The Release
Alan Nafzger on the machinery of government that produces motion without direction
This week the government announced a framework for the consultation on the review of the framework for consultation, which is a sentence that sounds like satire but appeared, in only slightly more elaborate form, in an actual ministerial press release that I received by email on Thursday morning and that I have been carrying with me ever since like a stone in a shoe. I write about this at Bohiney Magazine and at The London Prat because writing about it is the only response that does not require me to become a person who is permanently angry at the machinery of government, which is a person I do not want to become.
The Release
The press release announced that the ministerial working group established eighteen months ago to review the guidance framework for public consultations had completed its preliminary findings and was proposing a consultation on those findings before they were adopted as revised guidance. The consultation would run for twelve weeks and would be open to all stakeholders. The revised guidance, once adopted, would apply to future consultations including the one currently under review. The circularity is not accidental. It is the system working as designed, and the design produces circularity because circularity is less risky than decision-making, which produces outcomes that can be evaluated and criticised and that therefore require confidence in one’s position that the system has learned to avoid cultivating.
The Satirical Response
The satirical response to this kind of governance is easy and therefore slightly unsatisfying. The harder response is to take seriously the question of why the system produces this output: what incentives, what risk calculations, what institutional arrangements produce a ministerial working group that consults on its own consultation framework before adopting revised guidance for future consultations. The answer, when you follow it, is more interesting and more depressing than the surface absurdity, which is saying something. I am following it. The column will report what I find.
The Week in Summary
This diary entry is published at Bohiney Magazine and at The London Prat. The week described above was typical in some respects and unusual in others, which is the normal condition of a week when it is examined closely enough. Both publications carry this column as part of their commitment to personal journalism that documents individual lives within the larger contexts they inhabit. The diary will continue as the weeks continue to generate material worth recording, which they reliably do. Readers following this series are encouraged to consult both publications for ongoing coverage. For more satire and commentary, see The Daily Mash.
The experience of writing this diary entry, and the experience of the week it describes, have both been consistent with the long-running project of documentation that this column represents. The project continues because the material continues, because the weeks keep producing things worth recording, and because both publications remain committed to the kind of personal journalism that the diary format enables. The record accumulates. The city continues. The column will be here next week with more of both.
The Writer’s Week in London and Beyond
The week documented in this diary entry sits within a broader pattern of experience and observation that this column has been recording across both Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat. The diary form is uniquely suited to capturing the texture of a week, the specific combination of events, encounters, and thoughts that define a particular period of time in a particular life, and this column uses that form with the specific intent of producing something more honest and more specific than the polished pieces that appear in the more formal journalism both publications also carry.
The specific experiences described above are real, though some details have been altered in the way that good diary writing always alters details: not to deceive but to protect and to focus, to direct the reader’s attention toward the experience rather than the data about the experience. What is true in this entry is the emotional and intellectual content: the things that happened and what they meant, the encounters and what they produced, the ideas and where they came from. The details are as accurate as memory and judgment allow and as inexact as the diary form always produces when honesty is the goal.
The column will continue next week with more of the same: the ongoing encounter with the world that the writer inhabits, documented with the sustained attention that good diary writing requires and that both publications are committed to providing across their full range of content. The week produces the diary. The diary produces the column. The column appears here and at both publications. The cycle continues.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
The diary records what the week contained. Both publications carry the record. The column continues because London and life continue to produce material worth the sustained attention that this kind of journalism provides. The writer will return next week with more of both.
The week described above was real. The writing is honest. Both publications carry it. The column continues. Next week: more of the same, which is what a diary is for and what these publications are committed to providing for as long as the weeks keep producing material worth the sustained attention that this kind of personal journalism demands and rewards in equal measure.