Today I have highlighted two disastrous management errors in public services which Parliament has criticised many times in the past. Yesterday Ministers presented their approach to both problems to try to put things right.
In both cases MPs asked about what would happen to the managers who made the mistakes, especially the top management of the Post Office who went on to spend large sums on lawyers to hound the people they had wrongly accused. One contributor has been muddling the state owned Postal Office up with the privatised mail services, which have nothing to do with this issue.
My prior concern over the years has been to speak with others for the postmasters who were so badly treated to get the accusations against them reversed and to give them compensation for their large financial losses forced upon them.I agree the government as owner of the business does need to tell us what will be done about those who pursued this policy at the Post Office. The bill for compensation will be substantial and falls to taxpayers as we own the Post Office.
The Defence Minister has accepted that the MOD needs to improve the way it handles contracts. He has also promised to seek to rescue this large contract by closer working with the defence supplier. He seemed confident that remedial costs fall to the supplier to pay.
December 16, 2021
But still zero comment on who was responsible and what sanction they received. I guess none. If this had been a private sector cock up, even a one off unlike the ongoing messes in the public sector, virtue signalling politicians would be calling for their heads, Directors being personally liable etc.
And in the meantime they go on and on and we pay.
December 16, 2021
Indeed then ministers complain about low UK productivity yet bloated, incompetent, misdirected government, red tape, planning restriction and expensive intermittent energy are the main causes.
Still some good new a 40% cut in EV grants. Why not 100%? Scrapping your old IC car and causing a
new EV car to be build is far more expensive (even after the grants), range limiting and also increases world CO2 it does not reduce it even if all the charging is done with low carbon electricity – and this will not happen anyway.
December 16, 2021
@Nig l: Indeed, in the private sector such massive errors would have resulted in the head of a CEO metaphysically served to the shareholders on a silver plate, in the case of the public sector that should mean the exit of a Minister, if not the SoS, perhaps not just from their govt job but perhaps their seat too.
December 16, 2021
Metaphysically?
December 16, 2021
The names are well known. ‘Sanctions’ were not applied.
It is more a case of proper public scrutiny now being applied.
December 16, 2021
A director would probably be disbarred from holding such office in the future. I am now out of touch with the obligations of directors of public companies but I do recall being advised, way back around 1980, that even then over 200 Acts of Parliament were relevant to the role and imposed obligations on them. Now doubt that number and the potential penalties faced by company directors will have increased still further. Can anyone update me?
December 16, 2021
As I have said several times before, NOTHING will improve until ministers are given the power to hire and fire civil servants. Not only are many officials grossly incompetent, but as we have seen from the Home Office many deliberately obstruct government policy for political reasons. The idea that the head of an organisation cannot recruit the staff that he wants, and cannot dismiss staff he is unhappy with, is utterly absurd and does not occur anywhere in the private sector. But the government is so weak and stupid, it has NO intention of changing the current situation. And that’s why nothing will change and officials will continue to fail and to sabotage government policy.
December 16, 2021
You will forgive me I am sure, if I wait and see.
So many promises in the past have come to absolutely nothing.
Lessons seem to have never been learn’t.
December 16, 2021
Improving the Pubic Sector – dream on. Stop all these ever lasting reviews and fire the top man/woman/person.
December 16, 2021
The public sector is actually very small compared to what it once was.
For instance, the bin men in Hull, on privatisation – another severe form of austerity on the working classes – took a pay cut from £16kpa to £12kpa and lost their future defined benefit pension accrual, probably worth about another 30%.
These are key workers, and that is how Right wing doctrine treats them. They now have to work on the trot in all weathers too.
December 16, 2021
Thats odd NHL because a quick search finds an article dated 20/3/2021 which says Hull’s refuse staff’s salaries range from.£19,312 to £20,092 and bin lorry drivers get £22,627 per year. Team leaders get £27,905.
Before overtime pay and any bonuses.
December 16, 2021
@Peter2; NLH was writing using the past tense whilst you have (no surprise…) chosen to read it as the present tense and jump in all guns blazing. Unless someone puts some dates on these figures mentioned by NLH all anyone has proven is the refuse collectors of Hull have simply perhaps made up what they lost when their pay was cut upon privatization.
December 16, 2021
Gosh Jerry
How did you spot it was past tense?
Please tell us
I’m all a tremble
December 17, 2021
@P2; How did I spot that? Quite easily Peter2, it was where he wrote “took a pay cut”, the past tense of ‘take’… Duh!
You will note in my own reply to @NLH I questioned his logic, based on working conditions, not past or current pay.
December 17, 2021
“Took a pay cut” does not tell the reader that the reduction was many years ago.
It simply means that it happened yesterday or at any time in the past.
It was disingenuous if NHL to quote salaries from many years ago in his desire to criticise privatisation as a policy without mentioning the date.
PS
Duh! say more about you than it does anyone else Jerry
December 17, 2021
@Peter2; Oh do stop trolling, unless of course you are just showing us your ignorance. Read my other comments in relation to NLH’s comment for why -after all I’m sure you do not want me to write an “essay”, repeating myself, simply to indulge you.
December 17, 2021
As usual you revert to cheap abuse Jerry once you are challenged.
Very sad.
Your pal Hefner is all about decent debate.
Not for you it seems.
December 17, 2021
@Peter2; It will be noted that you still refuse to debate the actual points raised by NLH, still refuse to accept you miss-read what NLH said in his original comment.
Whatever…
December 18, 2021
The point you still miss Jerry is that NHL was using statistics to bolster his dislike of privatisation which were decades out of date.
He was tying to make it look like they were current figures.
I showed that current figures were much different.
Therefore my part in making his post on privatisation look very weak.
Others can post about the strengths and weaknesses of privilege if they want to.
Why don’t you have a go Jerry?
You seem to have an awful lot of time on your hands at the moment
December 18, 2021
privatisation not privilege
December 18, 2021
@Peter2; “The point you still miss Jerry is that NHL was using statistics to bolster his dislike of privatisation “
Just as others use questionable statistics to bolster there dislike of the public sector, and who says the figures NLH used were wrong, can you cite a source that proves you have the correct stats for the same year/period he was talking about?…
December 16, 2021
Thought the minimum wage was a National rate, you suggest they are being paid half of the minimum wage !
There are no real key workers, as all of us depend upon each other to live a sensible life, as we and the Government are now finding out, although I would agree some jobs are perhaps more important than others, and would perhaps have a greater and more immediate effect on society if they do not function.
December 16, 2021
@alan jutson; Most refuse contracts were privatized in the 1980s or early 1990s, the NMW didn’t exist until the late 1990s.
December 16, 2021
+1
December 16, 2021
@NLH; Sorry but your example is not a good one, whilst refuse collectors might be paid less these days their job is nothing like it was. I remember the days when “bin men” not only had to ride on a step whilst hanging onto a handle as the dust cart traveled along the road, and no wheelie bins back then either (at least for the domestic waste), bins carried on the shoulder. Oh and poor lads, having to work in the rain and cold, just as railway track workers have to, at least refuse collectors don’t have to work nights, nor weekends (usualy)…!
December 16, 2021
I’m writing about what happened some years ago when this first happened, during the avalanche of such privatisations across the country.
Sorry to have to spell out the obvious.
I forgot the readership.
December 16, 2021
You wrote it suggesting the wages were current NHL
And you got challenged.
Next time someone posts giving statistics from 20 years ago to try to make a point I hope you will be equally as laid back.
December 16, 2021
Appalling & shameful incidents indeed and many of them. Surely criminal charges are required these actions cannot really have been accidental can they? What/who on earth drove this and why?
December 16, 2021
Improving the public sector – start by halving it in size and making individual people directly responsible for results. Currently they care not what they spend nor what if any value is delivered (often a negative value). So many people and sections they can all blame each other. Elected MPs duty is to ensure the state delivers value for money but they never do so. Not just the MoD but nearly all of it.
December 16, 2021
Unfortunately there is a code of silence. They stay silent, we get s**t upon.
December 16, 2021
There is only one way to make the public sector better and that is make it smaller. Then keep doing that until it doesn’t exist at all.
December 16, 2021
“He seemed confident that remedial costs fall to the supplier to pay.”
I feel confident that the supplier’s contract law department will have ensured that this is not the case. The private sector lives and dies by drawing up watertight contracts that protect themselves, the public sector doesn’t have to.
December 16, 2021
@Roy Grainger; There are many prior examples of private companies agreeing to foot remedial costs, even when the original contract is watertight, because these private companies/contractors need future business. No private company lasts very long if they keep p*ssing off their, perhaps, most important customer(s)!
December 16, 2021
So the govt and it’s shroud waving advisers having whipped up hysteria at enormous cost to the economy, to the population’s health and well-being, but without as yet any evidence that omicron actually threatens large numbers of deaths and hospitalisations, it remains impossible to get a code to get lateral flow tests. The website just says ‘there is a problem’. Dead right there is a problem. The problem is the public sector is not under nearly enough pressure to perform. We taxpayers must demand firings for this incompetence. The work stream in this crisis that’s really worked well was the vaccine task force under venture capitalist Kate Bingham, outside the scope of the NHS. We need much much more of that sort of thing. The public sector is in so many ways simply hopeless and very poor value for money.
December 16, 2021
For anyone who’s interested it is now possible to get a code by calling 119, so that’s some improvement.
December 16, 2021
Our host highlights disastrous management errors in public services but ignores the disastrous errors in the (once public, now) private sector barrelling towards consumers and households, namely the energy sector, I read (via Sky News Business section) Ofgem is suggesting consumers who do not voluntarily contract themselves into fixed length price ‘deals’ might need to be locked into a 6 month contracts with their current SVT supplier via Ofgem regulation -with exit fees if such people dare to leave early. How is this the ‘consumer choice’ our host promised back in the 1980s.
December 16, 2021
“The bill for compensation will be substantial and falls to taxpayers as we own the Post Office.”
Doesn’t the Post Office make money?
December 16, 2021
@a-tracy; “Doesn’t the Post Office make money?”
Probably not, since all the real profit making parts (Telephones, Parcels, Royal Mail, Giro) have all been sold off over the last 40 years…
December 16, 2021
Isn’t this a case of parliament, and especially ministers, not doing its day job while being distracted elsewhere with political maneuvering, or has parliament forgotten what its role is?
The Post Office affair was shameful, and heads should certainly roll, and ministers should be called out, past and present, for their lack of leadership.
Under-priced estimates of equipment and projects has been an accepted formula for how things have operated for far too long. HS2 is a prime example of unrealistic cost estimates used to get a project off the ground, followed by regular requirements for more cash.
If those getting the estimates together cannot be honest and provide real estimates, then they should be moved aside, demoted or whatever.
All in all though, these are just symptoms of a grater malaise with parliament. MPs need to fully understand that being outside the EU means that they are not there to accept everything that comes from above. They are there to question, to hold ministers to account, along with every branch of government that they are supposed to keep in check.
December 16, 2021
Improving public sector. We employ 650 MP’s to protect us against fraud and misadventure. It would appear they in turn are comfortable with giving away our money without any accountability and responsibility on any ones part put in place. The taxpayer gets rewarded with shouldering directly all malfunctions of the recipients. That can never be right.
Is it the Public sector, their CEO’s, mangers that are wrong, or is it Government and those that daily directly hold them to account, Parliament? The bit that is out of kilter is it shouldn’t be the taxpayer, it should never be the taxpayer, it should be those that are rewarded with the direct give away of taxpayer money.
Trouble is those in receipt and those that award taxpayer funding don’t ‘get it’. Its not their money, they cant keep hiding behind their egos and thirst for power, just to shed the responsibility we give them.
December 16, 2021
So there we go. I was hoping to get away to my home in France over Christmas.
But thanks to the miserable failed Brexitist government I am stuck here on Plague Island.
A reminder: the majority of us do not vote for these useless clowns who have repeatedly stuffed up our country.
December 16, 2021
Who is stopping you ?
France is still open isn’t it, aware you need a Covid passport to even buy Supermarket food, or to go to a cafe, but surely that is not a problem to man with your connections is it !
December 16, 2021
Still stuck on your old cliches, Andy? ‘Plague Island’ indeed! Instead of your home in France, you might care to visit Worldometer, as I did, and total the most recent 7-days worth of ‘new Covid deaths’ per day figures it gives for France and the UK. In this country I make it 875, in France 971. (The two countries have roughly the same population size.) So it looks like you’ll better off here at Christmas. Have a good one.
December 16, 2021
I wonder why if we are useless people are trying to get here at risk of their own lives rather than stay in France?
NB we have always been European but we will be vey similar to little Switzerland when you are old and still moaning
December 16, 2021
@Andy (or is it Walter?…); Stop trolling, the only person you’re fooling is yourself! Brexit has not closed the boarder between the UK and France, the pandemic has, just as it has closed internal EU27 boarders in the past. Anyway, given how europhile you are, how come you have not taken out France residency.
December 16, 2021
Why would I take up French residency? I like in the U.K. I work in the U.K. I pay more tax than you ever have or ever will in the U.K. My children go to school in the U.K.
I have a home in France which I used to be able to visit as and when I chose. Now because of Mr Redwood’s Brexit I can no longer visit as and when I choose. He has removed my rights – despite a minority voting for his party at the last election.
Having voted for Brexit Agricola made sure his rights in Spain were fully protected. But some of us are not hyprocrites.
December 17, 2021
@Andy; “I have a home in France which I used to be able to visit as and when I chose.”
As you still can, assuming two things, you have sorted out the correct paperwork [1] and there is no pandemic raging. As for the comment about our host and others, a clear majority voted for both Brexit and this conservative govt. I did neither but accept the results, stop bleating, stop trolling, all you do is make yourself look the undemocratic one.
[1] not that you are alone, there are (or were) large numbers of UK expats and non holiday makers living in the EU26 (I exclude the RoI where different rules apply) who never bothered to formalise their affairs/rights, often failing to do so to avoid paying local taxes that would otherwise be due
December 17, 2021
Jerry, me ol’ china.
There is nothing whatsoever undemocratic about exercising Free Speech to try to persuade readers that if they voted Leave then they are responsible for the adverse consequences of that, nor in trying to get them to vote so as to reverse that damage should an opportunity arise, e.g. by joining the SM and CU, as the Leave campaigns promised that we would not leave anyway.
December 17, 2021
@NLH; There is a vast difference between having a robust debate about an issue and posting gratuitous hatred for effect, there is a vast difference between arguing the facts and knowingly posting fiction for effect. I was not accusing Andy of being troll for wishing to debate the issue but for posting blatant lies, it is not Brexit that is about to stop UK nationals from vising France but the pandemic, whilst many thousands of British nationals carry on owning homes in EU27 member countries without issue, just as many EU27 nationals still own homes here in the UK.
December 17, 2021
Just call NHL a troll Jerry.
Add him to your mounting list.
December 16, 2021
Do go, please.
December 16, 2021
err correct me if I’m wrong but it is the French govt which is stopping you from going – unless you have French citizenship?
Do clarify and perhaps you could apologise to the UK govt for your earlier, incorrect, post as its the idiotic French govt under its vainglorious little napoleon which has imposed this fatuous restriction.
December 16, 2021
Ho-ho-ho Happy Christmas Andy – Home in France ? Explains your angst and allegiances we have been treated to daily ear -ache. Merci. As you sow…..
December 16, 2021
Come on, Andy. Book an appointment with a French notaire close to your French dwelling. Whatever the topic ‘you might need to discuss about your property’, this was considered a good enough reason to allow Brits to go to France in April-May 2021. I guess it is likely to still be the case.
In the UK get a PCR test 24 hours before going to satisfy the border authorities, be ready to potentially isolate up to 7 days, likely to be of much reduced duration (1 or 2 days) if a LFT on arrival gives a negative result. Do not forget to cancel the original notaire appointment as soon as you are in France.
Do not forget to move your NHS vaccination certificates to the TousAntiCovid app, as you might be required to show a green ‘not at risk’ light in restaurants/cafes.
Et voila, le tour est joue’. Pas plus difficile que cela.
I wonder whether you are as well informed as you say you are … just a thought.
December 16, 2021
No doubt you are retired so you have time to quarantine for a week. I was only going for a week. I have to get back to work – to pay taxes to fund your pension handouts.
December 17, 2021
Just as we have done for 50 years :so you will get yours , stop bleating and realise that there are many senior citizens out there who have put far more into the UK than you ever will. I love France too and if we get to control this virus , one day all will be well.
Who the hell do you think you are to rubbish so many who have given so much.
December 16, 2021
Andy. Try arriving on a dinghy. That would be a novel event for France. You could all dress as Santa Clause and the elves. Such a shame.
December 16, 2021
The people in dinghy are among the world’s most desperate people. Fleeing persecution in their home countries and risking their lives in the process.
The most hardship you now face in your charmed life is when the WI runs out of sponge cake. Frankly, you are an embarrassment not just to our country but to humanity.
reply Surely they are not fleeing persecution from France and your beloved EU? Why not stay there in your land of milk and honey?
December 16, 2021
Having visited Beaconsfield recently… all that traffic ! No wonder you have the permanent hump.
December 16, 2021
They’re not errors, they are conscious, premeditated and deliberate acts designed to injure, silence and eliminate a political problem
December 16, 2021
Impose on the civil servants (servants? Ha Ha!) the same as government has on NHS workers.
Tell them all, no more WFH and get three jabs or you’re out of work.
Oh well, dream on Martyn…
December 16, 2021
“The bill for compensation will be substantial and falls to taxpayers as we own the Post Office.”
Surely then, the bill should also fall on those who made the mistakes to repay those taxpayers as far as they possibly can. When we hear that the people in charge at the Post Office were informed repeatedly that this was an issue but refused to believe or take action on it, preferring persecuting innocents to admitting they had made a mistake, they should be liable for those actions and their results. In the private sector this would be negligence or failure in a duty of care, and the government should be pressing charges for such.
December 16, 2021
+10
December 16, 2021
We need a root and branch transformation of government and the public sector. There haven’t been many good governments and Parliaments in my lifetime but this is the worst. Many of us feel that, rather than representing our best interests, those in Westminster and elsewhere are actively working in their own interests and against the people. This country is in a very dark place and the traditional means of bringing about change have virtually gone – removed by those who we, in our naiveté, voted to represent us.
December 16, 2021
Perhaps I could wander off-piste here, and bring up this week’s enormous fine for Natwest – a quarter of a BILLION pounds. Yes, some penalty was warranted – but the fine will be paid by shareholders, and not by the managers responsible. So, are we at the point where regulators need their disciplinary wings clipped? Or is Parliament content for them to act like out-of-control judges, dispensing penalties totally out of kilter with the scale of the offences?
December 16, 2021
On 30/07/2021, NatWest announced a £3bn distribution of dividends to shareholders over three years. It had tripled its profits every quarter of 2020 despite the ongoing money laundering investigation. The bank has now admitted its money-laundering failings and is being fined £340m.
Why should supposedly informed shareholders be spared the pain?
December 16, 2021
“Today I have highlighted two disastrous management errors in public services which Parliament has criticised many times in the past.” This demonstrates how ineffective the UK parliament, (you can’t actually call it a “legislature”; more a debating society), is at fixing anything that has gone, or is going, wrong.
Contrast that with, “Former French health minister Agnes Buzyn was charged Friday over her handling of the Covid-19 pandemic (etc ed – she strenuously denies the allegations). Contrast also with the constitutional powers of the US Congress and the Office of Special Counsel that enforces the Hatch Act.
The UK gets a Punch & Judy pantomime like Wednesday’s PMQs, where Downing Street’s Punch only faces opposition from its own lobby fodder, carefully choreographed to be always, just a little short of the government party committing political suicide. Worth a read, “Conservative backbenchers are out of touch with the public — and fully removed from reality.” (Martin Kettle Guardian.)
December 16, 2021
OT: I watched Chris Whitty on national TV telling us to scale back social activities over Xmas. This will result in the bankruptcy of many hospitality businesses who rely on the Xmas season. Why didn’t Prof Whitty announce a package of financial support for those businesses at the same time ?
December 16, 2021
Roy: Only if we take any notice of Whitty. Surely no-one in their senses will.
December 16, 2021
@R.Grange; Perhaps those who ignore the advice of the Chief Medical Officer (England) should be deigned any and all medical care from the NHS,just as some suggested the non-vaccinated should a week or so ago, perhaps even be deigned any and all tax or welfare help from either HMT or DWP, nor have any legal protection against debt/bankruptcy proceedings should they be unable to pay their contracted bills, mortgages etc. due to falling ill from CV19…
Reply The NHS has a duty to provide care to all, including those who harm themselves in various ways
December 16, 2021
@JR reply; I know! I was posting tongue in cheek, given all the nasty things some have said in the past week so about others, funny how some forget what’s good for the Goose is also good for the Gander, especially at this time of year.
December 16, 2021
I’m still meeting friends and family in pubs and restaurants
December 16, 2021
Prof Whitty is the Chief MEDICAL Officer. Might this explain that?
December 16, 2021
It’s a defacto lockdown which means no bailouts for hospitality.
We’ve been nudged to talk ourselves into it. An impossible vaccine target and “Do this to save Christmas.”
Ain’t happening and we’ve got years of this yet.
December 16, 2021
He should have volunteered that since in his estimation omicron is going to be so infectious, there is no point in running the test and trace programme because it will only find people who are already infectious and symptomatic and thus do nothing to halt the spread, so the money saved is for ministers to choose to spend elsewhere or save.
December 16, 2021
Off topic, here from November 2019 is a video of Boris Johnson, glass in hand, speaking as a “passionate Unionist”, holding forth to spellbound Northern Irish Conservatives about “unfettered access” between Northern Ireland and Great Britain and telling them what a great deal he had negotiated:
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/boris-johnson-accused-of-deceit-or-ignorance-on-brexit-trade-barriers-hkpzm6srg
While here yesterday is the BBC speculating about the real reason why the UK government is deferring the imposition of checks and controls on goods entering Great Britain from the Irish Republic:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-59657998
“Industry sources suggest there is another unspoken factor in this move.
If there are full border controls on Republic of Ireland goods landing in British ports then Irish traders could just route their goods via Northern Ireland’s ports.
Remember the government has promised that Northern Ireland goods will have unfettered access to the rest of the UK – in other words those goods won’t be subject to checks or new paperwork.
But how do you discriminate between Irish and Northern Irish goods as they roll off the Belfast ferry while still keeping the unfettered access pledge?
That problem has not yet been solved, so this move helps kick the can down the road.”
Maybe further down the road the can will eventually bounce off the correct solution, which would be to only have any necessary EU related checks and controls on goods moving between the two parts of the island of Ireland, in either direction, but with all the procedures carried out well away from the actual land border to avoid giving republican terrorists attractive targets.
And it should be recalled here that when Leo Varadkar issued his vicarious threat of renewed terrorism:
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/taoiseach-uses-copy-of-the-irish-times-at-brussels-dinner-to-emphasise-border-issue-1.3667789
“Taoiseach uses copy of ‘The Irish Times’ at Brussels dinner to emphasise Border issue”
the article dragged up an August 1972 attack on a border customs post perpetrated by the IRA:
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/what-if-brexit-brings-the-violence-back-1.3665559
“What if Brexit brings the violence back?”
December 16, 2021
The public sector has changed.It would be a good Idea if the country started at 1st base again. Communication is at the route of all transactions and interventions. What is written ,said and understood in the same text can mean radically different things to many people. There are also concerns with predictive text in publically used software
December 16, 2021
And do not overlook the Railtrack outrage you wrote about before of it unnecessarily and recklessly incurring losses on foreign exchange through borrowing in currencies other than Sterling.
December 16, 2021
There is no chance of “improving the [Britphobic] public sector” when no-one is ever sacked for either ignoring or perpetrating incompetence, malfeasance, corruption, misbehaviour, indolence, truculence, fraud or criminal activity.
December 16, 2021
PS : It will also be necessary for the [Britphobic] public sector to not always be totally insulated from the financial costs of their policies and actions.
December 16, 2021
Here’s a topic on government and civil service incompetence and subversion. That is the allowance of the breaking of our borders. My target of about 50, 000 invaders allowed over the Channel is building nicely.
Here’s a response. A totally secret group here in England should send say a dozen indentity secret volunteers in a rib over the channel secretly and land in France. They could ensure the French authorities found if they got there unnoticed.
What would the French do? Would they perhaps find them crossing and stop them or help them across like we do? What would we do if they tried to intercept them mid channel and push them back? If they prevented them then we could do the same against those invading here.
If found in France would they send them back? The crossers could claim they were being mistreated here and demand asylum there.
We would refuse to take them back. My process would be that the French should take back say a many times mulitiple of those who came here if we did. How about that? It could be made to work and we then just keep doing it until the French stopped their behaviours against us. Ihink we could easily find people to do it – maybe some illegals who got here, on a promise.
Some determined action is required.
December 16, 2021
Very good idea, Prangwizard. Our young friend Andy needs to get to France somehow. Perhaps he can try it and let us know how he gets on. He can tell the gendarmes he’s an asylum-seeker from ‘plague island’ Britain. And not ‘illegal’, no, no.
December 16, 2021
Good afternoon.
These are two entirely different cases. One is a one off, where as the other is just another in a long list of failures.
The one off was most unfortunate and it is good that those who have lost are to be compensated. The blame for failure is difficult as I am sure many would have acted in the belief that they were acting in the public interest much like MP’s voting for Lockdowns do knowing the harm that it may cause.
The problems with the MoD and procurement are structural and institutional. Literally, too many chiefs and not enough indians. I once watched a lecture by a former RN Rear Admiral. All I can say is, thank god we never went to war with him in charge.
Reply Nonsense re Post Office . I and some other MPs when we heard how many Postmasters were being accused of fraud said it is impossible that so many could suddenly turn to crime after years of honest and good service all around the same time. I cannot fathom how they made this error of management.
December 16, 2021
At TCW (conservative woman) today, this article,
‘The horrifying vaccine damage testimonies of Australia’s silenced nurses.’
It is a litany of devastation, for some death or life in a wheelchair. If ever those here, who have suffered similar injuries, are able to get monetary ‘compensation’, I imagine we will have a new national debt.
December 16, 2021
You are clearly referring to the Ajax Armoured Fighting Vehicle which is beset with problems relating to noise and vibration which is injuring crews.
One has to question two things :
1. How has the programme come so far before the MOD admitted to the severe problems which, I believe, have resulted in some soldiers being discharged with defective hearing and many others suffering lesser damage to their ears.
2. It would appear that, so far, the vehicle is 4 years late and, while 109 of the 589 vehicles have been built, only 14 have been delivered to the MOD.
Due to the dangerously high noise and vibration levels, these vehicles are unusable.
Why then, has the manufacturer been paid more than £3.5bn of the total contract value of £5. 5bn !
December 16, 2021
I would suggest that highlighting this poster’s muddling of a state and private enterprise to demonstrate the propensity of government to socialise losses is obfuscation Sir John. But it’s your diary so demonise if you must. It’s politics after all.
December 16, 2021
The civil service are simply not up to the technological challenges that their budgets facilitate. It will never get better until it is realised that the days when a civil servant can be parachuted into a role that would normally take a technically qualified and competent person several years to master are over. Many years ago the civil service was reformed such that only those who passed a competitive exam were eligible.
Is it time for another major reform that recognises that much of the work of the civil service is now technological and requires appropriately qualified people for those roles?
It is pretty obvious that the civil servants in the PO had no idea how to specify the requirements for a computer system or how to test it. That they assumed that the system was working correctly
when the implication was that their postmasters had suddenly decided to engage in fraud says little for their general intelligence either.