The message from Greg Phillpotts said:
>With my RSS hat on, the best I can suggest to add to Humphrey's (2) and (3)
>below is to refer colleagues to Tim Holt's paper on legislation, published
>in the Journal of the RSS:
Members of this list should know that Tim Holt is a former head of the
Government Statistical Service and is currently President of the Royal
Statistical Society. It is not surprising therefore that Tim Holt's paper
presents what might be called an establishment view. The establishment in
this case is a combination of the RSS and the Government Statistical
Service.
This establishment has managed to deny the Labour Party's 1997 commitment to
a statistical service independent of the government of the day. Instead
the RSS/GSS establishmment has shamelessly used the independence issue in an
attempt to boost the status of the statistics profession.
The main method used has been to ignore the public except to ask for their
support. Jack Straw in his talk to the RSS in 1995 argued there should be
a National Statistical SERVICE who should serve the public, Parliament, and
government IN THAT ORDER. But the RSS failed to publish Straw's paper, it
ignored the ideas of the paper when it responded to the Green Paper. And
of course Tim Holt's paper does not mention Straw or the Labour Party's
ideas when it was in opposition. A reference to Straw's paper on the RSS
website has recently been removed.
On Jack Straw's current governmental performance he can hardly be classified
as a radical. But it seem that he will always be a dangerous radical form
the point of view of the RSS/GSS establishment.
Of course the views of parties in opposition change when they achieve power.
But the RSS/GSS has so closely intertwined statistics and government that
they could be in for a big fall at the next election. Tony Blair has
prematurely boasted that he is the first PM to win three FULL terms of
office. But when there is an election that could well be well before 2010,
and there could also be a hung parliament.
A three party system would produce favourable conditions for legislation for
a statistical service truly independent of the government of the day.
There would always two parties seeking knowledge of what is actually
happening instead of seeing it through the spin of government statistics.
Ray Thomas
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