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9 hours ago, Retsdon said:

Who the hell is Cummings to hire and fire members of Her Majesties civil service because they're not enthusiastic about his crackpot schemes?

It's not about being enthusiastic. The guy clearly had an agenda and not only did he have an agenda, he had one opposite to that of the British people and how they voted. Just who the hell does he think he is!

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6 hours ago, ditchman said:

i wish the civil service would stay out of politics....just keep pushing the pens and counting the beans...and just do as they are told....i know there has always been a certain ammount of interferance............but senior civil servants are now constantly crossing the line and nailing their colours to the mast............and there is no longer a line between admin and politics.....civil servants arnt voted in by the people and should remember that  before sticking their oar into the power game ...

"Yes Minister"  and "Yes Prime Minister" were well written in their Machiavellian plottings of the Senior Civil Service and so close to reality. Now the top boys are sticking their heads above the parapet and getting caught.

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1 minute ago, Bobba said:

"Yes Minister"  and "Yes Prime Minister" were well written in their Machiavellian plottings of the Senior Civil Service and so close to reality. Now the top boys are sticking their heads above the parapet and getting caught.

Wonderful series; Apparently Mrs Thatcher said that it was MUCH closer to the truth than people realised!

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48 minutes ago, Bobba said:

"Yes Minister"  and "Yes Prime Minister" were well written in their Machiavellian plottings of the Senior Civil Service and so close to reality. Now the top boys are sticking their heads above the parapet and getting caught.

entirley agree..............................i think the word that is lacking of late is "discreet"

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10 hours ago, JDog said:

 

Amongst a litany of ridiculous posts from you this must rank right up there. 

👍..... I must commend you on your reply....and your politeness  .....just remember  the old truism -    " Never argue with an Idiot. He will only...etc..."

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If you take the Politics and emotion out of it, what has happened / is happening really should not come as a surprise... 

Part of the role of the Civil Service is to more or less ensure the nation as a whole steers the course set by successive and progressive national / governmental policy.  Brexit has completely redefined the course the nation is heading on, so it's only natural that career Civil Servants would to lesser or greater degrees be entrenched in the way things have always been done and resistive to this kind of change.

What is possibly disturbing is the timing and manner in which it has been done, but the effects of that  - positive or negative - remain to be seen. 

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8 hours ago, ditchman said:

i wish the civil service would stay out of politics....just keep pushing the pens and counting the beans...and just do as they are told....i know there has always been a certain ammount of interferance............but senior civil servants are now constantly crossing the line and nailing their colours to the mast............and there is no longer a line between admin and politics.....civil servants arnt voted in by the people and should remember that  before sticking their oar into the power game ....

 

am i right in thinking ...in america when there is a new administration /president.........the civil service changes as well ?...the top ones the manderines anyway ?

They do. The difference at the top is the people in post know what they are on about and will evaluate and challenge propositions. If a proposal is based on sand then the challenge will show it for what it is. Do that often enough and any civil servant will look obstructive. This is exactly what Trump has done.

 

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1 hour ago, oowee said:

They do. The difference at the top is the people in post know what they are on about and will evaluate and challenge propositions. If a proposal is based on sand then the challenge will show it for what it is. Do that often enough and any civil servant will look obstructive. This is exactly what Trump has done.

 

Sedwill took a political stance, he's now paying the price and rightly so.

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12 hours ago, JDog said:

Amongst a litany of ridiculous posts from you this must rank right up there. 

Wait until the Brexit crash and the complete and utter shambles that's going to follow it. When it comes to practical matters, every job this government touches gets bungled and the practicalities of managing a disorganized no-deal Brexit will be no different at all. They're a pack of incompetent chancers who are going to bankrupt the country  - and I'll stand by my prediction of £ to $ parity or less within 3 years.

When half the country is in the poorhouse, people won't be so keen to vote for the party that put them there. So come back in 2 years and call my post ridiculous and if my prediction above has proven to be incorrect, I'll happily concede I was mistaken. Or do you think that Cummings and friends have such a cult following that in the eyes of the voters they'll be forgiven anything? Perhaps on here maybe......

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The difference at the top is the people in post know what they are on about and will evaluate and challenge propositions. 

I assume you are having a laugh. I have had lunch with Sir Robert Devereux and Neil Couling - the former having been a Permanent Secretary and the latter head of Universal Credit. Your description fits neither. Lightweight and not very bright would be my assessment.

Cummings might not be a genius, but knows enough to know that some of the top jockeys are out of their depth.

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6 minutes ago, Retsdon said:

Wait until the Brexit crash and the complete and utter shambles that's going to follow it. When it comes to practical matters, every job this government touches gets bungled and the practicalities of managing a disorganized no-deal Brexit will be no different at all. They're a pack of incompetent chancers who are going to bankrupt the country  - and I'll stand by my prediction of £ to $ parity or less within 3 years.

When half the country is in the poorhouse, people won't be so keen to vote for the party that put them there. So come back in 2 years and call my post ridiculous and if my prediction above has proven to be incorrect, I'll happily concede I was mistaken. Or do you think that Cummings and friends have such a cult following that in the eyes of the voters they'll be forgiven anything? Perhaps on here maybe......

You must feel so lucky to have "escaped" it all!

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8 minutes ago, Dave-G said:

I imagine the Covid calamity will look like a Tory failure that would happen regardless of what party was in government,  but even more so by the time the left and MSM have dressed it up.

No need to dress anything up covid is BJ writ large, no thought, no process, no plan, no leadership. What a pity the love sick fawning followers can't see the mess for what it is. 

 

 

 

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5 minutes ago, oowee said:

No need to dress anything up covid is BJ writ large, no thought, no process, no plan, no leadership. What a pity the love sick fawning followers can't see the mess for what it is. 

 

 

 

I don't think many would say he's done everything that could have been done with the benefit of hindsight and pressure incumbent on him but Covid was not of his making and I can feel totally confident the country would in a far worse state if Corbyn had got in.

Who would you suggest would have done better?

Edited by Dave-G
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55 minutes ago, Dave-G said:

I don't think many would say he's done everything that could have been done with the benefit of hindsight and pressure incumbent on him but Covid was not of his making and I can feel totally confident the country would in a far worse state if Corbyn had got in.

Who would you suggest would have done better?

What has Corbyn got to do with BJ's pitiful performance?  Management of the problem required a bit of forethought and planning and getting a firm grip from the start. None of that happened and the negligent lack of performance and total disregard for  protecting the population should be called out. The huge levels of unneccessary deaths should be the cause of an investigation. If UK plce was a business we would be investigating corporate manslaughter.

Who would have done better? No idea but that does not make BJ's performance any less deplorable. If the choice is genuinely between utter carp and total madness then the political system needs to be changed. 

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53 minutes ago, oowee said:

What has Corbyn got to do with BJ's pitiful performance?  Management of the problem required a bit of forethought and planning and getting a firm grip from the start. None of that happened and the negligent lack of performance and total disregard for  protecting the population should be called out. The huge levels of unneccessary deaths should be the cause of an investigation. If UK plce was a business we would be investigating corporate manslaughter.

Who would have done better? No idea but that does not make BJ's performance any less deplorable. If the choice is genuinely between utter carp and total madness then the political system needs to be changed. 

Very little but as you slate BJ's handling of the crisis I seemingly wrongly assumed you had someone in mind that would have done things better - but you don't seem willing to suggest who that might be so I made a hazardous guess.

I doubt anyone could claim he's done a wonderful job about a catastrophe that landed in his lap - which a clearly new PM relies on specialist advisers to steer him.

I also doubt anyone could convincingly claim an alternative new PM would have made less mistakes about a completely new crisis that has screwed up the entire world.

 

EDIT: apparently the worst is yet to come but I imagine that'll be BJ's fault too.

https://www.rte.ie/news/2020/0629/1150391-who-covid-19/?fbclid=IwAR3W-fskaOa_WkbWEDanESnohK4QgWx8H7bev7h7Ip58ZccqyzSAx0K25LM

Contains a link to the full transcript.

 

Edited by Dave-G
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53 minutes ago, 12gauge82 said:

By attempting to block Brexit. That's going way beyond the remit of his job.

How did he attempt to block Brexit? By asking questions and challenging assumptions, which is / was his job? Lets not confuse obstacles to progress thrown up through the normal course of business with political posturing. A mistake, it seems to me that both the Tories and Trump are all too keen on. 

I would suggest his removal is more to do with revenge for him outing the Tory traitor Gavin Williamson? 

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3 hours ago, oowee said:

How did he attempt to block Brexit? By asking questions and challenging assumptions, which is / was his job? Lets not confuse obstacles to progress thrown up through the normal course of business with political posturing. A mistake, it seems to me that both the Tories and Trump are all too keen on. 

I would suggest his removal is more to do with revenge for him outing the Tory traitor Gavin Williamson? 

Got to be honest, I can't be bothered to waste too much time on this one, I'm rather busy at the moment.

But in a nut shell, the guy massively overstepped his remit and gambled his career on helping to manipulate us remaining in the EU, or at least a deal so close it'd be like we'd never left.

That is outside of how he should be behaving in that position and Cummings has yet again won the day, Sedwill now needs to go and he's only himself to blame. On a bit of a tangent, I'm starting to have a bit of respect for Cummings, I've never really liked him and thought he was a bit of a odd moron, but every time he's been taken on, he makes little noise and just when you think he's finished, like a magician, he pulls something from up his sleeve and comes out on top, like his opponents, I've underestimated him.

Edited by 12gauge82
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The Civil service remains one of the few "jobs for life" employment sectors.
Their employee benefits are above the norm, its almost impossible to sack anyone and the compensation levels are mind blowing.
Most of them would be unemployable in similar commercial/industrial environments and this is true of every level.
The impact of this lack of quality and commitment becomes a major problem in top and middle lines of management.

I think Governments should man these areas with elected (at the top) and nominated (in the middle) personnel.
They would then have more chance of their policies being progressed efficiently.

Anyone who has run a company knows that without support from these levels, the job is much more difficult and in some cases impossible.
I have never met a civil servant at any level that I would employ. 

 

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