I have this picture in my mind that i'm a small child in one of those plastic cars bumping into things and Rich is my slightly older brother wearing shorts with chocolate all over his face pushing me! (see what i mean about comedy)

Don't worry Bravebart, these little distractions from the main aims of the blog are rare, but entertaining. It's always interesting to know what people are passionate about.

24K, it's quite a gig. You won't get this much attention very often.

Sorry but I didn't mean the entire blog, just this part on the bondholders and that we've drifted in to all sorts which perhaps isn't relevant to this post.

Keep writing.

what is it about the blog that makes you feel it has lost its way? I don't want to contribute to the world filling up with unwanted puffery. How was it in the past that you preferred and now find missing in what I write.

Do others feel similarly. Feedback is always welcome.

I would rather stop writing than continue on as an irrelevance.

But i had a friend who worked in the council. Due to restructuring one person was no longer required. Instead of him finding another job they simply gave the automotive duties of another worker (it took him two hours a day) to him and sorted him out a nice office. So now he does 6 hours of nothing and the other dude does nothing for 2 hours.

One of my relatives is in charge of making fat people thin through innitiatives like exercise days etc, lots of poster making. I'm sure each council has a poster maker. Why the government doesn't tax healthy food less i don't know.

When i saw the figure i just thought of Golgafrinchan's. Do you know any Mr Automotive's? You must be passionate to call me out and I'm glad you did as I was being a bit blase.
Your point about contractors being greedy is a good point. That's how my boss has two bentleys, a Merc Kompressor, and a boat.

Thanks for the ladder Unclear and G blame Rich for talking about telly, and Rich, stop getting me in trouble.

The point about jobs disappearing is the important one, as if there were loads of jobs we could have loads of Mr Automotive, i could be one, a warm office sounds so appealing in the middle of winter with no heating and frozen steel. I don't think they should be cheap labour jobs either. I checked out the Adam Smith institute and they want to scrap minimum wage. China in Britain. 24hr ipod factories for the unemployed living in dormitories, that'll solve it.

The civil service operates with constraints the private sector has no concept yet is flexible enough to change and adapt to a ministerial or governmetal drop of a hat in policy change.

Anyway Golem, I reckon this blog has lost its way a bit, but still interesting.

This article resonated strongly with my experience, especially these phrases,

"…overpopulated with highly intelligent people who can't do simple, menial tasks, simply or menially'. It was also full of fiercely risk-averse people 'because no civil servant ever got fired for doing nothing. They get fired for doing something."

and

"I have never met such bright people who really care about what they are doing but they are working in a machine with a set of customs, cultures, values and practices that are utterly antiquated. A lot of the time the process is more important than the outcome."

The size of the public sector is well north of 6 million, I just don't see how how as a nation we could sustain that many employees paid out of taxation (not to mention their pensions), even without the current crisis.

Any talk of the private sector being able to pick up the slack in the short term is nonsense however. But maybe, just maybe if we didn't keep letting our jobs disappear overseas, we'd have something to build an economy back up with.

Why is it acceptable for services to be cut and then expect the gap to be plugged by volunteers? Either the job is there or it isn't. Would the private sector do it for free? I don't think so.

Government isn't cheap. My department spends vast amounts of your tax delivering a service the public expect. It's expensive because we pay vast sums to consultants and contractors delivering our product that expect profit. This can't be avoided. We can account for every pound spent. We don't make a profit we simply deliver a service the public expect.

Glad you're here.

We're all digging holes. At least we're digging this one together.

People can mange themselves. It's the great NuManagement lie that everyone has to be overseen and threatened in order to get any improvement.

What we need is trust. We have forgotten how to trust and that we can trust each other.

When we start top put our truast back in those we personally judge to be trustworthy, and do away with teh vulture of suspicion and tick-box buck passing, then we will start to rebuild this country.

I feel like I'm digging a hole here.

I watched a programme a year ago about this guy that thinks people can work without all the managers. One example was a council garage with 8 or so mechanics and 5 office staff peering down banning radios etc etc. The mechanics decided to move four of the office staff to other jobs out of the garage and kept one, the mechanics filled their own paperwork out, reinstated the radio and gave council workers M.O.T.s to bring in more cash and had control of their own budget. Interestingly the binmen who worked job and knock had no interest in the idea of doing more work themselves!

The NPIA all sat about in their cosy offices and figured out if they sacked 46,000 police and had a mix of volunteers they could save 500 million a year. Great!

Yet the NPIA cost 500 million a year to run? Is that exceptable?

I have relatives and friends who have public sector jobs and none of them caused public debt to double in two years. An interesting point though is that it doubled i.e. half of it was already there.

But that's just about free trade isn't it? As productive jobs left the country the public sector grew to accomodate the people who could no longer find productive jobs as they had gone to more profitable countries, profit for the globalists that is and the politions in their pockets.

I don't think anybody deserves to get sacked thanks to the Unholy Warriors (Rich that's the second time you have bust a rhyme, i think that's a sign that we'll karaoke sometime!)
And i don't mean to point a finger and say it's your fault as it's not. The fault lies clearly at the feet of the so called sheperds that should be taking care of our country rather than USING the country.
That's a wolf not a sheperd.

Maybe i should have thought about what i wrote more and i thank you for pointing it out to me.
I don't mean to offend and I'm in no way offended by anybody, these are just words my brain spat out. Please forgive my ramblings, unless you work for the NPIA of course.