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

Afternoon all,

I'll start by saying that this is a serious question. It is NOT an attempted swipe at civil servants per se.

With the revalations about the incompetance within the Home Office, prisoner releases etc etc, and todays revelation that The Treasury / Inland Revenue have yet again paid out more than £ 1 billion in incorrect tax credits, coupled with the apparent lack of outrage , I pose the following questions.

1 Are civil servants less competent than in the past?
2 Do Ministers and acolytes demand more of their CS's than can be delivered?
3 Are the Departments most involved understaffed?
4 Is Gordan's tax system too complicted?
5 Or is it just a reult of a government obsessed with 'targets' which they change too often?

Novo

I tell you what would reduce some of the family tax credits row, actually give it to those that deserve it!
.
The reporter on 6pm news said it was designed to help poorer familys. On the lunchtime news they had a man complaining about his overpayment he has to pay back. He said he earns around £100,000 a year, owns his own company and got his ACCOUNTANT to apply for his family tax credit. He said he uses it to pay for his holidays!
...it is one thing me paying to help poor families but it seems I am paying to give money to someone who earns many more times the money I earn to pay for his holidays!

1 Are civil servants less competent than in the past?
2 Do Ministers and acolytes demand more of their CS's than can be delivered?
3 Are the Departments most involved understaffed?
4 Is Gordan's tax system too complicted?
5 Or is it just a reult of a government obsessed with 'targets' which they change too often?

As an ex civil servant, some views.

1. No. the CS is (and probably always has been) staffed by a mixture of excellent people and dead wood. I had to work with an alcoholic and several incompetents. It has difficulties recruiting good administrative staff in London, as the pay is significantly below private sector rates.

2. Yes. Notably on pace of change and computer systems. Every new computer system introduced into the CS fails, due to the grasping nature of those that install these things, too much change at one go, too much complexity.

3. Some of the executive bits are clearly understaffed. Central Ministries are adequately staffed.

6. Some of this stuff is just insoluble. There are no easy answers to illegal immigration, prison population, welfare etc. Politicians pretend otherwise, but in reality these issues are permanently difficult, and will always raise problems. There are no workable solutions.

sprout

Morning B S

I take your point.I assume ( I don't KNOW ) that the Family Tax Credit was set up to replace Family Allowance, which I always thought was misspent by being a catch all payment that gave it to those who could save it up for luxuries, when the whole lot should have been given to thodse who needed it.

I know this goes back to the old objection to 'means testing' , but that has always seemed to me to be a fairer way to distibute the pot.

However, the main thrust of my post was that nobody seems to care , or be bothered about the colossal waste and colossal incompeteance that I referred to. If I was in charge of a set up which paid out nearly 2 Billion £'s wrongly -TWICE- I would possibly have shot myself, and certainly would have resigned. Similarly ,if I was in charge of the figures / data given to the Home Sec for passing on to parliament - and knew all the time that they were incorrect - my reaction would be to 'go' - in shame.

So I do not grasp the real reason why we, the public, simply accept these kind of situations, nor do I understand how the people involved can keep their jobs. It is a bit like my post on Prescott , and stems from the same innate nature of mine to accept the blame when wrong, and not to take the cash / perks for something I am not doing.


Novo

1 Are civil servants less competent than in the past?

Yes. The civil service used to be made up of the best and the brightest and the dead wood. Now only a fool would consider a career in the civil service and the dead wood, like scum, also rises.

2 Do Ministers and acolytes demand more of their CS's than can be delivered?

Yes. Though this is not only the fault of this administration. It has been happening for decades as successive administrations failed to recognize that the CS is not merely a set of flunkies but are actually responsible for shaping and implementing government policy.

3 Are the Departments most involved understaffed?

Probably. By a factor of about 10%. This governemnt, like the last two, fails to understand that it is better to have a little slack wherein civil servants drink an extra cup of coffee than it is to have a situation where jobs don't get done at all.

4 Is Gordan's tax system too complicted?

Pass. As a PAYE with nothing to claim I can't really comment from experience.

5 Or is it just a reult of a government obsessed with 'targets' which they change too often?

Yes. I think it was the gyuuy from Amicus who said of the Home Office that part of the problem is that everything is now a priority task. As we have been saying for years round here 'Is this new top priority target about knife crime more or less top priority than the taget issued last week about immigrant crime?' And nobody knows.

I'd also suggest that there is a 6) If you appoint a man who runs Tesco's to run a civil service department (as happened with the CPS), then you are heading for trouble. The two environments are completely different. The CS *cannot* be made to run to market principles.

>nor do I understand how the people involved can keep their jobs.<

Sacking the entire Home Office in one go isn't likely to solve the problem.

NO B S you're right, it won't. But wasn't it President Trumann who the sign "The Buck Stops Here" on his desk in the Oval Office?

In the UK at present The Buck appears to stop nowhere, it just seems to circulate endlesly.

Novo

Well, speaking as someone who had the Sainted Tone pehgged as a complete t***er from day 2 of his administration, I agree that the buck ought to stop very firmly with him.

But I was being flippant, mostly because I know the ministers and top civil servants involved will find a way to pin the blame the on those lower down.

Sadly I am sure you're right, both about The Sainted Tone, and the downward selection of targets for 'blame'.

I realise that not all of us are free to post during the day, but have you noticed that whenever I throw out a challenge - such as for lawyers - to justify their actions and fees - the miners compensation being a case in point, NOBODY posts a defensive argument.

Does that mean that apart from minor disagreements, HooToo posters are of basically 'like-mind', and the rest of the money grubbers are too occupied with getting their snouts into the trough to engage in literal combat?

Novo

Well, I don't know that we enjoy the company of any of those people such as lawyers who might post a defence.

Though of course, I know plenty of lawyers, and have a reasonably high regard for them, but to be honest I don't see much mileage in trying to correct the perceptions of an entire society that they are blood sucking leeches who have no consciences.

Yep - No proper solicitor/barrister types on hootoo to my knowledge.

Legal advisers (me, Blues?) Tube was a German lawyer but appears to have elvised.

That's it as far as I'm aware.

sprout

Speaking as another ex-civil servant:

1 Are civil servants less competent than in the past?

No, not in the last 20 years at any rate. The civil service was always incompetent, by virtue of being very large and cumbersome, and led by a stream of fly-by-night managers who neither had, nor were required to have, any experience in the activities of their particular departments. It's not really the fault of individual civil servants either; each could do their job perfectly and things would still get lost between department divisions. There are problems with the huge delays in making managerial decisions, the cost of ongoing projects already known to be pointless, the cost of trying to improve pointless projects half-way through, and the cost of eventually cancelling them.

2 Do Ministers and acolytes demand more of their CS's than can be delivered?

Pass. Certainly I've seen major sweeping decisions being made at high level without any regard for the actual cost and time involved in implementing them.

3 Are the Departments most involved understaffed?

Probably some are, some aren't. I've worked in places where there were far more staff than the commercial sector would need to do a similar job. Civil servants have very clear demarcation - if a new job needs doing they need a new bod to do it. Consequently, you end up wth a lot of people doing very little. In a private company you get told to shut up and get on with it.

4 Is Gordan's tax system too complicted?

Absolutely - I'll deal with that one later!

5 Or is it just a reult of a government obsessed with 'targets' which they change too often?

I think its rather naive to simply blame the present government. Sure the constant initiatives, reorganisations and cost-cutting drives don't help; there is a massive cost involved in filtering everything down, changing procedure etc. Usually it gets about halfway through before the next one hits. But I don't think that's got any worse since Thatcher's time.

The only thing that's changed in recent years is the number and frequency of media outcries and scare stories. I could cite several examples of huge amounts of cash being poured down the drain. It happens regardless of whether the media report it.

In my interfaces with the civil service I see assumptions that outsourcing companies are working to same imperitives as the civil service - they're not.

I fail to see how making people claim for their entitlements is anything other than an overhead, tax credits and student loans being a couple of examples. Market forces are not a good driver for service industries - probably the worst example I can think of is the privitisation of the prison service.

I'm an existing Civil Servant - joined from the private sector just over 10 years ago. So yeah, the atmosphere and culture IS totally different. That doesn't necessariy mean that's a bad thing - the CS is a non-commerical beast and therefore commercial ideas have to be at least modified to make sense.

Can it do things better? Certainly. I'm involved in a major project at the minute which will radically change the way of doing things in the NICS. We're working in conjunction with consultants, and everyone on the team is very keen to ensure that the project is a success.

But you can't on the one hand say "things could be better" and then complain about there being too many initiatives and ambitious projects!

It has definitely changed over the years - I'd say for the better. But change is a slow process, and a behemoth like the CS doesn't completely alter overnight.

Who to blame for failures? Don't know that there's just the one scapegoat. The CS is here to implement Govt policy no matter what that is. You can criticse individual policies, or you can measure how well the implementation is working. And at least being able to measure performance is a huge improvement on the old days...