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>"Or a teacher or headmaster running Education." //

You were probably thinking of a high-school teacher (?) but ...

[via http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_of_State_for_Educatio... though I remember quite a few, especially as my parents and in-laws were all teachers]

[Michael Gove]

Ed Balls (Labour Secretary of State for Schools 2009-10) according to Wikipedia was "from 1989 to 1990 a teaching fellow in the Department of Economics, Harvard University". So a modicum of teaching experience at least.

[Alan Johnson]

There's Ruth Kelly - "taught at University of Navarra, after she joined the Labour Party in 1990" [Wikipedia again] - Labour SoS for Education 2004-06.

Charles Clarke wasn't a teacher but was President (I think) of the NUS which would clearly give him some insight in to Higher Education. 2002-2004

Estelle Morris - "Morris was a PE and Humanities teacher at the inner-city Sidney Stringer School on Cox Street in Coventry from 1974–92, becoming Head of Sixth Form Studies" [ibid] - Labour SoS for Education 2001-2002. She was apparently the first Comprehensive school teacher to hold the post.

Before that:

Blunket had a PGCE and was "a lecturer in industrial relations and politics between 1973 and 1981". Labour SoS for Education 1997-2001.

Gillian Shepherd "gain[ed] an MA [Oxon] in Modern Languages, after which she became a school teacher and a worked as an Education Inspector for Norfolk County Council from 1963 to 1975". Conservative SoS for Education 1994-97.

tl;dr the majority of SoS for Education in the last two decades have teaching experience of some form. Moreso than I expected TBH. Would appreciate it if someone else considered the SoS for Health postings.

Out of curiosity, (I'm genuinely not attempting to incite a political debate) what would you consider a more effective alternative to the current structure?

I don't have any solid opinion one way or the other apart from knowing that the current structure is ineffective.

Is it? I live in Australia, granted but it's not so different here and for the most part everyone's lives are pretty awesome. I think the biggest mistake idealists make is assuming that there is necessarily a better way of doing things that we are capable of as a society right now. That's not to say I disagree there are better ways of doing things per se, and that given another 5,000 years many of these issues will have been resolved but I think it's a mistake to look at a system that's basically working and focus on all the bits that don't work because all the bits that do work have become so commonplace that you take them for granted.

It's the facts that bother me. Long term unemployment being at almost a 20 year high, violent crime rates are the worst in Europe are two of the primary issues that indicate failure in my opinion.

I'm very much an apathetic observer though. I really can't claim to know enough about the politics in this country to pose a very solid argument but the glaring issues above are too apparent to ignore.

I quite like the system Hong Kong has:

http://www.gov.hk/en/about/govdirectory/govstructure.htm

"The Legislative Council is the law-making body of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. It comprises 70 members, with 35 elected directly by geographical constituencies and 35 elected by functional, occupation-based constituencies. Apart from its law-making function, the Legislative Council debates issues of public interest, examines and approves budgets, receives and debates the Chief Executive's policy addresses, and endorses the appointment and removal of the judges of the Court of Final Appeal and the Chief Judge of the High Court."

So their legislature is 50% industry experts. The Executive Council can be made up of experts as well, but it doesn't have to be.

Take education as an example. The Secretary for Education is a businessman, however there is an educator in the legislature, the Voluntary Chief Executive (Development), Hong Kong Professional Teachers' Union.

"Take education as an example."

Graham Stuart and the cross party Education Committee have managed to head off some of Gove's more ridiculous proposals.

Could we not find some MPs who have some idea of how the Web works to sit on an appropriate cross-party committee?

Your proposals, while interesting, have absolutely no chance of happening on any timescale that is relevant.

Graham Stuart was also involved in education prior to entering Parliament, albeit as a Governor.

And it shows. That was the point I was trying to make. There must be a few MPs who actually know enough about the Web to form a cross party committee within the system as it is. Surely?

There's the Science & Technology Select Committee, with at least some of the membership who have an industrial background. And Julian Huppert is on the Home Affairs Select Committee, which is perhaps more pertinent for this - he's a research scientist, but has been very active in campaigning on web issues.

Sounds reasonable. But I think I would have to know a hell of a lot more about it and how it works in practice.

Who set that up anyway? HK used to be British run. Don't tell me we gave them a better government than we have !!!!!

Structure is irrelevant while the electorate refuse any responsibility for their voting. Problem is people who have political bias and stick to it in a bigoted prejudiced way. On top of that, we have political apathy. Numbers wise, the majority is a non vote.

A change I would make is to make voting a legal requirement, but there must be a none of the above option. If "none of the above" wins, we vote again. Tedious, but hopefully it would force thought. Under no circumstances should a forced vote not include none of the above. I would personally freak if I were forced to vote for what we have now. I would be a NotA people.

Over all though, its down to us. The system is there for us to use. Information to base decisions on is out there like never before. Even in the US where both parties spend 100s of millions of $s lying and trashing, Americans could get to the truth, ignore the BS, and vote accordingly. But like every one else in a democratic country, the vast majority just dumbly vote for their usual party with out any thought what so ever. So, its hardly surprising that the politicians rig it all accordingly, and take very little notice of any one but their core vote, and their prejudices.

Tangent: If you want a real leap, this why I partly understand (and please, not condone, justify, excuse, support, or anything else) terrorists attacking civilians. No point attacking military or politicians as they are enforcing our democratic will. Logically it makes sense, especially from afar. They think that if they change our votes, things will change for them. We are responsible for the actions of our democratic governments, because we validate them with votes. On the flip side, in a dictatorship, there is no point attacking civilians as they have no power and the government doesn't really care since it doesn't need votes. Its like my mum used to say to me, "Don't hate or fear the Soviet people, they don't get to vote" But of course, there is an implication there.

>> Problem is people who have political bias and stick to it in a bigoted prejudiced way.

This annoys the crap out of me.

I know people who are vehemently anti-Tory, who will take the slightest word of anything from the current government and twist it so they can paint it in the most evil light imaginable, and cast the current politicians as real actual demons.

Tell them you have no faith in the other side either and you'll get a lecture about the party of workers, rights for the poor etc.

Mention to these people that the legacy of the last labour government (war, prohibition, surveillance-state) isn't exactly shining and didn't actually help the downtrodden either and you'll get a grudging comment about how Blair was possibly a mistake but the 'toffs' in power now are only there to screw everyone.

Not "the whole Labour party was and still is in on this sh*t and are just as bad as anyone else, let's have some real choice", which is the only rational position I can think of. No, just hate.

I don't actually know anyone that admits to voting conservative so I haven't seen the other side. I'm sure its much the same.

My mother admits to voting for the best looking party leader.

I just despair of the whole thing.

My feeling on this:

There is no effective science for this. Determining a more effective structure, for such a horribly non-linear dynamical system, requires mathematics which we do not have. I suspect that we are operating within a conceptual framework which is poorly serving our purposes. I think that a good number of problems that we currently face are rooted in this poor framing. How do you effectively parallelise code? How do you create systems that effectively satisfy objectives within dynamic environments? How do you build general AI? What is the mechanism that underlies the function of the brain? Where does life come from, what is it's driver? What is computation? What precisely is complexity? And... how do you construct a society which is, in the ways that we prescribe, optimal?

I would wager that there is a single big fish out there that recasts these problems into a framework which renders them at least partially tractable. We are in limbo waiting for a genius to find us a way out of this mess.

Citizen policy juries, selected by random sampling of the electorate, with access to experts making public recommendations on policy.

Even if they don't have formal authority to legislate or execute policy, politicians enacting laws in conflict with those recommendations would have to at least explain why.

Some Australian experiences: http://blogs.crikey.com.au/croakey/2010/08/10/behind-the-sce... http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/jury-still-out-but... http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/lifematters/cit...

Ministers are appointed, aren't they?

What prevents voted-for politicians from approving ministers with working and practical knowledge?

People who have invested their life in excellence in a discipline other than politics are going to be beaten at politics by the power-hungry sociopaths who want to be politicians. So we always end up with unskilled, unethical people in government.

This wasn't the case during the most of the modern history.

"The heaviest penalty for declining to rule is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself" - Plato

Ministers are (mostly) appointed from the pool of voted-for politicians, who are nearly all lawyers or politics graduates.

Well, there are hardly likely to do themselves out of a prime job, are they? But in a way they sort of do, they appoint advisers....

We could have a whole new official layer of experts, but that would be shot down by cries of bureaucracy.

Initially I like the idea of expert opinion being mandatory. So, like with the drugs advice, I would like to see government forced to adopt their proposals. But would I be happy with police experts forcing legislation? Doctors, probably, but army?

In the end, I have to come back to general population ignorance an prejudice. "We" have to smarten up, and vote accordingly. Its the only way I see.

Or in the British case at least, appoint people from the Lords who have got their through contributions to their fields.

Yup. It is definitely our fault (the fault of the electorate, that is). We get what we vote for.

Despite the inevitable issues, I would still like to see people with relevant experience running these departments.