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.

Britain's Corrupt Civil Service - 55,000 MOD Clerks get bonuses!

The Telegraph has the full report on the the payments within the almost entirely non-functioning MOD, 55,000 pen-pushers in total out of a huge payroll of 83,000 with one actually receiving £85,831. The following quote makes clear that this rotten sickness is endemic across the whole of Whitehall and therefore probably the entire government machine:

In the past year 56 senior officials - those in the highest civil service grades - shared £505,000, averaging £9,000 each. Junior staff were handed a total of £37.9 million, typically taking home £697 - meaning 54,375 of its employees received bonuses, a level in contrast to ministers’ intention that bonuses are not given routinely.
The highest level of bonuses were awarded to the Department of Work and Pensions, whose employees scooped £51 million. The Department of Transport paid out £9.2million, the Foreign Office £6.4 million and the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs £2.3 million. The Department for Education spent £1.9 million on bonuses, the Department for Health £1.7 million, the Cabinet Office £1.3million and the Department for Innovation and Skills £1.1million.

Every pound of bonus money paid to a civil servant who is an indexed linked, Government-funded, pension recipient is a direct kick in the teeth to UK tax payers! Worse, every penny of bonus paid to a civilian employee of the MOD, given the facts on servicemen and women having been sent into battle under-funded and ill-equipped, is akin to rewarding those with such much spent blood on their hands!

Britain's Corrupted Civil Service.

Now that our elected politicians are finally prepared to tackle the thoroughly corrupt European Union, by which we have been controlled for decades, brought on mainly by its own imminent and obvious self-destruction, is it not also timely, with the departure of Gus O'Donnell from the Cabinet Office, to tackle our thoroughly corrupted civil service, as suggested by Douglsa Carswell MP on 11th October 2011, quoted here:

Mandarins need to have a mandate

According to twitter reports, Gus O'Donnell, the most senior Whitehall mandarin, is to quit - and will be replaced by another Whitehall mandarin.
Hang on a moment.  Even mandarins need to have a mandate.
Before we are told which Sir Humphrey is next in line to preside over the machinery of government, there must be a public confirmation hearing.
As Coalition ministers have discovered, it is these permanent officials that really decide most public policy.  All too often, elected ministers end up as mere mouthpieces for the machine.
It is people like Gus O'Donnell at the Cabinet Office, Kim Darroch on the national security council, Simon Fraser at the FCO and other semi-anonymous technocrats who really decide how this country is run.  And,in my view,who have helped run it into the ground.
Incidentally, it is precisely because we have such a smug, insulated technocracy in charge that voters are left complaining that no matter who they vote for, things rarely seem to change.
Before the next technocrat is installed to preside over us, we need to have a Parliamentary confirmation hearing. No convincing answers, no job.
Requiring senior officials to answer publicly for what they do in our name might mean that those who make public policy start to appreciate what the public actually wants.
Posted on 11 October 2011 by Douglas Carswell

There will be more on this topic, on Orphans of Liberty later, and here on this blog during the coming Parliamentary break!

Corrupt Civil Service

I have been blogging on this of late and have today been joined by The Times and The Slog, the latter not hiding behind a pay wall is linked here.

Britain's public officials being paid off for years!

As I was only saying just this morning, read here!

Britain has become wide-open to corruption following the example set from the top during the years of the New Labour Governments of Blair and Brown who simultaneously bankrupted the nation AND handed power to Brussels!

This is how the matter is being reported in the USA this afternoon, linked here:

UK police describe network of corrupt officials, illegal payments by Murdoch's The Sun tabloid

LONDON - Rupert Murdoch's top-selling U.K. tabloid, The Sun, had a culture of making illegal payments to corrupt public officials in return for stories, a senior British police officer said Monday.

Later that same article continues with the following:

Akers said journalists paid not only police officers but also military, health and other government officials. One official received a total of 80,000 pounds ($126,912) over several years, Akers said, adding that police also are investigating whether officials were placed on retainers by newspapers.

She said "a network of corrupted officials" had provided The Sun with stories that were mostly "salacious gossip."

"There appears to have been a culture at The Sun of illegal payments, and systems have been created to facilitate such payments whilst hiding the identity of the officials receiving the money," said Akers, who is in charge of a police investigation into phone hacking and police bribery.

She said one journalist had "over several years received over 150,000 pounds ($238,000) in cash to pay his sources, a number of whom were public officials." She said payments to public officials went far beyond acceptable practices such as buying them a meal or a drink.

The country became used to its politicians being disgraced during the expenses scandal. This is on an entirely different level. It is inconceivable that these practices were not known about at the highest levels of the Civil Service and Government. The appointment of Sir John Chilcot to head the Iraq inquiry, after it was already publicly known and revealed that he had received undeclared payments from a foreign wind electricity promoting company, is surely evidence enough for all beneath his exalted pay grade, to believe that such practises had become widely acceptable?

The British Establishment should tonight be in deep crisis! Not least because of the disgraceful police inaction since deep suspicions became self-evident so long ago!

Germans set to grab Britain's Dairy Industry

Click here to read the press release put out some ten minutes ago.

Our dairy industry is what ensures that a small part of our green and pleasant land still survives in spite of the ravages of our corrupt senior civil service and the political classes.

Steadily over decades our country has been ground into the dust and dirt and stripped naked of its entire productive industry and infrastructure. Controlling our countryside MUST be turned into the final straw.

I tweeted the following on hearing this news, which comes on top of learning that Britain has once again been over-ruled by foreign judges, this time on votes for convicts:

7m Martin Cole ‏@IroniesToo

It appears German leaders seek to return Europe to the early 1940s, other (Germans and) national leaders should use informal EU summit today to say NO

Cameron must make his first stand against the EU today!

Now for the corruption from the EU and within Government services!

We are finally scratching the surface of the obscenities, arising from the cosying up to the press, by senior politicians, of our two thoroughly rotten main poltical parties. Similarly, with the expenses scandal, some of the worst abuses by our elected politicians and peers within the House of Lords has finally begun to be addressed.

The nation cannot pretend that matters either end there, or just with the police.

This blog has several times in the past reported on certain blatant abuses of power within the civil service, all of which have gone completely ignored elsewhere. It would be the height of stupidity for any to believe that there are not similar abuses underway within local government and the EU regional organisations, which will eventually point us to the corrupt centre of all excesses, those delivered to us by our membership of the European Union.

The non-declaration by certain peers of their EU pensions in supporting amendments to the European Union Bill, in the past few months, is yet another area worthy of urgent and full investigation.

We must remember, in the coming days, that the obvious corruption in Downing Street, is merely giving us a small glimpse of where New Labour and Cameron's Conservatives have taken our nation!

One face of Britain's Corrupted Civil Service

The Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Danny Alexander, is interviewed in The Observer this morning on the topic of the austerity regime to be announced in October, linked here. Spending ministers MUST demand that the first cuts must fall on the corrupt 600,000 leaches within the Public Sector who have helped themselves to vast perks and pension pots without any provision for their funding. Included in such cuts should also be the MPs own pension provisions. Donation to the state of the private homes acquired by MPs through the disgraceful expenses allowances, such as those in the property portfolios of the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister could make the coming cuts more palatable to the public. Sir John Chilcott and other knavelike Knights have been already exposed and thus become topics of coverage on this blog, type "Knighthoods" in the search bar above to read past postings on this disgrace. If the leaders of the Coalition Government will not take the lead in purging the country of the corruption now gripping the nation, then for the sake of their own futures, spending department Secretaries of State and their Ministers must now do so! Criminal proceedings against the New Labour ex-Cabinet Ministers who authorised and gave tacit blessing to these excesses for their own puposes should be the first step. The axe must then fall on the the mass of materialistic public employees who, while destroying the underlying fabric of the nation state, have gorged themselves insensible at the public trough so that they today even lack the ability to sense the enormity of what they have accomplished nor follow the line through to the eventual obvious consequences.

The Last Bastion of British Values and Decency Protests

So, finally the head of the army has apparently twigged what is afoot! After fifty years of unremitting and relentless assault, the fact that the people of Britain have been engaged in a remorseless battle in defence of decent standards has finally been absorbed in the cloistered corridors, messes and wardrooms in which move the heirs of those who fought and died to keep our country free. Our new Army chief, mere weeks in his post, has challenged the government on terms which the press and media, predictably enough IMO, have totally misconstrued. First consider the timing. Blair should now be on remand or in jail. Police inquiries on the payments for peerages issue can only end in 10, Downing Street. Peerages are in the gift of the Prime Minister. He submits the list to the Queen and precedent requires she comply. There are further questions, I recall seeing in the press, regarding the lease of the speculative student accomodation Bristol flats which reportedly were eventually let to companies or their employees associated with France who will apparently be involved in contracts for Britain's replacement 'through deck cruisers' ( to use an 'old' Labour platitude) or aircraft carrier as the rest of the world knows them. So what, you ask? Blair is a known verbal contortionist - everybody knows that! Big Deal, I can almost hear readers add. But now it is clear that our overstretched armed forces chiefs' must have dearly wished that Blair would have been done for after the summer of scandals and that Brown's conference speech might give some hope of more realism over Britain's capabilities in Iraq and Afghanistan. But NO, instead Blair ploughs on and Brown's conference speech predicts no change, instead they got this recent Prime Ministerial statement, of which this quote is taken from Reuters:

In an interview with the British forces' broadcaster, Blair rejected the claims, saying morale was high and troops would be given any extra support they need.

"If the commanders on the ground want more equipment, armoured vehicles for example, more helicopters, that will be provided," Blair said. "Whatever package they want, we will do." Look at that last phrase again: "Whatever package they want, we will do." That was,of course, a lie. Yet nobody in the MSM queried the statement. Nobody even in NICE, busy banning basic treatment drugs for Alzheimers, even raised a whimper of protest at the clear financial implications! Why? Britain has finite resources - there are no more helicopters and 'smoke and mirrors Brown' has no more cash to borrow or pensions to pillage! BUT, of course, everybody else knew it was a lie, they knew it even before Tony Blair opened his lips (I guess that is why it isn't really news) ..... So Gordon Brown stepped in and offered tiny tax relief for our under-equipped servicemen and women ........ well not a tax exemption exactly but perhaps a bonus that would match their tax liabilities... details were difficult. WHAT???? Tax exemption should be perfectly straightforward. We are supposed to believe that there has apparently been no real plan to destroy the 'country of principle' that my generation was taught to trust in and uphold. It apparently just happened while the country was supposedly governed by Buggins Turn Labour and Conservatives!!! Yet the nation I knew has disappeared almost without trace. In every aspect of our daily lives it has disappeared, like our democracy, gone to the EU as if it had never been there. Talk about heritage to a young person today..........??????? Somehow our armed forces have become the last repository of the values that once the whole country held dear. Sooner or later, it was therefore inevitable they too would come under attack. At least they now seem to have seen the threat. It would be foolish indeed to suggest that the dual operations in Iraq and Afghanistan were contrived to stretch our armed forces to the limit, but listening to the London Mayor Ken Livingstone on the Radio 4 Today programme, suggesting the values of the British Armed Forces were alien to Londoners - then reading Matthew Parris in The Times , calling for the sacking of the Army Chief, who had merely expressed ideas which our multi-facing PM wholeheartedly agreed, makes one really wonder! So, Sir Richard has viewed the future. In his follow-up interview after that published in the Daily Mail on Radio 4, he stated that he did not wish to see the army 'BROKEN' in five or ten years time. Has he twigged that this is the real objective of some close to government? Did Shirley Williams and Tony Crosland really wish to destroy Britain's brilliant post-war education system? Perhaps they were the idealistic pawns of other less well intentioned anarchists. The end result is the same whoever is to blame! Other examples abound, the NHS, Local Government, the Civil Service, Westminster Democracy, the Judiciary etc., all in thrall to corrupt government and fourth rate politicians. Now the Armed Forces are under attack, just as a government detesting our past values might have wished - underfunded, under hostile fire, overstretched and largely overseas. What the public statements by the army head mean to me is that something far more serious than the timetable for withdrawal from Iraq is in question. We seem to be witnessing another (perhaps final) Battle of Britain, unhappily it seems already lost!

Hypocrite Hartnett must go!

What kind of blinkered numbskull could allow these two statements to be broadcast on the very same day? Firstly -"Mr Hartnett told BBC Radio 4's Money Box programme: "I'm not sure I see a need to apologise. I've read the papers, listened to the media and heard stories of HMRC blunder and IT failure. Neither of those are true. Secondly - " I apologise if my remarks came across as insensitive.

"I am working flat out with my colleagues to ensure everyone's tax is correct and the new computer system will help us do this.

"It was this new system that revealed the extent and size of reconciliations required and will help us be more accurate in future but we do not underestimate the distress caused to taxpayers and once again I apologise."

The flat contradiction makes the belated apology even more insulting, as Treasury spokesman Lord Oakeshott, quoted in The Independent, earlier accused Hartnett of being "in a world of his own; I wonder what planet he is on."....."This is the latest in a series of management failures in the HMRC going back many years. If Mr Hartnett cannot see why he should apologise for this one, then he really should be reconsidering his own position..."

The full catalogue of disasters is detailed in the Telegraph , by Paul Farrow, linked here, giving the lie to Lord Oakeshott's words. Hartnett should not be considering his position, it being quite clear he is so besotted and befuddled by POWER that he is incapable of rational thought, he should therefore be summarily dismissed, "pour encourager les autres" as was once said of the executed Admiral Byng, read here. Any serving Civil Servant, MP or other troughing public official had better quickly realise that such arrogance guarantees a tax revolt in the longer run, if not in the immediate short term, and all their disgustingly high pensions entitlements, stretching decades into the future, if not yet at risk today, will certainly never eventually materialise until the public sees clear evidence that the loot from such corrupt excesses has been returned to the Treasury - thus perhaps allowing a small percentage of these huge sums to be paid where genuine and honest service can be seen to have been provided.

As suggested repeatedly on this blog an essential start should be the return of the MP expenses funded property portfolios of the Prime Minister and his Deputy, the firing of 'Dave' Hartnett without pension now seems an extra first necessary step.