The failure of central planning

Some weeks ago Harry Phibbs had a timeless CAPX Critic piece on central planning which I've just found at the back of my blogging drawer. Doesn't matter about the delay though - it's timeless.


The failure of central planning

It didn’t work in the late 1940s or the early 2020s

“What was it like in the war?” was amongst the most frequent questions that we asked our parents and grandparents. Our children and grandchildren may well ask us: “What was it like during the pandemic?” Some comparisons have been made between the two emergencies. Others recoil at the notion of any possible equivalence of the heroism of those fighting to defend western civilisation in the Second World War, and those stuck at home watching Netflix for a few weeks: not working but on 80 per cent of their regular pay via the taxpayer-funded furlough scheme, the routine only broken by the occasional visit to a supermarket to panic buy lavatory paper.

It occurs to me that a more valid comparison to our lockdown episode came in the years just after the war, during the late 1940s. That was when the zeal for state control in a time of peace was unleashed to its greatest degree — until it was surpassed in 2020. Such was the determination of the Attlee Government to pursue “economic planning” that the response to each setback was to intensify the folly.


The whole piece is well worth reading as a reminder of how ignorantly intransigent bureaucrat planners can be and how spitefully indifferent to the damage they cause.


Winston Churchill came back in 1951 with the slogan “Set the people free” and did abolish rationing — but I’m afraid there was still significant consensus for state restrictions. Economic planning was still fashionable in the 1960s. Enoch Powell was a trenchant but isolated critic, declaring: “Lift the curtain and ‘the State’ reveals itself as a little group of fallible men in Whitehall, making guesses about the future, influenced by political prejudices and partisan prejudices, and working on projections drawn from the past by a staff of economists.”

Racket

Andy Murray warns Just Stop Oil against targeting Wimbledon as group defends Ashes pitch invasion

Andy Murray says there is "a good chance" Wimbledon will be disrupted by a Just Stop Oil protest - and while he supports the climate group's cause, he has urged activists against targeting The Championships, warning it would be "dangerous".

The two-time Wimbledon champion said while he supports the group's cause - it could be "dangerous" to invade the courts, because tennis players "obviously have got rackets in their hands".

Anyone for Tennis?

 

We are the ultimate propagandists

Laura Dodsworth has an interesting Critic piece on the weird world of TikTok filters.


The self(ie)

Filters seduce, but what happens when the flattering reflection becomes a carnival mirror?

I regarded my face on my iPhone screen. It didn’t look like my face. After applying the infamous Body Glamour filter on TikTok, my skin was smooth and liberally daubed with perfect make up — the sort of make up you have seen a thousand times on more expert examples of the female species than I. My nose was a little slimmer, lips fuller, and my eyes were brighter and bluer.

I looked great. I wondered if I could learn to do make up that well. I wondered if my lips were a bit too thin in real life. Disoriented, I switched back to my own image on my phone. I’d never looked so plain and dull-eyed. I switched again to the picture of the pretty woman. I wanted to look like her. I wanted to be her. If her face was so well put together, maybe her life was, too?

In Oscar Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, the young, handsome protagonist sells his soul to remain young and beautiful forever. Instead, his portrait ages and becomes hideously ugly with each immoral act.

Modern-day filters do the opposite. Our bodies and faces inevitably give away our habits and hedonism, whilst our social media portraits can hide a multitude of sins with a filter. You can be sweaty from a run, bleary-eyed with a hangover, just a plain old Jane, but a filter transforms you into youthful, glossy, homogenised perfection — or a chimeric cute half-kitten, half-person. Whatever you like really. There is a filter for it.


The whole piece is well worth reading as another insight into the modern reach and significance of an ancient problem - vanity. 


Once upon a time, we settled for the fact that we are born baby smooth, must age, fall ill, become decrepit and eventually die. We don’t settle so easily these days. If the human body used to be a canvas of historical record, it is now a work of fantasy and science fiction, written as much in the electronic ether as in the flesh. People at the fringes of bodily transformation aren’t just weird outliers; they are canaries in the coalmine.

Even if you don’t apply a filter, you might choose the best of several photos to share. You probably share the highs but not the lows of day to day life on your socials. We filter our faces, our personalities, achievements, experiences and truth. We separate, compartmentalise, embellish and even fictionalise. If we don’t expect the complete truth from ourselves, why would we expect it from other people or organisations? In other words, we lie, and we risk becoming more tolerant of lies. We are the ultimate propagandists.

Public sector productivity

Tim Knox has a useful CAPX piece on public sector productivity.

Public sector productivity is dragging the UK down – is Jeremy Hunt the man to fix it?

At the Centre for Policy Studies’ Margaret Thatcher Conference, the Chancellor announced the creation of a new productivity task force, to be led by his deputy John Glen to review the performance of government departments and the NHS, amid fears the public sector is failing to keep pace with the private sector...

The worry is that Jeremy Hunt was too polite to set out the scale of the challenge, of how bad public sector productivity actually is. The figures speak for themselves: since 1991, productivity in the private sector has increased by over 26% while ‘Government Services’ have seen productivity fall by 16%.


The whole piece is well worth reading as a reminder that worthwhile political oversight isn't happening and our main political parties are not a solution.

As it stands, ministers – nearly always with limited management experience – have the impossible task of managing organisations larger than most FTSE 100 corporations. And they stay in office for less than a couple of years. Consider, for example, the Department for Education: it is one of the UK’s largest employers with nearly 11,000 administrative staff and more than 200 roles with the title of Director General, Director, or Deputy Director. But since 2010, it has had, on average, a new secretary of state every 17 months. How can they possibly get anything done?

In addition, central government should do far less. Power, accountability and finance should all be pushed down to the lowest possible level so that the citizen can know who to blame when anything goes wrong.

The Chancellor is right to appoint the taskforce to investigate the issue of failing public sector productivity. The question is whether he and his team will be bold enough to challenge all the vested interests which will defend the status quo. We can only wait and see whether his plans for reform match the size of the problem.

The difficulty is finding a way to be positive about the issue.

Really?

France riots: Teen's death being used as 'pretext for robbing' in Marseille, says store owner

Franc Attali lost 100,000 euros (£86,000) in a night, his shop one of dozens in Marseille broken into by rioters.

"The store was full of merchandise, now it's completely empty," he says as he shows me around.

Be Weep is usually full of clothes and shoes. Now, the glass shelves have been stripped completely clean and the front window has been smashed in.

A chap is bound to wonder how many looters even know the teenager's name. Not as well as they know the brands they are after - that would be a cynic's guess.

Be your own weather forecaster

Ivor Williams has a useful TCW piece on weather forecasting, particularly short term forecasting of rain.


Be your own weather forecaster, and do a better job

ARE you responsible for a forthcoming outdoor event? Or are you planning to do the Southwest Coast Path (630 miles), the Scottish National Trail (537 miles), or a saunter to the park?

Summer in the UK usually brings a lot of showery weather, which means anything from a sprinkle to a flood. In these times of apps for anything, you consult the forecast the night before.

You have already made a wrong move. If showers are a likelihood, not one of the 20 or so forecast organisations can tell you what time it will rain tomorrow. They’ll give you useless information like ‘some showers possible’. Many will give you a forecast even more ridiculous: among symbols for each hour you discover that at 10am there is a 20 per cent risk of a shower. What use is that? The forecasting organisations, of course, can say they were right no matter what happens.

For those who don't do it already, the whole piece is well worth reading as a guide to checking current weather patterns in your area.

You need to access the Met Office’s network of 15 rain radar stations, from Druim a’Starraig on the Isle of Lewis to Predannack in Cornwall, plus two in Eire and one in the Channel Islands. If you search for ‘UK rain radar’ you will find over a dozen, the Netweather site being a good example of the different variations (cloud cover, lightning strikes etc) you can call up. I cannot recommend the Met Office’s own version because the software people have got at it and ruined what should be a simple picture of the radar echoes.