Second quote of the day 5th July 2020

"Politics is vastly more complex than engineering, not least because policies affect millions of flesh and blood people rather than inanimate hunks of metal.

"But it is still worth asking, how would we feel if ministers and officials actively sought to measure the failings of policy?

"How would we feel if they were open about what they don't know? How would we react if they conducted experiments and pilots that went wrong but acted as signposts towards how to get better?

"Would we thank them for providing the data that can help improve society? Would we admire heir risk-taking? Would we embrace their candour?

"Or would we blame them for every admission of failure, scapegoat them and humiliate them, as so many TV and radio interviewers seek to do, driving them back into the spin and subterfuge that has become so familiar - with the consequence that, instead of learning from mistakes, we make the same mistakes again and again? 

"This is the elephant in the room - the problem Gove, perhaps understandably, didn't dare to touch."

(In his Ditchley lecture.) 

For a culture of true accountability isn't just about ministers and officials; it is also about those who sit in judgement upon them. In other words, us."


(Matthew Syed pinpoints one of the fundamental problems with politics in the modern age in Britain, America and many other countries in the final three paragraphs of an article in today's Sunday Times.)

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