Category Archives: civil service

Cat >>>>> Pigeons.

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The race for the new police commissioners job here in Kent is starting to hot up. I don’t know who all the candidates are, but Col. Tim Collins, he of the impassioned eve of battle speech seems to be the early, runaway favourite. No doubt the rest of the card will be made up of the barely successful local politicians, or those fading from greater glories.

He’s made a bold statement today, one that will not have gone down at all well with some. His claim?

Former Army officer Colonel Tim Collins, who wants to become Kent’s police and crime commissioner, has said he would only need to work part-time.

Eleven people are standing for election for the post, which will replace the county’s police authority this year.

Col Collins said he did not see there was full-time work in the role.

Seems a little cocky, but Collins is not a man afraid to put his neck on the line.

The 51-year-old, whose availability for the role is limited by existing work commitments, said: “It would be a part-time role for me. I don’t see there’s full time work in it.

The Police Federation don’t agree.

The Kent Police Federation said it was “nonsense” to say the role, currently filled by 16 police authority members, could be carried out part-time.

Yes, sixteen members.

In the US, they’ve had this model of elected police chiefs since, well, forever as far as I can make out. It seems to work for them. But for the public servant the idea that one person can do the work of 16 is unthinkable, hell most of them would probably have you believe that 16 people can’t do the work of 16 people. (Bear in mind that the expenses run to £212 per person, per day, plus transport and up to £30k per year in ‘annual allowances’ dependent on position held, this looking at the list of members is ‘part-time’ work. By my very, very rough back of a fag packet calculations interspersed with some assumptions of 10 days a month work, we’re looking at around a cool half million a year minimum for the current system.)

A canny operator, Collins. The Colonel takes care not to piss off his Majors and Captains:

“the reality is that we’ve got a very effective chief constable who has got a great team around him. They can do the policing.”

Absolutely, there’s nothing worse than a politician walking around with the police, on the beat, wearing a stab vest, going back and telling everyone that they know what’s going on because they’ve been there. It’s rubbish.

This is why I support the concept of elected police chiefs, if they can direct the uniformed management, hold them accountable, whilst being accountable themselves, then surely it must be an improvement on what is effectively an anonymous group of local worthies with no real accountability.

The elected police chief can set his/her stall out and say, a vote for me is an indication that you want policy A, B and C. If s/he delivers, then all well and good, if s/he doesn’t then s/he’s out. They also need the power to remove uniformed managers who disobey, obstruct or obfuscate the policies of the elected chief.

A part-time role? Well, who knows, only time will tell. In a Conservative county, I’d be amazed if Collins, the old war hero and Conservative candidate didn’t get the nod from the electorate, but if he sets a dangerous precedent and one man can do the work of 16, then others may pick up on this. It could be a dangerous time to be a senior civil servant.

Or you could have just re-done the test.

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I despair at sections of the public civil service who just seem obsessed with spanking public money in needlessly bureaucratic exercises that benefit nobody at all. I try to mount a considered defence of civil servants, because I am one, I am keen to let people know that we’re not all incompetent wasters, but when faced with stories like this, it makes the task pretty much untenable:

A bull sentenced to slaughter after testing positive for bovine TB has won a reprieve after its South Yorkshire owners took its case to the High Court.

Ken Jackson, of Forlorn Hope Farm, Walden Stubbs, disputes the validity of a TB test that condemned Boxy the bull.

Defra ordered the bull to be slaughtered after a positive blood sample was taken last April.

Now, given the volume of TB tests done on cattle in the UK, it must be fairly safe to assume that a cost-effective test has been developed and also that from time to time these tests go wrong. The simple solution is to re-test.

Mr Jackson had told the court he wanted prize-winning Hallmark Boxter, also known as Boxy, to be re-tested and offered to pay for it.

He argued that the officers who took the sample mixed two half-full vials in the field, contrary to written procedures.

Now, had I been in charge of the office responsible, my response would have been to have said ‘OK, let’s do that, I understand you are anxious and as you’ve offered to pay, let’s get it done.’ But no. That hasn’t happened at all.

Julie Anderson, appearing for Defra, argued that the bull posed a dangerous threat of spreading bovine TB and must be destroyed.

She submitted that there was “no evidence whatsoever” that the positive blood sample had been contaminated.

No doubt a little checklist on the inside cover of the file had been completed, signed by the officer in the field and/or lab, passed to the line manager who had given authority and then countersigned by a higher or senior officer. It is the mindset that if the checklist has been completed then everything is correct. The checklist can never be wrong. It is complete in its wisdom, everything that needs to be on it is there, anything that isn’t on it is an irrelevance. This is a culture that prohibits the employment of abstract thought. It is not common for a civil servant to be thanked for saying to himself ‘hang on a minute. . .’

But at the High Court in London Mr Justice McCombe quashed the notices of intended slaughter, ruling that the test taken in relation to Boxy was flawed.

Obviously nobody thought to tell Justice McCombe about the infallibility of the checklist. Or perhaps they did, but he didn’t buy it.

He refused Defra permission to appeal, though the department could still make an application directly to the Court of Appeal in a bid to take the case further.

Or they could just re-administer the test. You know it is possible that maybe a human being made a mistake. I know you’ve got best practice and standard operating procedures and training courses and one day refereshers and e-learning and all that guff, but sometime people just make mistakes. It doesn’t make them a bad person, it makes them a human person. Re-doing the test, making sure that it is robust and properly effective will settle this once and for all. The farmer even offered to pay for it.

Daniel Stilitz QC, for the claimants, said the Jacksons “are not wealthy people” and the case had cost them £28,000.

The judge ordered the defendant to pay £15,000 costs within 14 days.

So that’s fifteen grand on top of what DEFRA have had to pay to get themselves to this situation, as opposed to what, a couple of quid for a test? A test, which I cannot outline enough, the farmer has offered to pay for.

Of course there is no culpability here from DEFRA:

A Defra spokesman said: “We are naturally disappointed by this judgment and will carefully consider its implications and our next steps, including whether to appeal.

“The judgment does not, however, undermine our comprehensive TB-testing regime for cattle.”

They’ll appeal, believe me. The fact it will cost the taxpayer a small fortune doesn’t matter. Their rules, their decision. Who do these people think they are, going against DEFRA’s judgement? Don’t they know these people are highly trained experts in their field with years of experience under their belt? No. This cow must die. Without a re-test. It is impossible to think that a mistake has been made. Besides, we’ve got this checklist. . .

The spanking of public money is done unthinkingly. There is no connection between the tax take and the departmental budget sheet. It simply does not occur to them to not spend the money.

In my department, which I have decided to name the Dept of Beverage Transportation and Consumption Vessel Cleansing for comedy blog purposes, (it is headed up by Dame Greta Arseclown-Um Bongo following the retirement of Sir Norman Tedium-Custard in the new year), a number of front-line staff, most of them my friends, have toddled off into redundancy this week. However I received a message from the ‘Religion and Belief Champion’, Simon Supinely-Nice, about ‘Holy Week’. Could they not get it darned?

‘Savage’ cuts? Don’t make me laugh. I’d love to see what vital tasks are undertaken by Mr. Supinely-Nice over the course of a week, how much he is paid, and how many of those just handed their P45′s could have stayed on if he’d been given the push with his ridiculous post instead.

Dropping the bomb.

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The bomb has finally been dropped in the department and the job losses are coming. It’ll make the papers, when it does, the Daily Mail may very well explode. There’s going to be some fairly large job losses at a number of sites. As fas as I can tell it is the front line, those sat in the comfy chairs seem to be unaffected.

I’m unsure how many will actually be kicked out, they’re giving the opportunity for those who want to walk, to walk with some dignity. Morale is so low that I’d be surprised if the offer wasn’t over-subscribed. It’s been coming, it’s been expected and yes, it does suck. But that’s life. It is unfortunate that there will be a number of people who I respect who will be lost. These people are worth their salary, and I’ll miss them.

By lucky hap, it looks like Wolfers unwittingly moved himself into a bomb shelter a couple of years ago, I’m glad about it. I’ve had some plans in case the worst happens, but I’d rather stay in at the moment, I enjoy my job and in the last couple of months it has become very interesting and delivered a steep learning curve, one that I’m finding challenging. This is most welcome, my worst nightmare is becoming an automaton, marking time.

We’ve a new manager of my unit, he isn’t quite God, but he’s enough nous and political capital in the office to safeguard his staff. Looks like I’ve a 3 year reprive until the next swoosh of the axe. He’s blunt, direct and has upset people. Some of those people didn’t deserve to be upset, and it could have been handled better, but I don’t blame him completely, he’s been handed a unit in a department (but not an area of work) which is alien to him, with no knowledge of the people working there and a number of cherry bombs with fizzing fuses around him.

He’s given us a degree of insulation, but I have no doubt that his protection comes with the expectation that we actually deliver in a meaningful sense, rather than in a nebulous, fuzzy management speak sense. This is uncommon in the civil service. I actually find it quite refreshing. I like the idea of having to figure out how in the hell I’m going to do something, it is infinitely preferable to working down a list and ensuring every box is ticked. More responsibility, more flexibility and more freedom. Excellent. More pressure, higher expectations and not as much money. Well, them’s the breaks. I know a good thing when I see one, so I’m going to make sure I roll my sleeves up and do my damndest to ensure that this new regime is a success. The short term future is dodgy, ride this storm out and who knows where I could be in ten year’s time. It is exciting, but it won’t be a free ride.

I hope you’ll forgive this departure into the personal. I try to avoid blogging about work, because it could get messy, however I always try to be objective and balanced when I do. It isn’t all bad, although it could be better and some managers do their best to make it worse, they actually seem to relish the prospect of telling good staff that they’re surplus to requirements, when their performance should leave them on shaky ground themselves.

I just want to let you know that the civil service isn’t all about box tickers, diversity officers, outreach coordinators and the feckless and incompetent. Although God knows they exist in big enough number. There are staff who do care about their work, and completely understand that we work for you. It is a shame that this attitude seems to become less common the further up the foodchain you go. Then they think they work for the ministers and secs of state. They’re wrong.

On the day when the bomb is dropped a new toy appears, on the wall of the foyer of the building there has appeared a monitor; it details the amounts of energy used, CO2 expelled and electricity bill for the building for a rolling 24hr period. I don’t know where it gets its data from, probably some wonk sat in an office typing in numbers at random. The Ecoloons have broken through into the world of Sir Humphrey. The best bit? It isn’t just a monitor, it is a top of the range touch screen computer, almost like a wall mounted I-Pad. The device is locked though, the only application it will run is the green deity’s counter of guilt and doom. God knows how much it cost. I’m sure the irony of the expenditure on it won’t be lost on the staff who are ruminating on their future.

The fat remains to be trimmed, unfortunately the butcher is careless and he’s hacking off a lump of fillet steak.

All about Terry.

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I want to tell you about Terry. I’ll call him Terry, because it isn’t his name.

Terry is a real person and works in my civil service department. He’s been around for God knows how long. I joined more than a decade ago and he was an ‘old lag’ then.

Terry is never late, he never complains, he’s absolutely never off sick. He is easily more than competent and takes each new initiative and quick-stop-turn-around-run-off-in-the-other-direction change in his stride.

Terry has MS. He’s known about it for some time, but over the last few years it really has taken its toll. Like I said, Terry never grumbles.

His place of work is a ‘permanent’ building. This building is in effect a portacabin, sat up on breeze blocks. In the summer it is unbearably hot, in winter it is arctic. In the spring and autumn, rain water comes flowing in through the door from outside. Terry never grumbles whilst others moan and whine. He merely snorts and raises his eyebrows before getting back to work.

At least twice a week he’s on parade for 06:30. Lord knows how he does it, how he can physically get himself out of bed for such an early start is a mystery to me. Lord knows how much sleep he gets the night before. Movement is not easy for him, in order for him to walk more than 5 metres, he has to lean on a colleague’s shoulder and move at a snail’s pace. Terry never grumbles, he merely accepts the cards that life has dealt him and gets on with it.

When other members of staff moan about certain tasks that they don’t want to do, desks which they don’t want to sit at, Terry never grumbles. All he asks for is a few minute’s grace so he can get from one place to another with the assistance of a work-mate. You won’t hear Terry say ‘can’t do that, it’s my back/neck/arm/leg/wrist/ankle’.

When the latest authoritarian and hostile missive designed to demotivate the staff, to make them jump ship, comes through from the managers, Terry just smiles ruefully and shakes his head, he’s seen them come and seen them go.

Terry never has a day off sick. Never. His fear is that his first day off sick will be his last day of work. Although he wouldn’t admit it, Terry loves his job. Terry loves the people he works with. The people he works with love him back.

Terry’s only vice is a sneaky fag, propped up on the railings outside the main entrance. This is against the rules, the department has decreed that any smoking on departmental property is verboten. Even the most ardent of anti-smokers in the team would kick off if someone prevented Terry from having his puff a couple of times a day.

Terry will without doubt leave with a very nice pension, but given his physical condition, one can only wonder how long he’ll benefit from it. He’d probably be better off taking medical retirement to get some use of it, but his job keeps him socially active. When Terry does go, he’d be unable to find a venue suitable for his retirement do, there’d be hundreds wanting to turn out to see him off. He probably wouldn’t have one though, Terry doesn’t like a fuss.

To our management Terry is just another drone, another name on a document.

There’s no moral to this story, no happy or sad ending. I just wanted to put a human face to the grey anonymous people given the ‘civil servant’ tag. As has been clearly documented here I support the cuts, but not at the expense of Terry and those like him. Unfortunately he and his kind will be the first to suffer. Our management, senior national and middle local, will always make sure their army of box ticking, equality observing, diversity valuing, best practice policy making suits will be safe.

They don’t know Terry, they have no contact with him and when they do visit the shop floor all they see are a crowd of drones. They don’t really know what these drones do, they know how valuable their army of box ticking, equality observing, diversity valuing, best practice policy making suits are.

Bring on the cuts, wield the axe, but for the love of God hit the right target. Terry and his colleagues are spread thin enough as it is, and it breaks my heart to see them treated in such a shoddy fashion.

We civil servants are not all officious, unfeeling automatons. Some of us care deeply about the jobs we do, and despite every obstacle put in our way, we try to do it as well as we possibly can. This country can have a civil service of which it can be proud, but I am worried that the rotten flesh will be cut out and kept, whilst the healthy is thrown aside.

For shame.

Why is this so difficult to understand?

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I’ve just had the misfortune of listening to some of this morning’s phone in on Radio 5, and it left me tearing my hair out in despair.

It all centred around this news story about the public service unions discussing industrial action over forthcoming cuts.

Sigh.

It really does drive me to distraction. Usual pointing out, I am a public sector worker, and come early November, once the spending review has been digested, I will find out how deep and how close to home the cuts in my department are. There’s nothing I can do about it. What happens, happens.

I am not a member of any of the TUC affiliated unions, I’m not interested. I dislike the authoritarian nature of those unions, I dislike their militant tendencies and I’m damned if a single penny of my pay is going, via my subs, to the Labour party. It isn’t happening.

How did we come to be here? Well, there’s a couple of major factors in my mind. Firstly we’ve just come out of 13 years of Labour rule. Quite why people expected a different outcome this time is beyond me. Labour governments always end in bankruptcy and industrial strife. Always, always, always.

For over a decade we had a government that was obsessed with spying on us, monitoring and measuring us, nannying us, telling us what do to, how to do it, when to do it, and regulating us to make sure we complied with all the above. This was a government that really did oversee the introduction of officers to root through people’s bins, to adjudicate on whether people had driven their car in a bus lane for two metres, to go into our schools and tell kids to eat 5 a day.

Like the person who wins the lottery and then lives the next 5 years spending, spending, spending, the money was always going to run out. The levels of expenditure were not sustainable, this money does not magically appear out of thin air, there comes a point when the people you take the money from simply do not have any more to give. The cow has been milked dry.

Secondly, there was a huge shift in the way the civil service (my department at least) did business. It used to be that when someone retired or moved on, people wishing to fill that post from within would apply for the job and would be interviewed etc, etc, before being given the promotion. That all changed, I forget the reasons now, but you can bet that one of the prime motivators was that senior positions did not have adequate representation of women, ethnic minorities, the disabled, the incompetent, and that wasn’t good enough. There was then this programme of ‘assessment centres’ where anyone could apply for their ticket to promotion, and as long as they met the minimum requirements for the promotion (and the criteria and process bore very little relationship to the real life demands of the promotion, it was spectacularly vague and general) then that ticket would be given.

Problem, with all these people being told they could have promotion, there were no promotions to give these people. Solution? Create new jobs for them. When I joined my department, there were six Senior Bottle Washers and one Bottle Cleaning Policy Wonk, if you had any dealings with the Bottle Cleaning Policy Wonk, it was because you’d happened to walk into the toilet when he was there or you’d been very, very bad. In 2010 we have, blimey, I don’t know, over a dozen Senior Bottle Washers, five Bottle Cleaning Policy Wonks and two Directors of Liquid Containment Vessel Management (Cleansing and Deployment). All these people had to be given a responsibility, a staff, a budget and all the trimmings. If this was replicated throughout the civil service, and I bet it was, then the bill must have run to tens, even hundreds of millions of pounds.

Where were the unions? I heard no policies of caution and parsimony from them at the time. Now the credit card bill has arrived and the gnashing of teeth and wailing has started.

So on the radio this morning, we’ve heard the old bogeyman being rolled out. ‘Ooooh, it’s the evil bankers and the evil Tories.’ Bullshit. We’ve been spending for too long. The banks didn’t help, and then spending loads of our money to bail them out when we could have said ‘you’re broke, and? What do you expect us to do about it? Your shareholders can bail you out, or do they only count when there’s dividends to pay and they don’t ask too many questions?’ didn’t help at all.

As for the bonuses. Well, as long as the bank paying it hasn’t taken a penny of public money, they can pay someone a hundred, billion, trillion pounds for all I care. If the shareholders are content with it, then fair enough. If the shareholders’ silence or indifference leads to the bank collapsing, then tough.

Our politicians and senior civil servants have been just as wasteful and as profligate as our failed banks. The bankers were not held to account by their shareholders, and the civil servants have not been held to account by the (warning, management word) stakeholders of the politicians, unions and electorate.

Is it fair that some capable and worthwhile staff (and they do exist) are going to lose their jobs? No. It isn’t, but that is the situation. If you are on an economy drive at home, is it fair that the Chinese restaurant, the video rental shop, the local zoo all lose income as a result? No, it isn’t, but that’s life, if you haven’t got it, you don’t spend it.

This is going to hurt, but it cannot be escaped.

Unions: For years you have stood back and watched as millions of pounds have been pissed up the wall, and you said nothing. You knew the party had to end sometime, but all the while people were joining and donating to whatever causes you saw fit, you kept quiet. You don’t represent peoples’ views and interests, you collect people as if there’s a prize for whoever has the most members. I don’t want to hear people on huge salaries moaning about the inequity of bankers’ pay (as detailed by OH here), it is hypocrisy and you are as self-serving and corrupt as the politicans you have finally decided to rail against.

Public Service Workers: What good do you think going out on strike will do? Will it make the money magically come back? Will Joe Public recoil in horror and take out his wallet? Ask yourself the question ‘will I be missed if I go out?’ If the public will not absolutely miss you as an individual not pushing forms, internal memos, order dockets and the like about, then watch out. You are turning a huge spotlight on and your empty desk is right underneath it.

Public Service Managers: Stop wasting money. Stop introducing idiotic schemes promoting alternative lifestyles, rambling groups, religious awareness seminars. Stop bringing in stupid teams with mad budgets, if your department has managed to soldier on despite a lack of a ‘vital service’ thus far, the chances are it doesn’t need doing now. Sweep away the ridiculous empires which have sprung up in the last ten years. I can think of half a dozen in my department alone. Get rid of them. For every person in these non-squads, there is someone who works in a worthwhile office who is seeing it fall apart because the reason for the existence of the department has been forgotten. You’ve forgotten that you have a clear purpose, and you’ve failed to exercise sufficient control over those below you. They’ve pulled the wool over your eyes whilst their gaze is set on the next promotion. Keep it simple and do what is absolutely required, not what your grasping assistants tell you it would be nice or good to do.

What a bloody mess.

The One That Is Waiting For His Letter. . .

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It’s probably a publicity stunt, but as a civil servant, I’m feeling quite energised about Cameron’s letter arriving on my doormat or in my pigeon hole. I may be naive, but I like the idea that suggestions I may have to save money could be considered. I dismiss the criticism over the policy of the PM and Chancellor asking the staff for ideas. A good manager will always seek out the opinions and suggestions of his staff, they have a perspective he does not, and may see things he cannot.

Will any of these ideas actually be considered, or even acted upon? I’m sceptical, but it is only fair to give Cameron the chance to fail to live up to his word, he deserves that at the least. The ideas I have (and there are quite a few) that relate purely to my own department would never be entertained by my local management. There are simply too many vested interests, too many empires built that need protecting against the barbarian hordes.

Civil servants come in for a lot of criticism, and rightly so. As a group we have an amazing capacity for officiousness, unaccountability, and an a lack of ability to think ‘outside the box’. However on the ground there is a collection (mainly) of individuals who are frustrated at the crushing box ticking, the restrictive gradist attitude and as recent events have proven at my work place, have a capacity for humanity doing whatever little they can to help (not nanny or manage) those who really do need it.

On the ground floor at my department we have a collection of individuals who care deeply about the job they do and take great pride in doing their job as well as their individual talents and the collective bureaucracy allows. I am proud, with a few exceptions, to call them my colleagues.

When Dave Prentis from UNISON says:

The efficiency savings made over the past three years have cut out most of the waste – there is very little fat left to cut.

He is wrong, wrong, wrong.

There are huge great seams of fat which can be excised, and most of it having very little detriment to the front line. Indeed most of it would be of benefit to the front line. However, and this is the crux of the matter, I have very little faith in the will of my senior local managers to make those cuts, they will always look to target the front line first.

This is because of the empires that have been built. Everyone will accept that cuts have to be made, but the mantra will always be ‘but of course my teams/projects are absolutely vital to the running of the business.’ Once those empires have been ring-fenced, given immunity from the purge, it is always the front line will be damaged, through staff losses or constrictions in resources. The support mechanism starts to become more important than the operation they in place to support.

We’ve already had unofficial word of job losses at my department. I was expecting it. To be fair the totals mooted cover both operational and support posts, and to be even fairer, I think the support workers will probably bear the brunt. But, and it’s a big but, once the cuts have happened, I’m fairly confident that our senior local managers will start to pick off operational staff from the front line to plug the gaps in their little non-teams, for without the little non-teams it becomes more difficult to justify their existence.

It should also be noted that the job loss total semi-rumours which are doing the rounds stop just below the level of the lowest band of senior manager locally, which for ease of illustration, I shall call Band X.

When I started in my job around a decade ago, we had one person in Band X locally. They more or less let staff get on with their jobs. They were the boss. There was no-one higher without going to HQ. If you saw this Band X, you wrote a post-card home to Mum, telling her about it. Now we have. . . I don’t know how many. . . seven? Eight? Band X’s, all trying desperately now to justify their existence. Not only that, but there have been recent listings advertising for more of these. We also have a Band Y and a Band Z.

The result? A top heavy management which leeches off money and resources from the front line, and managers who cannot help getting involved in the smallest details of the operation, an operation that has been run, as far as the bureaucracy allows, perfectly well by the staff on the front line.

There’s the first saving right there.

There are many others too boring and techincal to go into here. I will look forward to drafting my response to Cameron’s letter and posting it off.

What’s in it for Wolfers? I don’t want a bonus, I certainly don’t want a promotion – I don’t sing the right hymns for that. A shake of the hand and a thank-you will be sufficient. That, and the increased ability of my colleagues and I to do our jobs without intereference, with more efficiency and with greater initiative, pragmatism and humanity.

Conscientious civil servants do exist, and there are more of us than you may suspect.

The One That Hasn’t Been Striking. . .

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Golden rules. Well, if it’s something I’ve learned about golden rules from this government, it is that they are there to be broken. So here goes.

My only golden rule about this blog is that I will not blog about my work. This is for a couple of reasons, I don’t want to – in the main my work is dull, and it isn’t a good idea – if I say something controversial and it is traced back to me, I could find myself in a spot of bother.

So. As many of you know I’m a civil servant (and I’m very civil, I always say hello, good-bye, please and thank-you. My mother brought me up very well), by most peoples’ reckoning about 250,000 of us were out on strike today, I wasn’t one of them. And I will explain why.

Firstly, it’s not my union that has gone out on strike. As a Libertarian I have absolutely no problem with the concept of a unionised workplace. One of the central beliefs of Libertarianism is the freedom of association. However I am not a member of the PCS union, they are far too militant for my liking, and locally have engaged in shameful, personal attacks against managers and members and reps of other unions. Criticise policy and performance all you like, launch personal attacks (and these attacks were disgusting and very, very personal, below even that which one would expect of a playground bully) and my interest in having you represent me is nil.

I will now trot out the old line about the difference in pay between private sector employees and their equivalents in the public sector. I am not a high ranking officer, and my pay is not stellar. However it is enough for me to live on, I have (a lesser degree of) security and I know that (at present) my pay will be in my bank account at the end of every month. That is worth a lot to me, so I’m happy with my lot, even though it isn’t perfect.

Secondly, I’m not in complete agreement with the subject of the action. As I understand it, it all hinges on the amount payable to staff if they are laid off. Under the new system which is due to be introduced in April 2011, I would stand to lose about 40% of what I would currently be paid in the event of my being laid off. Whilst that is a sizeable amount, it is still well beyond that which would be given out to most private sector employees.

Am I happy about this? No, not particularly. However I have an understanding that the money that has been splashed about over the last thirteen years simply is not there anymore. We are broke, so there are two options, cut back on expenditure, or raise taxes. I don’t want the latter, either coming out of my pay-packet or making people view me as the greedy, lazy, incompetent civil servant that has ensured a bigger chunk has gone AWOL from theirs. No, cuts have to be made, and we on the factory floor have a duty to take our share, just as our managers in the office above us do. I hope they realise this though. Whether they do or not remains to be seen.

Whilst I completely understand the reaction of my colleagues, not just in my department, but from across the civil service, going on strike isn’t going to change the fact that the cupboard is bare. We cannot pay out cash that doesn’t exist.

The worry is that as soon as this reduced pay-out regime comes into force, the job cuts will start. It would seem that we need to reduce by 10% (natural wastage is about 3% – 4%). Well, at the risk of sounding hard hearted, I reckon my department could probably cut 10% of the typical lazy, incompetent staff at a stroke and not lose any efficiency at all. Poor performance dismissals are a very rare animal round my way, and too many people have had it too easy for too long. The lazy and incompetent are tolerated, carried, not rocking the boat is the order of the day down here. It is amazing how the feckless and can’t be bothered get very energised and determined as soon as moves to finish their free ride appear on the horizon. The policy of ‘it’s a hassle, let’s not force the issue’ has gone on far too long, both on the factory floor and in the office above. It must stop, now.

I’m confident that if the cuts come, I’m capable of proving that I am, have been and will continue to be worth my job. If I’m not, then I’ll just have to deal with it. Again, I may sound hard hearted, I may sound like I’m looking out for number one. Well, I am. I am not convinced that any union can look after me and especially not the PCS. It seems to me the PCS are like the big 3 parties. They get your subs and then demand your complete obedience to their agenda. Well, to be frank, Fuck That. If these savings HAVE to be made, if these cuts MUST happen then all the strikes in the world will not alter that fact. To borrow a phrase, we can’t carry on like this. It isn’t fair on the taxpayer and it isn’t fair on the staff who are competent, who do work and do care.

I cross the picket line with a clear conscience. However I also do it with no criticism of those standing on it, they are poorly managed, frustrated at a sea of waste, demoralised and (the majority of good workers) are undervalued by their managers and ministers. I understand them, but I cannot join them.

The One That Wants To Know How. . .

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A senior political advisor, earlier today.

It seems to be death by a thousand cuts, doesn’t it?

First there was the knife crime figures, released with indecent haste, and even by the standards of this government’s tractor production figures, laughable. Apology from the floor of the House.

Then, and this is a real doozy, somehow this bunch of elected and appointed fucktards managed to embark on an efficiency drive that ended up spunking £81million up the wall, when it was meant to cut spending by £57million.

I would absolutely love to know the details of that one. How on Earth do you set out to save tens of millions of pounds, but then end up spending almost twice that in the process? It really does beggar belief. Heads should roll. They won’t, because no-one has the decency to hold their hands up anymore (certainly not in the public sector, I work there and see it every day) and fall on their swords, and they won’t get sacked because the halfwit minister that appointed them would be expected to follow them out of the door. I love the faux-hubristic bluster and fingerpointing across the floor of the House when anyone has the temerity to suggest they should go. How fucking dare they?

And then, and this is the real killer, despite us having the largest prison population in the EU, the largest DNA database in the world and more people inside now than at any other point in our history, there are a ‘substantial’ amount of prisoners who have yet to be put on the database. These are the people that should be on the database. How? How in the name of holy fuck can anyone be that incompetent? It isn’t as if they are difficult to track down, is it?

My feelings regarding this government and the machinery they operate swings from abject terror to incontinence inducing mirth and there is a line that connects the two.

Firstly, the politicians have an attention span akin to that of a four year old dosed up on skittles, they must run around the table at cabinet meetings whooping and shouting as they try to get through the latest ‘ideas’ as quickly as possible. They are playing at government and are as effective as a paper condom.

Secondly, and with deepest regret, I must announce the death of Sir Humphrey. He doesn’t exist anymore. In his place we have:
- A collection of absolutely batshit mental psychopaths who think that the film Wall Street is a modern management manual, who then destroy staff morale and wipe out goodwill.
- Those who have managed to persuade the civil service that in order to get the best they must pay private sector wages, but can’t obviously match the bonuses and share options handed out. It doesn’t attract the best, just those who think they are the best.
- The Righteous who see it as a mission from God to be ZNL’s ‘fixers’.
- Those who have been promoted way above their abilities, but have got there by vigourously following the civil service’s ridiculous box ticking diversity and equality agenda. This will be implemented, whatever the cost to practical and operational matters.

The result? Make no mistake about it, we have a cross between Stalin, Mr. Bean and Darth Vader at the top, but his generals are all morons, his stormtroopers are armed with spud guns and all the spuds are ten miles behind the lines. The potential is frightening, the reality is like watching the Keystone Kops rolling across the Polish border in leased, poorly maintained Panzers.

Leg-Iron is quite right when he says the Righteous will never agree, it is all about personal glory coupled with insane arse-covering. They are doomed to failure, unfortunately as they self-destruct they will take an awful lot of bystanders with them.