Aug 10
Looking after Number 1!
Two interesting news items have recently aroused my ire – the first, an item in yesterday’s Scotsman regarding the “trimming” of civil service posts (reported in the news as 70,000 jobs, a far cry from Mr Brown’s 120,000) and the fact that there are no proposals to axe any of the “spin doctors” this arrogant and incompetent government have recruited. To add insult to injury, it would appear that there are no plans to axe any of the expensive and incompetent Senior Civil Servants from their featherbedded and protected positions of control, either.
So, all the “cuts” are scheduled to happen at the lower end of the scale of salaries and perks where the savings will actually be pretty minimal. Add to that the fact that the Civil Service is still creating jobs at a phenomenal rate and you can see that the supposed “cuts” are no cuts at all, but rather a re-arrangement of the deckchairs on the Titanic! The fighting troops are cut back and already have problems recruiting to fill natural “wastage” of servicemen and women leaving the forces, and yet the offices of the army of penpushers in MOD HQ in Whitehall is being refurbished for a sum equivalent to the cost of a new Type 45 Destroyer. Nor is this all, the army of penpushers in the MOD is increasing and now outnumbers the total strength of the Army and is 20% greater than the combined RAF and Royal Navy strength. So no “cuts” there then – unless you count the ones being made to the actual services themselves.
And then there is that second item…
To compound this disgraceful squandering of public money on worthless and entirely unproductive public sector jobs, we also must add the disgraceful treatment of pensioners – many of whom served their country well in 1939 – 45 and who now struggle to make ends meet because of Civil Service rules which freeze the pension paid to anyone who opted to retire to a Commonwealth country. Retire to any other country and you get all the increases and allowances, but dare to retire to one of the Commonwealth nations and your pension is frozen at the level it was when you retired.
This is, today, highlighted in an item in the Daily Telegraph which discusses the case of a 92 year old ex-London Fire Fighter (he spent WW2 fighting the Blitz fires) who dared to retire to Melbourne in Australia. His pension is frozen at the 1982 level of 32.50 per week. Someone in the same position who retired to an EU or any other country not in the Commonwealth would be drawing whatever the original pension had escalated to in the interrim, which is what he himself would be getting if he had remained in the UK. At a guess I would suggest that his 32.50 would now be about 200 per week at least.
Of course, the Civil Service wrote the rules on this, but they now hide behind them and point the finger of blame at the appropriate Minister or at Parliament. What complete nonsense, Parliament relies on the advice of the Civil Service (more fool them!) and then tasks a Civil Servant with writing the appropriate rules. These are usually utterly incomprehensible to anyone including the clown who wrote them – and then rubber stamps them without consideration of the impact upon the lives of anyone else. As to why it was decided that someone retiring to a Commonwealth country should be treated in this disgraceful manner remains unknown. Suffice it to say that there is now a case before the House of Lords to decide whether or not this is a fair and equitable rule and whether or not it infringes a person’s rights of entitlement. I sincerely hope that their Lordships pass a really censorious judgement.
What a pity they cannot also recommend a penalty to be imposed upon the Civil Servants and Ministers who have used and abused this grossly unjust rule to their advantage. Watch how quickly it would be changed if it hit any ex-MP or retired Civil Servant, but no, as long as the victims are out of the country and too impoverished to resort to the law they will continue to get away with it.
This disgraceful shower of worthless jobsworths have degraded and destroyed everything they have been entrusted with. This is about the pursuit of power by the totally unworthy and about its retention for their advantage. Time to clean out the House and start afresh!
