Back in 2003 I had the joy of leading on Bradford Council’s budget process. There were many lessons learned but the most important one was the Finance Director telling me that, if you want actual budget reductions, the only way to achieve them is to stop doing things. Yes you can play smoke and mirrors with the numbers, you can not fully fund inflation or pay rises, you can promise efficiency savings, better procurement and reductions in waste, but all of this is just flim-flam, a process of handing responsibility for making cuts to middle management rather than owning the reduction of services yourself. If we want better government, we need to start with asking what better government looks like and what changes are needed to get the better outcomes we desire. Not merely in headline terms but right down to the detail - if you want fewer potholes then ask first why we have so many of them, if you want less immigration start by asking why we have so much of it in the first place, and if you want community cohesion perhaps begin by wondering why those parallel lives occur.