It is also important that the cuts agenda does not deflect from wider reforms. First, the civil service and ministerial merry-go-round needs to be ended, with project management skills improved. In 2009, I became the fifth transport secretary in barely three years. In my previous three-and-a-half years as schools minister, I served under three secretaries of state in a department renamed and reorganised twice. This is no way to run the country.It is a similar story with the civil service, which is often far from permanent or expert, despite its image. As schools minister, driving forward the multibillion pound academy schools policy to replace failing schools, the biggest single obstacle I faced was the weakness of the Whitehall machine. In eight years I saw six directors of the academies programme come and go, for reasons entirely divorced from the requirements of the programme. All were capable, but policymaking and project management skills were often lacking.
Anthony Barnett on 05 Dec 09"But there is a deeper struggle at the base of this issue - the ownership of public space, which the state is consciously laying claim to in these actions. Photographers are stopped in the name of protecting us all from terrorism but actually this can also be seen to be a territorial incursion. What used to be public space is rapidly becoming "state space", the area owned, patrolled and policed by various agencies of the state, which establish their ownership by totemic tribal markers. I am of course referring to the CCTV camera."
