Illustration: David Foldvari

Michael Gove's scheme to send a special edition of the King James Bible to every state school in the country has been saved. The plan, which was announced last year, was reported to have run into difficulties when it was decided that it wouldn't be appropriate for taxpayers to pay for it. Instead the bill is to be footed by leading Tory donors. That's not to say that they're not also taxpayers. I'm sure they are. To some extent.

It's going to cost £370,000, which is a lot of money if you're a normal human. It's not quite so much if you're a leading Tory donor. That's not to say that they're not also normal humans. I'm sure they are. To some extent.

But it's not a lot of money for the government either, so it wouldn't really matter if the taxpayer had paid – apart from the principle of the thing. By which I mean all the adverse publicity. People care much more about that £370,000 than about vastly greater sums being squandered or saved less interestingly.

Just like people, some bits of money are cared about more than others. Some bits are cherished in coin collections or tax havens – others are left to fend for themselves down the back of sofas or in the budgets of lazily written action movies. In my life, the money I would otherwise spend on shampoo is very dear to me: I buy the cheapest possible shampoo. When I can steal it from hotels, I do. I use every last squirt from every bottle, eking out days' more use from each one when most people would have thrown it away. I dote on the thought of that saved money. It may amount to as much as £14 over my lifetime. Meanwhile, the money I waste because I'm perpetually on the wrong mobile phone tariff is sent out into the world neglected and unloved.

But this Bible distribution money is not just loved, it's famous. It's not part of the anonymous billions that go into servicing the national debt, or the hardworking billions that pay for doctors and nurses, or the parasitic billions that are spent on bureaucracy. It's a celebrity, always in the papers, hobnobbing at parties with what the logo for the London Olympics cost and the price of that duck island.

The fuss over who should pay for this scheme has, rather sadly in my view, overshadowed its goals. Which are stupid and loathsome in equal measure. First of all, the whole idea, practically speaking, is pointless. Many, if not most, of the schools to which Gove is arbitrarily sending a King James Bible will already have at least one. For those that do not, the acquisition of one copy of a book is useless for teaching purposes. And the entire King James Bible is available online anyway.

Second, it is self-aggrandising. Every copy of Gove's specially printed Bible has "presented by the secretary of state for education" written on it. In gold. On the spine. Not inside in small letters, but on the outside in shiny ones. That's rude to God. And, if you don't think God exists, it's rude to King James, who definitely did. This grandiose sending out of a single book is not going to be of any educational use. It's just going to annoy teachers because it's so high-handed.

Third, this very high-handedness is, I suspect, what appeals about the scheme to many of its fans. It's clearly a dog whistle to a reactionary constituency who, in a lazy and uninformed way, are suspicious of the teaching profession, which they consider decadent and liberal, and of society's general multi-cultural direction. "That'll knock some sense into all those socialists and Muslims – send them a big old British Jacobean book and see how they like that!" they think.

This allows Gove to perpetuate in the public's minds a view of our education system in which he's not really responsible for it. He sends out Bibles, makes speeches about how scandalous it is that private schools are so much better, moans that kids don't learn Latin or read Shakespeare enough, argues for performance-related pay and generally makes all the right old-fashioned noises – and then everyone assumes the inadequacies of our schools must be despite, rather than because of, his efforts. In short, by this dispatching of a book, Gove is clearly implying that he's not really on the schools' side. He's not asked them if they want one and made it available to those who do. He's not bothered to check which schools already have a copy of it. He's not trying to find out what other books they might want or be short of. He's just dispensing the Word of Gove from on high.

Transport minister Norman Baker would probably advocate doing it remotely. No need to drag Moses all the way up the mountain when you can just tell him what's what over Skype. Responding to the Whitehall plan to "cut or change" 50% of civil servants' journeys during the seven-week Olympic and Paralympic period by encouraging people to work from home, Baker said: "I'm very keen to use this opportunity to record speeches remotely." He continued: "It's much better value than travelling maybe hundreds of miles to make a 10-minute speech." And on top of that, you save the dry cleaning bill – if it's all done over the internet, the rotten tomatoes can just be wiped off the screen.

I was amused by this insight into what a transport minister does: makes speeches. So, if he's working from home, he's making speeches at home and then emailing the videos to people. I wonder if he's bought himself a little lectern? He could get a range of plastic microphones with the logos of international broadcasters stuck on them. Alternatively, he could just grab a shampoo bottle and do it in the shower. I've often suspected that endless pontificating was all a politician's life consisted of, and that the actual business of government was handled by the reviled bureaucrats, but it was surprising to hear that view confirmed by a minister.

But Michael Gove is a more senior member of the government. He doesn't just make speeches, he also comes up with "eye-catching initiatives". Whether it's sending out Bibles, buying a yacht for the Queen or letting people set up their own schools, he's got an impresario's gift for keeping us interested. He holds our attention with the £370,000 he's spending on gilded scriptures. It distracts from what's happening with unloved billions elsewhere.