DEFRA acts just like a big private corporation with lots of people and no accountability to the public.
However, the similarities end there because bureaucracies are isolated from reality because they operate in an artificial environment where productivity is judged by wasting time and paper because making a profit and efficiency are irrelevant.
For three years DEFRA have known that their legislation was irretrievably broken and the rating system unworkable - and all they’ve done is pretend to kick the tyres and lift the bonnet while misdirecting, scapegoating and deflecting the blame onto everyone else.
Therefore, it's accurate to sum up bureaucracies as not representing the smooth running of systems, but a catalogue of incompetents who are institutionally protected from the financial and personal consequences of failure.
We’re meant to believe that DEFRA did nothing wrong because they arrived at every regulation by following every imaginary protocol and every denial, every avoidance of responsibility and every incorrigible excuse can be found in the standard bureaucratic bible, “The Big Book of Stupid”.
The ultimate in gaslighting is when an incompetent bureaucrat tries to convince you that it’s someone else’s fault that they made a mistake.
DEFRA’s inadequate responses and inaction have fallen below any expectations and have normalised responsibility avoidance, deflection and delusion - and it appears that the only thing DEFRA cares about is not being held to account.
If these incompetents worked in the real world, they would simply be fired and someone else would be hired to fix their mistakes. Not being fired is the pinnacle of institutional exceptionalism that only persists because their failures, the consequences and their budget is paid for by everyone else.
The civil service bleats about being overworked and claims impartiality at every juncture, but the narrative that this exposes is that DEFRA are no better and no more honest than the clowns that we elect to parliament to do nothing, lie to each other and lie to the country solely to benefit themselves.