The biggest lie I ever heard

Promises, promises, MD. Another way to view this interesting landscape is through the mythical lens that gives you three mutually exclusive groups: worker, consumer and taxpayer - the latter two suffering for the laziness and greed of the former. All this while we incarcerate our ageing parents in places staffed by poorly-paid people from Romania and Africa and owned by people who only care about owning the biggest and latest Mercedes 4x4. All this while monstrous buildings erupt like boils from behind the Tower of London. More with less may have meant some sense to someone at some place at some point in time, but is now the Eleventh Commandment. And the only thing the growing army of managers can't game-play is the headcount. This isn't even party political. The Eleventh Commandment is part of the established religion.

Hi MD. It's good that you have that certainty. It wasn't a conspiracy theory exactly. It goes back to the heady days of the '90s think tanks and the formulation of the "Third Way", of which Blair successfully rode the wave. The trouble with ideas like "delivering more with less" is that they become convenient. Anyone who is fighting off hungry wolves will grab the first convenient thing that comes to hand and if the supply of that thing seems endless, so much the better. Back in the '90s I was only researching it. I have been living in the thick of it pretty much ever since. The contradiction concerns both ROI and democracy without balls. The first is about satisfying the demands of investors and customers. Guess who gets caught in the middle. The second is about satisfying the demands of voters (in their role of consumers of services) and voters / funders (in their role as tax-payers). Guess who gets caught in the middle.

"Great Contradictions", scratch. Didn't Dickens write that?

In the end, you're right scratch. You can't deliver more with less, so you look for ways to make it appear that you are. Enter Orwell, Heller and the rest.