Brit-PolFollow

Just a ramble on the appointment of our new Prime Minister.

Before 1997 we had something known as 'The Cabinet' comprising the PM and the Secretaries of State for Health, Defence, Edjamacation etc. Each SofS would build a team of specialists from within their respective department and propose policy to the cabinet. There would then be a debate to check consistency across departments, and, of course, compliance with the relevant party's political commitments.

Since '97, the debate has been non-existent. Bliar surrounded himself with independent advisers - usually from big business. That in itself isn't a biggy, but all-too-often these 'advisers' would suggest the privatisation of public agencies, put them to tender at ridiculous prices, then buy them. More to the point, the only opinions allowed in cabinet were those of Bliar himself.

As well as resulting in some whacky 'looked good on paper' plans, the plans changed every few years. 60% of people's time was spent unravelling last year's plans, 30% developing ways of working in 'the new way', and 10% of their time doing the day job. Defence, Education, Treasury, Housing - all were victim of a culture of never-ending u-turns.

Golden Brown seems to have reinstated the model of a Cabinet of discussion. Ministers of State are starting to visit the people who work in their area of specialism and ask them/us what they/we think. Our new Health Secretary is now developing a group of the most successful doctors, nurses and specialist healthcare managers to propose a way forward. Already he has (for the 1st time in 10 years) put forward the view to Cabinet that the NHS has said for years. Can we please finish making the current systems work before you change them?

Could we actually move towards policy based on reality instead of political idealism or the theories of 22 year old bright young things?

I fUcking hope so.

For those of us in the MoD it seemed that Blair's only policy was "Do more, with less"

More deployments with less Units

More maintainence with less money (Because there was no money to do low level repaires so machinery was run until destruction)

More workload with less benefits (Changes to pay stuctures, pensions and bonus/allowances all of which reduced the amount of net pay).

The only problem for us is that Brown is (even more than Blair) anti-military and so our future is bleak.

On the plus side, again, he's still better than Geoff Hoon. I cannot stand that tosspot, he seems to incarnate everything that's wrong about New Labour. The fact he's been demoted to Minister for Europe (*snicker*) just shows that brownie agrees with me.

Brown's "I've only been in ofice for 5 days" was a poor performance. It looks like his honeymoon will be short-lived.

I like the guy, though, and I think his new cabinet is "ok". The Miliband bros seems competent, and there are a few new faces.

But I'm begginging to think that New Labour has been in power too long. Same old faces, same new faces, and despite all teh "constitutional changse" that Brown is announcing, I have yet to see anything that wasn't purely superficial and intended for the media, in other words, spin. Yes, that dreaded word.

Still, I don't really like Cameron, and I could certainly never vote for a party that has William Hague as Shadow Foreign Minister.


By the way, any of you Brits catch Question Time last night? The British Gbaji was a panelist! And I discovered that the UK has neo-cons[sm]tipated ************** too!

As you can tell, this song is about heroin, and not our PM.

Bring back Margaret Thatcher...she kicked some serious ****

I believe it was called "The winter of discontent" so bad my family left the country.

Maggie was saved by the falklands War, shock horror yet another politicial with blood on thier hands.

Sue me, i was 3

Sorry dad, can i go play now?