I am often asked who influenced my ideas. I reply that my views on the economy and public policy have come from my experience in a wide range of jobs, from my many conversations with voters, and from my own reflections on what works best in the world around us.
If pressed I concede I read a lot of books in my youth that had little or no impact on me. I struggle to remember what they said. The one book that had a big impact was Marx’s Communist Party Manifesto which made me write rebuttals and publish the Popular Capitalism Manifesto alternative. The one book I read whose message impressed itself upon me was Parkinson’s Law. It is a great satire, but is also a documentary of the worst failings of our ever growing and sprawling public sector.
Parkinson explained how and why civil service bureaucracy expanded without delivering more service or useful output. He showed how the Admiralty officials grew from 2000 to 3569 between 1914 and 1928 when the number of capital ships fell from 62 to 20. The officials reached 33,788 by 1954!
More modern versions of this analysis have shown how in more recent years there has been a big increase in senior naval officers against a background of fewer fighting ships. 2 aircraft carriers, 7 frigates, 6 destroyers and nine submarines are directed by 134 Admirals and Flag officers and 260 Captains. The individual ships are mainly taken to sea by Commanders. Captains are too grand to command frigates and destroyers.
The navy is unfairly picked on for a phenomenon which grips most departments and services. Most have far too many senior managers but are badly managed. Managers make work for each other and place strains on those doing useful work to run a necessary service by demanding all sorts of internal information and policies.
It is high time UK government tackled the waste and poor management that its ever expanding bureaucracy causes.It is bizarre that the navy has money to pay 394 senior officers but was unable to send a single destroyer to defend Cyprus on time.
March 16, 2026
Good morning.
But who is responsible for administrating all of this ?
Perhaps it would be a good idea to place a peace time cap on all military positions and, ant that are over or above additional taxes can be placed upon them to encourage them to leave and find better jobs elsewhere.
March 16, 2026
Stick close to your desks and never go to sea,
And you all may be rulers of the Queen’s navee,
Scholar up on matters of diversitee
Scholar up on matters of equalitee,
Etc. Etc
Or for the army (or politics) :-
I’m very well acquainted, too, with matters mathematical,
I understand equations, both the simple and quadratical,
About binomial theorem I’m teeming with a lot o’ news,
With many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse
I avoid all matters associated with degrees called PPE
And now I am the leader of the Queens armee
Yes, now I am charge of matters parliamentary
March 16, 2026
As I said the other day the National Security Council (United Kingdom) is Chaired by Two Tier and has five lawyers two PPE graduates and the Defence Secretary John Healey (social and political science Cantab). Do they know anything relevant to war and war technology? God help us. I see that our appalling PM is even refusing to send even a single ship to help keep the Straits of Hormuz flowing.
Far more concerned with his appalling anti-free speech Islamophobia agenda and killing jury trial so single agents of the state can rule instead! Would we think a jury of just one was a good plan? A single judge with an eye on promotion is even worse.
March 16, 2026
Short answer to your first question: they think they do but all their thoughts are wrong, wrong, wrong.
March 16, 2026
@LL. The straight of Hormuz is open. You do have to trade your oil in Yuan though, and not be a member of the states attacking Iran. China’s getting supplied, for example. The Iranians have increased sales of their oil since the war began.
March 17, 2026
So why is China short of fuel?
March 16, 2026
Starmer “we will not be driven into a wider war” you may well have no choice mate we shall see! So what is happening with your and Lammy’s insane Chagos deal – have you made you decided yet Sir Two Tier.
So money if you employ young people now. Make them unaffordable with extra tax and NI and minimum wage increases, waste 50% of the cash raised in admin costs and then give a bit back with strings attached,
same with energy push it up with net zero then subsidise it a bit and much else – total economic insanity.
You pay for the fuel or you pay higher tax the former is far better and more efficient and give you more choice perhaps to use less fuel you cannot pay less tax so easily.
March 16, 2026
On net zero Starmer now wants to double down on renewables! Renewables and carbon taxes that have given us energy 4 times the price of the US. Even with BBC A levels Maths, Music, Physics (the C in Physics) I would have expect a bit more understanding of energy realities form Starmer.
So nearly 25% of university students would not share a flat or house with a Jew a survey finds – and yet Two Tier Kier thinks Islamophobia laws and Tzars are what is needed. Should these 25% even be a university?
I am not Jewish but having read Maths and Physics I am perhaps rather biased – Approximately 26% of all Nobel Prize winners in Physics are Jewish. Not that many of them actually believed in God in my experience. Jews are only about 0.2% of the world population – so over 100 times over representation!
March 16, 2026
there appears to be some doubt as to whether the saitre was of the popular general Sir Garnet Wolseley or of the older General Henry Turner. Either way, we know the type and it’s a jolly good song.
March 16, 2026
Something went wrong while I was typing. I was adding that a friend of mine, now departed this life, wrote several satirical songs about politicians to the same tune. We have a great many who need to be taken down a peg or two.
March 16, 2026
The never ending growth of the public sector is reflected in too many examples of huge growth in staff numbers and payments to senior managers/officers, The tiny scale of our navy yet the massive cost to manage it being just one example.
When we try to drive on our roads, the scale of the pubic sector incompetence is reflected in the broken roads riddles with damaging pot holes yet the number of personnel in the public sector grew by hundreds of thousands/year. While the number of state funded employees increased the number of vehicles broken by the appalling state of the roads doubled last year according to the AA/RAC reports.
The more we pay the worse it gets.
It is time for the government to introduce Net Zero recruitment in the public sector, maybe a ‘one in one out’ policy, they like those sort of policies apparently.
March 16, 2026
Indeed and with potholes “a stitch in time saves nine” (often even more) is true. Not only the nine but also all the damage to vehicles, the injured and dead cyclists and motor cyclists, delayed journeys… a small pothole rapidly grows as each vehicle crashes into it, plus the freeze and thaw effects. Even worse with far heavier battery vehicles that Miliband is insanely ramming down people’s throats using their taxes to bribe them.
March 16, 2026
If we had US energy prices (25% of ours), as we could easily have without NET Zero, then even a doubling of energy cost would still only be half the current UK price! This would also drive a huge fall in inflation and interest rates. Alas we have Mad Miliband!
March 16, 2026
I believe I am right in saying that promotion prospects in the Civil Service, with one exception, depend on the number of people under one on an organisation diagram. The more you have under you the more capable you are presumed to be and hence the more likely your promotion. The exception is – or at least it used be – people with highly specialist knowledge or expertise, particularly in scientific research, much of which can be conducted successfuly without many underlings.
March 16, 2026
In a clear admission that the USA has bitten off more than it can chew by starting the Iran war, the megalomaniac in the White House is now threatening NATO with “a very bad future”
Unless America’s allies put their sailors and warships in harms way – instead of US Navy ships – when it is apparent to everybody that the IRGC still controls the Strait of Hormuz
30% of the worlds fossil fuels travelled through the Strait before the war – which equates to hundreds of tankers
Trump’s latest treats to the NATO alliance follow on from yet another grovelling telecon with the war criminal Putin. It’s past time that America’s allies and the American people address the hold that Putin has over Trump.
March 16, 2026
Well let us hope Trump has not taken on too much. We shall see. It will not be easy, but I am reasonable optimistic. Appalling deluded people like Starmer and no drilling/fracking Miliband will not help!
March 16, 2026
Would you prefer Iran to tooled up with nuclear missiles and bombs, control of the whole region and the destruction of Israel?
March 17, 2026
+1
March 16, 2026
@Sakara Gold – put our ill-equipped, under manned armed forces in harms way to protect British Shipping, British lives? Surly that is ‘us’ having a Parliament that refuses to serve and protect us. Freeloaders sitting on their hands and paying out hard earned taxpayer money as benefits to blackmail preserve a voter base
March 16, 2026
The USA gets 1% of its energy via the straits.
There is a bonanza in oil and gas benefiting the USA.
Why should the USA do all the work for the rest of NATO?
March 16, 2026
Oh and the Telegraph reports that The Renewable UK Chief Executive has urged Miliband to restart North Sea drilling, saying it is ‘entirely sensible’ to support home-grown oil and gas.
What do you say Gold?
March 17, 2026
She is right renewables cannot even really worth without fossil fuel backup as storage is so expensive and impractical. It seems she is a PR person rather than an engineer/scientist as seems common in the state sector. Cannot find the subject of her Cantab degree it seems they are rather coy on this!
March 16, 2026
I have been posting here for years about the humungous waste of taxpayer’s money that is the bottomless pit of the MoD
They suffer no consequences as a result of the stupendous cock-ups that their procurement system inflicts on the British taxpayer and until someone grasps the nettle and inflicts root and branch change, nothing will be different
We also have a similar surfeit of Generals in the Army and Air Vice Marshals in the RAF. But it’s OK! – they can all speak Latin
March 16, 2026
Indeed what about the humungous was on Net Zero, Covid Lockdowns, net harm Covid Vaccines, the NHS, pointless & almost worthless degrees, student “loans” for these.
March 16, 2026
Actually they can’t. More LSE types.
March 16, 2026
The Navy perfectly describes every government departments. The NHS being the worst. Until we get away from. Uniparty rule and have a party willing to do a root and branch clear out, nothing will change.
I volunteer at my local hospital and the waste is criminal both in manpower and materials, there are 250 of us in the Trust and probably do more useful work than many of the hundreds of admin staff.
March 16, 2026
IW,
Political patronage( via overpaid roles as heads of NHS trusts etc) plus unchallenged empire building from within. No concern whatsoever about cost, or the relevance of every post to public health.
NHS started out as a fairly lean organisation. No such thing as health tourism in those days either.
March 16, 2026
+1
March 17, 2026
Stop propping it up and enabling the grifters to get away with it.
Ayn Rand told us how to deal with this – let it all fail! The sooner it fails the better, and it will fails anyway in the end.
March 16, 2026
we should have more of some key roles than makes sense in peacetime, in order to be able to support a far larger force made up of mostly new entrants in the event of major war.
also long term military mostly get a posting to wind down their last 2 years in the military, during which they can prepare for return to civvy street, and they are generally not fully contributing to the military during that time. they often get extended training time, and secondments to study at university or with foreign military, during which they are not really contributing to the military here.
so some over capacity is needed, but not as much as we have.
the royal artillery is funnier with only about 80 actual artillery peices available to the army, of which many are tiny, yet lots more senior officers.
we should stop so many senior officers taking roles in the MOD for which they are completely unqualified and unsuitable for, that is a large part of why so many MOD programmes are failures.
March 16, 2026
The Navy doesn’t have the money to pay 394 senior officers. Neither does the Government. It’s all borrowed …. and it’s far more important to throw money at:
Mauritius
Criminal Migrants / HR Lawyers / Migrant “charities”
“Our wonderful NHS”
Legions of “anxious” welfare claimants who are swinging the lead / Motability etc
The Net Zero insanity
Ukraine (not our war)
The EU (we’re supposed to have left)
The thousands of DEI “managers” in the Civil Service
Anything really, except for the primary responsibility of every Government – defence of the Realm.
March 16, 2026
Starmer this AM in another of his tedious and totally dishonest & robotic speeches “I will always act in the UK’s interests”. Well he certainly never done this so far, the complete reverse in fact! Pissing off the US for no good reason was/is a dreadful error, as is more alignment with the EU, net zero, his Islamophobia Tzar, Miliband’s energy lunacy, Reeves’s doom loop economic lunacy, the war on employers, the self employed, private schools, motorists, the hard working, the Non Doms…
March 17, 2026
It’s in our interest to have fuel 4x the US price and 1,000 migrants a day.
We are just not clever enough to see why.
Starmer, on the other hand, well, I think his life depends on towing this line and sacrificing the U.K.
March 17, 2026
and relying on electricity available at very expensive rates from Europe.
March 16, 2026
a large part of the problem with the military and civil service is that they get promoted by not rocking the boat, for compliance with prevailing fashions. anyone who innovates, produces unusual excellence, who shakes things up, they are inevitably treated like a foreign body and the immune system kicks them out.
March 16, 2026
Indeed often in a large organisation many can see what needs to be done to improve efficiency but it rocks the boat if they try to do so and rarely do they get rewarded for trying. They will charge licence fees and fines to all rather than actually deal with real problems so much more profitable and parasitic job creating that way.
March 16, 2026
Kaftan describes the effects bureaucracy has on any services it seeks to perform.
March 16, 2026
Kafka!!!!?
March 16, 2026
LBour will never do anything about overmanning in the public sector.
It’s in their DNA. The Conservatives allowed the sector to grow exponentially with no gains in efficiency.
Our next Reform-led government should announce now that the civil service and local government establishment will be halved over their first parliament. As for the military and the MOD, similar treatment should be applied.
Plus, nobody should be promoted to Captain in the Navy unless they have previously commanded a Destroyer or Frigate. There should be other ranks established for technical officers like nuclear engineers who don’t need to command ships.
It goes without saying that procurement needs root and branch reform with management from the private sector.
March 16, 2026
The costs of redundancy and early pensions in order to clear out these non functioning posts will be enormous. A spacial 90% tax on public payoffs may be possible if the law is changed.
March 16, 2026
Ah yes, make all these Admirals and Captains redundant – and crystalise their (large) payoff terms and final salary pensions. Cue much screaming from Treasury and Rachel. Better to keep them turning up for work and doing not very much.
But where would all these poor Admirals get a job. No more supermarket checkouts, far fewer cushy numbers in the City. The ‘revolving door’ can only absorb so many. AI tells me the UK jobs are ‘technology, green energy, healthcare and manufacturing with significant growth in TikTok strategy (whatever that is)’. Just the job for a scrapped Admiral, wiping bums or assembling Chinese windmills.
We might also look at the House of Lords (864 + flunkies) old folks doing the much vaunted ‘line by line scrutiny’ of our legislation. To little useful effect – it usually falls apart at the first contact with a competent KC. Same problem, costs today’s cash to get rid of them, so kick the problem down the road. Slow, over-personed and ineffective – before we start on the House of Commons.
There is a serious point – where are the useful salary paying tax paying productive jobs coming from? TikTok Strategist does not have a convincing ring to it. Conclusion – if you are in a useless parasitic job hang on to it.
March 16, 2026
That sounds all too real, especially when it comes to the NHS, which is over-regulated by those on high while the frontline is run on a minimal number.
We can’t expect anything to be done about any of this while we have a big-government in office.
No doubt things will get more extreme when Starmer gets us back under EU control – That’s the reason we are being reorganised into larger unitary councils, to better match how EU regions are organised.
All of the contrived messages from his backbenchers will never convince anyone that we will be better off under the EU yoke..
March 16, 2026
This ‘top heavy’ management is just a reflection of our civil service, government and parliament
March 17, 2026
returning to 650 MPs and 890(?) Lords!
March 16, 2026
Talking of digital IDs, Starmer is now telling us they will be downgraded to enable us to use government services more easily. As if that changes anything.
We are all aware of mission creep – he just wants to get them established and then comes the requirement for them to be used for access purposes and checking our identity.
Does he imagine we can’t see through his pathetic scheming.
Starmer announced that there would be a survey of 100 public to work with the team to implement this first version of digital IDs, but even this is a con.
There is a website already in place which accepts names for entry, but entry is limited to people who are working with or partnering with government services.
So nobody who could oppose this expensive intrusion into our lives could even contribute.
In other words it’s yet another false survey stitched up to look like they really want to know our views but which in fact will provide the answers they want.
Showing once more how HMG manipulates us, and our data, to get the results they want.
March 17, 2026
Here’s a link to the CONsultation on Digital ID.
I suggest you tell them just what you think about the plan for a Digital Surveillance, Control and Social Credit system. I have 🙂
https://roadmap-for-modern-digital-government.campaign.gov.uk/digital-id-consultation/
March 16, 2026
This is unsurprising, old news – doubtless promotion is dependent on staying schtumm. Governments of all stripes have allowed bloat in our civil services and the number of senior roles, even ministerial posts. Many of us feel, when we pay taxes, that we are just pouring gasoline on the fire to a state that actively dislikes us and which is seeking our ruin. Do you wonder at the fury at 14 years of inactivity by a nominally Conservative government?
March 16, 2026
To add my two penneth, SJ, during my sea time in the 20th century, there were five civilians working within the Naval command structure to put one single sailor to sea. I dread to think what today’s ratio might be.
Obviously, there has to be civilian support behind all services, but why don’t they employ experienced ex-service personnel for those respective jobs? Especially those who may have left before they were due any service pension. Or haven’t they been to the “right” schools?
March 16, 2026
I remember as a young man training a group of foreign men to use a tractor and plough. Part of a government program financed by the foreign aid budget. Notwithstanding their lack of interest they were sure that upon return to their home they would be managers not ploughmen. Sixty years on and Sir John’s comments are evident in all aspects of public service. Nothing changes
March 16, 2026
+1
March 16, 2026
Human natures perhaps not but the technology and economic of war changes and is doing so ever more rapidly speeding up each and every day.
March 16, 2026
It doesn’t need 260 four stripe Captains to command 24 ships even on rotation. A two stripe Lieutenant, is placed below a Lieutenant-Commander, a Captain or Commander but can still command, as in be the captain of a ship.
Lets all be honest, the real situation/problem as an island nation reliant on see trade for survival, the empty slot is we don’t have the ships in numbers to protect our supply life lines.
March 16, 2026
Even today when there is a question about the ‘Strait of Hormuz’. The UK Parliament aided by the media has conflated that situation as joining a ‘war’ a lot of people are not sure about. Keeping the Strait of Hormuz open an international sea way is about protecting British Ships, British lives that need to pass through and need the cargos being transported. Blocking the Strait’s under the non-existent International Law is a crime in the eyes of those that profit from these pretend laws – but there is no Police Force, no Court, just decisive action by one party over another
That is without discussing our obligations to others, States in the Gulf that we have close relationships with. London would die with out Gulf States investment .
March 16, 2026
Gulf allies are unimpressed with Starmer’s plodding response
https://order-order.com/2026/03/16/gulf-allies-blast-starmers-wholly-inadequate-response-to-iran-war/
2TK, Parliament it is not even about supporting POTUS (Trump), its about protect UK interests and people
March 16, 2026
Agreed. We don’t need fewer admirals, we need more ships.
March 16, 2026
@Ian B – or sea trade
March 16, 2026
So the Navy has about 400 senior staff who rarely take command of a vessel at sea?
A different question might be ‘what is the average age of them, and secondly is there a compulsory retirement age?’
March 16, 2026
For amusement although it is so true
Ed Miliband specialises in driving people nuts. He almost seems to treat it as a badge of honour. Critics are dismissed as foaming right-wingers or shills for Big Oil whose arguments don’t even deserve a hearing. Miliband simply sticks his fingers in his ears and carries on. In fact it’s worse than that. He’s turned energy policy into another front in the endless political culture war, pushing ever more extreme ideas to fire up Labour’s left-wing base.
https://www.express.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/2182673/ed-milibands-energy-madness-torn-shreds-cant-believe-word-muppet-says
‘In one’, not just Miliband, the Government but the whole of Parliament ‘ badge of honour ‘ for upsetting the right wing of the country (sic)
March 16, 2026
“Starmer announces £53m in support for heating oil customers”
Great so we will pay in higher taxes rather than higher fuel costs. We could of course use less fuel and wear thermals but not with this agenda you have to pay the taxes then they give a bit back but only if you spend it on fuel! Total insanity!
March 16, 2026
In my experience as a naval officer, too many admirals and not enough ships has been a problem since the 1970s. The Navy has been shrinking since UK’s withdrawal from East of Suez announced by the Labour government in January 1968, following economic crisis and devaluation of the pound. Completed by 1971, it ended Britain’s long-term military presence in Southeast Asia and the Persian Gulf to focus on NATO commitments.
That gave the all the armed serives a genuine problem: how to give officers a genuine full life career path with a vastly narrowing scope of naval responsibilities. Full service is from age 18 to retirement at 65, a span of 47 years. A linear progression would mean shedding a percentage of posts at every step up the ladder. In industry the problem is resoled by people moving sideways to another employer. that is not possible within the navy. The ability to move sideways is limited by civilian industry’s recognition of the value to industry of naval qualifications and experience. In practice this is actually very limited so many naval officers prefer to remain in the service until the limit of time they may serve in their rank. This can be as young as 38 (20 years service) but most at age 60.
The compulsory retirement age for captains is 55. Who in civilian industry would employ a 55 year old with no industry experience?
The compulsory retirement age for admirals is 60–65. There is no option, as there is in civilian employment to continue working after age 65. That’s the end. You’re out. That is a span of 5 years for 3 ranks of admiral – rear, vice, full. So a rear-admiral can escape compulsory retirement only by promotion to Vice within about a year of becoming a rear admiral only to be presented with exactly the same choice a year later – gain promotion to Vice or retire within a year.
This is a genuine problem. I remember it was debated in the 1970s – another Labour government cutting the Forces.
At the tine I was Lieutenant convinced I knew better than my superiors so the number of ranks should be cut so that I could shoot from lieutenant to Commander, skipping Lt-Cdr, as was the case in Nelson’s day.
A career structure has always been cinsidered important for recruitment, even if for a shorter period – short service commissions are currently up to 8 – 10 years depending on specialisation. – But there’s another problem: Senior positions require not specialists but all-rounders.
One change that has also critically influenced the career path is the growth of bureaucracy at the top. Fighting one’s way through this in a climate hostile to spending on defence requires many people with experience and intelligence. I would go so far as to say that it requires a whole specialist arm of guerilla fighters at the highest levels if the Navy is to exist at all. That is the real and essential role of Admirals.
It is not an easy problem to solve
March 16, 2026
Overmanning is endemic in the top ranks of the forces, the Civil Service and the NHS. The Iran war has simply made public what our Governments have been hiding for years. That welfare is more important than warfare.
The first duty of any government is the defence and security of the UK. Somehow, in some way, the Iranians will get a drone, or maybe several drones, to hit London. We have no proper air defence, so that will cause real panic.
Today, that risk is crystal clear, but Labour simply will ignore it, and then act surprised when it happens. The estimated cost of an Iron Dome system, like Israel’s, for the UK is £10 billion. Scrapping one Quango, UKRI, would cover that cost as it spent £9.9 billion last year. But funding welfare, Immigrants, DEI, useless Quangos, and throwing money at other countries is much more important to this pathetic Labour Government.
March 16, 2026
Public sector and quasi-public sector bureaucracy is the curse of our age – it has stopped people getting most of the massive potential benefits of improved technology, especially in terms of more time to themselves away from work for over a century. There needs a ‘public sector engineered crash’ akin to and as devastating as the stock market 1929 Wall Street Crash to remove most bureaucracy (and regulation) and allow people the extra free time technology (and more recently computerisation and AI) has made possible. The main objective of government should not be full employment but enabling maximal personal freedom in general and especially maximising human free time.
When I was young most people were employed in manufacturing (now only about 10% are) and before that most people were agricultural labourers (now only about 1% are) whereas now most people work as various pen or keyboard pushers in mostly bureaucratic jobs instead of having a massive amount of extra free time (which is what I advocate).
March 16, 2026
“Starmer: I’m working with Europe to reopen Strait of Hormuz
Sir Keir Starmer said Britain was working with European allies on a “viable collective plan” to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
The Prime Minister said Iran’s effective blockade of the key shipping route was pushing up prices of oil, gas and fertiliser.”
2TK and his Parliament will not protect the UK people, UK interests or help UK’s allies. Unless and until he has been given permission by his master outside of the UK.
March 17, 2026
Australia can no longer help. It does not have enough fuel to get there.
March 16, 2026
to use an old music hall song.We had the ships we had the men we had the money too!
What we do have are 1star officers.Royal Navy 29 RAF 4 Army 140.
March 16, 2026
“The navy is unfairly picked on for a phenomenon which grips most departments and services.”
Correct. But it gets even worse when our elite rulers are aligned with Lord Gus O’Donnell who, when Cabinet Secretary, said in 2011: “When I was at the Treasury I argued for the most open door possible to immigration … I think it’s my job to maximise global welfare not national.” Socialism depends upon making and keeping people poor.
March 16, 2026
48 ‘illegal immigrants’ invaded the UK 15th March 2026 …
March 17, 2026
Human rights is designed to protect minorities against majorities. As a globalist human rights lawyer who likes to follow international law you might think that our PM would be working to protect European peoples’ laws and culture, if not their very existence, from the global majority. But he is not.
March 16, 2026
Dear Lord R,
Like you, I often refer back to Parkinson and the Communist Manifesto. Parkinson’s original law took the evident truth that “work expands to fill the time available to do it” and added the number of staff employed to do it, not least because they make work for each other. As you say, it goes way beyond the Admiralty. He estimated lightheartedly that a bureaucracy naturally grew at 6 per cent a year, which is well worth testing.
The antidote, applied with mixed results in many big businesses, is to adopt a horizontal rather than vertical organisation, so that one person is responsible for one thing. But government bodies, whether central or local, still use the vertical organisation that Parkinson satirised.
Some of his other laws are also highly relevant. One is that committees, councils and parliament spend more time and effort on trivial matters that all members can relate to rather than the big complex issues that few understand. For instance, from the start of HS2 one Labour hereditary peer, a civil engineer, argued that it should pursue a technically easier route that would cost much less and be built much faster at the expense of about 8 minutes on the journey time. No-one seemed to take it up and he was ignored.
In the Manifesto, Marx clearly has no idea what to make of the “lumpenproletariat”, described as
“the dangerous class, the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of old society” which might act as “a bribed tool” of the politically unscrupulous. And, as applied elsewhere, might treat “law, morality, religion” as “bourgeois prejudices”. That seems to ring a bell in today’s society.
Marx’s theory of economic determination – that economic power determines social, cultural and political power – has its attractions. But what of the UK today. Even the vestige of aristocratic power is about to disappear. But government clearly does not represent the interests of wealthy employers (the bourgousie), or working families (the proletariat). The figures tell us something. Manufacturing now makes up only about 7.5 per cent of GDP, finance and insurance about 8.5 per cent but the NHS accounts for 11 per cent and state education another chunk. So maybe no surprise if we have government by the public sector for the public sector, with dire consequences for the size of the cake.
March 17, 2026
There are very nearly as many civil servants in the MoD as soldiers in the army.
March 17, 2026
I understand MOD staffing 55000
Sir Humphrey’s of today’s UK effective governance rule