An Olympic boxer elected as one of Reform UK’s first mayors is embroiled in a war with his officials, The Telegraph can disclose.
Luke Campbell, who won gold for Team GB at the 2012 Olympics, asked five senior staff at the Hull and East Yorkshire combined authority (HEYCA) to resign last week, amid claims and counter-claims about their performance and his management style.
The 37-year-old mayor said staff had been “blocking” his agenda since he was elected in the region’s inaugural mayoral contest in May, while they were working from home and trying to “get paid a fortune and do as little as possible”.
However, Mr Campbell has also faced accusations that he tried to book first-class train tickets on expenses, organised an office move without following official rules and created a “toxic working environment” for staff.
Make it more toxic laddie. Make it so the mere miasma stangles them at their desks.
There’s a substack called https://thewestminstercentral.substack.com/ which has insiders from Westminster. Some juicy gossip about how Kemi is on her way out, but what’s interesting to me is the stuff about Lee Anderson.
“… routinely aggressive, drunk, racist or sneering, belittling to staff members. We’re reaching the point where we’ve all had enough of this thug, and a few others.”
We’ve had 20+ years of government being middle-class female coded. Above all else, behaviour and good manners matters most. As opposed to working class or male coded, where getting the job done matters most. Hit the sales targets and no-one cares if you’re drunk and shagging the receptionist after work in the board room. Government and some large companies are the opposite.
I mean, look at the entitlement there “we’ve all had enough of this thug”. He’s the elected member for Ashfield. You might not like him, but your job is to serve him or quit.
@WB
Exactly. If you’re a civil servant, locally or nationally and you don’t like your job, you are allowed to leave. Same as any other job.
Some may remember after the election last year when the Home Office welcomed the new Government, and looked forward to “working in partnership on shared goals and priorities”.
Had Sir Humphrey been running the department he’d have resigned in shame (whiskey-and-revolver level shame possibly). Not that he’d have disapproved of the message.
To be fair, being bullied by a boxer is a bit more plausible than being bullied by a little 4 foot 11 Indian lady…
Sir Humphrey would never have gone for whiskey, he’d have a whisky.
Western Bloke
I don’t think being effective and having Good manners need be mutually exclusive although the frustration with the Civil service is well encapsulated in the Diaries of the late Alan Clark so this kind of behaviour isn’t a new thing.
What the story does illustrate is how deep the rot goes – and I know from speaking to otherwise sound people working in the Blob in whatever area that it’s basically akin to a tree with Dutch Elm Disease in terms of how complete the ‘woke’ takeover has been. I don’t see any alternative if Reform gets into to almost sacking every single employee in some departments and councils.
How can you have a toxic working environment if you insist on working from home? Their personal life must be shit.
Grist,
Nearly everyone who is being “bullied” at work is really being put under pressure or facing what is someone pissed off at you, who perhaps got angry and became a little unprofessional about it.
Workplace bullying doesn’t really exist. The incentives to get it don’t exist. School bullying happens because bullies are bored, teachers don’t really care that much and kids can’t leave. Senior managers do care about their staff abusing staff below them because it’s bad for profits. Managers generally aren’t that bored and workers can quit.
What people mean by “workplace bullying” is that they believe the office is a girly salon for doing a punch-clock job, dressing up, doing bake sales and that everyone will be polite to one another and some man broke the rules by being impolite. Like you were on Facebook, and he yelled at you to “get off fucking Facebook and get me those numbers I told you were urgent”. Men will just go “yeah, sorry boss” and get it done. Women will run to HR.
As I have mentioned before, I worked for the MoD briefly.
It was like being in an unending Bristow cartoon, with Fudge-like bosses and rebellious employees.
When I left college and started again, thanks to “advances” my life had morphed into an unending Dilbert cartoon.
Despite all my efforts, any job I went to mirrored one or the other.
I had to become director of my own firm to break the cycle.
WB
The second article on that Westminster Central blog that I came across slags off JD Vance’s Munich speech.
It caused such a furore because he lanced exactly what is happening in Europe.
Vance exposed European politicians as the authoritarian and reality denying destroyers of our economies and cultures.
I could not be bothered to read any further, the blog had already disqualified itself from serious discourse.
VP,
“I don’t think being effective and having Good manners need be mutually exclusive although the frustration with the Civil service is well encapsulated in the Diaries of the late Alan Clark so this kind of behaviour isn’t a new thing.”
That’s not what I’m saying. When I yelled at a woman to “stop yapping with your mate, and get me that fucking change request raised that I told you was urgent 20 minutes ago” I was being uncharacteristically ill mannered, impolite, unprofessional. I lost control in the moment (particularly as I’d been working all night).
But so was a woman who instead of getting a thing done with 20 minutes that she was told was urgent (and takes 5) and said she’d get onto it right away, did something else.
I’m not saying either is right, I’m saying that in female-coded offices, female desires become everything: work-life balance, politeness, taking time for a charity bake sale. Most middle-class women think of work as being like the WI. Can’t go to work because I’ve got the painters in. As if work is helping out with the Church flowers, rather than that someone is paying you to add value.
If the board of a company is getting filled up with women, you should probably dump the stock. It’s becoming female coded. There’s a startup out there somewhere which is 75% men who is going to eat their lunch.
“Can’t go to work because I’ve got the painters in.”
D’you know, I’ve often wondered what airlines, the military, the NHS and others who run critical services do when their lady pilots, soldiers and doctors “have the painters in” and suffer from the PMT, brain fog, physical impairments and other problems they so vocally complain about?
Simply hope that nothing untoward happens?
On your next flight to Benidorm, on hearing a female voice making the announcement from the pointy end, do you hope you haven’t chosen the wrong time of the month to travel?
That Westminster blog is clear evidence that the civil service working environment needs to become a lot more ‘toxic’ and that managers from MPs downwards need to up their bullying game.
– I don’t see any alternative if Reform gets into to almost sacking every single employee in some departments and councils.
I have a new Reform council and I also know someone fairly high up on the staff side. The new council announced bold plans to quickly bring everyone back into the office but it soon lost steam when it was pointed out there was no longer enough office space to bring everyone back in, the council was near broke and it was going to take lot of work by the councillors to push this policy that wasn’t massively beneficial anyway. Lately, the councillors couldn’t be bothered to come into the office to talk about their back-to-the-office policy.
My late mother lived in Spalding (South Lincolnshire) which is also (strongly) Reform. This is one of the few areas in the country to still have weekly rubbish collections and no wheely bins, much to the satisfaction of the majority. The council had a vote and the side supporting the status quo won. Then they had a follow on discussion and decided that as the introduction of wheely bins was “inevitable” they would be introduced anyway.
So don’t get your hopes wrapped up too much in Reform. They’re a rabble of twats and newbies. Still better than the establishment parties but not enough to avoid disappointment.
Ottokring,
Do these people really not understand that the USA isn’t Daddy? Your father will love you and care for you unquestionably until you die. The USA is a country that looks after its interests.
Pax Americana was economic and defensive in America’s interests. Not ours. That it happened to coincide with our interests for a time was great, but when America found it not to be in their interest, that was going to change. WW2 created the sense of global threats and because of the rise of oil production, that the Soviet Union was a threat to American interests. Around the 1950s it was the second largest oil producer in the world, far above the rest. It had nuclear weapons. If it wanted to invade Europe, Europe would struggle to fight alone. And international communism has that thing of government running everything, everywhere. Even if not a threat to the USA, what about all the trading and resource nations.
Over the decades, oil production grew everywhere, and economies became more about value added than resources. And then international communism died. It didn’t work. Russia is now a gangster petrostate, like Saudi Arabia. It’s not ideologically communist. Putin has a thing about Ukraine being Russian, but there’s no reason to invade Poland or Germany. Agricultural land isn’t worth the blood and treasure now, and transport is better. Just sell them oil and gas and get food and BMWs back (via various indirect routes).
Pax Americana has been propped up for decades by politicians and a population brought up in it. JD Vance would have been 5 when the Berlin Wall fell. He doesn’t have the terror of The Cuban Missile Crisis, Threads, or Red Dawn in his formative memories. He was still watching Scooby-Doo as the cold war was dying out.
On your next flight to Benidorm, on hearing a female voice making the announcement from the pointy end, do you hope you haven’t chosen the wrong time of the month to travel?
And would you choose to be operated on by a pre-menstrual surgeon? Or appear before a pre-menstrual judge? Or…
PJF
Thanks for that information. Obviously a plan is good but you need to implement it. I agree Reform has many issues but without that faint hope what is there? Another decade of this? The worst Government in recorded history?
@ Grist
Luke Campbell is just under 5’9″ tall and boxed Featherweight (under 9 stone), so a bit less than average height and a lot less than average width. Being bullied by him isn’t all that plausible!
What is more plausible is that he stands up to people trying to bully him.
“Accusation that he tried to travel first class on expenses” – a regional Mayor should have to travel second class on business? He is in charge of an authority spending hundreds of £millions so being able to work in relative comfort (i.e. less than toral discomfort) on a train journey is worth a multiple of the first-class fare.
@ Theophrastus
By the time they get to being a judge they are likely to be past the menopause
Norman,
“D’you know, I’ve often wondered what airlines, the military, the NHS and others who run critical services do when their lady pilots, soldiers and doctors “have the painters in” and suffer from the PMT, brain fog, physical impairments and other problems they so vocally complain about?”
Most women take a painkiller or something.
There are women who love their jobs and care about their jobs. Nurses, teachers, hairdressers. I’ve met some women programmers who are great.
There are also loads of women in the offices of government and bloated companies who don’t really care much. They turn up, go through the motions. They’ll say “I love my job” but they really love dressing up, gossip, charity cakes, someone bringing a baby in, being around other women. See, it’s all pretty much optional because the marginal benefit, financially, is tiny. Take the salary, deduct tax, childcare, second car, office wardrobe, having to have more takeaways and there isn’t much left. The main benefit to these women is getting to socialise with other women because there aren’t any where they live as they’re all working.
There’s a path into programming that comes from people doing things like automating Excel. Someone googles around and discovers VBA and do some shit hot stuff with it, with big productivity improvements for the office. From there, they move into databases and then applications. And they’re always men.
Western Bloke
My apologies – and my bad for misunderstanding. 100% agree with the scenario you outline and you’re correct that the male dominated startups will eat those firms that are female-coded for lunch in economic terms.
What I would say is that institutional feminism has complete control of all aspects of the legal, political and civil service branches of government, as well as total control of the mainstream media so while it’s easy to say that a male start -up can be economically successful, it won’t be for long until DIE and other such legislation kicks in and kneecaps it.
@ WB
Just followed your link. Looking at the article headings it looks like one of Alastair Campbell’s propaganda smear sheets
Norman,
When in the burglary squad, we happened across a crime in progress. The offender thumped one of the squad and did a runner, only to be brought down, restrained, and handcuffed by a 5′ 5″ female Sgt. When he started bleating about the rough treatment, and how tight the handcuffs were, she smiled sweetly at him, and said, “A lesson for you. Don’t piss off female coppers when they have the painters in. ”
Reading that phrase, brought that incident back. Also, that’s what quite a few women in similar jobs those days, did. They got on with the job.
Painters
All to be applauded, chaps, and I notice airliners don’t constantly fall out of the sky piloted by painterly women.
I simply wonder how it’s handled. Some women barely notice; others proclaim that it’s genuinely disabling and their performance suffers. Does the latter type avoid jobs such as commercial pilot? If they don’t is it handled by rostering? And if so, how do the blokes feel about it?
The way to bring the civil service to heel is (Formosa style) White Terror.
Put them on the back foot from Day One with massive, urgent job cuts and department closures. Force Sir Humphrey to reapply for his own job whilst under criminal investigation for supporting grooming gangs and people smugglers, destroy their morale and eliminate their leaders. Soon they’ll be Pavlov trained to do what we want.
It’s not hard, ffs. Mean girls at primary school could tell you how to do this.
Like PJF, I’m wary of the kind of people Reform has got into local government. At least they’re not Labour/Con/Lib etc. but a lot of them don’t seem to understand what time it is. Some of them seem to think the Status Quo can be tinkered with to make it work. But it can’t. Or they think Kemi style Daily Mail retardation is the way to go, but we need substance, not culture war headlines.
Britain is closer to becoming a failed state than most people realise. One White Terror, please! Don’t spare the skull ashtrays.
Putting that vast lesbian munter in charge of prisons was a bad move.
Norman – Sandi Toksvig?
I think one of the problems Reform has is that capable people don’t want to go into politics.
Despite being clinically mental, I could easily run a government department for them, but can’t afford the pay cut. So they get what they get. I do feel their pain – when you interview the Great British public it can be difficult not to want to strangle them for their stupidity and timidity.
Anyway, Reform needs a Malcolm Tucker to keep the troops in line. Do we know any horrible Scotsmen of Italian descent?
I have a damaged knee and my hips are going to shit, and I get semi-bareable pain at random times. I don’t turn up at the office and complain about it and demand time off when it gets too much. I get employed DOING SOMETHING ELSE. If I absolutely adored doing the job that I was unable to do because of the intermittant work-preventing pain I’d get medical treatment to be able to keep doing it.
And then this:
https://archive.ph/ol0QH
‘This is what the British state looks like; this is how it operates. It’s a culture of ineptitude with the bureaucracy protecting itself against all transparency, against every attempt to hold the system and its people to account. The primary purpose of the British state is waging a continual campaign to conceal from the public how badly we are governed.’
Nailed it. Another fucking Horizon, covered up.
PJF,
What’s the problem with wheelie bins?
They’re easy to move and quick to empty so it improves bin collection efficiency.
@BiND
They are the wedge in the door. They are easier to collect and empty so first the council decides that you can have two, one for general rubbish and one for garden waste that can be composted, then they have a separate bin for “recyclables” so you have to sort everything before you put it in the bin, then it’s two bins for different sorts of “recyclables” – and you have to rinse out food cans and plastic pots before putting them in the bin – now it’s four different bins and a “caddy” for food waste and the bin for the non-recyclable waste is not-quite-half-size and only collected once every three weeks so – tovarich – you must not exceed party guidelines for the amount of non-recyclable waste. Population growth will be slowed because no family may have two babies/toddlers simultaneously using dispoable nappies.
Wheelie-bins were a useful invention but they have rapidly become misused to help the blob oppress the masses, just as the invention of writing was very rapidly abused to assist tax collection.