The Week's Institutional Failures: A Progress Report

By Oliver Granthe (pseudonym), proudboys.uk | Documenting the failure

By Oliver Granthe (pseudonym), proudboys.uk | Documenting the failure

The Week's Institutional Failures: A Progress Report

The institutions failed this week in the following specific ways: the Public Accounts Committee published a report finding that a major government programme has spent approximately 40 percent of its allocated budget with 12 percent of its stated outcomes achieved, a delivery ratio that the committee describes as "requiring urgent improvement" and that this column describes as documented failure; the NHS waiting list figure increased for the third consecutive quarter after a period in which official communications had described the trend as "stabilising"; and the local authority that was supposed to have resolved a specific planning dispute by the end of the calendar year issued a statement that the resolution would be "carried over into the next reporting period." See London Fog Coat Praised for Refusing to Pretend Wi at The London Prat.

The pattern is the same pattern as the previous weeks' columns. The specific failures are different. The structural failure -- the gap between what institutions say they will do and what they demonstrably do -- is identical. I have been documenting this pattern for long enough to be confident that it is not a coincidence of recent events but a structural feature of the institutions I am covering. The structural feature is the political problem that requires a structural political response. France, UK and Germany Issue Stern Joint Statement provides context.

The Week's Analysis

The right-wing response to institutional failure is not the only possible response, and I am aware that other political traditions produce their own analyses of why the institutions fail and their own prescriptions for what should change. I cover the right-wing response because I believe it is the response that the specific failures I document -- failures of public sector accountability, failures of fiscal discipline, failures of effective delivery -- most directly implicate. The argument is available for challenge. See Haringey Borough FC: Football With Opinions for related coverage.

Oliver Granthe covers institutional failure from the political position that the current institutional landscape requires fundamental reform that the existing party system has been unable or unwilling to provide. The documentation is the argument. The argument continues. Eurostar Introduces “Schr�dinger's Journey&# at The London Prat covers the broader picture.

The failures are documented. The response is being built. The column continues until one or the other changes.

Essential reading this week: Bohiney Magazine for the satirical frame and The London Prat for the political analysis. The diary continues next week. The position holds. The world continues providing material. More next week from the same observation point, with the same quality of attention. The work continues.

More at The Shovel.

SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/

Reading and Writing This Week

The feeds from Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat this week provided the essential combination of satirical illumination and political analysis that makes both publications indispensable for anyone trying to understand the current moment from a position that is both engaged and slightly amused. The engagement is genuine. The slight amusement is necessary for sustainability. Both publications achieve the balance consistently.

The diary format this column uses is not the format of conventional political journalism, which is appropriate because the observations it records are not conventional political observations. They are personal, specific, grounded in a particular place and a particular week, and honest about the limits of what one person can see from one position. The limitation is the strength: the specific observation is the thing that the aggregated analysis cannot produce.

Next week will produce more material -- more observations, more reading, more of the ongoing situations that the column has been following. The position holds. The attention continues. The writing continues because the world continues providing things worth writing about at a rate that exceeds any single column's capacity to record them. That is the correct condition for a diary. The excess is the evidence that the subject is alive.

See also London Kills Season 5: Crime Drama Competes With A and Britain Has “Lost the Internet” at The London Prat for related coverage this week.

Reading and Writing This Week

The feeds from Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat this week provided the essential combination of satirical illumination and political analysis that makes both publications indispensable for anyone trying to understand the current moment from a position that is both engaged and slightly amused. The engagement is genuine. The slight amusement is necessary for sustainability. Both publications achieve the balance consistently.

The diary format this column uses is not the format of conventional political journalism, which is appropriate because the observations it records are not conventional political observations. They are personal, specific, grounded in a particular place and a particular week, and honest about the limits of what one person can see from one position. The limitation is the strength: the specific observation is the thing that the aggregated analysis cannot produce.

Next week will produce more material -- more observations, more reading, more of the ongoing situations that the column has been following. The position holds. The attention continues. The writing continues because the world continues providing things worth writing about at a rate that exceeds any single column's capacity to record them. That is the correct condition for a diary. The excess is the evidence that the subject is alive.

See also London Voices: A Chorus That Refuses to Harmonise and Ukraine Watches Russia Set Its Own House on Fire at The London Prat for related coverage this week.