You’d need a heart of stone not to laugh. I’ve tried getting angry, tried to rant – I can’t. They are like winsome toddlers taking their first steps – they fall, they tumble backwards, they try to make the right moves, and then they throw a tantrum because they just can’t get ‘it’.

‘A senior Civil Servant writes’ is becoming required reading in the Guardian, the (anonymous) diary of a man who rose to near the top of his profession and now struggles to understand the brave new world that he has been forced blinking into.

Today’s effort is epic, but worth reading for comedic value.

He knows he must master his brief, do his best to carry out the new government’s orders impartially. (That is the theory anyway.) How then to tackle Cameron’s ‘Big Society’ – the idea that people should look after themselves and their neighbours without government intervention? It’s an oxymoron for him isn’t it? How do you set out a government strategy for the government to be seen to do sod all?

He set about it in time honoured fashion. He presided over ‘an entire industry of ‘big society seminars’, ‘training courses’ (in doing nothing!) and ‘trained people to train people to do nothing’!

Big society position papers shuffled across Whitehall and all departments were asked to write narratives with details of policies that most exemplified the big society.

I bet they did. I’ll wager there were conferences and lectures in preparing staff for the transition, and posters went up advising staff of counselling courses for those affected by the new initiative of doing nothing; Union representatives to see to advise on how the change would affect ‘their people’; pension advisors to reassure that the new policy wouldn’t affect their gold plated pensioners; newsletters to write to keep staff fully informed; team confidence building week-ends to organise in salubrious hotels.

The Civil Service must have been a hive of activity.

Because naturally, ‘doing nothing’ requires organisation – doesn’t it?

They even took on board the idea that some of them might leave the Civil Service and join in the ‘Big Society’.

But setting up your own shop is still a deeply unattractive prospect. Even to consider it, you would need a guarantee that the service will be required for some time, that the budget exists to pay for it and the confidence that you can run the service for less money. Without this, your colleagues won’t leave their jobs and pensions to join you.

Bless ‘em – they only way they can consider doing their work in the same way that everyone else does; without job security, a guaranteed pension, and the same wage – is if they are given job security, a guaranteed pension and the same wage!

Since this isn’t on offer, our ‘Senior Civil Servant’ confidently predicts that:

Despite all this work, we have hit a brick wall. In short, the idea won’t work as not enough people will want to make it happen in the years ahead.

How can you be angry with someone who so wildly misses the point?

The point, my little petal, is that there is no longer the money to allow you to shuffle paper; we can’t afford you. You can either get out here with the rest of us and do something of value, or we will starve you out.

If we don’t have jobs and a reasonable cut out of our wages because we are committed to paying you to do nothing, then there will be no taxation to pay you. You’ve bled us dry. Gawd Bless You.

Rather than expensive training courses for the long term unemployed – with dubious results – shouldn’t we be badgering for expensive training courses for the civil servants? We could potentially save a lot more money, their wages being considerably higher than benefit payments, and they at least start from the position that they know how to get dressed in the morning, and turn up for work most days – we just need to retrain them in the art of doing something useful.

101 Uses for an ex-Civil Servant….your inventive suggestions please!

Demetrius November
23, 2010 at 14:43

I can recall a time when there was a huge number of people doing voluntary
work and involved in organising and running local interests and sports. But it
was a different world. Those people are no longer there and two to three
generations on their equivalents do not exist. Add to that all the complicated
rules and regulations and officialdom they have to contend with why should
anyone bother?

Michael
Fowke November 23, 2010 at 12:24

Big Society = Big Nothing.

Epictetus November 23, 2010 at 11:50

I seem to remember reading that on being appointed Home Secretary Sir
Robert Peel was horrified to find that the Home Office employed 15 (?),
including a night porter.
Thank goodness you are back Anna. I had given up
checking.

Giolla
November 23, 2010 at 11:20

Eco-friendly replacements for traffic cones?
A source of green energy by
means of huge hamster wheels with dynamos?

A Brave New
World November 23, 2010 at 14:03

Energy?
You do realize that we’re talking about civil servants?

Giolla
November 23, 2010 at 16:14

Good point, traffic cones it is then

Hysteria
November 23, 2010 at 22:05

I know it’s all a bit of a laugh – but I still find it disappointing
we so easily lapse into jibes at our fellows rather than attack the
bloody system that got us here.

Same in the US where the vitriol seems to be directed at some
minimum-wage TSA guy in the front lines rather than at the incoherence
in the approach to security.

Better go take my happy-pill I guess……

Clarissa November 23, 2010 at 23:06

We are all aware that it is the system that is the problem. However
the fools that dream up and maintain the system are difficult to get
at, hidden away as they are in their ivory towers. This results in the
PBI being the target of everyone’s ire – not helped of course by the
fact that some of them are their own worst enemies.

Sadly one of the few known ways to get those who don’t have to live
on the ground floor to listen to those of us who do is to get rid of
so many of their foot soldiers that they actually start worrying for
their own safety.

Giolla November 24, 2010 at 13:26

Don’t the people on the front line have any say in how and if they
implement the rules? Much as they may not in some cases have that much
choice but they are part of the system, maybe not in most cases an
important part but without them implementing the wishes of the system
there would be no system.
Just following orders has generally been
discredited as an excuse for a while now.

passat21 November 23, 2010 at 09:21

If all the thousands and thousands of ex civil servants were laid out
end-to-end in a line – they would be more comfortable!

obligato November 23, 2010 at 08:12

Uses for ex civil servants:
Ballast – for ships returning empty to China
after bringing us our latest fix of tut
IED detectors
Source of hot air
at balloon festivals
Companions for retired airline pilots who miss the
incessant whining
Replacements for lab rats to please the animal rights
jihadis ( lab staff don’t get as attached to them as they do to rats and
there’s some things even rats won’t do)

obligato November 23, 2010 at 12:45

and more:-
Prone, naked, in concrete – stands for Boris’s
bikes
Supine, in concrete – speedbumps
Given 40% adult obesity – just
add wicks and presto! giant nightlights!

adolf hitler
November 23, 2010 at 21:29

How about soap and lampshades? Oh no, that was the Jews. Still, it’s
just a laugh….

Gildas the Monk
November 23, 2010 at 07:44

Hat stands. Simples!

will November 22, 2010 at 23:48

I’m mystified as to what these former/pro civil-service/public-sector types
were taking from a self-identifying libertarian blog. Did they mistake the
Passion and indignation as merely an ‘amusing writing style,’ an affectation
to draw in the punters? Maybe its me that’s got it all wrong, maybe I’m wrong
to stray from the warm embrace of the state, maybe I should be thanking these
charitable souls for all that they’ve done for me without me even having to
ask. then again maybe the miserable parasites can fuck off – humans thrived
before them and I’m sure we’ll do just fine when they’re gone too.

Pericles November 22, 2010 at 19:42

Lovely, Clarissa :  the Mine Inaction Group !

It is a shame, however, and often quite unfair that thirty years of Labour
misrule — nearly half the period since the War — have given rise to an
atmosphere in which civil servants, once seen as perhaps stuffy but at least
dedicated to the public good (however little their understanding thereof),
have come to be seen as parasites.

ΠΞ

Clarissa November 22, 2010 at 22:37

Why thank you, I’m glad you liked the idea.

More seriously though I don’t think all of the blame for the state of the
civil service can be laid at the door the the Labour party. Yes, last time
they radically expanded the size of it simply to keep the jobless total down
but successive governments have made more petty rules, gradually politicised
it and/or bypassed it with special advisers. Somewhere along the way the
image of the stuffed suit has been replaced with what seems to be an
altogether more accurate image of a power crazed small man with dodgy facial
hair.

Culling the size of the state will – one hopes in a moment of utter
naivety – makes them realises that the dog wags the tail, rather than the
tail wagging the dog.

ivan November 22, 2010 at 23:30

Clarissa, the only way any reduction will be made is to cut the top 66%
and discard them, and their gold plated pensions.

The same could be said for the NHS – remove the top several layers of
management – not those that do the work.

MRB November 23, 2010 at 10:13

It is peoples mindset and expection of their totally unrealistic
pension that worries me, it is sucking the sap out of this country and
then we’ll all wake up and wonder where the trees have gone?

stating the
bleedin’ obvious November 23, 2010 at
21:32

If the pension’s so good why didn’t you join the civil service?

Bob November 23, 2010 at 22:03

I take it that you mean the top 66% of each civil servant- what are
we going to do with all the spare legs?

JimS November 22, 2010 at 18:22

Once upon a time the civil service designed its own buildings, managed and
maintained them. It provided meals for its staff, it trained its own staff and
managed their pensions when they retired.

Now the civil service leases its buildings under a financial fiddle called
PFI that moves the costs from the capital to the current budget. The
contractor borrows money at commercial rates and loads its profit on top and
at the end of twenty years walks away with its loans and shareholders paid off
and a spare building on its hands. The buildings are, of course, managed and
maintained by the private sector. Catering, training and pensions services
likewise are all contracted out.

Back-office services in the MOD which were once recorded on the books as
administrative costs carried out by the civil service are now with the private
sector but charged against the equipment or front-line budget.

Public = bad, private = good is far too simplistic. Can we really run an
economy based on telephone sanitizers and hairdressers?

Dioclese November
22, 2010 at 18:04

Captions :

Small man : “I got no job and live in a council house so I’m laughing…”

Middle man : “I do all the work, so I’m very important…”

Tall man: “I work in the city and earn so much money I don’t a toss about
the other two…”

Brian November 22, 2010 at 18:01

I have a great deal of respect and admiration for you so it’s sad that I
have to say don’t expect this ex-Civil Servant back.
Bye Anna

Fred November 22, 2010 at 18:37

Wot? This gives you reason to no longer read one of the best blogs
around? Then you aren’t paying attention.

Hysteria November 22, 2010 at 18:56

and this sentence just about sums up the whole problem – truly amazing
!

lenko November 22, 2010 at 17:40

I have been looking for yonks for a cheap but civil-serviceable coat-rack,
which would simply sit quietly in a spare corner somewhere, taking up little
space, and doing very little.

I am prepared to pour tea down it, if that is what is required.

I will even read out the Telegraph crossword clues to it, as long as I am
not required to read the news stories.

lenko
November 22, 2010 at 17:42

PS… I know my place.

Caedmon’s
Cat November 22, 2010 at 17:33

I use then as draught excluders for the doors in Caedmon’s hovel. They get
a bit whiffy after a while, though – but the foxes seem to like it.

Anna
Raccoon November 22, 2010 at
17:34

Excellent suggestion! Cavity Wall Insulation might work too.

Clarissa November 22, 2010 at 18:22

How about saving on concrete, bricks and mortar by putting them into
foundations or sea walls?

Minefield clearances? Line ‘em, march ‘em off and any survivors get to
keep their gold plated pensions.

Adolf’n’Joe
November 23, 2010 at 21:36

Disposal of bodies in building works and mine clearance, as used by
everyone’s favourites the Nazis and the Soviets. Doncha luv these whacky
Libertarians?

Bill
Sticker November 22, 2010 at 17:31

A leaf out of this textbook perchance?