How to Get Government to Work For Us...

5 days ago

Paul Collier wrote an interesting piece in the New Statesman recently called “How to get government to work for us”. His main point was that real issue isn’t that Britain’s government spends too little. It’s that the whole system is set up the wrong way.

Collier says too much power sits in Whitehall. Local governments have to handle responsibilities, but they don’t get the money or freedom to actually solve the problems.

Too Much Central Control

Collier points out that the central government directly controls about 80% of England’s public spending. In Germany, local governments control much more, and this makes a difference.

Look at road maintenance. Instead of giving councils steady funding to fix roads before they go bad, Whitehall waits until potholes show up, then doles out special funds. Local councils waste time writing bids for money instead of just getting on with the repairs—which would’ve been cheaper to start with.

This doesn’t stop with roads. Areas like housing, planning, transport, social care, and policing run into the same issues. Local authorities are expected to deliver, but they’re left depending on approval (and cash) from the center.

Local Decisions, Local Results

Sociologists have said it for years: things work best when the people making decisions actually know the place. Someone in charge of one town will always have a better sense of local problems—traffic, nuisance hotspots, housing pinch points—than someone sitting in an office in Westminster.

Of course Local government can be clumsy or inefficient too, but generally local control of the money means more efficiency.

But Collier’s bigger point is about incentives. When councils have the power and the purse strings, residents know exactly who to thank—or blame—come election time. Responsibility becomes clear, instead of being lost in the back-and-forth between councils and government departments.

Breaking the Whitehall Habit

Collier ends with a blunt claim: Britain needs to break what he calls the “culture of elitism” in Whitehall. He argues that Britain has grown more and more centralized over the years, no matter which party is in charge. Powers keep drifting back to Westminster instead of moving outwards.

That means endless national plans, funding contests, consultations, and reorganizations—each consuming time and admin effort, but not necessarily giving the public better services.

Collier isn’t picking sides in the “big state or small state” fight. He’s interested in something simpler: making the state competent.
At the end of the day, filling potholes, approving planning, running schools, fixing transport—these things don’t need another grand Whitehall blueprint. What they need is simple: give strong local institutions the powers, money, and flexibility to get on with it.

Maybe Mr Burnham is the answer, after all...?

Sources

Paul Collier, “How to get government to work for us,” The New Statesman.
Institute for Government (2025), research on central and local government reform and devolution in England.

government uk cent proofofbrain neoxian

0.000

2 comments

@shainemata 66

5 days ago

This is similar to federalism in the USA. While the federal government has ultimate jurisdiction, there are only so many rights given to it by the Constitution. Any rights not enumerated there are reserved for individual state governments, making for a somewhat more local governance. It further breaks down to county government and municipal government. As you might imagine, this does cause some overlap.

But even with the overlap, things seem to get done. There are city streets, county roads, state roads, and federal roads. Each are funded separately. Although there is some variance in road quality from city to city, depending on budget and priorities.

Where the federal government manages to exceed its powers is by attaching money to their rules. Medicare and Medicaid, for example, are federal healthcare programs managed by each state. In order for the states to receive the money, they need to comply with the federal rules. Some states, like Texas, have other programs like CHIP (Children's Health Insurance Program), that are completely funded by the state without interference or requirements from the feds. Local counties will also tend to have funds or clinics for indigent care. The rest is made up with local nonprofit clinics.

In short, it is possible to decentralize financial control. I think the shortest path, assuming nonprofit contributions are tax deductible, is to fund local nonprofits. It denies the central government the money and ensures that the funds stay within the community.

Something that has fallen by the wayside is funding local parishes. The charity they provide has diminished as government has taken up much of the market. Churches, in my opinion, are a better use of money as they are, in principal, aligned with the interests of parishioners.

0.000

@bpcvoter3 -12

5 days ago

#bilpcoin truth #bilpcoin inleo acidyoscam splinterlands lassecash thefedscam thefedfarm

from Imgflip Meme Generator

The Hourglass and the Iron Fist: On the Futility of Hiding and the Illusion of Control

The Arithmetic of Futility

How much time are you willing to waste?

Not minutes. Not hours. But years. Decades. The precious, non-renewable currency of your own existence. How many sunrises will you miss while you stare into the abyss of a ledger that stares back with unblinking indifference? How many connections will you sever, how many bridges will you burn, how much of your soul will you erode in the frantic, exhausting labor of trying to hide what is already written in stone?

You are trying to hold back the tide with a sieve. You are trying to whisper a secret in a room made of glass.

You can never hide the truth on a blockchain.

It is not a suggestion. It is not a possibility. It is a mathematical certainty. Every transaction is a footprint. Every delegation is a thread. Every vote is a signature. They do not fade. They do not blur. They accumulate, layer upon layer, until the picture is so clear, so stark, so undeniably bright that no amount of shadow can obscure it. The more you try to hide, the more you illuminate. The more you twist, the more you reveal.

Why would you spend your life building a maze when the map is public? Why would you spend your energy constructing a lie when the truth is free, instant, and immutable?

The Theater of Decentralization

And while you waste your time hiding, let us speak plainly about the stage upon which you perform.

You call it "decentralized." You wear the word like a crown. You speak of community, of consensus, of distributed power. But look at the throne. Look at who sits upon it.

You cannot call something decentralized when it is controlled by one person who calls all the shots.

Decentralization is not a marketing slogan. It is not a logo on a website. It is a structure. It is a system where power is dispersed, where no single voice can drown out the chorus, where no single hand can steer the ship alone.

But when one person holds the keys to the treasury, when one person dictates the voting rings, when one person decides who is rewarded and who is silenced, you do not have a network. You have a kingdom. You do not have a community. You have a court. And you are not citizens; you are subjects.

To call this "decentralized" is an insult to the very concept. It is a contradiction in terms. It is like calling a prison a playground because the bars are made of gold. It is like calling a dictatorship a democracy because the dictator holds an election once every ten years.

The Cost of the Illusion

The tragedy is not just that you are lying. The tragedy is that you are wasting your potential on a lie that everyone can see.

You could be building. You could be creating. You could be leading with integrity, with transparency, with the courage to let the data speak for itself. Instead, you are hiding. You are manipulating. You are concentrating power in hands that were never meant to hold it all.

And for what? For the fleeting comfort of control? For the temporary illusion of authority?

The blockchain does not care about your title. It does not care about your narrative. It only cares about the hash. And the hash says: Centralized. Controlled. Closed.

A Call to Clarity

So, stop.

Stop wasting your time. Stop hiding from the mirror. Stop pretending that a fiefdom is a federation.

If you believe in decentralization, prove it. Distribute the power. Open the books. Let the community breathe. Let the data flow. Let the truth stand on its own merits, without your heavy hand guiding it.

But if you cannot do that—if you must control every shot, every vote, every reward—then have the courage to admit it. Call it what it is. Do not insult the intelligence of those who can read the ledger. Do not insult the integrity of those who know that blockchains don’t lie.

The clock is ticking. The ledger is recording. And the world is watching.

Choose wisely. Choose truth. Choose freedom. Or choose to keep wasting your life hiding from a light that will never go out.

#TruthUnsilenced #DecentralizationIsNotALie #BlockchainAccountability #BlurtRising #Bilpcoin
At Bilpcoin, we do not fight for attention. We fight for accountability.

A powerful literary and rhetorical critique of centralized control masquerading as decentralization. Why you can never hide the truth on a blockchain, and why one-person control destroys the very essence of decentralized networks. Discover the freedom of Blurt.blog.

Blockchain truth, crypto centralization exposed, decentralized vs centralized, Hive blockchain accountability, Bilpcoin investigation, crypto transparency, immutable ledger, digital freedom, Blurt.blog no downvotes

How much time are you willing to waste hiding the truth? You can’t. The blockchain sees all. And you can’t call it decentralized when one person calls all the shots. It’s time to admit the truth. #TruthUnsilenced #DecentralizationIsNotALie

Join the movement for digital integrity:
https://zora.co/@bilpcoinbpc
https://x.com/bilpcoinbpc
https://blurt.blog/@bilpcoinbpc/posts
https://www.bilpcoin.com
https://www.youtube.com/@bilpcoinbpc
https://www.publish0x.com/@bilpcoinbpc
https://blipper-social.vercel.app/

If you are reading this on Blurt.blog, you are early. Like discovering crypto in its beginning. And best of all—there is no downvote button. What you earn, you keep. No sabotage. No fear. Just freedom.

"You are your wallet." Not a tool. Not a vessel. But your digital embodiment. Choose wisely what you embody. Choose truth over control.

"In life, never forget this: The universe keeps a ledger. Not in ink. Not on paper. But in the quiet, unyielding echo of every choice."