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Sep 10, 2023Liked by Colin Newlyn

"Working From The Beach:" Human nature is pretty much the same everywhere, so my 11 years with the Government of Ontario, Canada, is informative on the connection between (A) The Daily Mail headline, and (B) why government is so bad so much of the time.

I am a government cheerleader, not one of those naysayers who believe less government is always better. Governments are the foundation of all society. Without government, there is no society. That's the bias I am writing from. And my government service ended 7 years ago, so I'm not writing this to defend myself or my job.

Early in my 11 years with the Ontario government I read a news article about a scandalous conference the government had held for judges and crown attorneys. The article's "work from the beach" headline was that the conference was "at a RESORT with a GOLF COURSE." The horror! I am a buyer and my portfolio at a previous private sector employer was conference services so I read the article with professional interest.

There was no scandal. In fact, there was no news at all. A perfectly reasonable conference at a perfectly reasonable price. And no evidence that anyone played golf.

But this is how it works between the public (that's US folks, YOU AND ME), the media and the government. Some "journalist" has a slow day and turns a handful of mundane government invoices into a story using creative writing.

And here's the important part, which I saw and suffered through for 11 years: a government manager can be perfect, they can have a perfect staff, they can run a perfectly error-free operation (which, let's face it, is impossible) and this perfect manager STILL has no security because the media will enrage the voters over nothing at all, and our pencil-neck milquetoast elected representatives will throw that government manager under the bus in a SECOND rather than stand up to the media and the electorate and say they've got it wrong and they need to shut up.

The result? When even being perfect is not enough, taking the relatively huge risks of trying something new, of accepting change, of hiring innovative people with initiative, of looking for ideas to make things better -- all are impossible. Keep it the same. Stomp out initiative. Slam the door on new ideas. The fear that "something" might happen that ran through the workplace was subtle, but all pervasive and it affected everything.

That's why government stinks and can't seem to get better. It's because we, the people, lap up those stories about non-existent scandals and reward the media for them. So the next time the government treats you like crap, before condemning them, first turn around and ask what you've done to make them too afraid of you to try being any different.

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I love this comment. You’ve really hit the nail on the head.

Here in the UK, one side gets a much easier ride than the other, even though they are evidentially much worse at running public services AND more likely to have their noses in the trough.

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