January 4, 2006
Sometimes an event helps focus on something silly or even stupid. This is such a moment.
In London, a government department that is supposed to trim the size of the civil service has gotten bigger. The headline on the times story says it all: Whitehall job cuts body needs more staff – to cut jobs.
Only in government would more people be required to create agencies with fewer people. It is something like the thinking in America that says if you reduce the rate of growth in a program, you are cutting it.
Here in the U.K., the government is busy hiring outside consultants to reduce inside employees. Only someone committed to government as ultimate keeper would think like this.
Spending on the program to reduce programs and staff has gone from 5.8 million pounds to 9.2 million pounds. Approximately double those figures for the equivalent dollar amount.
To normal people, this defies logic, but in government it passes for perfectly normal thinking. More is less. Didn’t George Orwell have something to say about this?
