The end is nigh!

Oh dear; we waited and it came. The scathing announcement of our demise from Mr Pickles - not even a thank you for all your hard work. Just more political posturing which signals to me the man has a real problem with his ego - being macho doesn't make you clever. In fact it makes you look inadequate and thats what I think is at the heart of it. "We will make tough decisions" he says. Mmmm, tough doesn't equal clever either. No, if you had wanted to be clever Mr P you would have said those offices of government spread around the country are cheap and they can do the same job as my Whitehall minions so I'll get them to do my Big Society and localism work.
I hate to be the prophet of "I told you so" but in a years time when you haven't made any progress on the Big Society mullarkey and those able volunteers are still sitting on their backsides waiting for the money and the instructions, you are going to come up with a bright idea of having offices of civil servants locally who can help push your ideas through. Of course they won't push though, because you don't like the state pushing, not even when you undemocratically make decisions with out discussing it in the House of Commons.
And Mr P likes to take decisions without having any of the detail ready - bet that makes him feel big too. Eric " I don't deal with details" Pickles. So 1700 staff are left in the dark about redeployment or release and now face further months of uncertainty and at the same time we are asked to carry on professionally. Tell that to the single parent who wonders if they will lose their home or the carer who wonders how they will manage with an increased journey time, longer hours and less money. But of course we are not real people with real problems. We are all ficticious Sir Humphreys with gold plated pensions and platinum salaries - just shows how out of touch EP and his advisers are. Not to mention the political pigmyism he displays by putting more people on the dole when the country is already bankrupt.
Oh well, as they say "that's politics!"

Confusion is key

Well, we had a very important person come to speak to us today to tell us.......what, I'm not exactly sure. As it turns out he told us absolutely nothing. After too long waffling about Ministers and how this new government is not like the last (oh really - I needed him to spell that out for me) and they are really having a difficult time grappling with the budget deficit (in case we hadn't noticed), and its not just politics - they had ideologies too (that makes me feel a lot better - though I've just remembered Stalin had ideologies too), we were all left none the wiser about the decision on if and when we were going to close. Actually the if is pretty much settled though he tried to dress it up by saying Ministers have to think long and hard. I bet their delicate brains are really hurting now. There's no thinking to be done - they said they would abolish anything between them and local politicians - ergo we are gone! He could have saved himself the trouble and expense of the train fare from London. He didn't even have the decency to turn up on time. Obviously his PA forgot to look up the train times for him or he thought he was really going to the sticks (we are only 35 mins from London)but there we were waiting expectantly for news and he smiled his rock star smile but there was no one clapping in the stalls.

If only these people could leave their egos behind and realise that its not an honour just to have him in the room - he needs to be able to say something sensible and meaningful to the people there. His greatest piece of advice was get your cv up to date and start applying for jobs. Bet he doesn't need to do his - if he survives it will be a nice little move to head up a charity and there will be no surplus pool for him to swim in like the rest of us. I'm getting my arms bands blown up and ready for when I'm chucked in...........

Cuts, cuts, cuts

Have you ever noticed that politicians must be superstitious because they like the magic number 3? Questions have to be taken in threes, there are always three letter acronyms (and however much they protest they hate TLAs they keep on propagating them) and the latest is the catchy straplines. Take Mr Pickles for instance (I can't help but smile at the similarity between Eric and Jonathan Ross's pug Mr Pickles!), he makes a joke of saying he only has 3 priorities Localism, localism, localism. Ha ha, very funny Mr P - we get it. What I would rather get though is a straight explanation for what he means. The mantra is we will leave it to local people to decide. Hmmm, when did you last look and see local people really getting involved in decision making. I'm afraid the vast majority of local councillors are well past their sell by date and simply do not get that housing and schools are way more important than dog poo or how often the bins get collected. Seems like Mr Pickles scored an own goal on the whole bin collection mullarkey too. He's told local councils that he has reversed that nasty labour government recommendation of fortnightly collection and they can have their weekly collection back. Oh dear Mr P, surely the whole idea of less bin collection was to save money. No? Oh I see, all these cuts we are making is to ensure that bins get collected weekly. And I thought we were dealing with a fiscal crisis - though clearly not when it comes to having your bins emptied because obviously that's more important than saving jobs or providing acute services. I know - lets stop feeding elderly people shall we? That'll save millions.........

Mr P is certainly not my favourite at the moment. Purplepumkin may be about to lose her job because he has decided that our office is bureaucratic and like the badgers, needs to be culled. Shame he hasn't considered the financial case which actually proves we are good value for money, an ideology that I thought he was really hot on. Seems not so when his cronies are whispering in his ear to get rid. In their naivety they think he will pass our funding over to them - get real chaps, there is no money, haven't you been keeping up?!! So anyway, there was supposed to be an announcement this week but its been put off. Seems Eric hadn't reckoned on other departments actually having a view and trying to redeploy thousands of civil servants is no mean feat - oh Eric, haven't you noticed David has imposed cuts everywhere so whatever you shut or abolish is going to cost a lot more than keeping them going. Basic budgeting - why don't you ask the public their views on that!

I caught up with the diary of the anonymous civil servant in the Observer this week - I was a bi miffed actually as I thought I had the idea first but nevermind, this mandarin is obviously more senior than me and closer to the action so I'll give him that. But I could have written the words - it was completely spot on. If you haven't read it use this link - its worth a scan http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/jul/11/civil-servant-diary-turmoil-whitehall

And I haven't even mentioned what they are doing to redundancy payments and pensions yet...........

Money for old rope

Well, what do we all think of the budget then? Seems us poor old public sector folks are the whipping boys for the fat cat bankers and their politician friends. Wasn't it ever thus. Seems like George Osbourne can't risk upsetting his rich friends so he lays into the decent people who work hard, for not a great amount, knowing they will be desperate to hold onto their jobs. Good bullying tactics if you ask me. Oh yes, I forgot - they are asking me. We all received a letter today from David Cameron and Nick Clegg under cover of another one from Sir Gus O'Donnell (Cabinet Secretary) thanking us for all our hard work but......Didn't anyone tell them that anything after but is rubbish? Seems they have run out of ideas on how to tackle the deficit and cut public spending so they want our bright ideas - I thought that was what they were paid to do. No? Apparently not- seems like they want us to come up with ideas, and if they don't work then they'll say we asked you and this is what you wanted. I'm thinking of some good ones to put in. How about we abolish the honours systems and the costs incurred with that - whoops then they won't be able to promise their friends a peerage for party donations. And Ministers making visits - do you know how many civil servants it takes to brief a minister because he/she cannot face ordinary members of the public without their comfort blanket. And all the lunches they attend to schmooze. Have you seen Eric Pickles - the straight talking Yorkshireman who mistakes himself for Che Guevara (seriously he thinks hes a revolutionary)- looks like he's had one too many Yorkshire puddings. The political rhetoric from him takes the biscuit - he thinks fortnightly bin collections are a scandal and he's happy to pay people to create more waste to recycle. Has he got shares in Veolia or one of the other waste disposal companies? This is not efficiency - its rubbish - literally.

I'm now off to dream of retirement at age 70 - happy days!

This is my first blog and it feels pretty scary - but I reckon I'm now ready for it! I've just completed my last module for my OU degree (results due August) and at last I will have achieved something I should have done over 20 years ago - but that's another story...........

My degree was in literature and I thoroughly enjoyed critically appraising 19th century novels and poetry and I even really enjoyed the Bard himself. For my last course though, I thought I would set myself a challenge and actually write something creative myself. This was almost as hard as I had imagined. You could say I write creatively everyday in my job as one of those 'overpaid and over-pensioned' public servants (are we really all lepers now?). It was even harder than that. Imagine having to write about what you think and feel - that was the novelty. Actually not much of a novelty - more a seriously scary journey that I was to embark on. Well, I am still here. I survived the critical appraisal from the tutor (I wimped out on posting stuff to my tutor group but I admired the courage of those who did) and all I have to do is await the results.........

But now that its all over I have promised myself I wouldn't stop writing creatively. It provides an outlet from the dull dull talk of spending cuts and realigning of priorities. You know what? I might even turn that into a haiku or two or maybe even a short story. What a shame someone has already written Yes Minister - its all true you know!!