The extraordinary failure of the public sector in Britain, despite massive funding by the Labour government, needs some explanation.

The poster child for this disaster is Baby P, who died at the hands of monsters who were meant to protect him. The Social Services department charged with preventing it, failed so completely that no confidence can be placed in any similar organization anywhere in the country.

The people in charge barefacedly claimed they “followed procedure”, as if procedure were their only duty, not actual child protection. Failure of the procedure was the fault of politicians, not their own. Unhappily, that is mostly true.

The appalling rash of incompetence across most of Britain’s public sector, involving the police, child protection agencies, exam boards … and many other examples, highlights the need for a total reform of how Britain is governed.

Superdemocracy is an idea I had a long while ago while musing on the optimum hierarchy for any organization. It’s really a variation on meritocracy, so will be dismissed by followers of the postmodern tendency.

Imagine if you will the billions of decisions taken daily in businesses, agencies, governments, and other organizations up and down the country. Most of them will be made at nodal points where power has settled and accumulated over time, and where empires are ruthlessly defended. In other words, they will be taken well above the level of optimum efficiency — the Point of Maximum Competence.

A little thought reveals that almost all decisions are made at points where the decision-takers are not fully aware of the complexities of the task. In today’s technical society, that disjunction is growing all the time.

If each decision is depicted as a small arrow, it’s not hard to visualize most of them pointing downward, albeit by a tiny amount. Day after day, these billions of small decrements add up to a massive efficiency deficit, which can only be supported by vast quantities of public money propping up the whole edifice. They will also need statistical fallacies to claim success where failure is the norm.

Small businesses, by contrast, develop the expertise to avoid this tendency or they die, which is why they are usually the most dynamic elements in any economy.

Big businesses become more like governments as they mature, even creating social security and foreign affairs departments — look at Google and Microsoft.

But government is the principal problem. In the UK, central government operates the highly technical National Health Service, with predictably dismal, and costly, results.

Government also runs the State schools, transport and other big areas of public concern. It now appropriates getting on for 50pc of national income and employs 25pc of the workforce. Let’s call that, Decremental Drainage. The losses are huge and ongoing.

Governmental decisions are taken at the Level of Minimum Competence. In the UK, we also have the even more remote European level in Brussels — the Level of Maximum Incompetence. Why would any decisions, beyond essential cross-border issues, ever be sent to Brussels?

Conjure up a vision of decisions being taken much further down the food chain at the point where all the complexities and variations of the particular case are fully appreciated. Imagine all those billions of arrows pointing upwards by a small increment.

Jump forward a year or so and listen to that faint, distant rumbling of a tidal wave just visible on the horizon. It’s a tidal wave of MONEY. In the public sector that would translate as COMPETENCE, and hence lower public debt.

Look at any successful operation and you’ll see decision-making at the Point of Maximum Competence, or quite near to it. Examine any failing organization and you’ll discover decisions being made well above those levels by people miserably ensconced in positions of conceit and self-delusion. There is no exception to this rule. Decisions, like cream in a milk bottle, will always rise to the top.

All decisions therefore should be taken at the Point of Maximum Competence. The CEO role should comprise little more than shaking the milk bottles all day long.

Superdemocracy and representative democracy
Representative democracy, our standard political institution in the West, is vital for two reasons:

1. It spreads decision-making thinly, ensuring that power doesn’t concentrate in too few hands, and
2. It allows ordinary people to feel they are represented in the highest taxing and lawmaking councils of the land.

Point 1, of course, is easily bypassed by determined politicians with a decent majority in Parliament. Elective dictatorship is a curse of the British parliamentary system, caused mainly by “the Sovereignty of Parliament” — but that’s another story.

As Churchill may well have implied, you wouldn’t appoint a CEO of a major organization by a kind of X Factor televised beauty parade. “Democracy,” he said, “is a bad form of Government, but it’s better than any of the others.”

We have to recognize that most politicians are rank amateurs at what they do — and it shows. Seizing on a dangerously-small stock of information and experience, while being ignorant of the complexities of the case, they often make huge, irreversible blunders paid for by the rest of us.

Clearly, representative democracy is necessary. But it needs to be modified still further to limit the amount of decision-making available to the often hick-town amateur actors who rise to the top in the election process.

Using Superdemocracy as the principle of governance across a whole society would naturally rob the dilettantes of power and add a huge efficiency increment to a country’s earning power.

Simply passing power downwards — or sideways, in the case of “devolution” — is not enough. A root and branch examination of decisions, and who takes them, is vital to rebalance the system.

David Cameron, Iain Duncan Smith, and the next Conservative Government should put constitutional change on its agenda as a matter of urgency.

John Evans

Well, that’s the Olympics over for another four years.

What! I hear you say, it’s only just starting? Are you having a laugh?

In modern times, the opening ceremony has become the Olympic Games. The rest is substandard minority sports played out by complete unknowns on behalf of various pharmaceutical companies.

A few score cyclists riding round and round a velodrome — how many know what a velodrome is? The Tour de France is a much greater spectacle.

Meanwhile, half a hundred rowers pull their way down a canal in a park. I don’t think I can stifle this yawn for much longer.

And all those athletes running round a track in pursuit of the big advertising contacts a gold medal will bring. Everyone wants to be a model these days. Whatever happened to real men?

For this, China has turned its capital Beijing into an armed camp, ringed by their version of Patriot missiles, just in case someone somewhere tries to disrupt the event. They have, but it’s in Georgia and it’s the Russians.

I have to admit though, the opening ceremony was without doubt the greatest show ever put on anywhere on the planet at any time. It wasn’t the most tinglingly enjoyable, like a big Royal event in London, but it had more Wow factor than any other comparable bash. It was massive, unremitting — it lasted four hours — and had a machine-like precision that was quite mesmerising.

Pity poor London which has to match that in just four years from now. Can a capital city every bit as ancient as the former Peking dust off its old bones and produce a show as scintillating as the new Emperors of the Middle Kingdom have done?

That is to miss the point entirely. Britain is not a command State like China. The English don’t go in for that kind of mass synchronized eventing. Anyone who has watched our football team knows how unsynchronized we can be.

We’re a nation of individualists who rather resent being pushed around by our rulers. Besides, we are more than a little ironic and prefer our patriotism laced with a great deal of humour. Think Gilbert and Sullivan and you’re on the page.

The problem London has is that its Olympics is in the hands of the same team that brought you the Millennium Dome, the Great Wall of Fire across the Thames that fizzled out like a damp squib, the Millennium Bridge that wobbled so much people were seasick crossing it, and a display meant to highlight 2000 years of British history that included a troupe of Brazilian dancers, snowboarding, an Irish presenter, and the Archbishop of Canterbury. Way too much irony!

I refer, of course, to those prize Charlies, New Labour.

Tessa Jowell is the Olympics Minister. This is a lady who has been Minister for “Fun” for donkeys’ years and was demoted to her present position a year ago. She has never run anything in her entire life apart from bits of bureaucratic machinery. Naturally, the cost of Olympic contracts is rising by the week.

Her husband was allegedly involved in bribery scandals with the Italian Prime Minister, and such was the fuss, Tessa had to separate from him, while denying all knowledge of his activities.

Thankfully, London now has a real showman as its Mayor, one Boris Johnson, a chap who knows a thing or two about irony and has actually appeared on game shows. We should also have a different government in 2010, when David Cameron is almost certain to be Prime Minister — he’s 25 percent ahead in the key marginal seats.

Perhaps the most important point is that London can’t be taken over in the way that Beijing has. It’s essentially hundreds of small villages where the old fields in between have been built up over centuries. Many boroughs retain their villagey character. The Olympics will practically disappear when plonked down in that rather dismal part of London hollowed out for the even more depressing stadiums and fun arenas. Like the Dome, there will be no sign of it anywhere that tourists actually go.

I would like to be able to summon up more enthusiasm for this project than I can, but the Olympic Games has become a crashing bore. Only a bigger and more spectacular opening ceremony each time masks the fact that the sport is a sham and the nuts and bolts rusted beyond repair.

The irony is, London is just not capable of that kind of opening show. Amid the disappointment, we may finally realize that this overblown extravaganza is simply not worth disrupting our lives for.

The German playwright Bertolt Brecht once wrote a poem in support of a peasant’s revolt. When he presented it to the leaders of the uprising, they told him, “Our people won’t like this. Can’t you change it?”

“There’s nothing wrong with the poem,” retorted Brecht, “Change your people”.

Old Bertie would have made a fine President of the EU Commission in Brussels, for that comes very close to the European elite’s reaction to Ireland’s No vote in yesterday’s referendum on the proposed EU constitution.

Quick Recap for the Uninitiated
The original European Union constitution was rejected two years ago in referendums by the French and the Dutch. Had Britain been allowed the promised vote, it would have been slaughtered, but the No results on the continent saved Tony Blair’s face.

The bureaucrats of Brussels, urged on by Blair and Germany, then shuffled the pack, cut out a few cosmetic bits and renamed the document the European Reform Treaty. This is now in process of ratification around Europe. Only Ireland was given a referendum on it. Britain’s treacherous government under Gordon Brown defaulted on its manifesto promise and is currently forcing the treaty through Parliament to bypass the inevitable verdict of the people.

Yesterday, the Irish said No! … emphatically.
/Recap

This morning the EU is urging the other 26 countries to continue with their own treaty ratification processes, even though it requires unanimity to become law.

The simple fact is, Europe’s political class wants this “constitution” — so-called because it gives the EU a legal identity for the first time — while the people do not.

There are half a billion people against half a thousand politicians. Who will win?

The Commission’s legal team is already working on how to implement most of the constitution’s contents without the need for a treaty. In other words, smuggling most of it into law by the back door.

Why does Britain, the most Eurosceptic nation in Europe, put up with this ghastly authoritarianism? For the same reason we sleepwalked into two world wars in the last century. We preferred not to think about it until it became inevitable.

Sometimes apathy can kill.

There comes a time in the life of every nation when a once-in-a-generation change creeps up on it unobserved.

In a single day, something grabs the country by the throat, destroys the prevailing calamity, and reveals a bright new landscape of infinite possibility.

Yesterday, that tipping point occurred in middle-England, transforming Britain overnight from a grubby little socialist island off the north-west corner of Europe, into Borisland.

In the context of massive gains by Conservatives in the local elections, London swept away its Mayor, Red Ken Livingstone — who encouraged every terrorist and barmy oddball in exchange for votes — and out popped Boris Johnson.

Boris is a classical scholar who could easily double as a standup comedian. Indeed he often chairs the popular TV panel show Have I Got News For You.

His opponents regularly portray him as “priapic” and a “buffoon”, slurs that have only embellished his aura. Being a priapic buffoon is not an easy accomplishment. Try it.

In fact, as a former editor of the prestigious and gentlemanly journal, The Spectator, he is far from making the “B” and “P” words his own.

As well as holding the Parliamentary seat of Henley, Boris is possessed of an unshakeably amiable nature and an easy approachability that makes him a huge favourite with all kinds of people.

Syntagma does not underestimate Boris as many do, nor do we underestimate the size of the task now facing him. Governing London is no job for the fainthearted or the incompetent. For now, it is enough that he isn’t Ken.

Soon though he’ll be called upon to show his mettle. We have no doubt he will succeed and lead the charge for his party leader, David Cameron, to become Prime Minister, whenever the general election is called.

Hail to Boris, Chieftan of London, the greatest city on earth — apart from Exeter, of course.

It may be crisis point in the world of financial markets, banks, Treasuries, Exchequers and Kings’ Counting Houses but, here in the South-West of England, spring has truly sprung.

A carpet of daffodils heralds spring in the northern hemisphere

I’m aware that the weather can be as treacherous as the stock markets, but no-one can doubt that there’s a bullish mood in the bulbous population just below ground.

With flooding and mayhem elsewhere in the country, we at least have a sign of what is to come.

Let us hope it’s a metaphor for the world economy.

I’ve written a number of times about the new Apple store about to open in our town here in the West Country of England. While looking out for local information on an opening date, the following email arrived for me this morning from Apple :

If you look at it carefully, you’ll see it’s precisely geo-targeted. There’s no mention of a town or city, just the shopping complex : Princesshay. No-one outside a couple of counties would know what this was. So how did they do it?

Putting on my Sherlock Holmes deer-stalker hat, I’ve concluded the information must have been gleaned from my membership of Apple iTunes, possibly from credit card details. Even so, that’s very precise targeting and shows what can be done in the age of the internet.

We have known for a while that Google is seeking ways of marrying person-specific advertising with worldwide IP television. Apple seems to have beaten them to it with city-specific advertising by email.

Some might call it spam, but I’m grateful for the information.

Well, we never use cliches here at Syntagma. Nelson’s Trafalgar refrain is all over the papers today and on everyone’s lips — but not ours.

After musing briefly about whether to go to Paris to watch the Rugby World Cup Final between England and South Africa today, I decided against it. An autumn day in the French capital in the middle of a transport strike, cool temperatures, cool Parisians and hundreds of thousands of rugger fans is not as enticing as it might sound at last-orders in the local pub.

However, England’s greatest fan, Prince Harry, will probably be there, together with his South African girlfriend, Chelsy Davy, who will need all her diplomatic skills not to cheer every Springbok score. That match will be as interesting as the game itself.

Prince Harry at the semi-final when England beat France

Syntagma predicts an England win. The team will be two points adrift with seconds of the match to go. Jonny Wilkinson will receive a pass outside the Springboks’ ten-yard line, look up at the posts and kick a perfect drop goal to take the match by one point.

How do I know this? It happens every time : in the semi-final last week, and in the previous final in Australia four years ago. It’s now an established tradition. A British version of Groundhog day.

And Syntagma’s prediction for the Formula One World Championship in Brazil tomorrow? Lewis Hamilton, 22, will win in his rookie season, making sporting history in the process. He reminds me of that line in the film, Chariots of Fire : “God made me fast, and when I run, I can feel his pleasure.”

Who says the English are no good at sport? Actually, I think that may have been me.

I don’t normally get caught up in the spasms of patriotic fever that grip the nation whenever England or a GB team reach a major sporting final — which thankfully is quite rare.

However, Saturday’s Rugby World Cup final in Paris between what was recently a no-hopers’ England team, and the seemingly unbeatable South Africa, is catching everyone’s attention, not least in that sleepy hollow of scholarly values, the Syntagma office.

One of the reasons is that in the next few days the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, is about to enact one of the great betrayals in history — signing the shamefully dishonest and authoritarian European Constitution while reneging on his promise of a referendum.

This act by Brown has been described by the all-party House of Commons Scrutiny Committee as “akin to Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler in 1938″.

The rugby final provides a distraction for the dire political events happening not so many miles away in Lisbon. So, while Syntagma wishes “the lads” well in Paris, we simultaneously call down a multitude of plagues on the houses of all those involved in the Great Brussels Stitch-Up.

Oh, and I should mention that Englishman Lewis Hamilton could become Formula One World Champion in Brazil on Sunday.

We wish our great sportsmen the best of British over the weekend, while to our unsporting politicians, deep, unremitting gloom.

So next week Gordon Brown is to sign Britain up to the European constitution, while simultaneously reneging on a manifesto promise to give the people a referendum on the issue — simply because he knows he will lose it.

Are any of those actions justifiable in a moral universe, let alone a fully franchised democracy? Do I need to answer that?

Brown’s claim — and Tony Blair’s — is that the new document is different from the one they made their promise on. That is despite everyone who has examined both agree that up to 95 percent of it remains the same, especially the legal framework.

Brown further claims that Britain is protected by four “red lines” beyond which he will not go. These are policy areas such as foreign affairs, legal policy, etcetera.

It has a sniff of cordite about it. Back in the 18th and 19th centuries British soldiers wore red tunics and were known as Redcoats. When surrounded, outnumbered and in dire straits, they would form four red lines and stand in the famous British Square formation. By holding their nerve, and with great discipline, they would lay down a deadly barrage of fire against the enemy, whether it was Zulu or American.

Quite often they would break out and win the battle. Sometimes they were overwhelmed and fought bravely to the last man. Whatever resulted, the Square was always a last desperate position.

Now Gordon Brown is defining this island nation as “four red lines”. Nothing more to show for two thousand years of history and an empire upon which the sun never set. Such defeatism is pretty hard to take.

New Labour, a political party of social Marxism and clunking incompetence, is finally getting its revenge on a Britain it has always despised. Armed with a new Scottish Prime Minister who allowed Scotland a referendum on independence, it refuses England, which is 85 percent of the poplulation, a plebicite on its freedom — from Brussels.

If you’re in Britain, support a referendum now.