It's going to be a busy day.
I was to be on Sky at 10.20 - that's now uncertain due to the situation in France.
I am on the Jeremy Vine Show on BBC Radio 2 at about 1.30 to 2.
Then I'm doing a Guardian podcast.
There are some local broadcasts this afternoon.
Then it's BBC 24 News at 7pm.
Followed by the Moral Maze at 8 on Radio 4.
That's it, I think....
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In between all that work, Richard, I thought this might make you smile (not sure of the original source but sent to me by a colleague). Very much Osborne, the Tories generally, and of course, the Lib Dems.
Government Theory
The tribal wisdom of the Dakota Indians, passed on from generation to generation, says that; “When you discover that you are riding a dead horse, best strategy is to dismount “. However, in government, more advanced strategies are often employed, such as:
1. Buying a stronger whip.
2. Changing riders.
3. Appointing a committee to study the horse.
4. Arranging to visit other countries to see how other cultures ride dead horses.
5. Lowering the standards so that dead horses can be included.
6. Reclassifying the dead horse as living-impaired.
7. Hiring outside contractors to ride the dead horse.
8. Harnessing several dead horses together to increase speed.
9. Providing additional funding and/or training to increase the dead horse’s performance.
10. Doing a productivity study to see if lighter riders would improve the dead horse’s performance.
11. Declaring that as the dead horse does not have to be fed, it is less costly, carries lower overhead and therefore contributes substantially more to the bottom line of the economy than do some other horses.
12. Rewriting the expected performance requirements for all horses.
And of course….
13 Promoting the dead horse to a supervisory position.
If you don’t understand this theory, you haven’t lived long enough.
@ Ivan – I remember showing this round my colleagues in the voluntary sector, in about 2000, when I was working at Barnet Voluntary Services Council as a Regeneration Officer. It was published in one of the excellent 3rd Sector magazines – can’t remember which – and came with amusing cartoons. Similarly unsourced, as I recall, but painfully funny, because it’s painfully true. Alas, after all the Coalition “deforms”, I suspect that it is civil society, and a democratically accountable polity that is the new “dead horse”, which they’ve killed using Naomi Kelin’s “Shock doctrine”.
I suspected it’d been around for a while, Andrew – to good not to have been – but I’d never seen it before today. Interesting you should have a background in the voluntary sector. I was a development officer with Mid Glamorgan Association of Voluntary Organisations and then Greater Manchester Transport Resource Unit (part and Manchester CVS as I recall) in what is now the dim and distant past.
How very true Ivan, unfortunately for most of us in the UK. I shall try and catch you tonight Richard on the Moral Maze; I normally avoid it but tonight’s one on taxation should be good.