Consider the future of a new born British baby!

Ponder on the innocence of a new born baby, reflect on the pride, aspirations and hopes of its parents!

Now if you can for a moment, turn your thoughts to the qualities of those who have attained the upper echelons of our society: our leading politicians, senior civil servants , the DG, management and senior producers and celeberity broadcasters of the state run, hugely expensive and completely biased and unreasoning BBC etc.

Would any such parents wish their new born infant to follow in the footsteps of the present incumbents of those offices, most of them, (almost without obvious exception,) vain, greedy, self-seeking, self absorbed and commonly utterly incompetent as the state of society so obviously bears witness.

Such are the depths of the problem facing our country, all completely and entirely of our own making

Heywood's never-ending cuts, Doctors discontent and braving Britain's bankruptcy.

Cruising in the Med some twenty odd years ago my step-son, then around 11 years old suffered a nasty collision between his face and an out of control winch handle. We put into Gibraltar and at the Royal Naval hospital he was x-rayed, treated and comforted and combined with the delights of the islands and coasts of our cruise, he suddenly professed a desire to join the RN as a career. I cautioned that holding joint US citizenship as he did, that should he wish to pursue a "seagoing" career, he had better aim at the US Navy.

Doctors and Consultants in the NHS and Mandarin Senior Civil Servants, ripping off Britain's taxpayers in a multitude of highly discreet ways as they do, may not have enjoyed similar options, but coming as they mainly do from the well-educated levels of the upper middle-classes they should have foreseen that the institution which they were joining for a lifelong career, was led by obviously dishonest manipulators - the politicians of the two main parties and was therefore heading for certain and early bankruptcy.

These powerful groups are now stuck with the results of their earlier career decisions, just as the middle and upper management of such companies as Enron, with no knowledge or culpability for the mispractises at the top, were stuck with their redundancy. Read what Britain's Senior Civil Servant now has to say on the nation's prospects for the coming years in the Daily Telegraph today from here.

Britain was a prosperous world trading country and its public servants enjoyed the benefits that such accrued. The upper middle classes, have supported our entry into the EU, the effects of which THEY are now suffering. In Asia, Australasia and elsewhere there are incredibly prosperous booming economies. Our upper class influential opinion formers have all along the way supported policies that have put trade with these areas beyond Britain's reach and bound us tightly to a sclerotic, cancerous and now barely living corpse that is the EU.

In the process thay have removed the democratic accoutrements that would have earlier allowed full debate on these issues and driven us to a sensible and soundly based national financial future which the country does not possess today.

I am afraid the senior civil servants of Britain, attract my extreme distaste while the doctors of the dreadful NHS get none of my sympathy. These are the people who have set our course towards the rocks, taking "industrial action" as we are about to hit, when we could be turning about, seems odd and ignores the long-coming realities!

The knives are out for Sir Jeremy Heywood!

Quentin Letts wrote a brilliant article on the odious Sir Jeremy Heywood which appeared in The Spectator, 17th March edition, on which I blogged on 15th March which is linked here.

Today, the same magazine, has a follow-up piece by James Forsyth, full of criticism of Heywood's takeover of the Number 10 policy unit, which may be read from here. That Speccie article concludes with the following paragraph, a dire warning for Cameron in light of the latest Home Office fiasco:

Throughout his leadership of the Tory party, Cameron’s saving grace has been that he’s managed to change direction just before it’s too late. At the moment, though, he does not appear to be in the mood for doing that. One confidant says, ‘He doesn’t think there’s an existential threat to his premiership. It takes a lot to shake him out of his complacency.’ Cameron is used to having his critics talk this way, but when his friends join in then he ought to take notice. There are, after all, only a certain amount of mistakes and U-turns that a government can survive before it loses its most valuable asset: credibility.

Perhaps Cameron's only hope, at this late stage, is throwing the Knights of the Civil Service overboard, they are expendable and make perfect jetsam, thereafter we could as a country face up to the real crisis which is caused by the EU and is rapidly getting out of control!

Another Knavish Knight - Sir Jeremy Heywood

I owe it to Douglas Carswell MP for tweeting this link to Quentin Letts article in The Spectator on the thoroughly odious sounding Sir Jeremy Heywood, read Talk Carswell from here and The Spectator article in full from here. Meantime recorded for posterity on this blog the following brief extract from the latter:

Astonishingly, this was Heywood’s first proper public grilling. To make it to Cabinet Secretary without submitting to this parliamentary wringer is like becoming head chef at the Savoy without ever having cooked quenelles. But Jeremy Heywood is not a front-line Freddie. He has been a Treasury high flier, head of policy at the Cabinet Office, a fixer for prime ministers since John Major. He has never run a big-spending department. Far too exposed. Please. That sort of thing is for the bungling Bob Kerslakes of this world.

Sir J. Heywood is a backstairs Bertie, a smudger, a whisper-in-the-PM’s-ear sort who shrivels from public view. The worry for Conservatives, and the rest of us, is that this shrewd murmurer, this eminence grease, has acquired unprecedented power over not only the Prime Minister but also Nick Clegg, Cabinet, the coalition and much of the rest of the state apparat. There is talk of Heywood obstructing secretaries of state, shafting Cameroons and organising Downing Street to his own convenience. We have gone beyond ‘Yes, Minister’ and now have ‘Yes, Sir Jeremy’. Worryingly, no one seems more in hock to him than our soigné, someone-take-care-of-that PM.

The Cameroons are dying like bees. Andy Coulson is long gone. The Wade-Brookses have also been swept away by Hackgate. Other parts of the Chipping Norton set are in retreat. Steve Hilton is fleeing to California.

Heywood remains.....

Have Civil Servants been lying to Parliament?

The interview with Margaret Hodge on the Today programme this morning was a bit of a damp squid, but this linked report more than compensates with the following quote:

"To argue that we were wrong to try and hold the civil servants accountable to parliament, especially when the evidence of the permanent secretary for tax was at best inconsistent and at worst may have been misleading is, I believe, wrong. And if we don't hold civil servants in non-ministerial departments to account, who does?"

More on this seems likely to follow after the appearance of the Chair of the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee at the thinktank Policy Exchange today.

Is it too much to now entertain some slight hope that our MPs will begin to penetrate the stinking mess that UK public service has become?

Knights for the knackers.

Yesterday's decision, by a Committee apparently including several senior civil servants, represents the chance for Britain to finally shake off some of the sickness deeply embedded in its society and system of governance.

This blog has for some time been calling for the bringing to account of certain of the most outrageous examples of the deep corruption at the top of our civil service. Of course matters cannot be left to rest with those individuals alone, but it is an ideal place for the next steps to be taken after the shredding of Sir Fred Goodwin, upon which I commented yesterday.

Two candidates for immediate consideration for having their knighthood's removed already selected by this blog for earlier consideration are Sir John Cunliffe, here and here, and Sir John Chilcot the first of many posts on whom is here.  A third individual may be a better first case, however, in view of the appalling mess that has been allowed to develop at the Ministry of Defence, where waste and inefficiency and over-staffing is endemic. I do not know the individual(s) concerned but Dr Liam Fox probably has a good grasp of those facts. The deaths of how many servicemen and women might have been saved had the mandarins in charge of the MOD over recent years, either had ability or a shred of managerial ability let alone decency and a normally developed conscience?

In considering Sir John Cunliffe, the case for which has been considerably strengthened since the EU Council meeting in Brussels this Monday, I recommend reading this posting from Kosmopolito titled Cameron's diplomatic failure on his treacherous performance in Brussels, from which I quote this passage in particular:

Cameron’s misjudgment

Both, Die Welt and The Economist have similar stories about what exactly happened during the summit. It turns out that Cameron misjudged the mood among fellow leaders during the summit.  Cameron thought that the ‘Protocol 12′ solution was the preferred method for the eurozone – giving him leverage through a unanimous decision-making procedure. Bagehot thinks Cameron overplayed his hand, others said he lost his gamble (or verzockt as Udo van Kampen called it on German TV)   However, if he had listened to what politicians, diplomats and media commentators  in Germany or France said during the last weeks he should have known better. Plus  he had no allies, hence his isolation was not a surprise. Simply put, Cameron is not in the loop, maybe because he pulled out of the EPP… In any case,  his advisors should be sacked.
Cameron is not a diplomat and I am not sure he actually enjoys summits. Deep in his heart he is a eurosceptic (although the UK government has followed a pragmatic EU policy) but he comes across as arrogant and bossy. Especially during the eurozone crisis a sense of schadenfreude dominated the UK’s rhethoric.  The UK’s bilateral relations with EU member states have not been sufficiently developed. Cameron is like a robot in this respect. Whatever the issue somewhere in Europe he starts his monologue about British interests and why the EU is such a bad idea. This is hardly a good starting point for a constructive debate. Moreover, it seems difficult for him to build personal relationships with other European leaders – a necessity to win an argument at a summit.

Here lies the clue to another new dawn that has arrived today, as Alistair Darling's strident protests on the Radio 4 Today make clear that he has fully grasped, that being that after the smarmy, slimy, self-satisfied and thoroughly disgusting senior civil servants have their worst examples shorn of their honours, as night follows day so must go their ill-gotten gains and following that come the real villains, who should have been in charge of these opportunistic incompetents, the politicians themselves!

More Ironies Too posts on Britain's corrupt civil service are here.

Banker stripped of Knighthood, now for the Mandarins!

Brilliant news that the former head of the RBS Bank, Sir Fred Goodwin has been stripped of his Knighthood, merely for improperly carrying out his job improperly, like a mass of Civil Servants carrying undeserving of their titles!

Go to it, the outrage will win through now the barrier is broken!

Another face of Britain's smug, self-satisfied and hopeless Civil Service

After foreign wind-farm promoter and retired grandée and inquirer into the walking offence against humanity that is the habitual liar Tony Blair, one Sir John Chilcot mentioned on this blog in connection with Britain's corrupted civil service, most recently on 29th August, we can now bring you another mechéant mandarin: Permanent Secretary for tax (does that title indeed not say it all, for were he not permanent there might be some chance of rectifying the appalling mess that is Britain's tax system) one Dave Hartnett. (Spelling?? The BBC also has Harnett???) Listen to the stupefying glibness of this publicly employed overseer of a department so riddled with incompetence that it boggles the mind. It arrived on the Today programme via a "Moneybox Programme" interviewer as the subject and his department refused to be interviewed on the BBC flagship current affairs radio programme, which with his odious comments and attitude says it all really. Click here and listen from 55 seconds into the clip.