It. Gets. Everywhere.

It. Gets. Everywhere.

Ive got a weed in my back garden.  “Big deal,” I hear you cry, “Haven’t we all?”  Yes, we have, but please bear with me.  I can feel an analogy coming on.  Now please note - I am not green-fingered and I don’t have much experience with plants in general so I may make some mistakes when elaborating botanically. 

The weed which is the cause of my woes is called Ground Elder.  It’s deceptive stuff because it doesn’t immediately look like a weed if you aren’t born with shears in your hand and wellies on your feet.  It’s not all ragged and nasty like bindweed, nor does it have the telltale sting of nettles.  Its not poisonous and it doesn’t even look that horrible as long as you don’t mind very bland green leaves filling every square inch of your shrubbery.  Mine grows upwards and outwards making it look a little like a bush.  Or even, in one section of the garden, like a tree.  But let me assure you, however it may initially look, the monstous stuff is definitely a weed.  It. Gets. Everywhere.

Here’s what a gardening website has to say about Ground Elder:

Perennial, spreading mainly by creeping underground stems, sometimes by seed. Although they have been found down to 30 feet or more in cave systems, the roots usually form a network just below the surface, so they are quite easily dug up. However every last trace must be removed because any small fragments will regenerate. This is why this weed is very difficult to eliminate as it is usually growing among other plants. It is premature to declare victory in the battle with Ground-elder without allowing a few years to pass. Vigilance is required for at least this amount of time for some re-emergance, particularily if it has been allowed to grow unchallenged for some time. The roots will have been widespread and it will have cast some seed which may germinate as new plants.

In much the same way (here’s that analogy I promised you) our democracy is infected with a weed which has come to be known as the quangocracy.  Like Ground Elder, this stuff doesn’t immediately look like a weed either.  It snakes its way into every corner of government, its roots taking underground paths so that you can’t see quite how intrusive it is.  You might not even know its there until it pops up and takes over an area of government that had previously appeared to be weed free.  It can undermine the legitimate parts of government in subtle and effective ways (as Michael Gove is currently discovering to his chagrin.)

Like Ground Elder, the quangocracy is very difficult to eliminate as it is growing among productive sections of the government, winding its way through them so that a liberal dose of weed-killer will be counter-productive, damaging important areas too.  The quangocracy knows this – indeed, it counts on it. 

Like Ground Elder, the only way to be sure an individual quango is gone is to quite literally eradicate every trace of it.  But instead the “bonfire of the quangos” seems to be quietly turning into the renaming of the quangos, or the relocating of the quangos, or just surrendering to the quangos.  This is done for honest and decent reasons I’m sure, but there’s the rub – if you leave these unelected, undemocratic edifices a foothold they will just grow right back where they were before.  Bigger.  And again – the quangocracy knows this – it counts on it.

And just like the Ground Elder, if you are trying to close down a quango it is premature to declare victory in the battle without allowing a few years to pass. Vigilance is required for at least this amount or back it will come – perhaps with a new name, perhaps with a new face at the helm or a new perfectly-plausible reason for why it is a “vital, necessary and important resource.”  It will try to scare you with that importance by threatening the loss of services you rely upon.  It is easy to scare people who feel vulnerable.  The quangocracy knows this – indeed, it counts on it.

One power that the quangocracy has that is greater even than the dreaded Ground Elder is the ability to assimilate people into it.  By the clever use of love-bombing opponents by ‘bringing them on board’, by granting “special responsibilities” complete with sweeteners, by offering a convenient untouchable scapegoat for the mistakes of others, by threatening dire consequences for non-compliance with the quangocracy, or sometimes just by relentless sweet persuasion it becomes a terrible weed indeed.  Imagine if the Ground Elder in my garden didn’t just strangle and overrun the other plants but could actually turn them into Ground Elder too?  No more radiant roses, no more beautiful yellow swathes of Narcissus, no more luscious lillies.  Just acres and acres of conformist, colourless, bland green leaves.  That’s not the sort of garden anyone would want.

There is a simple rule-of-thumb which fits in well with the current localist agenda.  If a Quango is necssary and does important work then it should still be necessary and able to do important work with an elected person at its helm or as a privatised body.  Because somebody needs to be directly responsible for the spending of taxpayer-funds and that somebody must be removeable by the taxpayer.  Or the body itself must be controlled by the power of the markets.  Any Big State enthusiast (or indeed any small-state Conservative who has ‘gone native’ and bought into the whole quangocracy agenda) should still be able to see the merits of that.  If they are indeed necessary – then lets make sure they are also properly accountable. But if (and this surely goes for many of them) they are not necessary?  Let’s stack the firewood and get on with the much-promised bonfire. 

There is such a lot of ground elder in my garden that it would be easy to just throw my hands up and say: “To hell with it.”  I could just give up on my aspiration for a nice garden which I would enjoy sitting in and in which my son and I could shoot a few hoops or lounge in comfy garden chairs to Bat Out Of Hell, or Justin Bieber (depending on whether my son or I were choosing the music).  It would be much easier to do so.  Of course, every day I say that and do nothing, the weed grows larger and heavier and harder to shift.  The Quangocracy is just as deeply embedded.  A monumental task requires a herculean effort to tackle.

But how?  That’s the question.  How to get rid of these multi-layered bureaucratic monoliths in such a way as to make sure they don’t return?  I can only speculate based on how I plan to deal with the Ground Elder in my backgarden.  There’s no master plan, or clever scheme.  I’m not bringing in any specialists or advisors.  I will not be setting up a committee.  I have no intention of spending huge sums on a skewed consultation.  I’m just going to cut it down.  Even if that means damaging some of my other plants.  Even if my garden looks horrible for a while.  I’m going to dig up the roots.  I’m going to make liberal use of weedkiller.  And i’m going to keep doing that month after month and year after year until it is gone and is not coming back.  It’s that – or give the weeds free run of the garden forever.

Three Cheers For InspireEast

Three Cheers For InspireEast

I was sent a colourful missive  today by InspireEast.  I get forwarded a lot of this sort of stuff.  Some of it is useful, some of it is excellent.  This particular document apparently wanted to help me “understand my role in delivering democracy”.  I had never heard of InspireEast, didn’t know who or what it was, and so I went and had a browse of their website.  It appears that InspireEast is some sort of subsidiary quango, spawned by its mother the East Of England Development Agency (EEDA).   I’d like to share what I found with you.

Be inspired …

Inspire East is the regional centre of excellence for sustainable communities in the East of England.  Our aim is to deliver the knowledge, skills and advice that will inspire you to use and apply best practice. This website show-cases our services and provides a range of information and resources for anyone involved in regeneration.

 Okay.  So far so good.  They want to inspire me.  They are going to do this by delivering knowledge, skills and advice.  At the end of which I’ll be able to use and apply “best practice”.   I’m glad they came along when they did.  I was just wondering to myself today: “How, oh how, will I ever be able to use and apply Best Practice?” and here they are to deliver the answers I need. 

I managed to find the page where InspireEast describe their role.  Here it is:-

Inspire East is the regional centre of excellence for sustainable communities in the East of England.

We champion the creation of high quality places to live, work and visit. 

Our aim is to deliver the knowledge, skills and advice that will inspire you to use and apply best practice.  We work across the region in rural and urban areas.

Ah!  The penny drops.  InspireEast aren’t only trying to deliver “best practice” to me, they want to deliver it for everybody.  Well, everybody who is anything to do with “sustainable communities” anyway.  As long as they are in the East Of England.  Gotcha.  They’re champions too, which would appear to mean they don’t directly do anything themselves, they just get involved when other people do.  I could be wrong.  The website is kinda vague.

Our four aims are to:

1. Create sustainable communities by promoting better community and physical development in regeneration areas and areas of growth
2. enhance the skills required by sharing knowledge, information and experience, and working closely with training providers
3. improve the quality of projects through benchmarking and sharing best practice
4. influence and guide policy for sustainable communities.

So these guys get involved in building and development projects and try and help out by sharing things that worked in other areas?  Excellent!  What’s not to like?  And better still, they’ve decided to diversify into helping me “understand my role in delivering democracy”.   That is extremely fortunate.  If they hadn’t come along today I would, no doubt, have been pondering my role in the delivery of democracy well into the night.  Maybe even into tomorrow.

InspireEast even has an invite on their website:-

Climate Change Tools Training

The Regional Empowerment Partnership is pleased to invite you to an interactive half day training session on 19 October at Peterborough Cathedral that will provide you with hands-on experience of using practical tools.

I wasn’t quite sure what “practical tools” they might be referring to.  I thought I learnt to use practical tools in senior school, back when you did woodwork and metalwork seperately, and nobody ever studied ’resistance materials’ at all.  I wasn’t aware you could go at the Earth’s climate with a hammer, deliver a cooling of the atmosphere with a monkey wrench or remove CO2 by the judicious application of some WD40 (although it fixes most everything else, so you never know… )   But this was Regional Empowerment Partnership talking!  The R.E.P. no less.  I should probably pay attention.

Of course, they don’t mean physical tools.  They mean intellectual tools.  Indeed, they even tell you all about these tools on their website.  “Climate Talk”, “Climate Scenarios 2027″ and “Climate Walk” are their three ’showcased’ tools.  Want to know more?  Go on along to their training day and check it out.  But be aware:- Cost: Free of charge, however there will be a £25 fee for no-show.  Clever!   That’s a whole lot of £25 payments they’ll be collecting…

Quangos.  You’ve gotta love ‘em.  We pay for all this stuff.  Well, we don’t.  The East of England Development Agency do.  But we pay for them. And if you’d like to see some of the exciting range of other alphabet soup organisations there are out there, have a look the EEDA’s “our partners” page here.  It makes very interesting reading.
  
I’m sure some quangos do important, excellent work.  Quite possibly InspireEast is one of them.  But if they want to convince me of that they’ll need to stop with the ‘committee speak’ and deliver some Best Practice in the form of words and phrases normal people use.