The Civil Service, cut back drastically during David Cameron’s time as prime minister, is now four times the size of the British Armed Forces for the first time. Britain has a public payroll of 543,000 full-time mandarins and 137,000 regular troops.
C. Nothcote has a whole chapter on this.
Every state is, eventually, eaten from the inside by its own bureaucracy.
What I find surprising these days about this is that no one in the mainstream media wants to talk about this in terms of how we can address it by cutting back on the number of civil servants and improving productivity in the civil service. The talk is all about how we can increase taxes. BBC, ITV, Sky News, Guardian, The Times, the new wave of podcasts (News agents, rest is politics, rest is money, etc). It is all about how taxes have to rise, not how to find productivity and efficiency savings.
Of course Salamander, but remember we now live in the 1970s, but with mobile phones and nicer cars.
Governments around the world are purposefully ruining their country, with growing civil service and immigrant populations to fill the gaps. The ideal situation eventually is that everyone works for the government with the ex Syrian Jihadis emptying the bins in the offices.
The present cadre of journalists of whom you speak: Oxbridge educated and cosseted in their quarter million pound salaries cannot see what is wrong with this situation.
“What I find surprising these days …”
Have you not noticed who is in No 10, Salamander?
What I find surprising these days about this is that no one in the mainstream media wants to talk about this in terms of how we can address it by cutting back on the number of civil servants and improving productivity in the civil service. The talk is all about how we can increase taxes. BBC, ITV, Sky News, Guardian, The Times, the new wave of podcasts (News agents, rest is politics, rest is money, etc). It is all about how taxes have to rise, not how to find productivity and efficiency savings.
Is it surprising. All these people are from the same class. Went to the same schools & universities, live in the same areas, socialise together, borrow each others lawn mowers. What do you expect?
It was notable during Covid. All the coverage of your wonderful NHS of course. The trials & tribulations of those on furlough & WFH. There was virtually nothing about the people who carried on doing all the stuff kept the country functioning & you all alive. The essential services, the delivery people, the supermarket & shop workers & the rest of it. For the media these people simply don’t exist.
BiS
Given most of them voted for Brexit and loathe ‘diversity’ and unlimited immigration then as far as the opinion forming classes are concerned they don’t exist, and the purpose of the Great replacement is exactly that – to replace them….
As a couple of commentators have pointed out, the kind of people, especially women, in favour of this crap to me have an unreasonable confidence that ISIS or equivalent will continue to look after them in their dotage and allow them to drink a bottle of wine a night. Is it naivety or stupidity?
I suppose I should not be surprised. Then again, I am old enough to remember when such things were discussed on mainstream media.
the purpose of the Great replacement is exactly that – to replace them….
I honestly don’t see how they’re going to replace plumbers with life style councilors & still have water coming out the tap.
I love the idea of these ponces borrowing each others lawn mowers. Yes, VP, queers for Palestine? Bonkers or post-frontal lobotomy? I know Lefties are famed for believing 583 contradictory things simultaneously but I’m in awe of these mental acrobatics…
Every state is, eventually, eaten from the inside by its own bureaucracy.
Question is, how does it end this time? I’d expect Islamification, but given that those fuckers can barely run a tap, never mind an industrial country, I think the subsequent societal collapse would have unpleasant consequences. Mad Max beckons. And then we really will be beholden to whomever is left standing who can produce and supply all the modern-world stuff. That’ll be East Asia, unless Trump works a miracle.
Remember when only “essential workers” were allowed to go to work? And Khan reduced the service so that all the tubes and buses were rammed. It’s a wonder they didn’t all die of some strange new virus being kettled like that.
Anyway. Essential worker versus non essential worker from home. I was going to suggest making them reapply for their jobs every year, but that would just lead to more HR.
The only solution is decimation. If 10% isn’t enough, do another 10% next year, and so on. Better to be fored at random than to be fired for cause.
…& still have water coming out the tap
Becoming rarer in these parts, particularly near Christmas. Southern Water seem to be ahead of the curve.
The world survived with 90% of public workers on furlow. The very definitional definition of redundancy.
“borrow each others lawn mowers. ”
Get real, the likes of the Blob Class don’t have lawnmowers, they have staff who have nasty dirty machinery to deal with all that stuff. The average Oxbridge graduate wouldn’t have a clue how to start a lawnmower. They might not even recognise one. Heck the average person these days knows bugger all about lawnmowers. One of the cricket team that use my cricket pitch was sent out to do some grass cutting last summer, he was told to check the petrol level before starting and top it up if needed. He proceeded to look at the oil dipstick, see it was near the bottom, so poured petrol into the crank case until it was nearly full. Then started up and set off. Luckily he didn’t get far before it conked out, and it didn’t explode in a ball of flames.
We are surrounded by gibbering morons.
Soldiers quit in thousands despite Labour’s pay rise
The Armed Forces are shrinking, despite a 6 per cent increase and retention payments
Hahaha, good.
Last heterosexual white man to leave should turn the lights off.
Some 15,119 left the Armed Forces in the year to October. Of these, 7,778 were counted as “voluntary outflow”, those choosing to leave of their own accord.
The forces recruited just over 12,000 personnel in the same period, resulting in a net shrinkage of the military.
For a military as small as Britain’s, losing a net 3,000 trained men a year is catastrophically bad news.
Real terms pay for Army privates has increased by just 1.9 per cent since 2011, compared to 13.39 per cent for new junior doctors and 10.14 per cent for train drivers.
It’s a shit job with shit pay and shit prospects, you would have a better career at McDonald’s.
Al Carns, the defence minister and former Royal Marine, said the Army could be “expended” in as little as six months if it participated in a major Ukraine-style land war
Six months is based on generous assumptions about the US’s ability to resupply us after we ran out of missiles in 2-4 weeks. The British army simply does not have the men, machines or munitions to win a high intensity conventional war against a major foreign country. But don’t worry, they’re still “world class”
The incoming US administration of Donald Trump is expected to want much higher defence spending from European Nato members.
The president-elect may reportedly demand that most alliance member states spend 5 per cent of GDP on defence. The current NATO target is 2 per cent and, of the 32 member states, only 23 top that threshold.
There’s no money for this, so it won’t happen.
“Our service personnel make extraordinary sacrifices to keep us all safe and we are proud of their courage, dedication, and professionalism.”
Shameless lies.
I heard a news report today that teachers were demanding a pay rise, because (wait for it) their job doesn’t permit them to work from home, making it less attractive.
A smaller army has to be a good thing doesn’t it?
The army works for the government.
The government is your sworn enemy.
Why? Did you think the army is on your side?
@ Jim
When I had a lawn I used to push the lawnmower – that always started the blades turning.