[claudiawerner]

This also confuses me in politics. In one administration a particular member of the cabinet is justice secretary, and in the next election he's an education secretary. I am highly sceptical of the idea that they've studied the intricacies of effective pedagogy in order to get that job.

[TheOtherHobbes]

The jobs are awarded on the basis of political loyalty, ambition, and tribal (party) potential, not domain competence.

In the UK - and I guess the US - they're executive roles. The Prime Minister's office sets policy, with varying levels of debate and pushback, and the department heads implement it.

Executives who climb high enough are allowed to suggest policy of their own, under the oversight of the PM. Ministers direct implementation, but the details of execution are handled by the Civil Service.

No competence is needed. In fact in the last decade or so in the UK most of ministers were absolutely incompetent dolts elevated to purely political appointments - with results that surprised no one.

[claudiawerner]

There seems to be no other explanation for the borderline ridiculous proposals that keep making their way into laws, including but certainly not limited to CAJA 2009 which criminalizes sexual drawings of fictional underage characters - which they admitted in their own reports wasn't based on any empirical evidence and in fact only on hearsay and faulty reasoning from the likes of children's charity workers.

This is an egregious case with the chance to ruin lives (in fact, a substantial number of people are convicted under it each year according to stats in the VAWG report) but I wonder what other deplorable incompetence I'm missing out on seeing from the UK government.