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Instruction to Deliver: Fighting to Transform Britain's Public Services

By: Michael Barber
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Methuen Publishing Ltd
ISBN: 0413776646
ISBN-13: 9780413776648
Released: 22 May 2008
RRP: £14.99
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Customer Reviews

Compelling and idealistic view of the inside of Government - By: M. Sweeney, 11 Dec 2007
It is odd to read this book while the Labour bubble, following Northern Rock, lost HMRC discs, botched election planning & donorgate, is fast deflating. It captures the enthusiasm of Labour's earlier period in office. Barber himself seems remarkably smart & able & he pleas early in the book that we should appreciate our politicians more. Most are presented sympatheticallly in this book. To this detached reader he sings Labour's praises rather too loudly & lays into the 'directionless' Major years without providing key evidence about why they were so bad (he starts by praising Gillian Shepherd as education minister & Blair saying ideas shouldn't be ruled out because they are Conservative ones). At the end of 2007,Labour's experiment of throwing cash at public services seems to have failed & the public finances are now in far poorer shape than they were in 1997. There are interesting vignettes, particularly surrounding the civil service mentality (any supporter of smalll government will read this & be appallled) & the importance of sending the right message to the Press. Also, most telling of alll, is Labour's (especiallly Blair's) lack of experience of running anything when they came to office. I suppose the best you could say is that they tried & meant well, but how much better managed are public services today? , More parents are opting out of state education where they can afford it(as Barber himself did), the NHS remains a monolith, & few people would describe UK transport as a shining success story. The wider public will be profoundly sceptical. But this is a compelling, revealing portrait of life inside Number 10.