Government bureaucracy

I'm always slagging off newspaper commentators for their articles so it makes a pleasant change to praise one today. In The Times online, Alice Miles asks what the point of our government is - and it is a very good question.

If MPs cannot amend legislation, what are they there for? If Gordon Brown cannot regulate (or even bribe) the banks, what is he there for? If the Government cannot protect British jobs from European workers when necessary, then what is the point of it?

Quite. The quote of the day for me is this one, though.

Every time power is siphoned off to a new quango or another management consultant, the taxpayer is taken one step further away from democracy and Parliament shrivels a little more.

Yes. It's called corporatism and is the natural consequence of globalisation, supra-nationalism, internationalism and socialism. It is also the natural enemy of real democracy. If democracy is the government of the people, by the people and for the people then corporatism is government of the people, by unelected bureaucrats for the state. Doesn't have quite the same ring, does it.

Miles does go a bit off towards the end of her piece as she rambles on about social workers (I guess she has to do her required number of words), but it's a good read and well worth giving up five minutes for.

The phrase "government bureaucracy" used to refer to the forms that one had to wade through to get a passport or driving licence. Now it just means how we are ruled.