Except that elected politicians very rarely get to do most of what they set out to do, because they are constantly hamstrung by the massive bureaucracy that is the civil service - now there is a self-serving bunch of toadies if ever there was one...
Any kind of serious revision of taxation, any serious revision of the NHS, any serious revision of the benefit system... And, obviously, any serious revision (ie downsizing) of the civil service...
The Civil Service is able to block Ministerial decisions on these issues? I thought that just happened during episodes of Yes, Minister? It's funny but my recollection of, for example, Budgets announced by the Chancellor have a tendency of finding their way into reality - certainly in HMRC where I've had some experience in the past. I suspect the difficulty in creating major revisions in policy have more to do with career politicians not wishing to be "The Minister that caused the ... problem".
I agree with both of the above posts. Whitehall isn't so much self-serving as Brussels-serving. The EU Commission issues instructions directly to Whitehall over the heads of our elected Parliament. It is not so much that Whitehall prioritises this "business", more that there is so much of it in so relentless a stream that the business of our own Parliament often runs out of time and gets rolled into the long grass. Ministers in this government and even the last one have complained about this bureaucratic blizzard and given up in the face of it.
The civil service can never block ministerial decisions of course. It can provide advice about the effects (which might be e.g. that a policy will cost a lot of money, be very unpopular, antagonize allied nations, result in deaths, etc etc.) but ministers can always insist on going ahead with a policy regardless. The real problem for civil servants is more often getting a minister to make a decision at all. Especially as in the real world the choice is so often between the unpalatable and the catastrophic.
I sort of agree, but believe feminists would say - at least that's what my g/f tells me - that seeing pictures of women getting their kit off in a mainstream newspaper sets a bad example for young, impressionable women and girls because they pigeonhole them as objects for the delectation of men in a patriarchal society, thus blunting their potential and ambitions.
I sort of agree, but believe feminists would say - at least that's what my g/f tells me - that seeing pictures of women getting their kit off in a mainstream newspaper sets a bad example for young women because it pigeonholes them as objects for the delectation of men in a patriarchal society, thus blunting their ambitions and preventing them from achieving their true potential.
Technically, no, the civil srvice cannot actually "block" decisions made by ministers... But they can create so much inertia that things never actually get done - and that's pretty much the same thing... And just knowing that fact limits what government will ever decide to try to do : what's the point in trying to do something that they know will never happen ?
Whenever a government, or a minister, reverses some policy commitment, because (say) it would be too expensive, or they have realised it is impracticable, or there is no majority for it, a common way of explaining away the U-turn is to blame the civil service. The civil service is always there and can't answer back, thus makes an ideal aunt sally. That's OK; one of the principal functions of the civil service is to shoulder the blame for governments' shortcomings. It goes with the territory.
I thought the primary purpose of the civil service was to carry out government policy - shows what I know !
Well yes, but implementing it is the easy bit. The more difficult bits are to formulate policy options, predict and warn of policy problems, prepare for possible policy changes, and take the blame for policy failures ...
