Just for reference, there are currently 522,000 civil servants. The largest numbers are at the Department for Work and Pensions (116,000), HMRC (92,000), Justice (86,000), and MOD (78,000 - none of whom are men with guns).
I reckon we could get away with 5000. And their pay would be cut.
Cunts.
9 comments:
Cunts indeed.
How many "civil servants" were there when the British Empire ruled most of the world?
2,000?
The Penguin
MoD has 78,000 ! ... I do believe that I have stumbled on an easy and readily accessible cure for the Armed Forces manning problems ...
The 'civil servants' figure is not that important. What is important is the total of taxpayer funded jobs, which is around 8 million.
Yes, I seem to have read somewhere that before the first world war, Britain ran it's empire with only about 2,000 civil servants. That may not have included all the menial jobs, but nowadays many of these are outsourced, so the numbers are probably roughly comparable. Britain's population may have increased by about half, but better communications and computer technology should make administration easier.It's obviously not about better or more efficient government.
Whole categories of government programmes could be eliminated, whole departments closed, if we were looking for fair, effective and efficient government; but that's beside the point.
Yesterday's Newsnight discussion showed that the junior ministers are just ambitious but indifferent and ignorant people 'goimg along in order to get along'; while the senior civil servants are office politician-empire builders.None of them care a damm about the public. Neither do the few near the top who devise the maniacal and wasteful policies.
In previous eras important people surrounded themselves with a brilliant entourage of lackeys, lesser lords and men at arms. In our grey Bureaucratic Era, they surround themselves with 'public servants', lesser politicians, advisers and consultants. Spin-doctors replace astrologers.
The whole political-bureaucratic-media-business class is corrupt and self serving. No real news in that, of course. The trick is to institute a form of government whereby politics displays some form of the 'invisible hand' of economics, whereby as Adam Smith pointed out, private selfishness produces public benefits.
Meanwhile we have an Augean stable, but no Heracles to clean it.
Chief_Sceptic said...
MoD has 78,000 ! ... I do believe that I have stumbled on an easy and readily accessible cure for the Armed Forces manning problems ...
And I totally agree with you, however everyone of these without fail would have a 'condition' preventing them from entering the uniformed services. Aside from the usual they would possibly quote aversion to;
rapidus velocitus
or
Instantum disintergratium
or citing previous injuries received in the line of work such as cuts from paper, stabbed by a paper clip
Nothing to do with being a coward then, and continues ordering more unnecessary stationery..........
Fuck off.
I think it was Hercules, not Heracles.
We probably need both!
The Penguin
If you really want to see first hand the overmanning in the "civil service" take a glimpse at the well named leisure services run by the Peoples Republic of Manchester.
When these peoples jobs disapear they are shunted there and do precisly fuck all till they take early retirement because of stress.
This usually clears up in a few weeks so they can take part time jobs.
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