Latest news with #MartinKettle
The Guardian
2 days ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
Government is a living organism, not a machine
Martin Kettle is right to call for leaders who can operate the machinery of government (Opinion, 7 August). However, it should be made clear that the machinery of government – in which I work as a senior civil servant – is not a 'machine', as many current leaders assume. In his 2024 book On Leadership, Tony Blair says leaders often make the mistake of believing that the machinery of government is 'like an instrument in their hands' that they can learn how to use. It is not an instrument, he points out, but 'a living organism [with] a mind and a temperament'. This common misunderstanding of the nature of the system underpins the government's consistent inability to deliver. Anne Owers' independent prison capacity review is just the latest example. Machines can be mastered with manuals, precise plans and predictable cause-and-effect levers, but living organisms behave differently. As anyone who has raised a toddler or a teenager can attest: predictability and cause-and-effect do not apply. Linear approaches suitable for the 'machine', such as plans and targets, are ineffective, serving only to increase bureaucracy. Meanwhile, all remains quiet on the delivery front. Owers' review evidences this, describing the prisons-capacity response as bureaucratic and repetitive, with too much discussion and too little action. Treating the machinery of government like a complex organism, rather than a machine, is the only way it will be effectively deployed. The UK government's own guidance on 'systems thinking for civil servants', as well as research by the Institute for Government, acknowledges this, with the latter noting that the machinery of government cannot be 'controlled through plans and 'levers''. Yet time and again, leaders fall back on the same familiar levers, expecting different results. They deploy tools suitable for the 'machine', including endless plans and committees. Bureaucracy begets bureaucracy, while delivery is missing in action. Breaking this cycle will remain unsuccessful for as long as leaders continue to treat government as a 'machine'.Name and address supplied Martin Kettle correctly identifies the stranglehold that Treasury orthodoxy has on government, but does not go far enough in identifying the source. Supply-side theory claims that growth comes when entrepreneurs are given incentives such as tax breaks or subsidies. Private businesses will employ people and the wealth they create, the taxes they pay, will allow government to improve public services. Forty years of failure has not dented faith in this flawed doctrine. Perhaps because those who administer the policies do not suffer the effects. Instead of giving money to rich businessmen, much of which finds its way into tax havens, why not try using it productively through existing channels? Public spending is not a dirty word. Creating a safe, healthy and prosperous society is the essence of government. Local authorities, especially in poor areas, are desperate for funds to keep their communities in a half-decent state: give them money to rebuild and repair, perhaps with encouragement to source locally. Bring in a local income tax instead of rates. Reverse the increase in employer's national insurance contributions, which is a tax on jobs. When demand increases, supply will follow. In this way the economy will grow organically, sustainably and all around the DaviesNewton-le-Willows, Merseyside Have an opinion on anything you've read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.
The Guardian
5 days ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
The government needs to face up to reality
Martin Kettle's analysis of the dysfunctionality of government is spot-on, but incomplete (The biggest problem for Starmer and co: the machinery of government is broken and they can't fix it, 7 August). The core problem is our unwillingness to face up to reality, whether it is on tax, the need to invest in reform, the impact of Brexit, the pros and cons of legal migration, the real steps necessary to stem illegal migration at source, the implications of the new cold war, or the new world order under Donald Trump. By biting our tongue and trying to fudge the hard choices, successive governments have both confused and misled. Now is the time to treat the public as adults and trust them to recognise the need to get real. We need to rebuild the country to make it relevant for both today and the future, and that means moving beyond the Widow Twankey politics of saying a lot but doing nothing. Now is the time for genuine leadership and a promise to lead, not follow, the KellyPrime minister's official spokesperson 2001-07 Have an opinion on anything you've read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.
The Guardian
04-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
How the use of a word in the Guardian has gotten some readers upset
In Shakespeare's Henry VI, Part II, a messenger breathlessly announces to the king that, 'Jack Cade hath gotten London bridge'. Hold this late 16th-century text in mind as we fast forward to last week when Martin Kettle, associate editor and columnist at the Guardian in the UK, was seen to suggest in an opinion piece that, if King Charles has pushed the boundaries of neutrality, such as with his speech to open the new Canadian parliament, he has so far 'gotten away with it'. In a letter published the next day, a reader asked teasingly if this use of 'gotten' – and another writer's reference to a 'faucet' – were signs the Guardian had fallen into line with Donald Trump's demand that news agencies adopt current US terminology, such as referring to the 'Gulf of America'. Another, who wrote to me separately, had first seen the article in the print edition and expected subeditors (or copy editors, if you wish) would eventually catch up and remove 'gotten', which 'is not a word in British English'. She was surprised to find the online version not only unchanged but with the phrase repeated in the headline. Queries over US English spellings or 'Americanisms' form a small but steady strand of correspondence to my office; 'normalcy', 'airplane' and 'hot flash' are among recent contested usages. We explain that while the Guardian was founded in the UK, and this remains its biggest edition, it is 204 years later a global media organisation with two-thirds of its digital audience outside the UK. And the reason some articles use American English is that they are produced by Guardian US, which was launched in September 2007 and works (like Guardian Australia, established in 2013) to serve readers in that country as well as globally. Naturally, local spelling and grammar is followed, although all Guardian articles share a website and one with wider appeal may appear on the front of the UK online edition. Only if a US story is to run in the printed newspaper is it re-edited for British English. The difference in language works both ways, occasionally leading an American eye to mistake British spelling in an online article for error. 'The word 'defense' was spelled 'defence' over and over!' wrote one reader. 'I don't need a job, but I'd be happy to help with your editing.' I can only hope the above explanation reduces consternation. Getting back to 'gotten', which has been described by the linguist David Crystal in his Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language as 'probably the most distinctive of all the [American English/British English] grammatical differences'. Well, to set the record straight, this did not come from Kettle's pen. He wrote 'got' but there was an unwanted change during the editing process, with 'gotten' also making it into the web headline. In my view, it was right that the published piece was subsequently amended back to the writer's voice. However, it would be a mistake to regard language as a fortress. It has always changed. 'Gotten' was used in Middle English and Early Modern English (Shakespeare uses it five times, says Crystal), before falling largely out of use in Britain by the early 1800s, except in 'ill-gotten'. Early copies of the Guardian show some remnant sprinklings: in 1842, it reported that special constables in Rochdale, whose wages had gone unpaid, feared 'this money had gotten into wrong hands'. But in the US, where this past participle of 'get' had travelled with English colonists, its use continued, and lately appears to be making a return to base. 'It's certainly in young people's speech now,' says Crystal. 'I don't use it at all, but Ben [his son and often co-author] does. You can see the rise in usage if you do an Ngram search,' he adds, sending me a Google graph showing frequency in books, with a steep upward curve from around the start of this century. Crystal says it is also important to note that Americans use both got and gotten. 'What this means is that Brits are likely to overuse gotten, thinking it's always a replacement for got, when it isn't.' Rebecca Nicholson, who in reviewing the BBC documentary The Rise and Fall of Michelle Mone, had ventured that 'once you turn on the faucet of public attention, trying to turn it off again is a sisyphean task', was amazed to find she had written 'faucet', and could only think that in the moment it 'sounded better'. Such 'borrowing' is a way that natural language shift occurs, and I see the extra force here in 'faucet'. Nicholson can also summon history in her defence. The OED tells us that, in its first sense, faucet is 'a wooden tap for drawing liquid from a barrel, cask, or tub', deriving from the French 'fausette' or 'fausset' and with earliest known use in Middle English. As a later word for a plumbing fixture, it is 'chiefly US', with speakers of English elsewhere typically using 'tap'. And there, in whichever glorious variety of English you use, we turn off – but your messages are welcome to flow. Elisabeth Ribbans is the Guardian's global readers'
