Gecko from East London?
One of Ken’s slithery friends has gone off to the US and making money as an insurance spokesman. The Gecko from Geiko is now talking. This one is one of the best.
2 commentsWhitehall; unfit for purpose …….
Guido has been absent from these pages for a little while – mostly because his paymasters have burdened him with a very large and complex task, and partly because he has been able to take a short break in the Highlands. Nut he has watched keenly the debacles in Whitehall and laughed uproariously at the Nation’s Illustrious Leader’s admission last week, “That Labour have not had a good week!” Rest assured dear reader, Guido wished more than anything to be able to get to a computer with internet access, and make a comment.
This morning he sat down to do so, and discovered that everything he truly wished to point our – or nearly everything – has been said by the Gray Monk under the title of Blair’s legacy. The Monk points out all the things that Guido was about to write on, the complete lack of cohesion between Departments, the lack of joined up thinking between departm,ents and, even worse, within them, the corrupt Treasury imposed system of “preferred suppliers” which allows hugely expensive projects to be awarded to a supplier chosen from a list without any cometitive tendering and so on.
The only thing the Monk has failed to mention is the arrogant and frequently abusive “Ministerial Special Advisers” who now hold sway over the Civil Servants, who, despite their faults, are generally at least courteous, are allowed to intervene directly in some functions, given unlimited access to Ministers and Guido has even heard of one who routinely goes over her Ministers head when she can’t get her own way – direct to “Tony”. Cleaning this lot out of Whitehall will take some time, it will certainly take even longer to remodel Whitehall, and that is something that will have to be done if the incompetence and corruption is to stop. Senior Civil Servants do not solve problems or even deal with them, the “word” is that the “own” them. Making a problem your own is apparently the way to make sure you are not threatened in your position. You never solve the problem, you “manage” it, using it as a lever to fend off budget cuts, staff reduction and anything else that will threaten your Empire.
Read more Comments are off for this post
