BETTER AND BETTER FOR SOME PEOPLE

One of Cameron's early boasts when he arrived in Downing Street was that he would deal with the "crazy" (his word, not mine) bonus culture in the Civil Service.

Needless to say, given a pledge from Cameron, last year the number of top Civil Servants receiving bonuses in the five-figure range... doubled. Clearly it wasn't crazy enough for Crazy Cameron.

Seriously, you can always predict that no matter what this man promises, it will be the opposite of what happens.

According to a report in the Daily Telegraph, there were 10 recipients of bonuses over £30,000 and one, apparently in the MoD, who managed to get himself paid almost £100,000 on top of his salary. Further investigations showed:

* Six staff at the Cabinet Office took home bonuses of between £10,000 and £20,000 during 2011/12 — three times as many as in the previous year. They included Sir Jeremy Heywood, the Cabinet Secretary, and Sue Gray, the Cabinet’s Office’s head of propriety and ethics.

* Phil Wynn Owen, the Department of Energy and Climate Change official in charge of “greening” Britain’s economy, received a discretionary award of nearly £15,000.

* Three officials at the Department for Communities and Local Government received bonuses of up to £14,000.

* Two civil servants at the Department for International Development, the Whitehall agency charged with helping the world’s poorest people, received bonuses of between £10,000 and £15,000 last year.

* The chief executive of the Met Office, John Hirst, received a supplementary payment of more than £40,000. A fellow director accepted a bonus of £20,000.

* Three directors at the Training and Development Agency, responsible for improving teachers’ skills, were given performance-related pay of between £30,000 and £40,000.

* And five officials at the Ordnance Survey received bonuses of between £15,000 and £30,000.

OK, the numbers aren't huge, and the total amount spent isn't world changing, but with people from most walks of life being told that they are 'all in this together' and that they must all put their shoulders to the wheel, and particularly in view of Cameron's pledge to end this nonsense, it seems wrong that it not only goes on, but increases apace.

Better together for 'top' people! How's that for a slogan, Alistair?

Olympics: Another Day, Another Laugh

Because the transport system in London is at breaking point anyway, without the additional 3 million journeys a day anticipated to be made by the 800,000 spectators and 55,000 competitors and officials and VIPs, the Olympics minister, Hugh Something or Other, and the English Department of Transport have decreed that Londoners should try to... "think creatively and adjust travelling patterns, try different routes, stagger journey times, work remotely, walk or cycle to work" during next summer to avoid hold-ups during the Olympics.


Erm, it's just a thought, but, when they were bidding for this expensive extravaganza, did no one in London, like maybe Mayor Ken Livingston, or in the Westminster government, maybe Minister Tessa Jowell, or in the Olympics organisation like the head blokey, Coe, ever give a thought to the fact that there were people in London who had to get to work, school, to airports, to railway stations.... Did it never occur to anyone at all that the transport system just couldn't cope?


And what half wit came up with this advice;


to "try alternative routes"? If you've been going to work at a certain place for a fair amount of time, the likelihood is that you have already worked out the best route for you. Why would you change it;

to "stagger journey times"? So, how would that work if you're a shop worker, or a doctor, or policeman, a teacher, a train driver, or indeed most employed in the majority of jobs?


to "work remotely"? Yeah that will work with a lot of jobs, won't it? "I'd like two coffees and a rock bun, please"..."Well could you pop out to Epping. That's where the waitress is."


to "walk or cycle to work"? What if it's raining? What if you have bad feet or have to spend all day walking about? In any case, are there THAT many people that live so close to central London that they could reasonably walk?


I see that there is to be a trial for civil servants working from home to see if all the computers and networks are in place. I wonder how much that is costing us, and what budget it is coming out of? And what do we do if we want to speak to a member of staff in one of the Whitehall Departments? Phone them at home?

Not only that, but it's the first of three trials which is to take place before the actual event! What are they planning for? Nuclear war?


Another complete foul up in a fouled up set of arrangements for a fouled up games, after which I have no doubt Jowell will go to the House of Lords and Coe will...well, what can we do with him..? Make him Queen?


*****


Talking of Olympics and Fiasco, have you ever heard of anything as completely daft as this? Isn't a rather weird thing to do to take a baby to an event where you can't guarantee, for example not to be in a draft, or direct sunlight, where there maybe a lot of noise, or where absolute silence may have to be observed? But if people insist on doing it, surely they can't be expected to pay for a seat for someone who is going to sleep on their knee throughout.


*****

And it was on the Monday Morning that the Gas Man FAILED to Call!

It never rains but it pours for Gordon. First the civil servants, then the BA staff, then the railways and now the gas men.

The British Gas dispute is over working conditions of engineers, boilers fitters and general electrical repairers. The union (GMB) also claims the company has a "bullying culture".

British Gas wants to make the engineers work longer hours. Many of the engineers apparently get away with working a four-day week, even though they are paid for a full week's work, which seems like a weird situation to me. Of course you might ask how the management (so called) allowed this situation to come about in the first place.

The GMB claim their members are subject to bullying and that engineers are pressured to sell extra services to customers whilst mending or fitting a boiler. According to the union the average amount of time an engineer is allowed to fix a boiler or other appliance had been cut by 22 per cent, in an effort to ensure workers completed more jobs in a given week. So.... they only work four days a week, but they have to do 5 days work in the four days..... Hello, is there anyone in?

Of course British Gas denies all of this. According to them they are model employers and no pressure or bullying is ever exerted on anyone at any time ever....

A whole article can be read here, and various people may analyse it the way that they will. However, I suggest that this is just the start of a lot of action over the next months and possibly years, regardless of who wins the election.

This recession was caused by greedy and incompetent people at the top. Banks and Financial organizations wanted more and more money; governments failed to regulate companies who were behaving outrageously madly. Even financial illiterates like me could see that if incomes rose at 2-4% on average and house prices rose at 10 12%, there would shortly come a time when no one could afford to buy a house except the Queen (and maybe Lard Ashcroft).

Inevitably it all crashed... just because it was bound to sometime... and one day someone started a whisper that it had started, and so people started calling in debts upon which the world depended for its very existence, and ....BANG! It was over. (Of course it started in America and spread around the world.... tra la)

Even in Britian where the Wizard of Arse had abolished Boom and Bust, the bottom fell out of the economy. (Obviously it was everyone else’s fault)

Now we have to pay. But it’s not the people who caused all this strife who are paying. Oh no. It is BA cabin staff; it’s engineers; it’s transport workers, and civil servant. It’s soldiers and pensioners, and it will be all manner of other people.

Amazingly the bonuses for the morons in the banks go on, because if they don’t get big bonuses they will throw their toys out of the pram and go somewhere else. It’s not Ministers and it’s not MPs who have just pocketed £1,000 a year increase, as pensioners are getting a decrease.

British Gas have mismanaged their way into this, and because “everyone” has to tighten their belts they are trying to force their fitters to do more for less. (Despite the fact that British Gas have been coining it in!)

So, if anyone thinks that these strikes are anything other than the beginning of unrest ...then they should probably think again. It seems like Brits have may grown a back bone.

Brown Freezes Top Pay as MPs Receive 1.5% Increase

Gordon Brown has announced that he is going to freeze the pay of top civil servants, judges, generals and doctors to save £3 billion in defiance of the recommendations of an independent salary review which recommended small increases.

The armed forces will get a 2% rise and junior doctors will also be given a small increase.

In what seem to me to be a blatantly electioneering a speech to the City audience Brown announced his intentions to freeze the pay of senior civil service staff, military, the judiciary, senior managers in the health service and the pay of consultants, GPs and dentists.

He says that the measures will save money immediately and by 2013/14 save more than £3 billion.

He also announced that the Budget will be in two weeks’ time on March 24, which suggests that the election for Westminster will be held on May 6. The Times predicts that manifestos will be published during the week beginning April 12 and the controversial presidential debates on Thursdays each of the three full campaign weeks.

The Times suggests that Brown, along with Mr Mandelson, Balls and Ed Miliband, have looked at the possibility of holding the election earlier but have rejected it.... presumably on the basis that May 6 coincides with the English council elections and there is only so much politics the average Englishman can stand.

The pay freeze for the “top” people was justified by a Cabinet Office spokesman suggesting that it was right that senior staff should show leadership.

However, Jonathan Baume, general secretary of the First Division Association, said that the government was insulting hard-working public servants by rejecting proposals from the independent review body to raise the minimum pay for senior civil servants to address long-standing anomalies.

I’d be the last to advocate pay rises for the so-called “top” people. After all many already earn vast amounts that put them on a different planet from the rest of us. They will trot out the old chestnut that they could earn more in the private sector, which begs the question..... why don’t they go do that if the money means that much to them?

However, it’s a bit rich that Brown is prepared to over-rule the pay increases recommended for these people and let the MPs’ increases go ahead. And it is farcical for the Cabinet Office to suggest that senior staff should show leadership whilst MPs bury their snouts deeper in the trough.... AGAIN.

Incidentally, I was pleased to read in the Courier that Dundee East’s SNP MP Stewart Hosie has announced that he will not benefit from the pay increase, but will instead give the money to local charities. Labour’s Jim McGovern, MP for Dundee West, has declined to take his pay rise.

I think that both these men should be congratulated on their stance, and I hope that many other members will follow their good example.



(Pictured is Bill Cockburn CBE Chair of the Senior Salaries Review Body)