h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Morning all,

Well are they, or should they be? This is the Glasgow Toughie who talks hard but doesn't follow through.

Does the suspension of a senior civil servant get the good Dr off the hook, or is he still in the frame whilst the Home Office continues to be plagued by apparent incompetence.

Are we suffering from incompetent politicians ( targets etc ) or is the Civil Service letting us down? I know Blues Shark has some strong views on this, and he is probably right.

Novo

Firstly let me say that the suspension of a 'senior' civil servant is at least a step in the right direction - at least it wasn't the guy in the postroom who normally gets to carry the can for this type of cock-up. I'm not sure the junior minister who knew of the problem since last October can really hope to survive either.

John Reid ought to be able to ride this out - he has the advantage of having been on record as saying the Home Office was a shambles and I think he might justifiably be able to say that an organization as huge as the HO will take more than a couple of months (years?) to turn round.

As to who has let who down, well, that's a little more tricky. Successive Governments certainly hasn't helped by de-skilling, under-staffing and de-moralising the civil service to the point where most people with half a brain are getting out as fast as they can. Remember, the Civil Service once ran the Empire, and it was seen as good career choice for graduates from the better colleges (think of Ronnie in Passage to India. Not the brightest pencil in the box emotionally or socially, but an Oxbridge graduate nonetheless).

I think the press have to take their fair share of the blame for this as well - the Daily Hate Mail, the Express, all of the red tops and the Times and Telegraph are continously feeding the idea that the civil service is overmanned and overpaid. It's very hard for members of the public sector workforce to feel motivated to give you (the public) a decent service when we constantly feel that you'd like to see us all out of a job, or dead, or preferably both. This applies not only to civil servants but also members of support services in the NHS who are seen as barely being above criminals in the great scheme of things by the glorious fourth estate. Believe me, it can be very, very wearing and affects the way we approach our jobs.

And you the public must take your share of the blame as well. In the present 'kill a civil servant for Christ' atmosphere, the government has found it easy to screw our wages to the wall. And I'm afraid if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys. If you want a civil service that thinks for itself (I refuse to believe that huge swathes of people din't know about this problem - what was lacking was someone with sufficient get up and go to do something about it), you have to pay decent wages.

It'd probably help if you could stop Sir Gus McDonnell, Head of the Civil Service (wages £248, 000 a year) writing open letters to the unions addressing people who make less than a tenth of his earnings addressing us a 'dear colleague' and asking not to strike because of the damage we will do to the government.

And of course the present Government must take a lot of the blame. They took a bad situation and made it considerably worse. Gordon Brown thought it acceptable to state that 80, 000 people would lose their jobs on national tv without one word of warning or consultation with the unions, so great was his contempt for us. They revise targets, change priorities and knee-jerk react to everything on a virtually daily basis and expect a demoralised, under-staffed and de-skilled workforce to react favourably and well to every proposal they make.

It has of course now reached breaking point. The PCS has ballotted and they (and I) anticipate that the vote will be hugely in favour of industrial action, and then we'll see whose been letting who down.

Sounds similar to the US situation. You will get paid the least amount for doing the same work, if you work for the Federal government. I have direct, personal evidence as a scientist with an advanced degree.

And of course, we get jerked around too. Most recently they told a group of physicists and engineers that they should be biologists from now on. Maybe they're expected to evolve their advanced degrees into bio degrees?

"And I'm afraid if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys. "

I'd have thought you'd get elephants, that you'd need bananas for monkeys.

Get on Blues.

I know a few PCS Reps (comrades of mine from an old training course) who feel they have just been pushed too far and it is now time to act. Good for you guys!

Hi Blues,

Thanks for that considered and careful response. I'm sure too that it is an accurate representation of the situation within a civil service which used to be the envy of many.

As I have said before, tiresomely perhaps, I have no objection to paying my taxes, as long as the service exists. But may I give you an example of why some members of the public deride 'public servants'. I hasten to say that I still have regard......

On Boxing Day, a Bank Holiday I thought, and so does my MP, I picked up a parking ticket in our town, where oddly most of the
shops, including M&S where shut. I have paid up. But isn't odd that the local council ( who haven't had the good grace to acknowledge , let alone reply to my protesting email ) can have people out as Parking Wardens on Boxing Day but the Refuse Collection was 4 days overdue ( at maximum waste time ) presumably since the Bin Men enjoyed a long break. It would appear OK to get funds in whilst not providing a service already paid for.

Sorry Blues , that sounds like a rant, it isn't, I merely offer an example of how an average Joe sees the actions of those who are paid to look after his interests.

As to your missive, more power to your collective elbows, including FB's if you can get an improvement in the system, as well as your pay.

I confess to once being a Daily Mail reader, but not in recent years since Daily Hate became a more descriptive title. I get the Times on occasion and sometimes the Indy. What paper if any is less biased against you?

Novo

Is Blair's butler a Civil Service position? £50k isn't bad to kiss the backside of a socialist 24/7.

Blues has this absolutely spot on.

From a position where some culpability needed to be introduced into the Civil Service, because too many people were allowed to use the old boy network to fudge issues, it's become the whipping boy of the press.

I work alongside civil servants in some areas where the IT function has been outsourced, and I see people struggling to perform their jobs under a welter of mindless legislation which positively encourages doing nothing.

>On Boxing Day, a Bank Holiday I thought, and so does my MP, I picked up a parking ticket in our town, where oddly most of the shops, including M&S where shut. I have paid up. But isn't odd that the local council ( who haven't had the good grace to acknowledge , let alone reply to my protesting email ) can have people out as Parking Wardens on Boxing Day but the Refuse Collection was 4 days overdue ( at maximum waste time ) presumably since the Bin Men enjoyed a long break. It would appear OK to get funds in whilst not providing a service already paid for.<

Firstly I should point out that these are local council issues, not civil service ones, so paid for out of your council tax. Not really the fault of the civil service.

But, of course part of the problem lies with the sub-contracting of certain public sector functions, one of which is rubbish collection (unless you live in one of the very uncommon areas where the council opted to retain control of refuse). So interestingly your gripe about rubbish collection is really a private sector, not a public sector one. At a guess I'd suggest that the contractors cut their bid down so far to ensure getting the work that paying for work on bank holidays and anti-social hours is economically beyond them.

And of course traffic wardens are the sort of miserable b*st*ds you'd expect to be out on boxing day. (Though if you parked in a zone which was excluded on bank holidays, I'd appeal it.)

>Is Blair's butler a Civil Service position? £50k isn't bad to kiss the backside of a socialist 24/7.<

The sort of occluded comment that does *absolutely* nothing to forward the discussion. Would it be better if he was kissing the backside of a Tory 24/7? Is this a class thing that a socialist shouldn't have a butler? Or do you expect Blair to boil the kettle for US Ambassador? I suspect that although the job does nominally fall under the remit of the Home Office, the recruiting is done from outside, and I'd think £50k was about the going rate for butler of the sort of quality a head of state requires. Maybe you should write to Cameroon and invite him to make a statement that he will not require the services of a butler if elected. I'm willing to bet that strangely he declines your kind and well meant offer.

>a welter of mindless legislation which positively encourages doing nothing<

It's not so much the doing nothing, it's the not knowing what you are meant to be doing. Using my own job as an example, there are at least 5 tasks on any given file which have been identified as 'top priority' by the present government. As is tacitly recognized by at least middle management, there comes a point at which everything becomes urgent, therefore none of it is. I suspect my colleagues in the home office feel pretty much the same, especially with Robo-Reid giving daily press conferences about how useless they are and issuing daily orders about one thing or another.

And before some smart arse says it, we don't like striking. We recognize that strikes affect front line services, and in our cases the first people affected will be the victims of crime. But enough is enough.

Oh, and in answer to the question is anybody more sympathetic to our position, well, the Grauniad seems to hate us less than most, and by strange coincidence, todays Polly Toynbee piece may help shed some light on SWL's somewhat occluded thoughts;

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1991217,00.html

Hi Blues

<< Is Blair's butler a Civil Service position? £50k isn't bad to kiss the backside of a socialist 24/7.<<

I hope you aren't attributing that quuestion to me - it was one of SWL's


Novo

I think the whole of this governments days are numbered.The question is, who to take over?
What are folks views on a hung parliament, perhaps making all MP's work together for the good of the UK instead of for their respective parties and themselves? Would a hung parliament work?

Novo - not at all. Not the sort of thing I'd expect from you in any event.

Drd_t - Nope. Hung parliaments are a recipe for stagnation.

And to be honest, I see little evidence that this government is limited in terms of time. We have yet to see what Brown will produce in his first 100 days. Remember, it was largely Blairs first '100 day programme' trhat one him two subsequent elections.

FFS Blues, obviously you're too underpaid to afford a sense of humour.

Yes the civil service is underpaid - average salary is £19200 whereas the national average is £23244. No argument from me whatsoever.

There were 523580 civil servants at the last count, this is a figure that has been increasing since about 1997, (can't imagine what happened that year to start a reverse in declining staffing levels) http://www.civilservant.org.uk/numbers.pdf

As to the butler, I suppose £50k is a reasonable price to pay for a teasmaid seeing as how he seems to be split between the PM and the Queen (still head of state last time I looked).

Is the position of Butler a civil service position?

*delurks*

Not surprisingly I'm with Blues here. IN HMRC we're going through a savage rationalising process which includes reduced staffing levels; reduced offices (for example there will be NO debt management (collection) offices in Kent); LEAN working (think less, do more: demotivating and ultimately counterproductive. It means less people will know what they're doing but they'll be doing more of it) & centralisation of work (which is fair enough: why pay London weighting to someone to answer a 'phone? I can't argue against that one). On top of this we've got Brownie trying to peg payrises to 2%.

I see Polly hasn't really recovered from accidently agreeing with David Cameron has she - calling The Sun tory Press is the first little joke in her article - its owned by Tone's mate, the Dirty Digger.


Firstly she attempts to undermine the use of online resourse for civil service jobs by saying the Daily Mail owns the company that runs the NHS job site - this is nothing to do with the anything else - just a chance to use the words Daily Mail which is guarranteed to light the old red touch paper.

She then goes on to slate the list produced by The Tax Payers Alliance, and suggest throughout that they are a Tory organization. Her colleague James Harkin - obviously a journalist, who bothers to check what he writes, rather than a frenzied left-wing apologiser who writes what she wishes were true, rather than what is, found out whatthe organisation really is.

Read what Mr Harkin found out here. http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1863227,00.html

Morning all,

A question/suggestion addressed to Blues Shark.

Looking at the broader issue of worklooad in the HO and the range of tasks it apparently has to undertake , would you see any value in further decentralising government, following (eg) the example of the DVLA operating from South Wales and The Dept of Work & Pensions from Tyne & Weir?

I am wondering if moving various other departments to other parts of the Country could be beneficial in a number of ways.

Apart from the initial costs involved, it would possibly allow for lower operating costs, would give job opportunities to new areas, and would remove at a stroke the insulated 'Golden Triangle' view of how the rest of the country lives and works.

For example , Transport could come to the Northwest, Health To that centre in Yorkshire. You, the CPS could even go to sunny Devon !) Perhaps some of this is being done, perhaps there are more examples like the DVLA and W&P, perhaps it is a barking mad idea.

Any thoughts?

Novo

>FFS Blues, obviously you're too underpaid to afford a sense of humour<

My sense of humour is in excellent working order. I can always find time to point and laugh at West Ham. The difficulty with your post was that it was without context and wasn't terribbly funny. And I've given you my best answer to the question about the utterly irrelevant PM's butler. If you want more information you'll need to look it up yourself as I neither know nor care, nor indeed does it have the slightest relevance to the discussion here.

McKay.
Regardless of who owns the Sun, it is now and always will be a right wing press organ. Their chiel political correspondent, Trevor Kavanagh has an even more rabid hatred of anything left of centre than our friend SWL, and has no contacts within the Labour Party whatever. His chosen successor is of a similar ilk.

Novo - the CPS essentially already de-centralised, save for an HQ function (though this is much bigger than originally envisaged, and could do with being stripped down and some functions being sent to the hinterlands.)

I think there would be little objection to de-centralising the civil service, save from some die hards, and it would certainly save a great deal of money on 'capital' outlay such as accomodation.

Honestly, there's not much left to decentralise.

All the Agencies bar the Highways Agency are now out of London, AFAIK.

Pointless decentralising policy staff - they just get cut off from their political authority, co-ordination meetings etc.

sprout

I forgot - I wanted to add that I really didn't understand how the HO farce manages to go so badly wrong.

First thing I would have done in the place of the senior civil servant concerned is to send off a giant arse covering memo to Reid, the Junior Minister and enough copyees so they can't deny it.

Set out the problem, recommend a course of action, ask for approval. It's just basic civil service protocol.

sprout

Afternoon all,

The 'announcement' separation of HP functions ought to be one to welcome, but I a wondering if halving the size will actually double the problems, since it is clear that interoffice conversations are a problem, let alone interdepartmental ones. How well does that bode for the two proposed divisions to exchange information on overlapping functions.

Novo