Legitimizing laziness in public employment.

If one public servant in one post, no matter how senior, is ever awarded a performance bonus, the whole meaning and ethos of of all such service is demeaned. Why that should be seems obvious to me, but perhaps not to others, yet thinking about it, is it not obvious that job security, index linked pensions and all the other accepted perks of performing a vocation, are predicated on one always giving of one's best? Giving less than one is able at all times must mean that such benefits go unearned!

Worse, if one tiny portion of a public servants remuneration package is obscured from the public, then once revealed all trust in public employees will begin to be lost. Yesterday on Orphans of Liberty, linked here, I revealed one such abuse.

Also yesterday, in Parliament, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, announced further cuts to the public workforce and a 1% salary rise ceiling following the present two year salary freeze. George Osborne is a strategically calculating politician, he would have announced such cuts (and in such a manner) only if he were supremely confident that he has public support. Striking public workers have therefore been warned.

Yet it is not among the huge ranks of the lower paid that the abuses that have led to this loss of support have their roots. It is at the top. It was in evidence again last week in the mass sacking of ordinary bobbies in the Devon and Cornwall Constabulary while the higher ranks escaped unscathed. The higher your eyes rise in the civil service ranks the worse the abuses appear to become.

As this blog has repeatedly pointed out down the years, a Knighthood earned in public service nowadays almost seems to guarantee something shady in the background. If the Government really wishes to restore decency to public life, which I personally doubt, they should start by rooting out and prosecuting large numbers of senior public employees! For an example see here.

(Update 1325 Daily Mash article here)