The Plowden Report: A Translation

Abstract

Translator’s note. The report reached me when I was busy with other things, and a reading of the summaries, a quick perusal, conveyed nothing to me at all. My interest was reawakened by a note in Mr Anthony Sampson’s book The Anatomy of Britain at page 284, that this was a ‘revolutionary and critical document’ written in an unknown tongue. I used to be a philologist, sometimes I wish I still was; here is a shot at a translation. Much is of necessity conjectural, but this version has a certain internal coherence which gives it plausibility, like the stuff about clerical officers doing imprest accounts which the late Michael Ventris got out Minoan Linear B. So I hope some editor will take a chance with it.

From Guardian, May 1963, and Public Administration, Jun 1963. The full reference for the Report is Control of Public Expenditure (Chairman, Lord Plowden, KCB, KBE), Cmnd 1432 of 1961).