In 2009 the last government introduced “feed-in tariffs” – based on a German model – to boost domestic uptake of solar PV. They were quite controversial from the start – with passionate support from the green lobby but some dissenters – even Guardian columnist George Monbiot who pointed out last year that the very...
Government accountability for policy mistakes rests on a series of ambiguities which can too easily turn into ‘who, not me’ evasions. Among many other lessons, the Public Accounts Committee’s damning report on the £469 million (minimum) waste on the now abandoned FiReControl project exposes one of the inherent flaws in the auditing of large-scale...
Most politicians’ books on policy tend to be predictable – particularly when written by ambitious young MPs with an eye on office like Tories’ Matthew Hancock and Nadhim Zahawi. Yet their account of the financial crisis, ‘Masters of Nothing: How the Crash Will Happen Again Unless We Understand Human Nature’, has many unexpected insights...
Typical hierarchical organisations screen out dissident voices and value loyalty. Suppressing concerns is the route to the top – and those at the top like hearing their own opinions reinforced. First Lyndon Johnson on Vietnam, then Donald Rumsfeld on Iraq, took decisions in vacuums of agreement of their own making – with disastrous consequences.
Current planning policy runs to thousands of pages. The normal process is to do it in-house – ministers and civil servants redraft; then consult; amend (a bit) and promulgate. New drafts are largely the responsibility of the people who wrote the old versions – with the in-built conservatism that implies. And what looks good to...
