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...........