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Following on from my thoughts earlier on prime ministerial naps. I'm not saying all politicians should work 35 hour weeks all the time but I suspect that the media pressure disincentivising politicians from being well-rested & having decent leisure/family time is v bad overall. https://twitter.com/seheard/status/1351869032992038913
I'm not saying Britain was better governed when the Cabinet spent weekends at their friends' country homes or watched all five days of a Test but it's not immediately clear we were *worse* off.
A few people replying to this thread have made the point that the absurd & inhumane expectations we have of politicians probably lower the quality of our government because they deter clever and thoughtful eccentrics, mavericks and oddballs. I agree.
This seems an important q. Obviously govt is more complex than it was 3 or 4 decades ago, let alone sixty or seventy years back. But it still seems worth pondering how much of what ministers do actually needs to be done by a minister at national level? https://twitter.com/sideoutpar/status/1351997336336142337?s=20
I suppose no-one really wants to get too far into the potentially explosive subject of how much of the activity of the modern administrative state is useless busywork. That way madness lies.
