Got to love the image the BBC chooses to use to headline a story showing the Civil Service are taking even MORE sickies than previous years. Oh it must be ALL the pressure of those gilt edged pensions, generous holidays and absolutely no responsibility..
IN SICKNESS AND IN HEALTH….
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It’s perfectly OK for civil servants to take unauthorised holidays.
Services are not being harmed at all. As Digby Jones showed, in a report commissioned by the Labour Party, there are twice as many as required to do the work.
The problems start when their calibre and political beliefs are investigated. Many of them are lefties when they enter the public sector. Many who are not become so, partially due to the incessant left wing propaganda and partially due to them becoming aware of which side their bread is buttered.
The lefty civil servants carry out Conservative governments policies as slowly and badly as they can.
Many are also flat out incompetent as the failure of every large scale computer software project shows. These finish late if at all, are several times over budget and do not function correctly, or even at all.
Naturally none of these deficiencies and inadequacies get them sacked. There is no need to do the job properly.
The lack of discipline is shocking. Several hundred laptop computers have been lost by MOD staff alone. Some with unencrypted classified files thereon. These people should not be disciplined or sacked, they should be in jail.
Then there is the bribery, private sector companies charges are not controlled, not monitored. Cost overuns of great magnitude are common, not rare exceptions. The civil servant(s) responsible then retire with the perquisites noted by David Vance, but then start working for the very same companies whose charges they did not control, frequently at eye-watering salaries.
Public Sector, not fit for purpose. Naturally all the above has been the norm for decades.
Several hundred laptop computers have been lost by MOD staff alone.
I have no doubt there is some truth in what you say, TruthSeeker.
However, an acquaintance who used to work in MoD once told me that if an employee had been given a laptop, then regardless of age, specification or condition it was impossible to obtain a new modern up-to-date replacement.
So, the only way to upgrade was to ‘leave it on a train’ or have it ‘stolen from the boot of my car’ or some equally plausible excuse. Result – one new laptop……
Dsb
I do not believe a word of this.
If true, I should have followed the word “jail” with “and throw the key away.”
Spelling mistake : “In sickness and in WEALTH”
..is what your title, surely ?
Sorry David having spent 18 years in front line service in the DHSS, I can assure you that is not a description I recognise at the grade I was at. I can assure you when I’m old enough to get my occupation pension I will not be able to rush around to the local Ferrari dealer. If taking abuse from members of the public on a daily basis is a walk in the park fair enough. As for sick leave this may have been somewhat lax in the early 1980s I can assure you when I left it was pretty much like the Spanish inquisition on the “back to work” interview. The “back to work” interview was brought in supposedly to check you were fit to return to work I was once asked if I knew I had been sick on similar days 3 years earlier as my interrogator had printed all my sick leave details off. When I left I went to load lorries at a supermarket distribution centre for which I was paid 25% more than civil service wages and considerably less stress and aggro. As for you Nibor if you want to gob off make sure you can back it up you wouldn’t have lasted 5 minutes in the job I used to do you sad little tosser.
I’ve had experience of your civil service and it is the thing that brings this country down .
After you’ve loaded the lorries talk to the drivers , if they’re British , and they can tell you how they’re treated .
Talk to the international drivers – oh there aren’t any now due to senior civil servants callous regard for others jobs . Those were jobs , not careers , but they were also a way of life . A way of life extinguished because no one puts the spotlight on how mandarins at Whitehall influence every aspect of our lives .
And no I wouldn’t have lasted five minutes in your job . I’m patriotic .
David’s post is regarding civil servants, not public sector workers in general. However, I sympathise with your comments regarding the DHSS as I have a friend who also worked in that sector in a shit part of England. He simply could not tolerate the abuse he received on a daily basis so left and went back to college.
He’s now an English teacher in Singapore.
Not intended as a criticism of Dave666 personally, but if all recipients of public sector pensions (prospective or in payment) multiply their annual pension by 30 that will give a good approximation of the amount a private individual would have had to accumulate in his pension pot today to buy that same pension.
I do not know if the civil service employees make any contribution out of pay or not ( I do not think the armed services do) but such as local government has been around 6% (about 4.5% of take home after tax relief) with the enployer putting in 2 to 3 times that amount
Here’s an interesting article: http://www.personneltoday.com/hr/sickness-absence-rates-and-costs-revealed-in-uks-largest-survey/
“The public sector has, traditionally, suffered from higher rates of sickness absence, compared with the private sector.
The trend continues with this year’s figures, with public-sector organisations experiencing a median of 3.5% of working time lost due to sickness absence – equivalent to 8.1 days per employee – while private-sector services organisations lost a median of 2.2% of working time, translating as 5.1 days per employee.”
Noelle Murphy, author of the XpertHR report, points out that average sickness absence in the public sector has fallen, and goes on to say;
“Certainly, cost cutting will have contributed to fluctuations in absence figures within this sector, but we know that it is the consistent, proactive management of absence – through measuring, monitoring and intervention – that leads to a permanent decrease.”
What Noelle Murphy reveals – perhaps unwittingly – is that the public sector has been historically lenient on absence, and now, when job security is threatened and absence from work is scrutinised more stringently, public sector employees are faced with private sector realities; realities that those in the private sector face up to on a daily basis and have been doing so since the industrial revolution.
E
2.2% X 1.5 = 3.3%.
So despite this “Spanish Inquisition” the lefties still take c50% more paid “holidays” than the real world, maybe unpaid, holidays.
Ximenes and Torquemada would have turned the screw a little more.
Careful TS . One of my posts was taken down because it distressed the snowflake here .
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