Pathological mendacity

A few months back, Steve McIntyre said something that stuck in my memory:

Never under-estimate the capacity for institutional mendacity.

Today he writes in similar vein about the extraordinary range of mutually inconsistent stories put forward by the University of East Anglia in its various pronouncements on the availability of the CRU emails. Institutional mendacity indeed.

The story of Climategate is one of repeated - nay, continuous - mendacity and deceit, but I don't think we should fool ourselves that this is a problem that is restricted to CRU or to climatology or to science. I was struck by this story, in which MPs on the Public Accounts Select Committee decided that they would ask a civil servant at the Revenue (HMRC) to give evidence on oath - a very rare event if the article is to be believed. This has apparently caused outrage among senior civil servants.

During the inquiry, HMRC lawyer Anthony Inglese was the subject of an unusual exchange when the committee called for a Bible to be brought in for him to swear on – a rare but critical moment in establishing the truth of what had happened in a tax deal he described as perhaps "unconscionable". This seems to have been the cause of the angry letter from O'Donnell to Hodge, and a wider campaign against the committee now being waged.

O'Donnell accused the PAC of being "a theatrical exercise in public humiliation" and argued that civil servants were not accountable to parliament, but only to ministers. This goes back to Whitehall conventions, most recently asserted by one of O'Donnell's predecessors, Lord Armstrong. The PAC, because it investigates how public money is spent, rather than policy issues – which clearly are for ministers – has always been an exception. O'Donnell argues that this only affects the person at the top, the "accounting officer", not advisers such as Inglese. The committee wonders, in that case, how they are possibly supposed to get to the bottom of failures in an organisation like HMRC.

Given that senior civil servants seem to have no qualms about lying to Parliament or to anyone else, I think it is high time that they were forced to give evidence on oath in this way. As we have seen, the Science and Technology COmmittee inquiries were a sham, in which people on the public payroll consistently misled MPs and we were left with the farcical situation in which everybody - MPs, civil servants and the public - knew that lies had been told and the truth covered up, but nobody who was in a position to do anything about it was willing to do anything about it. Perhaps if Acton and Russell and Oxburgh and Jones had been speaking on oath we would have reached a different outcome. And as we know from Don Keiller's Information Tribunal hearing, UEA are very, very keen that Jones should say nothing on oath.

Comments

[Steve McIntyre]

One of Don Keiller's list should be of particular concern to Richard Betts of the Met Office:

4th June 2008 John Mitchell did respond to a request. John had conveniently lost many emails, but he did reply with a few.

This pertains to David Holland's initial request for Mitchell's review comments in his capacity as AR4 Chapter 6 Review Editor. The UK Met Office made a series of dishonest responses, claiming first (on June 2, 2008 almost concurrent with the CRU delete-all-emails strategy):

Any records and correspondence had already been deleted and the information is not held by the Met Office

Holland asked for details on the approximate date on which Mitchell claimed to have deleted his emails and paper records, since this was less than a year after the release of the WG1 report when Holland contacted him.

A few weeks later, the Met Office tried a different and equally mendacious refusal:

I incorrectly stated that the Met Office held the information you seek and I apologise for this.

Dr Mitchell acted as Reviewer of Chapter V1 of the Working Group 1 report in a personal capacity and not on behalf of the Met Office which means that none of the information actually falls within the scope of the Act. Most of the work in the process of the review was conducted at the final two lead author meetings and followed up by unrecorded telephone conversations and personal emails.

The information I sent to you was from Dr Mitchell's personal records which I was unaware of at the time. There is no requirement under the legislation to search back up data and as stated above, this information is personal to Dr Mitchell.

I have heard from other members of the IPCC Working Group who confirmed they corresponded with Dr Mitchell in a strictly private and confidential capacity,

This naturally led Holland to ask whether the Met Office had paid for Mitchell's travel expenses to IPCC meetings and whether he had attended on "personal" time or had collected salary. Holland also noted the many Met Office proclamations praising the contributions of their employees to IPCC.

As to the position of Dr Mitchell, for the period 2001-2007, would you please advise me:
1) whether Dr Mitchell received any salary from the Met Office while performing his duties for the IPCC;
2) if any of his paid holiday entitlement was used during his attendance at IPCC meetings;
3) a list of all travel carried out by Dr Mitchell to IPCC meetings or workshops;
4) if any of Dr Mitchell’s expenses for attending IPCC meetings or workshops were paid by the British government;
5) if the answer to (4) is yes, then please provide me with Dr Mitchell’s expense claims for the various IPCC meetings which he attended or an annual total of such expenses.
6) In addition, please provide me with any documents evidencing agreement between the Met Office and Dr Mitchell that his IPCC participation was “personal”, including copies of any recent correspondence in connection with my FOI inquiry.
I remind both you and Dr Mitchell once again of the inconsistency of your present course of action with the many references and claims to the IPCC assessment process being open and transparent.

The Met Office recognized that neither of these mendacious approaches was likely to succeed. They then reported that they "liaised" with IPCC who "instructed" the Met Office not to allow any emails to be released without consent of all participants. Precisely what entitled the IPCC Secretariat to instruct the Met Office on its FOI obligations is unclear.

The Met Office has liaised with the IPCC Secretariat and has been instructed that the Met Office is not to allow any emails to be released without discussion with and agreement from ALL participants concerned. The Met Office has learned that the majority of IPCC participants have stated categorically that they believed and still believe that these emails and correspondence are private and confidential because they were not, and were not meant to be, processed in accordance with the formal IPCC process.

This is only a portion of another long story, but it was one of the first instances of the corrosion of credibility arising from institutional mendacity.

The Met Office re-connected with Wahl's surreptitious changes to the final AR4 assessment of the Hockey Stick dispute. As discussed at length at CA, Wahl changed the IPCC assessment of the Hockey Stick dispute from the position sent out to external reviewers (that the final significance of the dispute was more or less up in the air) to the Wahl-Ammann claim (one that I would have contested as a reviewer) that the impact of the matters in dispute was negligible. In the SciTech Committee hearings on CRU in March 2010, Julia SLingo of the Met Office told the Parliamentary Committee that the various criticisms didn't matter. I corresponded with her and established that her opinion was based on no more than the Wahl's language in the IPCC assessment. The document in which Wahl changed the IPCC assessment is the one that is at issue in the longstanding FOI dispute.

[Richard Drake]

Foxgoose:

I wish I shared your faith in the essential goodness of humanity Richard.

Don't worry - I don't have any faith in that at all! Indeed, when I was at Cambridge I was accused at a cocktail party in front of my peers of having a highly pessimistic view of mankind by Miriam Camps, friend of Henry Kissinger and senior fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations - in the days it wasn't quite as open as it is now. I replied that that wasn't quite accurate - I believed there was a model, a New Man who could change all that. But it's probably not the place to delve further right now.

[Phillip Bratby]

[Off topic]

[mydogsgotnonose]

[Off topic]

[Latimer Alder]

Richard Betts noted that there was a lot of work to do to regain trust in climate scientists.

I'll just note that Climategate 1 happened just as a I started to take a serious interest in the subject. And I've very much noted the failure of any other mainstream climate scientist to condemn the behaviour of their peers revealed therein. Apparently its all just normal stuff for them. As a consequence I have never had any trust to 'regain'.

He'll have to persuade me from the very beginning that there is anything to 'trust' at all.

[Maurizio Morabito]

Climategate 1 happened just as a I started to take a serious interest in the subject

Latimer - I hope you're aware that has automatically made you prime suspect in the email leak!! /sarc

[Rhoda]

You cannot begin to regain trust until you ditch the cheats and disavow their works. That is just the way it is. No use to excuse their words and deeds as misunderstandings or common practice. No use to defend them or their obfuscations. No use to accept the whitewashes even if they can find a form of words to make it look not quite so bad.

[Steve McIntyre]

On restoring trust, let me quote from comments in May 2010 to the Heartland Conference (which received a lukewarm reception):

For the public, non-disclosure of adverse data, like the trick, seems like misconduct, but Pielke Junior, for example, has observed that there is little point in trying to fit non-disclosure of adverse data into academic misconduct, because the practice is widespread in the academic community – not just climate science. Academics seem unoffended by the trick.

But there’s a price for not being offended, because the public expects more. If climate scientists are unoffended by the failure to disclose adverse data, unoffended by the trick and not committed to the principles of full, true and plain disclosure, the public will react, as it has, by placing less reliance on pronouncements from the entire field – thus diminishing the coin of scientists who were never involved as well as those who were. This is obviously not a happy situation at a time when climate scientists are trying to influence the public and many have lashed out by blaming everyone but themselves, using the supposed exonerations by these ineffectual inquiries as an additional pretext.

To the extent that things like the trick were sharp practice, the practices needed to be disavowed. The scientists do not need to be drummed out, but there has to be some commitment to avoiding these sorts of sharp practice in the future. George Monbiot suggested early on perceived that apologies were necessary on the part of the climate scientists involved both to the targets and to the wider community – something that, in my opinion, would go a long way to achieving some sort of truth and reconciliation in a difficult situation. Right now, this seems less likely to happen than ever.

These remarks still seem sensible to me. I think that the "Empire Strikes Back" strategy promoted by Peter Gleick and others has been very counter-productive to the climate science "community" and should have discouraged by the lambs.

In addition, the "vindication" of the whitewash inquiries seems to me to be very pyrrhic vindication. The inquiries failed to properly involve the highly relevant constituency of Climategate critics and thus failed to accomplish any of the reconciliation that should be an objective of any inquiry.

[Don Keiller]

It is absolutely vital that Steve McIntyre appeals the ICO's illogical and legally nonsensical decision, otherwise the precedent that I set "that emails were held for the purposes of the Act" will be ignored and evaded.

In this connection it is worth reading this account of Keiller v IC and University of East Anglia (EA/2011/0152) on this legal blog; http://www.panopticonblog.com/

(It) is an important decision, not only because of the underlying subject matter, but because it deals with the thorny question of whether or not deleted emails which still exist on back-up servers are “held” for FOIA purposes.

The case concerned a request for the covering email from one of the Unit’s researchers to a colleague in the US, attaching datasets. The requester contended that the covering email contained instructions as to the use of that data, and he wished to see those instructions. UEA responded that, as the covering email had been deleted, it no longer “held” the requested information. The Commissioner agreed – but the Tribunal did not.

It had “no doubt” that the deleted email had been backed up onto the server which had been seized by the police as part of the investigation into the hacking affair. It was “rather disconcerted” by UEA’s evidence on this issue: its witness was unable to answer several pertinent questions about UEA’s email servers, back-up systems and deletion/retention policy. It also found that this email probably would have contained instructions or stipulations on the use of the data.

So basically the ICO and UEA do not have a leg to stand on.
Steve McIntyre should appeal the ICO’s legally flawed decision.

[stan]

Steve McIntyre and Arthur Dent keep the focus right where it needs to be -- the credibility of the people who are claiming that their science requires unprecedented policy responses. In the end, the details of e-mails aren't that important. The mendacity of the people and institutions involved, however, speaks volumes. You really can't trust people like those at UEA. And you can't trust people who refuse to condemn mendacity like this.

In a way, I feel sorry for Richard Betts. He naturally would like for the work of climate scientists to be respected and trusted. I don't think he really wants to come to grips with the implications of all the mendacity -- that the entire field is eventually going to have to start over. A little ointment and a bandaid aren't going to fix the problem. There is a virulent cancer that has eaten through most of the scientific community. Bandaids aren't going to matter.

[Bernie]

Richard Betts:
I believe Steve McIntyre has put the ball firmly in your court. I will be very interested in if and how you chose to respond. A constructive and on point response will go a long way with me in reinforcing my current positive opinion of your contribution.

[Anoneumouse]

@ Richard Betts

" It's been clear to me for a while that the field of climate science has a lot of work to do in regaining trust from people such as yourself."

Proverbs are popularly defined as short expressions of popular wisdom.

e.g. Cometh the hour, cometh the sham. ( )

[Latimer Alder]

maurizio

'Latimer - I hope you're aware that has automatically made you prime suspect in the email leak!!

If only I had been in such a position! It would have been my proudest moment to have done so. The liberator(s) deserve our highest praise and thanks for shining the withering glare of publicity upon their underhand and malevolent antics.

Without Climategate who knows what additional privations we would be suffering in the name of 'Saving the Planet' or other such BS. When all that is really at stake are the vast egos of some second rate extremely arrogant climatologists.

[Athelstan.]

As Maurizio and Latimer Alder [above] have alluded to 'leaks', for crying out loud the UEA are so cock-sure in their bumptiousness and convinced of their 'ex cathedra' canons of warmist absolutism, they live in a bubble and everywhere, they speak only with the 'converted' where all dissent is ignored.

Before any sense, or truth, can be extracted from this unhappy band of the paranoid climate creative accountants advocacy [CRU for short]. Would it not would assure the public of their goodwill, if they would simply admit that: the CG emails were simply released and not 'hacked'.

[Martin A]

Richard Betts Feb 6, 2012 at 12:37 PM

Yes, I've read it. It's been clear to me for a while that the field of climate science has a lot of work to do in regaining trust from people such as yourself.

Richard - I think it's an impossibility.

It's not a case of "work" being needed, "engaging with skeptics" etc.

Currently, there is a huge propaganda system (IPCC/Met Office/NASA/Realclimate/UEA/...) putting out a message that comes across loud and perfectly clear:

*****************
* DO NOT TRUST US *
*****************

So far as I can see, if you closed the whole effort down and started again with new staff and leadership with no previous involvement, and starting their work from scratch with quality of research their sole criterion, that might do it. Might.

But it's unrealistic to think that will happen.

[Anoneumouse]

Dr Richard Betts do you make your blog comments here as a private individual during your tea break i.e. your own time or strategically, as a paid HEAD at the met office?

If the latter please treat this as a FoI request.

[Bishop Hill]

Gentlemen

Could we please avoid piling on Richard B. I think asking him to disown his employer on this site may be going too far in present circumstances.

[Philip Foster]

I remember what must be more than 30 years ago when ‘Yes Minister’ began. I was a curate in north London at the time. A young lady in the church (not my wife!) was joining a conversation we were having about the second episode after evening service. We were expressing our thorough enjoyment. “Very silly programme” she said. But then she was in a high flying career in the civil service - ministry of education I think. From then on I knew it was a truthful programme. Since then it has only got far worse, for - as a previous commentator has observed - they have imported the further deceitfulness of EU bureaucrats. All civil servants go to Brussels on courses to learn how it’s done there. Behind those Whitehall facades are just clones of Brussels bureaucrats.

[Salopian]

Just for clarification; UK Civil Servants, like members of the Armed Forces, are not Public Servants, they are Crown Servants and are directly responsible to HMG, not the public. Their wages do not just come from public taxpayers, but other sources of revenue as well. It is unfair to lump Civil Servants along with the academic spongers.

[Cassio]

"Could we please avoid piling on Richard B. I think asking him to disown his employer on this site may be going too far in present circumstances."

Absolutely. It is reasonable to ask anybody who posts on this site to explain his/her views, and indeed those of an employer involved in climate research. It does not seem reasonable or productive to ask questions of the "When will you stop beating your wife" variety.

[Cassio]

"Just for clarification; UK Civil Servants, like members of the Armed Forces, are not Public Servants, they are Crown Servants and are directly responsible to HMG, not the public. Their wages do not just come from public taxpayers, but other sources of revenue as well. It is unfair to lump Civil Servants along with the academic spongers."

Rather off-topic, but I cannot refrain from asking (somewhat rhetorically):

1. Is not HMG answerable to Parliament ?

2. Is not all income of the state, whatever its source, collected and spent for the benefit of all citizens ? (And of course a very large proportion of that income is derived from taxation of one sort or another).

3. Who has lumped civil servants with "academic spongers", other than in the cases noted where a few of the former have behaved with as little impropriety and integrity as some of the latter ?

[Pharos]

Institutional Establishment's motto:-

Ablegatio in flagrante delicto

[Fay Kelly-Tuncay]

You are invited to a free special seminar by

MIT Professor Richard Lindzen
Global Warming: How to approach the science
(Climate Models and the Evidence?)

2pm-4pm 22nd February 2012
Grimond Room, Portcullis House
Westminster, London
(Ask for Sammy Wilson MP's meeting
and allow 30 minutes for security)

Special guest speaker
Prof. Richard S. Lindzen
Program in Atmospheres, Oceans, and Climate
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Chairman: Philip Stott Emeritus Professor
Emeritus Professor of Biogeography at the University of London,
and former Editor-in Chief of the International Journal of Biogeography.

RSVP Eventbrite ticket required
http://www.eventbrite.com/event/2857822825

[Pharos]

Intended meaning

Deflect even when caught red-handed.

[Streetcred]

Feb 6, 2012 at 11:18 AM | mydogsgotnonose

In my analysis of the climate models, I have now found the most basic error., the claim [Trenberth and Kiehl 1997] of 390 W/m^2 average IR radiation emitted by the Earth's surface.

This could only happen in a vacuum: [ ... ]

Indeed, this did happen in a vacuum ... where Trenberth's and Kiehl's brains should be.

[TomO]

The banner topic of the post and the comments regarding UK Civil Servants certainly chimed with my experience over the last two years. This is a bit long.....

The pathological mendacity is there - it's institutionalised in the middle and upper middle ranks, swigging away at the intoxicating brew of "power" and effective negation of any accountability conferred by deliberate obfuscation of lines of command and bizarrely contrived nuances in the way our UK public bodies are "constituted" to provide "administrative firebreaks".

Other commenters have indicated that they believe there are "Public Servants" and "Crown Servants" but it isn't that simple if you actually investigate the utterly Byzantine contrived morass that is UK Government Employment. The lexicon of acronyms and tortured titles for organisations blurs into one... The Civil Service web site itself is confused about who are civil servants and who aren't.

When dealing with "Agencies" - Some organisations with remarkably similar "Agency" names claim to be "independent" while others claim to be sub departments of Ministries - sometimes two people from the same "Agency" individually claim independence and government authority simultaneously.

Employees of many well known "government bodies", although employed directly by central government claim that they're NOT the Civil Sevants that most people earnestly believe them to be and as above, they trade on that when it suits them - but, they also deny that they are Civil Servants - when it suits them. (ooh... let's play at being a "corporate player" or sponsor a "climate activist" charity) Weirdly, Ministers are supposedly ultimately responsible to Parliament for the activities of these bodies - an assertion that I've had vehemently denied by officials..... (And one Chris Huhne in the HoC)

The average government employee it would seem isn't for the most part aware of their exact status... What is abundantly clear is that again - for the most part - the 2010 Act setting the Civil Servant's Code of Conduct (pdf) on a statutory (i.e. legally enforceable) basis is viewed by them in the same way that Superman thinks of Kryptonite.

That piece of legislation - the Statutory Code of Conduct 2010 has the Sir Humphries digging a large secret dark pit to throw it into - if the utterly mendacious (that word again) fiddling with references to it on government web sites is a guide.

That the likes of UEA ape this sort of shenanigans is obvious...

What tickles me though is that I can see multiple infractions of the "dread code of conduct" in the climate related outpourings of DECC and DEFRA - M'Lord Monkton are you listening?

[AusieDan]

Arthur Dent said Feb 6, 2012 at 10:17 AM
QUOTE
This comment is specifically addressed to Richard Betts and Tamsin Edwards:
Read the piece at CA, this explains why my (and I suspect many other scientists) default position in reading any work by climate scientists is one of distrust.
UNQUOTE

Richard Betts in particular comes across as a very honest person and as a good scientist.
I would very much like to read his full and frank response to Steve's post on CA.

Everybody should read Steve's post in full as well as ALL the following comments, as these add much more to the case against climate-tom-foolery.
David Holland indicates a practical way forward as well.
Enought talking - time for tribunals and courts.

The URL is: http://climateaudit.org/2012/02/06/acton-tricks-the-ico/#more-15536

[Hilary Ostrov]

That 2009 "Statement" was an issue that I (and others) had danced around with RB at the end of September last year. I certainly didn't (and don't) envy Richard his position - constrained as he obviously must be by his tenure at the Met, and by his commitment to the success of the IPCC process (such as it is increasingly turning out to be)***

My own view wrt those who chose to sign this Statement ...

Sep 28, 2011 at 1:23 PM in "Writing and Reviewing IPCC AR5"

[In response to RB's:]

My reading of the situation was that the damage to the reputation of the scientists was in danger of also damaging the credibility of the credibility of the science. Note that these are different things. The aim of the statement was to say something about the credibility of the science.

I wrote (inter alia):

I think I could accept such a reading if those 1700 had also put their names to one that preceded it with text that reads something along the lines of:

"We call upon those who have tarnished their own reputations by their words and deeds to acknowledge that they have brought discredit to their science - and potentially to that of others. By their actions, and by their words, they have undermined public trust in the credibility of the science and of the IPCC."

But that didn't happen, did it?! In fact they weren't even mentioned in this Dec. 9 "Statement from the UK science community"

Not only were they not mentioned, but (as I had subsequently observed Sep 29, 2011 at 12:16 AM):

[From Ben Webster's account in The Times]:

John Hirst, the Met Office chief executive, and Julia Slingo, its chief scientist, wrote to 70 colleagues on Sunday asking them to sign “to defend our profession against this unprecedented attack to discredit us and the science of climate change”. They asked them to forward the petition to colleagues to generate support “for a simple statement that we . . . have the utmost confidence in the science base that underpins the evidence for global warming”.
[...]
Professor Slingo said the statement was carefully worded to avoid claiming all climate scientists were beyond reproach.[...] [emphasis added -hro]

This was so very "carefully worded" that it studiously avoided claiming that any climate scientist was even deserving of "reproach", while conveniently blaming the skeptics (without naming them!).

But perhaps the "careful wording" refers to the conspicuous absence in the UEA "signatures honour roll" of those names (Jones, Briffa, Osborne, Hulme et al) that have become so familiar to so many in the interim.

It would certainly be interesting to know (although I strongly suspect we never will) how many of the 1700, who did sign, actually conducted any independent due diligence prior to signing.

[*** as TonyB noted at WUWT a few days ago:

I am currently reviewing the draft AR5 [...] I was quickly astonished by the amount of assertion, speculation and conjecture that was immediately apparent within the areas I am competent to comment on.

I had a very circular argument with the IPCC in Geneva when I queried a comment that ‘unpublished research has shown’ regarding a particularly contentious aspect of ocean warming. I queried as to who authored the unpublished research and what it actually said, which brought forth a string of emails between us as I asked for a copy (which we are permitted to see)

This culminated in the surprising (to me) response that only cited (unpublished or otherwise) material i.e that with a number and a corresponding reference to the authors, could be provided. A (seemingly) wild assertion with no citation could not be provided as it…er…had no citation. [emphasis added -hro]

Talk about the games these noble scientists play, eh?!]

[AusieDan]

Richard Betts
http://climateaudit.org/2012/02/06/acton-tricks-the-ico/#more-15536

There comes a tide in the affairs of man that etc etc.
That tide is arriving.
You are either part of the problem or the solution.
AR5 will be a laughing stock.
AR6 will be still born, unless it's of the "I confess" type - an expose (with an acute at the end if i remember correctly).

It's tough.
I presume that you are young enough to be supporting a young family and even perhaps a non working wife as well.

If you are not the type to just jump over the cliff (and I certainly am not one of those).
Then consider just what you can do to participate in the root and branch overthrow of the current climate-catostrophy.

Study Charman Mau, study Galileo, look for examples from the past of those who made a real difference without crucifying their families.
Some going backwards in career prospects for a longish period may be the way to win through in the end.

You are an honest man.
You will find the way.
It's just that you are not on the right path at present, nor in the right place too do good.

[AusieDan]

Richard Betts
Find some solid ground to stand firm on and face reality with confidence and a clear conscience.
(Advice from a very old man, sitting comfortably in his rocking chair).

[Salopian]

Cassio, TomO;

To try to clarify my earlier comment, in light of your responses: Civil Servants are all those permanently employed by Government Departments (including those 'arms length' bodies, such as executive agencies and trading funds). They are Crown Servants, who are ultimately responsible to the Head of the Civil Service, not Parliament as they are supposed to form the politically impartial permanent administration of HMG, that advises HMG and facilitates its decisions. Temporary staff within Government Departments, and staff employed directly by Parliament, the education service, the NHS or Local Goverment, are Public Servants and are responsible to their employers. In order to be a Civil (Crown) Servant, you have to hold full UK Citizenship, unlike Public Servants.

[TomO]

@Salopian 5:01 PM

Your assertions are fine, as far as they go ... I have been advised by one "arms length" Agency (The Environment Agency an "NDPB") that they are absolutely not Civil Servants - although they are government employees and by statute are directly accountable to the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (via the 1995 Environment Act) - something which I've actually had officials deny.

I think it's reasonable to say there's a fair amount of Balkanisation and narrow hair splitting with the classification different of UK Government administrative vehicles which seem to want to be both independent (supposed service providers) and also be "part of government" wielding not inconsiderable legal powers to enforce their will (some might say whim).

An example of Balkanisation would be The Food and Environment Research Agency who the uninitiated might think part of The Environment Agency... not so - although they are keen Climate Changers and LWEC-ers.

The quantity of entities has bred "diversity" which has resulted in miserably poor reporting and oversight - and, as a whole - the Civil Service systematically lacks coordination (and common sense), resulting in duplication of effort and as most folk are aware - absolutely monumental waste. I don't even want to think about the sprawl of fake charities and campaign groups cultivated and financially fertilised by government bodies for perception management and policy manipulation...

It should be a planned and well tended neat garden - what we've got is an infestation of blinkered, confirmation bias riddled Japanese knotweed

/rant

[Salopian]

@ TomO:

I think you are missing the point here. Whatever your have been told by 'somebody' in the EA and what you assert about FERA, permanent employees within both organisations are Civil (Crown) Servants, I know this for fact because I have spent over 20 years dealing with both in their present and past incarnations (and please bear in mind that FERA only came into existence just over a year ago) . Both organisations are responsible to their respective Departments and SoS's. But their permanent employees are Civil Servants end of story.

[TomO]

Salopian,
I appreciate and value your input - I do try to be calm and reasoned but don't always succeed in being entirely focussed in the face of deliberate serial misdirection from officialdom.

The EA "somebodies" are actually at top level... "We are not Civil Servants but, we do have a code of conduct that's... a bit like theirs" the inference being that it's voluntary and a bit of a moveable feast...

I have witnessed the public presentation of the actually rather toothless 2010 Act morph from a bit of self indulgent gesture legislation amongst many which passed mostly unnoticed to something dangerous that is being secretly towed out into deep water to be sunk.

I know of one small company which is in dispute with the Environment Agency who've run up extensive legal bills on a case, the trajectory of which has been based on The Environment Agency's vehement assertion that they are not Civil Servants. They took the EA's lawyers assurances.....

[TomO]

I should add I suppose, that the lawyers alluded to are also Civil Servants whose behaviour is constrained by the 2010 Statutory Civil Servant's Code of Conduct :-)

Looks like a theory needs to be tested.... :-)