You ask:

You take those organizations seriously because your "Law Enforcement" follow the orders of their Masters and insist that you take them seriously. Or suffer the consequences. See what happens if you try to tell them to stuff it!

I think there's something psychological about an authority presentation that people respond to. Such a thought struck me at the railway station the other week. Most of the announcements are either male or female and made "live".

There is however a security announcement that regularly crops up about looking for suspicious items. If he weren't long since dead I would have thought it was Patrick Allen in the same tone of voice he used for the Protect and Survive film in the dark days of the cold war.

"Pay attention, this is the state speaking" being the inference.

The Environment Agency is a non governmental - government department, - they must be 'aving a larf, fact is though they are funded by the BRITISH taxpayer and work for and issue diktats direct from Brussels.

The whole rickety construction exists, built on central tenets which are utterly compromised, in that, being supposed 'guardians' of the Environment, they are then make efforts somehow to defend riverside land and property - incompatible - one or t'other but it cannot be both.

Thus, looking after the flora and fauna of riverine eco-systems is the end, telling folk that their houses are about to be flooded is the job and in combination with duplicitous peddling of the myth of global warming - ie making political points and capital out of others misery, so EA, so EU so appalling.

The EA, could be useful if it was about engineers and all genuinely concerned with defending people and property. Leave it to the emergency services to offer the warnings, the water companies look after the water purity side of things.

And then, free from political interference and common purpose; the EA could concentrate on advising and overseeing the construction of new bridges [old bridges cause blockages] alleviating confluence points and building overflow channels, regularly dredging and shoring up river banks and advising and building new storage capacity - especially in the south of England, landscape management up in catchments and plant more bloody trees up there - especially back in the upper catchment of the Derwent, Ure, Calder, Aire, Nidd, Wharfe.

But lets face it, the EA isn't there to help us, it only works for its masters and employees.

Edited by user 22 December 2012 17:16:49(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

The idea of creating "Government Agencies" as NDPBs can now be seen for what is was - a land grab by the bureaucrats. I think it's beyond dispute that the end result has been an expensive shambles and served nobody well but the power intoxicated, hubris suffused, self aggrandizing, grasping fools in the middle and upper reaches of management across the menagerie of organisations spawned by this policy.

Yet another woeful failure to deliver public benefit in civil service organisational restructuring and one that from the beginning was designed to negate accountability.

That the Environment Agency in particular is rotten can be seen from the "senior" salaries and job descriptions exposed on the data.gov.uk archive. Much potential indignation there for the easily aroused .... The duplication of function is epic.

The EA have a self image problem too - some there view themselves as "the environmental police" as evidenced by their new out of office workwear which is hi-viz plod style with chequerboarding - somewhere between paramedic and traffic cop.

What to do with it all?

I suspect that herding them all over the fiscal cliff is the only viable strategy.