How goggbledook is taking over the world

From Compass magazine

Towards the end of last year the right of centre think-tank Reform Reforming Welfare surprisingly declared that the UK’s benefits and welfare system was “not fit for purpose”.

Well, not surprising in that it costs us billions of pounds a year (£79 billion at the last count) and soaks up more money than education, twice as much as law and order, or that it is open to systematic abuse. But that they should describe it as not fit for purpose.

What does that mean, exactly? Does it mean, for example, that the Welfare State doesn’t work? That its whole mighty edifice is so rotten that one metaphorical prod will have it crumbling to the ground? Or does it mean that this is an essentially sparklingly efficient organisation that just hums long very nicely, but not in a way to suit the nation’s needy – rather like a well-drilled army that goes to war in Afghanistan only armed with muskets (probably not far from the truth)?

Well, it means either of these things, or neither of them. You might as well say, “The Welfare State is pork pie, car, hat, bicycle, irradiation” for all the light the words “not fit for purpose” throw upon it.

This ridiculous phrase was drummed up by John Reid to describe the Immigration and Nationality Directorate, and didn’t mean anything then, either; he was just too scared to say that the whole department simply wasn’t doing its job properly. These weasel words are emblematic of the way we are governed. Gobbledegook has taken over our government, our public institutions, our charities, even, to a certain extent, our businesses. They are awash with a new breed of bureaucrat, swaggering around the public sector especially, on huge salaries, building empires that depend upon doing anything other than saying what you mean.

In the week that Reform decided that the Welfare State was not fit for purpose, for example, Lincolnshire County Council was just crying out for a Head of Democratic Services, for which it was offering a modest £51,261 - £56,376. “We are looking for a key player to provide leadership and direction to a team of professionals, developing strategies and policies in support of the Council’s vision, aims and objectives.”

Warrington was searching for a Director of Skills Policy (circa £75,000 plus benefits) to, “Distil and evaluate policy thinking, influencing key stakeholders to ensure regional and national targets are met, and major projects and initiatives are progressed.”

And so on. Every Wednesday The Guardian newspaper’s Society section is bulging with advertisements for these jobsworths on steroids. Between 1998 and 2005, 680,000 public sector jobs were created that seemed to have achieved little more than turning nouns such as progress into pompous little verbs so that initiatives are “progressed”. So when finally these functionaries do get feet under their publicly financed desks, their prime motivation is to keep talking rubbish to each other in endless reports and endless conferences that will hopefully make them appear important enough to employ even more people in their puffed up little empires.

In Manchester in 2004, a joint children’s unit was established in response to an Every Child Matters (yes, really) Green Paper to among other things: “Provide a focal point for the interpretation of Government requirements and new initiatives in the context of local aspirations and strategies and help make and plan appropriate responses.” Er, OK, if you say so.

What is so scandalous is that if every child really did matter, Manchester’s joint children’s unit would be pouring its efforts into education and teaching them to read and write properly rather than “identify mainstream evidenced-based good practice”.

But that isn’t the point. These jobs are about maintaining power. Lack of plain English makes it almost impossible to question these people’s pampered positions. Obfuscation is a means to an end.

Power and leadership are not the same thing, and it is the latter that these people lack. Churchill would never have bleated that something is not fit for purpose. Real leaders have the ability to use concise, erudite language to explain complex issues. Indeed our democracy depends on it.

If our leaders described the Welfare State as, “A monstrous white elephant populated by egocentric jobsworths”, then something might be done about it. Saying it’s “not fit for purpose” can only result in the employment of yet more bureaucrats working with stakeholders committed to improving outcomes.