My good friend – now sadly dead – Julian Cummins used to say that 90% of utterly brilliant ideas do not stand scrutiny by someone who knows you well. Julian – who did have the serious flaw of being a Liberal Democrat but I shall brush past that – knew that we can get terribly excited about some whizzo spiffing wheeze only to realise later that it was really really stupid.
So it is with political proposals. One of those terribly clever chaps (they do seem always to be chaps for some reason) from Demos or res publica or IPPR or Reform or policy Exchange or New Economics Foundation produce reports and sling them out at the world from the highest point of their ivory towers. And scrabbling around at the foot of these towers are the political advisors, public affairs consultants, directors of advocacy and policy, assorted pundits and scurvy bloggers. Grabbing these gems of wisdom from these great gurus, folk scurry off to their political masters, to the airwaves and to the presses and explain how the wonderfully brainy bloke from this or that think tank has shown us how to bring about world peace, make the deserts bloom and cure the common cold.
In recent times we have had salvation through
a twenty-one hour week
allowing public officials to take over the services they deliver
recruiting a vast army of busybodies
building super-duper railway lines at great expense
bribing people to get married
banning smoking in cars
moving all the bureaucrats out of London
getting all the Northerners to move South
the lifecycle approach to ‘civic service’
Most of the proposals churned out from these ivory towers do not bear close scrutiny – they represent the triumph of intellectual willy-wagging over common sense, the abrogation of our responsibility to think for ourselves to a handful of professional thinkers and the easy research option of either questionable statistical analysis or else the total replacing of quantifiable experiment with qualitative enquiry. The last of the list above – presented as a source of policy direction in the development of citizenship describes its methodology:
This isn’t research it’s the presentation of opinion as research – no hypotheses are proposed and tested, an ideological position is adopted from the outset and the resulting policy proposals have as much basis in truth as saying that we have to cover our heads to stop the sky pixie zapping us with his lightning bolts. And what is worse about this is that politicians, senior officials and even business leaders now simply take this pseudo-research as gospel, without consideration and without thought (so long as the ideological badge of the think tank matches).
So here’s a proposal from The View from Cullingworth – shut down all the think tanks, close all the policy departments, sling out all the special advisors. And make the politicians, permanent secretaries, chief executives and other well-paid senior people think for themselves for a change.
So it is with political proposals. One of those terribly clever chaps (they do seem always to be chaps for some reason) from Demos or res publica or IPPR or Reform or policy Exchange or New Economics Foundation produce reports and sling them out at the world from the highest point of their ivory towers. And scrabbling around at the foot of these towers are the political advisors, public affairs consultants, directors of advocacy and policy, assorted pundits and scurvy bloggers. Grabbing these gems of wisdom from these great gurus, folk scurry off to their political masters, to the airwaves and to the presses and explain how the wonderfully brainy bloke from this or that think tank has shown us how to bring about world peace, make the deserts bloom and cure the common cold.
In recent times we have had salvation through
a twenty-one hour week
allowing public officials to take over the services they deliver
recruiting a vast army of busybodies
building super-duper railway lines at great expense
bribing people to get married
banning smoking in cars
moving all the bureaucrats out of London
getting all the Northerners to move South
the lifecycle approach to ‘civic service’
Most of the proposals churned out from these ivory towers do not bear close scrutiny – they represent the triumph of intellectual willy-wagging over common sense, the abrogation of our responsibility to think for ourselves to a handful of professional thinkers and the easy research option of either questionable statistical analysis or else the total replacing of quantifiable experiment with qualitative enquiry. The last of the list above – presented as a source of policy direction in the development of citizenship describes its methodology:
"The report's arguments comes (sic) from a review of the existing evidence, a deliberative democracy event with 54 young people held in September 2009 and a series of expert interviews."
This isn’t research it’s the presentation of opinion as research – no hypotheses are proposed and tested, an ideological position is adopted from the outset and the resulting policy proposals have as much basis in truth as saying that we have to cover our heads to stop the sky pixie zapping us with his lightning bolts. And what is worse about this is that politicians, senior officials and even business leaders now simply take this pseudo-research as gospel, without consideration and without thought (so long as the ideological badge of the think tank matches).
So here’s a proposal from The View from Cullingworth – shut down all the think tanks, close all the policy departments, sling out all the special advisors. And make the politicians, permanent secretaries, chief executives and other well-paid senior people think for themselves for a change.
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