The Spectator

Barometer | 12 March 2011

This week's Barometer

issue 12 March 2011

The first bureaucrat


David Cameron described bureaucrats in the Civil Service as ‘the enemy within’ and vowed to get their backs off business. It has been a very long battle. The term ‘bureaucracy’ was coined by the French economist Jean Claude Marie Vincent de Gournay (1712–1759). Son of a wealthy merchant in St Malo, Vincent spent many years as a bureaucrat himself, as intendent of commerce and honorary adviser to the grand conseil. It was in his work that he became appalled by the regulations concerning the sale of cloth, which ran to four volumes, and took new entrants to the trade several years to learn. State offices were not created, he observed, to serve the public interest; rather the public interest was created to justify the offices.

Leader worship

Colonel Gaddafi declared: ‘All my people are with me. They love me.’ Few world leaders are lucky to be so popular. Here are some recent approval ratings:

Barack Obama 49%

Angela Merkel 41%

David Cameron 38%

Nicolas Sarkozy 30%

Silvio Berlusconi 30%

Naoto Kan (Japan) 20%

Parliamentary seats

The Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa) was criticised for buying seven chairs at £538 apiece.

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