our best interests by the very people we have elected and who have been employed to serve us.

Just as children have and may still be being abused when someone might have been able to stop it from happening, other people may actually be dying because people with responsibility for others at many different levels are not considering the real impacts of their decisions on the people in their care, when we all objectively know that they should.

Outrageous as this all may sound, tackling this problem, whether it is the way that a medical product is purchased within the NHS, a planning decision is made within a district council, or the action taken within social services means that a child is left exposed to the influence of someone who is considered as the member of an ethnic minority first and a peadophile second, may in no way be as simple as it may look.

Solving these many problems facing our public services is not as straightforward as punishing individuals for overlooking, or deliberately ignoring information or experiences that that public servants have had in their roles.

Before anything else, we have to understand at least some of the basic rules of the protectionist and ineffectual culture, which exists throughout our Public Services.

Only then might we begin to find solutions without automatically attacking those, whose actions would perhaps look very like many of our own, were we to find ourselves working and considering where our own responsibilities would stop in the very same circumstances.

Government is not a happy place. It stands to reason that if the people who are sat at the top of the tree behave in a certain way, the same kind of behaviour will soon begin to manifest itself throughout the branches and departments of the organisation below, often with consequences that could never have been foreseen.

My own experience comes directly from working within a local authority, with a national charity, as a politician, and anecdotally through third hand contact throughout. Its real, its tested and I have experienced first hand how the whole system is failing us all, because it is fundamentally, institutionally and culturally sick.

What follows is an overview or perspective of Local Government alone. However, many of the points raised will be applicable to any government body or what we would call a public service.

Whilst I have attempted to focus my thoughts on specific areas, the reality is that there is significant overlap, and the behaviors, processes and methods discussed are very much interdependent, effecting and effected by many different factors and the input of Officers, Politicians and Central – or Westminster-based Government alike.

Managers are increasingly becoming qualification rich and experience poor, as part of a ‘textbook technocracy’. The system rewards those who dedicate themselves to playing the progression game, much as it does the politicians. Those climbing the career ladder are usually specialists in one area, rather than having had a grounding in a variety of operational areas where they will have gained a broader understanding not only of the technical aspects of other service areas, but of the life issues and behavior of the wide variety of people from different backgrounds that the staff they will soon manage are interacting with daily. This is not a problem that is exclusively attributable to the most senior levels of management. With an increasing push to share services and responsibilities both within and with other authorities, lower tier managers are now finding themselves with roles where frontline experience of service provision can be critical across many disciplines. The results are plain to see, and as experience is lost through natural wastage, redundancies and attractive jobs with private business, good management is increasingly becoming reliant upon luck, rather than good judgment. When you have deficient management, you then become reliant upon political leadership and that is often as inadequate, if not more so than the relevant officers within the executive itself.
Many people are unaware of how desperate the financial circumstances facing the Public Sector actually are. In local government, funding for services is not solely raised by Council Tax alone, and what we pay each month is itself shared out between our local parish, district, county and police authorities. Central government provides an annual settlement or grant to our councils which is being continually lowered and this process has been speeded up throughout the period of Austerity. Some of this is being given back in the form of incentives, such as the New Homes Bonus, which relates to the number of new homes built in the area of the Authority during the year. Unfortunately, payments like this are a two-edged sword and are effectively a way of coercing local authorities to implement government policy and keep doing so, simply to maintain income which is otherwise irreplaceable without cuts.
Current Government Policy is not normally to allow rises in Council Tax above 5% annually. But even with this, there is a tendency for many ruling Political Groups to keep this figure as near to zero% as possible, simply as voters are likely to respond to this form of taxation and the way it has been decided than any other. The downward side to this ‘crowd pleasing’ approach is that Council Tax income is often not increasing in line with normal price rises (inflation), whilst other forms of funding are also being cut. This means that authorities aren’t even financially ‘standing still’, and have no option but to cut services, reduce staff or share services with other authorities, which is a process which ultimately takes power further away from the people. Money is tight and decisions are being made that are effecting lives, based upon funding alone. It’s not necessarily because the person on the other end of the phone doesn’t care, but because they have to decide who gets the fixed amount of money (the budget) that they have available.
Politically speaking, ‘can do’ is actually ‘can’t, don’t’. As is the case nationally, local government is experiencing a critical shortage of politicians who are ‘in it for the right reasons’. Of those who are – or get first elected on the basis that they are, many are simply not equipped with the experience or leadership-related–confidence that ALL politicians, at every level of government need to effectively represent the people who elected them – within what is actually a leadership role. This functional naivety leaves party dinosaurs unchallenged from within their own ranks, and officers increasingly able to guide policy on the basis of what works most safely for them, or for the furtherance of their CV’s. The situation is growing progressively worse and is only becoming enhanced further by the policy coercion which comes either from Government, or from the National Party HQ’s.
Despite the perception that local government makes decisions, much of its responsibility lies in the form of interpreting law and legislation which has been created by MP’s and civil servants in Westminster. Central Government retains the right to overturn local decision making that doesn’t meet the rules that it has set. The reality of this is that decisions are increasingly made on the basis of strictly adhering to central legislation, rather than what local need may actually require. The most obvious manifestation of this can be seen within the Planning and Licensing functions, where decisions are made that are openly transparent within a process with which members of the public or business community interact. When even our local policies are made very much on the basis of frameworks which have been set in London, politicians and officers alike are becoming more and more inclined to defer reasoned judgment on real life decisions they are facing on behalf of the public, to a subservience to a ‘greater power’. The financial, cultural and institutional aspects of the problem play heavily into this process also, but the greatest irony of the controlling way in which Central Government runs every part of the government, is that the structure already exists which would allow power to be well and truly devolved to local people – were it able to work as it could. The legislative problem is reflected in the attitudes of politicians and officers alike and is becoming ever more obvious to observers. Policy making has become a truly questionable process, the machinations of which were once only thought of, or perhaps spoken about behind closed doors. It is now openly discussed in public in a way that simply beggars belief.
The bureaucratic structure within Government is continually tightening, despite the messages we hear in the media to the contrary. Common sense; being allowed to think on your feet; taking into consideration all that factors which are specific to each and every case. These are all no more than ideas in a heavily proscribed environment, which leaves officers and increasingly elected members also having to adopt a highly arbitrary approach to decision making. The Influence of the rights culture has come significantly in to play and the creation of increasingly detailed and instructive processes are removing the human touch from interaction between councils and their customers, all to ensure that risk is limited to the remotest degree. Put simply, decision-making has become increasingly black and white when real life is a very grey area. Managers report upwards through respective line management to their CEO, who in turn reports to the political leadership of the council. Less senior politicians have very limited means to address performance issues relating to officers, which have to be passed to department heads, or to a council’s delegated committee which deals with employee issues – one which is often assembled politically. When both the political and executive leadership are incompetent, there is no robust system in place which will enable anyone to do anything about it. For a complainant, speaking out to the media is a highly risky approach to take, and one which is seriously frowned upon, when you are effectively bringing in to question the actions of the Authority of which you are yourself a part.
Officers operate within a protectionist system where responsibility is the equivalent of risk and where risk is to be avoided at all costs. Staff are closed down to wider issues affecting the organisations they work for and operate often with a kind of tunnel vision which effectively thrives on passing the buck, or more often than not, simply assuming that someone else will pick the issue up departmentally or organisationally – either because the person who raised it will just assume they need to go elsewhere, or because they just don’t have to deal with anything that sits outside of their job description. The way that we see this manifested most clearly is by the way that consultants are often employed – at great cost – to write reports, giving conclusions or recommendations which departments and whole organisations already understand and will normally have had skilled staff employed to know very well before. The views of a third party are somehow and mistakenly perceived to give a level of legitimacy that nobody employed to actually do the job could provide. Decisions often become assignments for ‘contractors’ by being passed from one level of management to the next. Nobody wants to rock the boat and put at risk what has historically been one of the safest occupations to have, with gold-plated consequences at the end of a highly uneventful career, doing all that it takes to keep your nose clean.
Managers have a clear distrust, and in many cases open contempt for the members of the authorities that they work for. This is a situation which has been exacerbated by the lack of interest that many politicians actually show in the areas of responsibility that they have – if they understand them in the first place. Managers often forget that they are employed by the council itself – which is the body made up of the elected members. Indeed, even a CEO is technically the clerk to the council, a point which is well illustrated by the role and position they often take up in council meetings.
The business of government today is more autocratic in nature than it is democratic and could easily be compared with the feudal system. Democracy leaves the building almost as soon as the votes have been counted in elections and then decisions are nearly always made under the guidance of those politicians upon whom power has been centralised. Genuine debate is stifled by restrictive procedures and processes which effectively enable officers and politicians to duck drawn out examination processes which would allow real answers to be produced within public forums.
Scrutiny processes are generally very weak, ineffective and are failing to serve the public interest in any way. Scrutiny is often treated with distain by controlling political groups who believe that their elected majority gives them and specifically their leadership a level of legitimacy that should not be questioned. Scrutiny cannot be relied upon by opposition groups who are unlikely to successfully influence the decision of a majority using what is currently an arguably worthless ‘checks and balance’ process, unless there is a problem so clearly obvious with a policy, that it almost certainly wouldn’t have been adopted anyway.
The political system does not currently encourage strong leadership – usually based upon experience, which is often perceived as divisive in a system where it is normal for politicians to be working to an agenda of some kind. Ineffectual or ‘all things to all people’ styles of leadership are however in practice very weak, opening the door to poor guidance from officers which in such circumstances could be viewed as almost being coercive. When that executive leadership is itself weak, inadequately experienced or just as self-serving as many of the politicians, the results will speak for themselves.

The issues are different for each and every public service organisation, and will almost certainly cover areas that go way beyond what has been described here.

There are also many exceptions. There are some truly exceptional officers and politicians in local government who are doing what they can to ‘get it right’.

There are many more officers and politicians who could be just as exceptional. But the system simply doesn’t encourage them to give the public service that they are capable of giving, and that we, as taxpayers should reasonably be able to expect.

If you consider all of the points that have been made; allow for them to be adjusted, moved or even considered in a different place, you might begin to be able to visualise just how complex the institutional crisis facing all government or public sector organisations actually is, and how critical it has now become that meaningful reform be enacted throughout, for the best interests of all.

The required process of change can only begin from the top. The legislative levers that must be moved to instigate change, are more than ready to be pulled.

The change needed has to be undertaken with the level of understanding, impartiality and diligence that will be essential in ensuring that all forms of self-interest are not only removed, but no longer tolerated within an extremely complex system that exists and should only ever exist to serve the public.

Decisions are being made right now on the basis of ‘what if’ and ‘what will be the consequences for me’ throughout the system.

Officers and politicians are not working within a culture which equips, enables or encourages them to empathise with the people they are supposed to help, or to look beyond and consider the consequences of their decisions and actions for others in any sense.

This is itself highly reflective of the processes which successive Governments have inadvertently nurtured, maintained and developed, and there would be great difficulty in criticising officers within any authority operating at any level for taking this approach, when the example that they continue to be set by Westminster is simply telling them that this is an acceptable way to carry on.

Public servants who fail the people they are employed or elected to protect should be expected to take full responsibility for their actions.

But when the institutional culture of government and public services tells them to do everything but make reasoned decisions alone, it must logically follow that those responsible for the system itself must take responsibility for the faults that lie within it.

So before doling out 5-year jail terms for the people who may just be scapegoats and the easiest to blame, should David Cameron perhaps be volunteering for 5 years in Prison rather than another jolly in No. 10?

This article was converted to PDF and its accompanying image was updated on 10 October 2026. The original text remains unchanged.

Jail Terms for Public Servants 9Mar13 PDF_Vers2_10Oct26 Download

Government is not the same thing as a business, and should never be run like it is one

The word ‘business’ conjures up different meanings for different people, depending on their background and of course what exposure they may have had to its use or application.

Most will agree that its use as a term suggests enterprise and methods of working which would sit snugly within a commercial environment. But should this word actually be applied to the modus operandi of any form of Government when the two terms are completely incongruous?

Much is made of the idea that the best people to run Government at any level are those who have a business background. One of the current arguments against the demographic makeup of our MP’s today is the substantial lack of solid business experience possessed by those who lead the Country from Westminster, with the accompanying notion that MP’s who have run or owned businesses of their own would somehow automatically have an almost esoteric level of understanding and midas touch which would solve just about any problem. They wouldn’t; they don’t and they never have.

With years of Local Government experience as both an Elected Member, an Officer and from working within 3^rd Sector Organisations alongside, I have also often heard the term ‘business case’, ‘business plan’ and the idea often suggested that Councils are now run ‘like a business’ in meetings.

The problem with this is of course that the political leadership and members of Councils rarely have ‘hands on’ experience of running any kind of business you could draw reasonable parallels with themselves, and when they do, it is often the case that it has been so long since they did so, that any lack of an appreciation that time moves on or that things continually change will soon erode any tangible benefit.

Perhaps worse is the ability that Officers and Civil Servants have been gifted by political demographics and the opportunity to use such terms in plans, which are then taken as read by those who simply don’t know any better as being a true ‘business case’, when such ‘business’ cases could never be any such thing.

Recognising the differences between running a business in its purest sense, and running Government under the delusion that it can be run as business has never been more essential for today’s politicians, because neither Central or Local Government are businesses, and the people running them have to stop believing and behaving like they are.

A business is of course run for the profit of an individual or shareholders. All decisions will normally be made with the form of pay-off that they will receive firmly in mind. It can be expanded or changed to meet the demands of customers as it sees fit, and a business can choose which customers it may wish to target and how much profit it will seek from delivering any particular product or service. Its revenues are never guaranteed.

On the other hand, Government does not run to make profit, but to provide services and support for all those which it has been elected to serve.

Run properly, Government would not actively target any particular group of customers to provide a different quality of service depending on the feedback or profit that it gets from that group, and would work to meet demand for services as best and prudently as it can, well knowing that it has a duty to do so without seeking payment from one customer to pay for the benefits of another, or to irresponsibly borrow money from lenders that it knows it doesn’t have the appropriate levels of revenue to comfortably repay.

However, Government revenues – as long as they remain sensible – will always be guaranteed, and it is with this significant difference that come the even greater levels of responsibility than no one business should ever realistically be able to have.

One of the greatest dangers facing us as a society comes from the fact that politicians at all levels of Government have either failed to recognise these basic differences and therefore maintain them, or have willingly abused their ability to raise revenues to cover badly managed services or implement policies without any due regard to striking the balance for every member of this society or in applying fairness to all, while they have given every thought to political expedience and electability.

The British political system is broken, because it has adopted those very same values of a profit-making business, which are to further the interests of that business. For politicians, this comes in the form of power, whilst they have ignored the basic rule of business as they have done so; the rule which states they must deliver profit to every single one of the shareholders rather than to themselves. Profit in this sense should always be seen as the delivery of the same results for all.

So if our politicians really feel that they have to treat Government like a business, they then must also realise that if they continue to keep raising the fees on the same old products time and again without offering new products and value for money, they will soon price their offerings way beyond the purse of the people who normally pay, and the cash will soon start ceasing to flow.

Government is not run for a financial profit, any more than it should ever be so for the bottom-line benefit of just the ‘staff’.

Whatever their backgrounds, experience and level, politicians must remember that they are the managers; the facilitators; the decision makers; not the beneficiaries themselves – and especially so where the end profit is not even perceptively the same as what it would be for a business.

The time has long since passed when the electorate could continue to live decent lives, whilst those within Government continue to focus on the end result for themselves. Government is not the same thing as a business, and should never be run like it is one.

Government is not the same thing as a business 3Mar13 PDF_Vers2_27Sep26 Download