The Science of Government

Although it will become apparent if you start to follow some of my Whiffles, let me start with a clear admission. I, the Whiffler, have a very cynical view of politics and politicians, not just those concerning our local or national governments, but those that pervade all activities of our lives. The amount of time, effort and money spent on the politics of a subject is, in my opinion, out of all reasonable proportion to the practical aspects of it. I know I am not alone in such a view, or that such a view is not new, and I use the following quotation from a book by a very well known author to illustrate this point. I have altered one word in the text to suite my general theme, but all will be revealed at the end of the piece, including the source.

"The Whiffling Office was (as everybody knows without being told) the most important Department under Government. No public business of any kind could possibly be done at any time without the acquiescence of the Whiffling Office. Its finger was in the largest public pie, and in the smallest public tart. It was equally impossible to do the plainest right and to undo the plainest wrong without the express authority of the Whiffling Office. If another Gunpowder Plot had been discovered half an hour before the lighting of the match, nobody would have been justified in saving the parliament until there had been half a score of boards, half a bushel of minutes, several sacks of official memoranda, and a family-vault full of ungrammatical correspondence, on the part of the Whiffling Office.

This glorious establishment had been early in the field, when the one sublime principle involving the difficult art of governing a country, was first distinctly revealed to statesmen. It had been foremost to study that bright revelation and to carry its shining influence through the whole of the official proceedings. Whatever was required to be done, the Whiffling Office was beforehand with all the public departments in the art of perceiving--HOW NOT TO DO IT.

Through this delicate perception, through the tact with which it invariably seized it, and through the genius with which it always acted on it, the Whiffling Office had risen to overtop all the public departments; and the public condition had risen to be--what it was.

It is true that how not to do it was the great study and object of all public departments and professional politicians all round the Whiffling Office. It is true that every new premier and every new government, coming in because they had upheld a certain thing as necessary to be done, were no sooner come in than they applied their utmost faculties to discovering how not to do it. It is true that from the moment when a general election was over, every returned man who had been raving on hustings because it hadn't been done, and who had been asking the friends of the honourable gentleman in the opposite interest on pain of impeachment to tell him why it hadn't been done, and who had been asserting that it must be done, and who had been pledging himself that it should be done, began to devise, how it was not to be done. It is true that the debates of both Houses of Parliament the whole session through, uniformly tended to the protracted deliberation, how not to do it. It is true that the royal speech at the opening of such session virtually said, My lords and gentlemen, you have a considerable stroke of work to do, and you will please to retire to your respective chambers, and discuss, how not to do it. It is true that the royal speech, at the close of such session, virtually said, My lords and gentlemen, you have through several laborious months been considering with great loyalty and patriotism, how not to do it, and you have found out; and with the blessing of Providence upon the harvest (natural, not political), I now dismiss you. All this is true, but the Whiffling Office went beyond it.”

The above are the opening paragraphs of - Book The First: Chapter 10 of the 1857 edition of Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens. My only adaptation is to substitute the Whiffling Office for Dickens' Circumlocution Office, but I leave it to you to substitute whatever office, department or ministry you think may be appropriate - there are many to chose from!