To get back onto the subject...........
Has anyone thought of the eventual effect of requiring civil servants (& government ministers) in a particular department had to have either a relevant professional qualification or five year's experience [acknowledged by a national body] in the subject.
That would mean that Alastair Darling & Gordon Brown would be barred from the chancellor's job, as neither have any financial qualifications. NHS civil servants would have nursing or medical qualifications, MOD civil servants would have either five year's service or a very few might have lectured at Sandhurst, Dartmouth etc.
This would give us a well educated civil service, with the benefit of seasoned active practitioners amongst them as well.
This would probably remove the vast swathes of overpaid, under employed deadbeats from the civil service. It would certainly remove any need for this government to employ its favourite fetish of throwing vast sums of money to consultants who appear to have little if any concept of the projects they are supposed to complete, but are quite happy to recommend the services of other consultants, usually at higher prices, or we find out that Gordon & Darling Darling have sold off another government arm for a pittance to some of their fly by night chums who are now being paid ten times what we used to pay to do a tenth of the job they used to
Distance may lend credence to apparent wisdom, but all we've got out of this sorry mess is smoke and mirrors & the country in an unending mortgage just after we finished paying the USA for World War II.
If we are to have a review, the politicians need to define what they expect of the services, then leave the service personnel to determine what they need to do they job, then the politicians need to come up with the funds to do it. But they will need to stop throwing cash about willy nilly to anything which does not turn a profit for the country.