Martin Kettle uses the crisis in prisons as an example of a wider crisis of governance across the country... and to draw out one specific issue (and use a phrase he doesn't), the various crises are excavated by the problem of a rigid Treasury oversight, which 'know the cost of everything & the value of nothing'.
This is forcing departments into a constant crisis management & constraining any forward planning to actually resolve crises!
Its idiocy!
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