“The greatest of all evils is a weak government.” — Benjamin Disraeli

Today we learnt that the British Government is using tax payers money to pay senior staff from the largest energy companies, who the Government is tasked with regulating, to come and help run their Ministries.

Having, for example executives from the Oil Companies, come and decide the future energy policy for the Nation raises concerns about conflict of interest.

Likewise having the senior executives from the Electricity and Gas suppliers come and run their own industry watchdog does not seem to serve the public interest.

Sadly these breaches of sound governance practice can be found in many areas of State oversight and not just in Energy.

We currently have a situation where the majority of the western nations have the heads of their national reserve banks being supplied from a single investment banking group.

There is little surprise then to find that Governments are failing in their basic duties to regulate against industry malpractice.  How can Government regulate when the regulating bodies are staffed by the very people who are being regulated?

Such breaches in basic Sound Governance raise the question – who exactly governs our government?

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