--- In [email protected], "Steve Haywood" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >
> In political terms the matter is very simple. For better or worse a decision > was taken that the costs of the rural payments fiasco would not be absorbed > into contingencies. DEFRA then took soundings from its spending agencies and > apportioned the cuts accordingly. I'm with you so far. > The question is did BW deal honestly with its department? Did it give it the > full facts on which to be able to make a decision? That's the question that Barry Gardiner has posed. Has anyone else? And is it the right question. > To claim that we do not > know what government thinks about this is as spurious as saying that when > the police start a murder enquiry they do not know the culprit is. The fact > is, they know there's been a murder ;-) We don;t know what the Government as an entity thinks about it (if it's noticed it at all). All we know is what one very junior member of the Government has said about it, which may or may not be the same thing. > > There is no reason whatsoever why the minister needs any sort of stratagem > for doing what he's doing, least of all spin. And there's no question of > losing face. Politicians for the last few decades have found it almost impossible to do anything without spinning it like mad. And what Gardiner said to the Select Committee, and, from what I hear, to the eptition delegation the other day, sound to me very much like somebody trying to create an excuse to change his public attitude to something, as without some face-saving device no Minister (with a *very* few exceptions) feels it proper to say "I've changed my mind". >This isn't a negotiation, Mike: it is government saying what is > going to happen. Negotiation was, I believe, Barry Gardiner's word for what'sgpoing in between him and BW at the moment. > It is called governing. And governing involves a heck of a lot of negotiation. What do you think has been going on between 10 & 11 Downing Street for the last ten years? The problem is that since 1979 the most importaqnt negotiations, between the Government and Parliament have stopped happening. I blame this on two leaders who each had a much bigger Parliementary majority than is good for the system and a messianic believe in their own rightness. > IMO what is going to happen is self evident. DEFRA will soon disappear and > that part of it dealing with BW matters - all of four of them - three if you > don't count the secretary (and if they all survive Gershon) - will appear > elsewhere under a different departmental organisation. One set of rumours saus that DEFRA will be enlarged by taking on Energy as well. >But don't do running > away with the idea that BW will be the same too. Certain parties from will > be allowed to keep face, it is true. Others will be culled, either sooner or > later, by this government or the next. I wish that was true, but I'd be very surprised if it happens. > Forgive me if I think that most of it has come about by a bad BW management > too centred on its bottom line and not centred enough on its customer base. Here again I fully agree with you, but the reason I don't believe this will be changed by Government is that the very thing that you and I complain of is exactly what BW has been told to do by DEFRA and the Treasury. I've always seen Robin Evans as a Treasury sock-puppet. Mike Stevens.
