Month: September 2005

Disastrous

The Washington Post reports that five out of eight leaders of FEMA (the emergency management agency that had such a triumph in New Orleans) had “virtually no experience” in disaster management when they were appointed.

This is – like so much about this Administration – astonishing but not surprising. The political appointment is so widespread in America, and so ill-managed in this administration, that there’s a wearying inevitability about the FEMA acting leader (the now-disgraced Michael Brown) and two of his senior officers having had ties to the Bush election campaign.

The alternative system, of life-term senior officials appointed through a career structure, has been around in the UK since the Northcote-Trevelyan report of 1854. It’s not perfect – it’s conservative, slow-moving and generally resistant to reform – but it does produce experts and permit expertise to flourish. It can, on its day, even produce a radical and innovative appointment.

The quick-change act at the top of most American governmental organisations must surely lead to demotivation and confusion in the lower reaches of the organisation. The British civil service may be frustrating, but if I were picking someone to lead on civil contingencies, I’d rather have Sir Humphrey Appleby than some random Muppet.

Travel notes: Edinburgh

Not a good hotel experience in Edinburgh today. Place booked at the Bank hotel, sight unseen through Expedia, but they bumped me to a ‘sister’ hotel called the Three Sisters. Sister hotel as in ugly sister. Stuck down on Cowgate, in the lee of Castle Mound, the outside area is a huge courtyard with a giant screen showing (today) Channel 4 racing. No room service either (noooooo).

The room was small and heavily overlooked, with cheap accountant’s-office blinds that moved in the slightest breeze. Oh, and there was an aircon unit outside the window that sounded like the Saturn V taking off.

I am now in the bland and corporate Radisson SAS on the corner of South Bridge, a much nicer spot, and handy for this evening’s do at the Scottish Parliament.