People’s Front of Judea
People’s Front of Judea
/ˈpiːpᵊlz frʌnt ɒv ʤuː'dɪə/ (n.)
The management team who brought you the change paradox. A collection of system insiders — a real Clavam Hominum Senum Pallidorum sect, this lot, make no mistake — who agree that the system needs fundamental reform and who are happy to strike dramatic poses to that effect, pronouncing widely, publicly, and tirelessly that change is imperative, it must come now, that we must break things to reinvent ourselves for a better tomorrow, but whose idea of what to do about it is to set their organisation’s bureaucratic machine, whose divisions are commanded of course by its membership to that task such that when, all is said and done, no one does anything about it at all.
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The JC’s amateur guide to systems theory™
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Judith: They’ve arrested Brian!
Reg: What?
Judith: They’ve dragged him off! They’re going to crucify him!
Reg: Right! This calls for immediate discussion!
PFJ Commando: Yeah!
Judith: What?!
Loretta: New motion?
Reg: Completely new motion, eh, that, ah — that there be, ah, immediate action —
Francis: — once the vote has been taken —
Reg: — Well, obviously, once the vote’s been taken. You can’t act another resolution till you’ve voted on it.
O, Tempora. O paradox.
The PFJ is so named, of course, for the bureaucratic paramilitary group in Monty Python’s Life of Brian [I thought it was the “Popular Front”? — Ed] whose commitment to violent overthrown was matched only for their devotion to careful application of process.
The cynical observation — Who? Moi? ~ I know — that, when it comes down to it, those in “leadership positions” who can make a difference invariably have to much invested to make a difference. They are too enchanted by the workings of the wood as it is to be bothered cutting down any trees. Especially the ones they shinned up in the first place to arrive at the exalted position in which they now find themselves.
Inasmuch as their position obliges them to make noises about cutting down trees, they will loudly and sonorously do so, and will convening focus groups, marshalling workstreams, penning board papers, addressing townhalls and, if it comes to it, hosting podcasts explaining the “vision”.
Examples
Commercial law
A classic Judean People’s Front is the one that will be at pains to entreat commercial lawyers the world over to write simple, clear, business-friendly contracts in plain English. Encomiums will issue forth from European regulators, US regulators, drafting doyens, prose stylists, legaltechbros and divers industry greybeards that simplifying contractual language is an utter imperative for efficiency, productivity, access to justice, diversity and inclusion and any number of other fashionable soups du jour — but will contracts get any shorter? Will they fuck profane expression which may refer to the act of sexual intercourse, but is also commonly used as an intensifier or to convey disdain.
Criminal law
Our criminal brethren seem no less prone — if the travails of Lucy Letby and the Post Office Horizon IT scandal are any judge. The spectre of expert evidence — the rules for which are riven with conflicts of interest, as has been acknowledged for years — are often talked about, yet no-one has had the gumption to do anything about it. Likewise the use, misuse and basic ignorance about probabilities and statistics. Again, well known about and teeth-gnashed about since at least the exoneration of Sally Clark more than two decades ago. Yet, plainly, the profession has done little to educate itself about these serious systemic flaws, as Lucy Letby might be finding to her cost at the moment.