3 December

This sign is most peoples’ wet dream writ large. But it’s bollocks. Here’s to the bureaucrats, society’s heroes. Why? It’s pretty simple. Every generation lives a certain time. It can’t reinvent history in every generation, and rediscover everything that has come before, the vast majority of what it knows and does it has to inherit from the past. And how does it do that? Through institutions - ‘bureaucracy’. They carry the collected wisdom and knowledge of history, in habits and procedures and laws etc. Ever noticed that during elections, life goes on pretty much as normal? That’s because nearly all the running of the country is done not by politicians, but by bureaucrats, implementing those long historical processes. And it’s the same even when we’re not in an election. Watch Yes Minister. If you want to live in nothing but the present with no bureaucracy, and with apologies to Michael Kato who banned my use of this reference, go and live in Syria. Or Afghanistan. Or Sierra Leone. Or look at Trump’s populist America, unrestrained by any experience and wisdom, from its bureaucrats. Let me know how you get on.