How good is the civil service ?
This matters as its the civil servants who provide the knowledge and depth to support minister's policies. This really matters at the Treasury right now.
Hence I was very concerned to have a conversation a few days ago with someone whose professional group has regular dealing with them who says they are alarmed by how much standards have dropped.
It was suggested that political correctness in appointments had lead to plodders occupying posts that once would have had some of the sharpest minds in the country in them.
So now we have the combination of a not very bright party in government ( and one who is at heart intellectually dishonest anyway ) combined with 'a more representative' quasi-politicised civil service.
These people are now blowing billions of pounds of our future every day, and its too late to do anything about it.
Now that's really frightening.
MiaS intends to go out for a drink or couple tonight to try and forget this and spend his money before its main value is a fuel to throw on the fire.
Hence I was very concerned to have a conversation a few days ago with someone whose professional group has regular dealing with them who says they are alarmed by how much standards have dropped.
It was suggested that political correctness in appointments had lead to plodders occupying posts that once would have had some of the sharpest minds in the country in them.
So now we have the combination of a not very bright party in government ( and one who is at heart intellectually dishonest anyway ) combined with 'a more representative' quasi-politicised civil service.
These people are now blowing billions of pounds of our future every day, and its too late to do anything about it.
Now that's really frightening.
MiaS intends to go out for a drink or couple tonight to try and forget this and spend his money before its main value is a fuel to throw on the fire.
1 comment:
This has also been happening in local government, as I and my colleagues were not all that surprised to discover when we took over the administration of our Unitary Council some eight years ago.
The two problems are (a) identifying where and who they are, and (b) getting rid of them, which is far from easy. They were all through the organisation, from Assistant Director level all the way down. Some were not just very poor at their jobs — the higher grade examples were generally subversive.
It has taken all this time to have reached a stage where there is confidence that all the worst, and most of the rest of it, has now been excised — but there are bound to be residual instances that just haven't come to light so far.
Post a Comment