Re. the discussion in the last thread, the Probate Officer will be employed by HM Courts and Tribunal Service i.e. the most well known under-funded part of public life in the last 20 years. It isn’t the “civil service” as is commonly understood.
Isn't it? That's how I understood the "civil service"!
I was puzzled on the last thread by a complaint that a government service was slow and therefore the solution proposed was to cut staff. How is that going to make the service better?
Coz they will be terrified they’ll be the next to go in the next round of cuts. Put the fear of god in them
Give them hard targets to meet and if they don’t meet them - gone
This is the new £350m for the NHS delusion.
It’s really not. We are all going to experience the “fear of god” in the next few years, in regards to our careers and crafts - the civil service will and should be no exception. We should utilise the moment to make them WORK
As a Civil Servant myself, go to hell. I work my arse off in a background of rising abuse from the public due in no small part to the lazy pontificating of people like you.
Why the feck are you posting on here? At 09:50 on a working day? I can do it because I’m self employed - and I employ you with my taxes. I am your boss
Get back to the office you lazy scrounger
I'm using an annual leave day to care for my sick husband if you want to know. I can't use them to actually go and travel because he's too ill so I might as well use them to provide a bit of extra care than I can provide in between the hours I spend at work trying to ensure that the public get a say in their government. I've already been threatened with a law suit this week. Why don't you go back to writing subsidised puff pieces and try to have a bit more empathy for people who work extremely hard.
Sympathies on your husband. Life is tough
Nonetheless we have to get a grip on the malingering workshy muppets who mainly staff government offices. This attitude of mine might be coloured by the fact I am now waiting ANOTHER YEAR for foreign tax documents to be stamped by HMRC. All they have to do is stamp them. It’s taking a year. And my agent has just told me this is now costing me £££
We need to sack 30% of government staff - literally a third - and halve the incomes and pensions of the rest, and tell them if they don’t like it they too will be sacked
Thanks. The problems with your foreign tax documents aren't because people aren't working hard though. There are a lot of things that can be done to reform the Civil Service and make it operate more efficiently. Any party that has the balls to do that without scapegoating staff would have my respect. It would require hard choices from the government that might be unpopular and that they'd have to live with.
Like why is it that you require a physical stamp on your documents at all? However, the person who's job it is to stamp the documents will be working hard trying to clear a backlog of thousands of them. Your document will not be stamped quicker if the person doing it has less pension or feels more insecure in their job. Go after the system not the people who are trying very hard to make it work.
I’d go after the people at the top, first. If we are going to be serious
The Nu10k. The people that run the departments and make the decisions and make £200k a year. Tell them: Make it work and make it work NOW or you will be out of a job and no pension and you’ll be sweeping streets if you’re lucky. No more “failing upwards”
I feel like I'm being unnecessarily argumentative but the people who run departments are Ministers not Civil Servant. I know there are plenty of duffers among the top grades but who is responsible for the effects of a really bad decision by a Minister?
These Boris leaks in The Guardian today look absolutely toxic. The implication is that Johnson was personally corrupt and enriched himself while in public office. If that story sticks, it's not just the ministerial code that has been breached, but the law. Let's see if the story has wings, but the optics are appalling.
It’s toxic but for another reasons
The accusations are marginal.
They are (from the article)
1. He asked a Saudi official to give a pitch to MbS 2. He was paid a fee by a hedge fund after meeting Venezuela’s PM 3. While in government he met Peter Thiel 4. He hosted an event in Downing Street that seems like it was in breach of lockdown rules and was to “honour” the person that refurbished the flat 5. He earned £5m from making speeches
And in the intro they talk about Greensill (which was genuinely appalling) and complain that he is “publicly subsidised” for claiming the allowance the state pays for office support.
The only ones that might possibly be open to criticism *for the accusation that the Guardian is making* (3&4 could easily be criticised for other things) are 1&2.
Basically they are trying to throw chaff in the air to diminish the damage to Labour caused by Rayner
This sort of journalism is irresponsible and toxic to public trust (such as it is) in politicians.
This has nothing to do with a tit-for-tat retaliation over Rayner.
It is completely remarkable that those who cheered Rayner's defenestration are defending this as either lies or "Boris will be Boris". Will the broadcast media take any of this up? No.
I still believe the most egregious act by any post war Minister, Profumo included, was a Foreign Secretary throwing off his minders to attend a party run by a KGB grandee. A story which at the time it occurred barely raised an eyebrow.
I’m not defending this as lies or as “Boris will be Boris”. At best it’s unedifying.
And I didn’t cheer Rayner’s defenestration- I think it was the right outcome but I have a lot of sympathy for her. She didn’t think and she messed up.
I am critical of the way that the Guardian has framed it - these don’t strike me as especially serious transgressions and trying to claim they are undermines confidence in the system. It’s not so much “tit for tat” as “they are all as bad as each other”
Rayner had to go because she broke the Ministerial Code. Johnson drove a horse and coaches through the Ministerial Code. Apparently he still has ambitions to return to Number 10.
Does he - I very much doubt it - he is earning lots more money out of Westminster
Re. the discussion in the last thread, the Probate Officer will be employed by HM Courts and Tribunal Service i.e. the most well known under-funded part of public life in the last 20 years. It isn’t the “civil service” as is commonly understood.
Isn't it? That's how I understood the "civil service"!
I was puzzled on the last thread by a complaint that a government service was slow and therefore the solution proposed was to cut staff. How is that going to make the service better?
Coz they will be terrified they’ll be the next to go in the next round of cuts. Put the fear of god in them
Give them hard targets to meet and if they don’t meet them - gone
This is the new £350m for the NHS delusion.
It’s really not. We are all going to experience the “fear of god” in the next few years, in regards to our careers and crafts - the civil service will and should be no exception. We should utilise the moment to make them WORK
As a Civil Servant myself, go to hell. I work my arse off in a background of rising abuse from the public due in no small part to the lazy pontificating of people like you.
Why the feck are you posting on here? At 09:50 on a working day? I can do it because I’m self employed - and I employ you with my taxes. I am your boss
Get back to the office you lazy scrounger
I'm using an annual leave day to care for my sick husband if you want to know. I can't use them to actually go and travel because he's too ill so I might as well use them to provide a bit of extra care than I can provide in between the hours I spend at work trying to ensure that the public get a say in their government. I've already been threatened with a law suit this week. Why don't you go back to writing subsidised puff pieces and try to have a bit more empathy for people who work extremely hard.
Sympathies on your husband. Life is tough
Nonetheless we have to get a grip on the malingering workshy muppets who mainly staff government offices. This attitude of mine might be coloured by the fact I am now waiting ANOTHER YEAR for foreign tax documents to be stamped by HMRC. All they have to do is stamp them. It’s taking a year. And my agent has just told me this is now costing me £££
We need to sack 30% of government staff - literally a third - and halve the incomes and pensions of the rest, and tell them if they don’t like it they too will be sacked
Sorry to be that guy, but 30% isn't 'literally' a third. Thank goodness you don't have a palsied hand on the running of a civil service department.
That Leon can't do numbers isn't news on here!
And the size of the civil service has ballooned since, and to a significant extent due to, Brexit - which Leon voted for - intended get us out from under all those EU "bureaucrats" (who were roughly equivalent in number to the "bureaucrats" employed by Surrey County Council).
The problem we have is that we don’t actually know where civil service numbers have gone up. What we have is a very large black box where we get told that numbers have gone up yet in the parts that I deal with continually see people leave and not get replaced.
So we have a mystery that definitely needs to be solved attached to a generic statement that it employs more people then it used at a random point in the past - and the detail we actually require isn’t available
On to slightly more serious matters and YouGov continues to tease with a poll which doesn't suggest a nationwide landslide for Reform just yet.
Another poll showing the Conservatives in the high teens - nearly a month since the party was at 20% so a step down. Party Conference season will be interesting - Reform have had theirs already and the Conservatives don't meet until October 5-8 in Manchester.
As for Norway overnight, the "Red" bloc of five parties went from 100 to 87 and the "Blue" bloc from 69 to 82 so progress for the centre right (and in partlcular Progress who had a very strong result to confirm their position as the leading opposition party).
Labour did okay - it was a poor result for the Socialist Left and Centre and on the other side for the Conservatives and the Liberals. As often happens when you have two very different parties at the top of the tree, you get a polarisation around those two (even in multi party systems).
This is why "two-party systems" are so hard to break down especially if the two leading parties are distinctive and why this is such bad news for the little fish (who can survive). Those who argue Labour and Reform will dominate the next GE have a point but smaller parties will survive as the little fish do in the jaws of the sharks.
I wouldn't say it was progress for the centre right. The centre right parties mostly dropped back. It was progress for the Progress Party (Fremskrittspartiet), who are not centre right, but hard right populists in a MAGA mould. They want "Norway first" policies, deny climate change, don't like gay marriages, have considered a ban on all "non-Western" immigration.
True but the bloc of parties which are called "Blue" include the Conservatives, Liberals and Christian Democrats as well as Progress. IF Progress split away from them (or they said they couldn't work with Progress, the "Red" bloc led by Labour would be in power forever.
It's not the same as the CDU/CSU refusing to work with AfD or Chega and the PSD in Portugal. It's more akin to VOX and PP in Spain though now the "hard right" party has twice as many seats as the centre-right party in Norway so the balance on the "Blue" side has shifted.
Are there any Labour MPs who have worked in business, whether manufacturing, hospitality or construction, other than as a part time job when they were a student?
I worked for the (Swiss) pharma industry until I was elected. It's a while back (1997-2010) but I didn't get the impression that it was especially unusual, except for the foreign element.
Lucy Powell to announce she is running to be deputy Labour leader, HuffPost UK understands
Wasn't she the Minister who got justifiably beasted by Nick Ferrari not long ago?
She has been comedy gold her entire career. i think she was Ed Miliband's campaign manager and she was famously inept even then.
EDIT: Her finest hour...
She was heavily criticised for apparently suggesting that Labour's election pledges were liable to be broken: in talking about the EdStone, she commented: "I don't think anyone is suggesting that the fact that he's carved them into stone means that he is absolutely not going to break them or anything like that." She said that she had been quoted out of context.
These Boris leaks in The Guardian today look absolutely toxic. The implication is that Johnson was personally corrupt and enriched himself while in public office. If that story sticks, it's not just the ministerial code that has been breached, but the law. Let's see if the story has wings, but the optics are appalling.
It’s toxic but for another reasons
The accusations are marginal.
They are (from the article)
1. He asked a Saudi official to give a pitch to MbS 2. He was paid a fee by a hedge fund after meeting Venezuela’s PM 3. While in government he met Peter Thiel 4. He hosted an event in Downing Street that seems like it was in breach of lockdown rules and was to “honour” the person that refurbished the flat 5. He earned £5m from making speeches
And in the intro they talk about Greensill (which was genuinely appalling) and complain that he is “publicly subsidised” for claiming the allowance the state pays for office support.
The only ones that might possibly be open to criticism *for the accusation that the Guardian is making* (3&4 could easily be criticised for other things) are 1&2.
Basically they are trying to throw chaff in the air to diminish the damage to Labour caused by Rayner
This sort of journalism is irresponsible and toxic to public trust (such as it is) in politicians.
This has nothing to do with a tit-for-tat retaliation over Rayner.
It is completely remarkable that those who cheered Rayner's defenestration are defending this as either lies or "Boris will be Boris". Will the broadcast media take any of this up? No.
I still believe the most egregious act by any post war Minister, Profumo included, was a Foreign Secretary throwing off his minders to attend a party run by a KGB grandee. A story which at the time it occurred barely raised an eyebrow.
I’m not defending this as lies or as “Boris will be Boris”. At best it’s unedifying.
And I didn’t cheer Rayner’s defenestration- I think it was the right outcome but I have a lot of sympathy for her. She didn’t think and she messed up.
I am critical of the way that the Guardian has framed it - these don’t strike me as especially serious transgressions and trying to claim they are undermines confidence in the system. It’s not so much “tit for tat” as “they are all as bad as each other”
Rayner had to go because she broke the Ministerial Code. Johnson drove a horse and coaches through the Ministerial Code. Apparently he still has ambitions to return to Number 10.
Does he - I very much doubt it - he is earning lots more money out of Westminster
Well the reports today suggest he can draw a salary and take a ( perfectly legitimate) bung.
Nothing in this country will change until we scrap the OBR which has the Treasury in chains.
Remember folks, we can't afford teachers but we can afford the poor economic results of the consequences of not enough teachers. We can't afford a functional criminal justice system but we can afford crime. Rinse and repeat at both local and national level.
These Boris leaks in The Guardian today look absolutely toxic. The implication is that Johnson was personally corrupt and enriched himself while in public office. If that story sticks, it's not just the ministerial code that has been breached, but the law. Let's see if the story has wings, but the optics are appalling.
It’s toxic but for another reasons
The accusations are marginal.
They are (from the article)
1. He asked a Saudi official to give a pitch to MbS 2. He was paid a fee by a hedge fund after meeting Venezuela’s PM 3. While in government he met Peter Thiel 4. He hosted an event in Downing Street that seems like it was in breach of lockdown rules and was to “honour” the person that refurbished the flat 5. He earned £5m from making speeches
And in the intro they talk about Greensill (which was genuinely appalling) and complain that he is “publicly subsidised” for claiming the allowance the state pays for office support.
The only ones that might possibly be open to criticism *for the accusation that the Guardian is making* (3&4 could easily be criticised for other things) are 1&2.
Basically they are trying to throw chaff in the air to diminish the damage to Labour caused by Rayner
This sort of journalism is irresponsible and toxic to public trust (such as it is) in politicians.
This has nothing to do with a tit-for-tat retaliation over Rayner.
It is completely remarkable that those who cheered Rayner's defenestration are defending this as either lies or "Boris will be Boris". Will the broadcast media take any of this up? No.
I still believe the most egregious act by any post war Minister, Profumo included, was a Foreign Secretary throwing off his minders to attend a party run by a KGB grandee. A story which at the time it occurred barely raised an eyebrow.
I’m not defending this as lies or as “Boris will be Boris”. At best it’s unedifying.
And I didn’t cheer Rayner’s defenestration- I think it was the right outcome but I have a lot of sympathy for her. She didn’t think and she messed up.
I am critical of the way that the Guardian has framed it - these don’t strike me as especially serious transgressions and trying to claim they are undermines confidence in the system. It’s not so much “tit for tat” as “they are all as bad as each other”
Rayner had to go because she broke the Ministerial Code. Johnson drove a horse and coaches through the Ministerial Code. Apparently he still has ambitions to return to Number 10.
On topic: the only way we’re getting a GE in 2027 would be a total collapse of the party that splits the Parliamentary Labour Party in two over something so existential that neither half is willing to back down. It would have to be something fiscal - inability to get a budget passed would do it.
Otherwise, why on earth would any MP vote for their own ejection from Parliament years before they legally have to face the electorate?
I could write fanfiction that would lead to those kind of outcomes, but none of it would be particularly likely to happen.
Nothing in this country will change until we scrap the OBR which has the Treasury in chains.
Remember folks, we can't afford teachers but we can afford the poor economic results of the consequences of not enough teachers. We can't afford a functional criminal justice system but we can afford crime. Rinse and repeat at both local and national level.
Let's be clear
We can't afford to invest - therefore nothing will ever improve...
Re. the discussion in the last thread, the Probate Officer will be employed by HM Courts and Tribunal Service i.e. the most well known under-funded part of public life in the last 20 years. It isn’t the “civil service” as is commonly understood.
Isn't it? That's how I understood the "civil service"!
I was puzzled on the last thread by a complaint that a government service was slow and therefore the solution proposed was to cut staff. How is that going to make the service better?
Coz they will be terrified they’ll be the next to go in the next round of cuts. Put the fear of god in them
Give them hard targets to meet and if they don’t meet them - gone
This is the new £350m for the NHS delusion.
It’s really not. We are all going to experience the “fear of god” in the next few years, in regards to our careers and crafts - the civil service will and should be no exception. We should utilise the moment to make them WORK
As a Civil Servant myself, go to hell. I work my arse off in a background of rising abuse from the public due in no small part to the lazy pontificating of people like you.
Why the feck are you posting on here? At 09:50 on a working day? I can do it because I’m self employed - and I employ you with my taxes. I am your boss
Get back to the office you lazy scrounger
I'm using an annual leave day to care for my sick husband if you want to know. I can't use them to actually go and travel because he's too ill so I might as well use them to provide a bit of extra care than I can provide in between the hours I spend at work trying to ensure that the public get a say in their government. I've already been threatened with a law suit this week. Why don't you go back to writing subsidised puff pieces and try to have a bit more empathy for people who work extremely hard.
Sympathies on your husband. Life is tough
Nonetheless we have to get a grip on the malingering workshy muppets who mainly staff government offices. This attitude of mine might be coloured by the fact I am now waiting ANOTHER YEAR for foreign tax documents to be stamped by HMRC. All they have to do is stamp them. It’s taking a year. And my agent has just told me this is now costing me £££
We need to sack 30% of government staff - literally a third - and halve the incomes and pensions of the rest, and tell them if they don’t like it they too will be sacked
And then wait even longer?
The focus on staff numbers is arse about face. Keep the current processes and we probably need more civil servants. Remove some of the pointless process (the stamp sounds like one, from your previous posts) and there will be roles that can be lost without impacting on service.
Focus on streamlining processes, then set the workforce to the correct level for that.
Yes, it's not that we have too many staff, or that those staff aren't working hard. It's that so much of what gets done is so remarkably inefficient. So much of the efforts of the public sector go towards talking to other bits of the public sector.
Also, the things that improve efficiency in the short term (cutting capital spend, training and whatnot) reduce efficiency in the longer term. And the things that improve efficiency in the longer term (thinking about what is actually done and how, building new systems) reduce performance in the short term. See that quote attributed to Abraham Lincon about cutting trees and sharpening axes.
If you want things to work better, I wouldn't be starting from here, Sir. But anyone who thinks that mass experimental sackings are the answer is just showing that they are a chump who works in an organisation where temporary collapse is an option, becuase their job isn't actually all that important.
Nothing in this country will change until we scrap the OBR which has the Treasury in chains.
Remember folks, we can't afford teachers but we can afford the poor economic results of the consequences of not enough teachers. We can't afford a functional criminal justice system but we can afford crime. Rinse and repeat at both local and national level.
The problem with the OBR is self-imposed though. The government chained itself to not raising the major headline taxes in a pre-election escalation of promises between Labour and the other main parties. As a result, every increase in the budget requires some pettifogging, complexifying change in the tax system elsewhere to compensate for it.
The government is free to ignore the OBR, it’s also free to issue a triple-lock style guarantee that the big three income taxes will be set at the requisite level to minimise the budget deficit at whatever level is deemed appropriate.
That it does not do these things is by choice, not necessity.
Nothing in this country will change until we scrap the OBR which has the Treasury in chains.
Remember folks, we can't afford teachers but we can afford the poor economic results of the consequences of not enough teachers. We can't afford a functional criminal justice system but we can afford crime. Rinse and repeat at both local and national level.
If we want to spend more, raise taxes to pay for it. Or cut other spending.
We already have 100% debt to GDP. Interest spending exceeds that of education or criminal justice already and more borrowing will make that worse.
The OBR is only reporting on whether the government meets its own rules - it can change the rules if it wishes. In fact, the rules were last changed less than 12 months ago.
Are there any Labour MPs who have worked in business, whether manufacturing, hospitality or construction, other than as a part time job when they were a student?
I worked for the (Swiss) pharma industry until I was elected. It's a while back (1997-2010) but I didn't get the impression that it was especially unusual, except for the foreign element.
So there are a few with business experience. Do the Government use their skills or are they ignored? E.g. were you able to contribute to the work of the DSIT or it’s predecessors?
Re. the discussion in the last thread, the Probate Officer will be employed by HM Courts and Tribunal Service i.e. the most well known under-funded part of public life in the last 20 years. It isn’t the “civil service” as is commonly understood.
Isn't it? That's how I understood the "civil service"!
I was puzzled on the last thread by a complaint that a government service was slow and therefore the solution proposed was to cut staff. How is that going to make the service better?
Coz they will be terrified they’ll be the next to go in the next round of cuts. Put the fear of god in them
Give them hard targets to meet and if they don’t meet them - gone
This is the new £350m for the NHS delusion.
It’s really not. We are all going to experience the “fear of god” in the next few years, in regards to our careers and crafts - the civil service will and should be no exception. We should utilise the moment to make them WORK
As a Civil Servant myself, go to hell. I work my arse off in a background of rising abuse from the public due in no small part to the lazy pontificating of people like you.
Why the feck are you posting on here? At 09:50 on a working day? I can do it because I’m self employed - and I employ you with my taxes. I am your boss
Get back to the office you lazy scrounger
I'm using an annual leave day to care for my sick husband if you want to know. I can't use them to actually go and travel because he's too ill so I might as well use them to provide a bit of extra care than I can provide in between the hours I spend at work trying to ensure that the public get a say in their government. I've already been threatened with a law suit this week. Why don't you go back to writing subsidised puff pieces and try to have a bit more empathy for people who work extremely hard.
Sympathies on your husband. Life is tough
Nonetheless we have to get a grip on the malingering workshy muppets who mainly staff government offices. This attitude of mine might be coloured by the fact I am now waiting ANOTHER YEAR for foreign tax documents to be stamped by HMRC. All they have to do is stamp them. It’s taking a year. And my agent has just told me this is now costing me £££
We need to sack 30% of government staff - literally a third - and halve the incomes and pensions of the rest, and tell them if they don’t like it they too will be sacked
Thanks. The problems with your foreign tax documents aren't because people aren't working hard though. There are a lot of things that can be done to reform the Civil Service and make it operate more efficiently. Any party that has the balls to do that without scapegoating staff would have my respect. It would require hard choices from the government that might be unpopular and that they'd have to live with.
Like why is it that you require a physical stamp on your documents at all? However, the person who's job it is to stamp the documents will be working hard trying to clear a backlog of thousands of them. Your document will not be stamped quicker if the person doing it has less pension or feels more insecure in their job. Go after the system not the people who are trying very hard to make it work.
I’d go after the people at the top, first. If we are going to be serious
The Nu10k. The people that run the departments and make the decisions and make £200k a year. Tell them: Make it work and make it work NOW or you will be out of a job and no pension and you’ll be sweeping streets if you’re lucky. No more “failing upwards”
I feel like I'm being unnecessarily argumentative but the people who run departments are Ministers not Civil Servant. I know there are plenty of duffers among the top grades but who is responsible for the effects of a really bad decision by a Minister?
Ministers very much included in the Nu10k. From now on we need a serious price for failure
Nothing in this country will change until we scrap the OBR which has the Treasury in chains.
Remember folks, we can't afford teachers but we can afford the poor economic results of the consequences of not enough teachers. We can't afford a functional criminal justice system but we can afford crime. Rinse and repeat at both local and national level.
No, the OBR is the only good idea George Osborne ever had. Scrap the OBR and you can add 100bp plus to bond yields.
All woman shortlist shocker Isn't Bell Ribeiro-Addy also running? Burgon is marshaling the SCG behind her
Only if she gets nominations from 80 MPs. Which is also the case for the others.
The best Starmer can hope for is a Critical Friend, with as much emphasis on the "Friend" bit as possible. Not my party, don't understand the workings, but they all feel like they fall in that category in a way that a SCG group candidate wouldn't.
Nothing in this country will change until we scrap the OBR which has the Treasury in chains.
Remember folks, we can't afford teachers but we can afford the poor economic results of the consequences of not enough teachers. We can't afford a functional criminal justice system but we can afford crime. Rinse and repeat at both local and national level.
No, the OBR is the only good idea George Osborne ever had. Scrap the OBR and you can add 100bp plus to bond yields.
But if he hadn't created it, primarily as a political device, scrapping it wouldn't. A disastrously clever bit of politics, that as a result we're now stuck with.
What a wasted administration that was, oozing arrogance and complacency.
Re. the discussion in the last thread, the Probate Officer will be employed by HM Courts and Tribunal Service i.e. the most well known under-funded part of public life in the last 20 years. It isn’t the “civil service” as is commonly understood.
Isn't it? That's how I understood the "civil service"!
I was puzzled on the last thread by a complaint that a government service was slow and therefore the solution proposed was to cut staff. How is that going to make the service better?
Coz they will be terrified they’ll be the next to go in the next round of cuts. Put the fear of god in them
Give them hard targets to meet and if they don’t meet them - gone
This is the new £350m for the NHS delusion.
It’s really not. We are all going to experience the “fear of god” in the next few years, in regards to our careers and crafts - the civil service will and should be no exception. We should utilise the moment to make them WORK
As a Civil Servant myself, go to hell. I work my arse off in a background of rising abuse from the public due in no small part to the lazy pontificating of people like you.
Why the feck are you posting on here? At 09:50 on a working day? I can do it because I’m self employed - and I employ you with my taxes. I am your boss
Get back to the office you lazy scrounger
I'm using an annual leave day to care for my sick husband if you want to know. I can't use them to actually go and travel because he's too ill so I might as well use them to provide a bit of extra care than I can provide in between the hours I spend at work trying to ensure that the public get a say in their government. I've already been threatened with a law suit this week. Why don't you go back to writing subsidised puff pieces and try to have a bit more empathy for people who work extremely hard.
Sympathies on your husband. Life is tough
Nonetheless we have to get a grip on the malingering workshy muppets who mainly staff government offices. This attitude of mine might be coloured by the fact I am now waiting ANOTHER YEAR for foreign tax documents to be stamped by HMRC. All they have to do is stamp them. It’s taking a year. And my agent has just told me this is now costing me £££
We need to sack 30% of government staff - literally a third - and halve the incomes and pensions of the rest, and tell them if they don’t like it they too will be sacked
And then wait even longer?
The focus on staff numbers is arse about face. Keep the current processes and we probably need more civil servants. Remove some of the pointless process (the stamp sounds like one, from your previous posts) and there will be roles that can be lost without impacting on service.
Focus on streamlining processes, then set the workforce to the correct level for that.
Yes, it's not that we have too many staff, or that those staff aren't working hard. It's that so much of what gets done is so remarkably inefficient. So much of the efforts of the public sector go towards talking to other bits of the public sector.
Also, the things that improve efficiency in the short term (cutting capital spend, training and whatnot) reduce efficiency in the longer term. And the things that improve efficiency in the longer term (thinking about what is actually done and how, building new systems) reduce performance in the short term. See that quote attributed to Abraham Lincon about cutting trees and sharpening axes.
If you want things to work better, I wouldn't be starting from here, Sir. But anyone who thinks that mass experimental sackings are the answer is just showing that they are a chump who works in an organisation where temporary collapse is an option, becuase their job isn't actually all that important.
You also need Ministers who are willing to incur the wrath of certain groups. I've seen the following process play out time and again in the Civil Service:
1.) Minister wants improvement in massive flagship service without any increase in funding or staff 2.) Department identifies service which is resource heavy but used by comparatively few people and proposed cutting it. 3.) The few people who rely on that service kick up an almighty stink which leads to disobliging coverage in the press 4.) Minister runs for cover and tells the department to keep funding the service whilst still demanding the improvements in the flagship service.
Re. the discussion in the last thread, the Probate Officer will be employed by HM Courts and Tribunal Service i.e. the most well known under-funded part of public life in the last 20 years. It isn’t the “civil service” as is commonly understood.
Isn't it? That's how I understood the "civil service"!
I was puzzled on the last thread by a complaint that a government service was slow and therefore the solution proposed was to cut staff. How is that going to make the service better?
It is true that if you get layers of management they slow everything down by demanding input into everything in order to justify their jobs.
It is also however true that when redundancies are carried out it tends not to be the management that get the push.
Middle managers are often made redundant, members of the board tend to get pushed out by each other or shareholders
On to slightly more serious matters and YouGov continues to tease with a poll which doesn't suggest a nationwide landslide for Reform just yet.
Another poll showing the Conservatives in the high teens - nearly a month since the party was at 20% so a step down. Party Conference season will be interesting - Reform have had theirs already and the Conservatives don't meet until October 5-8 in Manchester.
As for Norway overnight, the "Red" bloc of five parties went from 100 to 87 and the "Blue" bloc from 69 to 82 so progress for the centre right (and in partlcular Progress who had a very strong result to confirm their position as the leading opposition party).
Labour did okay - it was a poor result for the Socialist Left and Centre and on the other side for the Conservatives and the Liberals. As often happens when you have two very different parties at the top of the tree, you get a polarisation around those two (even in multi party systems).
This is why "two-party systems" are so hard to break down especially if the two leading parties are distinctive and why this is such bad news for the little fish (who can survive). Those who argue Labour and Reform will dominate the next GE have a point but smaller parties will survive as the little fish do in the jaws of the sharks.
Norway has PR though so even 2 party dominated systems still see significant parliamentary representation for smaller parties and endless coalitions
Just back from the hospital and out of my boot and off the crutches!
Only trouble is I seem to have forgotten how to walk.. or my right foot has. I can't seem to bend my foot and pick my heel up. I'm sure it'll come back to me; I've had plenty of practice
While I was in waiting area one at the fracture clinic, I noticed a very neatly handwritten notice on the noticeboard: "Water drinking machine in Waiting Area Two"
When I got to waiting area two I was most disappointed, though not at all surprised, to discover that it was just a drinking water dispenser, not a machine that drank water
Nothing in this country will change until we scrap the OBR which has the Treasury in chains.
Remember folks, we can't afford teachers but we can afford the poor economic results of the consequences of not enough teachers. We can't afford a functional criminal justice system but we can afford crime. Rinse and repeat at both local and national level.
Interesting point, but there is more to be said. Once you accept that money and resource is not infinite and that to govern, tax, spend and legislate is to have to make choice between desirable things then you have a problem.
The analysis and conclusion that scrapping the OBR is the solution ignores the issue of having to choose between excellent governmental aims with a finite resource. The OBR is not telling government to avoid spending on teachers and criminal justice. The OBR is saying that unless state finances are run effectively you get into an unmanageable crisis.
SFAICS there is not a single item of government expenditure about which there is agreement that it should fall. Almost all areas command agreement that expenditure should rise.
In what sense does the OBR put the Treasury in chains?
Re. the discussion in the last thread, the Probate Officer will be employed by HM Courts and Tribunal Service i.e. the most well known under-funded part of public life in the last 20 years. It isn’t the “civil service” as is commonly understood.
Isn't it? That's how I understood the "civil service"!
I was puzzled on the last thread by a complaint that a government service was slow and therefore the solution proposed was to cut staff. How is that going to make the service better?
Coz they will be terrified they’ll be the next to go in the next round of cuts. Put the fear of god in them
Give them hard targets to meet and if they don’t meet them - gone
This is the new £350m for the NHS delusion.
It’s really not. We are all going to experience the “fear of god” in the next few years, in regards to our careers and crafts - the civil service will and should be no exception. We should utilise the moment to make them WORK
As a Civil Servant myself, go to hell. I work my arse off in a background of rising abuse from the public due in no small part to the lazy pontificating of people like you.
Why the feck are you posting on here? At 09:50 on a working day? I can do it because I’m self employed - and I employ you with my taxes. I am your boss
Get back to the office you lazy scrounger
I'm using an annual leave day to care for my sick husband if you want to know. I can't use them to actually go and travel because he's too ill so I might as well use them to provide a bit of extra care than I can provide in between the hours I spend at work trying to ensure that the public get a say in their government. I've already been threatened with a law suit this week. Why don't you go back to writing subsidised puff pieces and try to have a bit more empathy for people who work extremely hard.
Sympathies on your husband. Life is tough
Nonetheless we have to get a grip on the malingering workshy muppets who mainly staff government offices. This attitude of mine might be coloured by the fact I am now waiting ANOTHER YEAR for foreign tax documents to be stamped by HMRC. All they have to do is stamp them. It’s taking a year. And my agent has just told me this is now costing me £££
We need to sack 30% of government staff - literally a third - and halve the incomes and pensions of the rest, and tell them if they don’t like it they too will be sacked
And then wait even longer?
The focus on staff numbers is arse about face. Keep the current processes and we probably need more civil servants. Remove some of the pointless process (the stamp sounds like one, from your previous posts) and there will be roles that can be lost without impacting on service.
Focus on streamlining processes, then set the workforce to the correct level for that.
Yes, it's not that we have too many staff, or that those staff aren't working hard. It's that so much of what gets done is so remarkably inefficient. So much of the efforts of the public sector go towards talking to other bits of the public sector.
"So much of the efforts of the public sector go towards *not* talking to other bits of the public sector" - due to stupid systems, fiefdoms and all the rest.
It's why I think the NHS is the National Healthcare Prevention Service - the number of times doctors and other staff have told me they are going round the system to get something done, rather than the system helping them treat patients...
Ergonomic is not a dirty word, Blackadder. Unlike "Crevice"
Nothing in this country will change until we scrap the OBR which has the Treasury in chains.
Remember folks, we can't afford teachers but we can afford the poor economic results of the consequences of not enough teachers. We can't afford a functional criminal justice system but we can afford crime. Rinse and repeat at both local and national level.
If we want to spend more, raise taxes to pay for it. Or cut other spending.
We already have 100% debt to GDP. Interest spending exceeds that of education or criminal justice already and more borrowing will make that worse.
The OBR is only reporting on whether the government meets its own rules - it can change the rules if it wishes. In fact, the rules were last changed less than 12 months ago.
Silly to scapegoat the OBR.
I suspect the Treasury's Green Book with it's bias towards expensive London property is a bigger part of the problem - but I don't get why the OBR isn't part of the Treasury - it should be merged into it and then quietly destroyed.
Guardian's list of runners in deputy leader race is a bit white and middle class. I can't see the members being happy, understandably as it suggests McSweeney has total control.
I am non white, perhaps I should become Labour's deputy leader?
Nobody cares about class, people with class do not talk about class and well...
Labour cares about class as it was set up to be the party of the working class. Although it is now more the party of the public sector, human rights lawyers and most ethnic minorities
Minor public school and Oxbridge – Labour. Major public school and Oxbridge – Conservative.
Labour has never had a majority of its MPs or even Labour Cabinet Ministers from private schools. Starmer did go to a minor public school but he joined it as a grammar school and he went to Leeds for undergrad, Oxford for a Masters.
Badenoch went to a comp and Sussex Uni, neither public school, let alone major public school, nor Oxbridge
Re. the discussion in the last thread, the Probate Officer will be employed by HM Courts and Tribunal Service i.e. the most well known under-funded part of public life in the last 20 years. It isn’t the “civil service” as is commonly understood.
Isn't it? That's how I understood the "civil service"!
I was puzzled on the last thread by a complaint that a government service was slow and therefore the solution proposed was to cut staff. How is that going to make the service better?
Coz they will be terrified they’ll be the next to go in the next round of cuts. Put the fear of god in them
Give them hard targets to meet and if they don’t meet them - gone
This is the new £350m for the NHS delusion.
It’s really not. We are all going to experience the “fear of god” in the next few years, in regards to our careers and crafts - the civil service will and should be no exception. We should utilise the moment to make them WORK
As a Civil Servant myself, go to hell. I work my arse off in a background of rising abuse from the public due in no small part to the lazy pontificating of people like you.
Why the feck are you posting on here? At 09:50 on a working day? I can do it because I’m self employed - and I employ you with my taxes. I am your boss
Get back to the office you lazy scrounger
I'm using an annual leave day to care for my sick husband if you want to know. I can't use them to actually go and travel because he's too ill so I might as well use them to provide a bit of extra care than I can provide in between the hours I spend at work trying to ensure that the public get a say in their government. I've already been threatened with a law suit this week. Why don't you go back to writing subsidised puff pieces and try to have a bit more empathy for people who work extremely hard.
Sympathies on your husband. Life is tough
Nonetheless we have to get a grip on the malingering workshy muppets who mainly staff government offices. This attitude of mine might be coloured by the fact I am now waiting ANOTHER YEAR for foreign tax documents to be stamped by HMRC. All they have to do is stamp them. It’s taking a year. And my agent has just told me this is now costing me £££
We need to sack 30% of government staff - literally a third - and halve the incomes and pensions of the rest, and tell them if they don’t like it they too will be sacked
And then wait even longer?
The focus on staff numbers is arse about face. Keep the current processes and we probably need more civil servants. Remove some of the pointless process (the stamp sounds like one, from your previous posts) and there will be roles that can be lost without impacting on service.
Focus on streamlining processes, then set the workforce to the correct level for that.
If you have a job, do you do better work when your workplace is well staffed and you're treated with respect, or do you do better work when you are facing the sack, your workplace is understaffed and everyone is having their pay cut? This attitude from the populist right is just performative cruelty: they perceive a group as the enemy and want to punish them. It is utter idiocy to imagine it would produce any improvement in the work.
Nothing in this country will change until we scrap the OBR which has the Treasury in chains.
Remember folks, we can't afford teachers but we can afford the poor economic results of the consequences of not enough teachers. We can't afford a functional criminal justice system but we can afford crime. Rinse and repeat at both local and national level.
No, the OBR is the only good idea George Osborne ever had. Scrap the OBR and you can add 100bp plus to bond yields.
Scrapping the OBR is just sticking your fingers in your ears and screaming LA! LA! LA!
The bad news is still that if you keep spending more than taxation for long enough, interest payments on debt will start swallowing all the money.
Re. the discussion in the last thread, the Probate Officer will be employed by HM Courts and Tribunal Service i.e. the most well known under-funded part of public life in the last 20 years. It isn’t the “civil service” as is commonly understood.
Isn't it? That's how I understood the "civil service"!
I was puzzled on the last thread by a complaint that a government service was slow and therefore the solution proposed was to cut staff. How is that going to make the service better?
Coz they will be terrified they’ll be the next to go in the next round of cuts. Put the fear of god in them
Give them hard targets to meet and if they don’t meet them - gone
This is the new £350m for the NHS delusion.
It’s really not. We are all going to experience the “fear of god” in the next few years, in regards to our careers and crafts - the civil service will and should be no exception. We should utilise the moment to make them WORK
These Boris leaks in The Guardian today look absolutely toxic. The implication is that Johnson was personally corrupt and enriched himself while in public office. If that story sticks, it's not just the ministerial code that has been breached, but the law. Let's see if the story has wings, but the optics are appalling.
It’s toxic but for another reasons
The accusations are marginal.
They are (from the article)
1. He asked a Saudi official to give a pitch to MbS 2. He was paid a fee by a hedge fund after meeting Venezuela’s PM 3. While in government he met Peter Thiel 4. He hosted an event in Downing Street that seems like it was in breach of lockdown rules and was to “honour” the person that refurbished the flat 5. He earned £5m from making speeches
And in the intro they talk about Greensill (which was genuinely appalling) and complain that he is “publicly subsidised” for claiming the allowance the state pays for office support.
The only ones that might possibly be open to criticism *for the accusation that the Guardian is making* (3&4 could easily be criticised for other things) are 1&2.
Basically they are trying to throw chaff in the air to diminish the damage to Labour caused by Rayner
This sort of journalism is irresponsible and toxic to public trust (such as it is) in politicians.
This has nothing to do with a tit-for-tat retaliation over Rayner.
It is completely remarkable that those who cheered Rayner's defenestration are defending this as either lies or "Boris will be Boris". Will the broadcast media take any of this up? No.
I still believe the most egregious act by any post war Minister, Profumo included, was a Foreign Secretary throwing off his minders to attend a party run by a KGB grandee. A story which at the time it occurred barely raised an eyebrow.
I’m not defending this as lies or as “Boris will be Boris”. At best it’s unedifying.
And I didn’t cheer Rayner’s defenestration- I think it was the right outcome but I have a lot of sympathy for her. She didn’t think and she messed up.
I am critical of the way that the Guardian has framed it - these don’t strike me as especially serious transgressions and trying to claim they are undermines confidence in the system. It’s not so much “tit for tat” as “they are all as bad as each other”
We find out, once again, that he broke his own rules over meetings during COVID lockdown. He told Parliament he would come clean on everything around Partygate and, look, there were even more breaches. So this shows even more lying to Parliament! He broke a law he himself imposed. How is this not a serious transgression?
Morning all. Counter Intuituve YouGov (or is it?) this week taken 7-8 Sept
Ref 27 (-2) Lab 22 (+2) Con 17 (=) LD 15 (=) Grn 12 (+2) SNP 3 (=) Oth 3
Gives Reform 310 seats, so a hung Parliament and Farage 16 short of a majority.
Farage would therefore need the confidence and supply of the forecast 44 Tory MPs remaining to become PM, if they abstained then he could still become PM but would need Tory support to pass any bills
I was thinking what an absolute dolt Corbyn is. After all the hype of 357 billion people signing up to the website it all goes cold. We might get a name at a possible 'mid Autumn' foundation conference (that a week and a half into Autumn hasnt been announced to allow people to plan attendance) Meanwhile Polanski hoovers up the left/gaza vote. If hes ruthless he should strangle these ridiculous fruits at birth.
Re. the discussion in the last thread, the Probate Officer will be employed by HM Courts and Tribunal Service i.e. the most well known under-funded part of public life in the last 20 years. It isn’t the “civil service” as is commonly understood.
Isn't it? That's how I understood the "civil service"!
I was puzzled on the last thread by a complaint that a government service was slow and therefore the solution proposed was to cut staff. How is that going to make the service better?
Coz they will be terrified they’ll be the next to go in the next round of cuts. Put the fear of god in them
Give them hard targets to meet and if they don’t meet them - gone
This is the new £350m for the NHS delusion.
It’s really not. We are all going to experience the “fear of god” in the next few years, in regards to our careers and crafts - the civil service will and should be no exception. We should utilise the moment to make them WORK
As a Civil Servant myself, go to hell. I work my arse off in a background of rising abuse from the public due in no small part to the lazy pontificating of people like you.
Why the feck are you posting on here? At 09:50 on a working day? I can do it because I’m self employed - and I employ you with my taxes. I am your boss
Get back to the office you lazy scrounger
I'm using an annual leave day to care for my sick husband if you want to know. I can't use them to actually go and travel because he's too ill so I might as well use them to provide a bit of extra care than I can provide in between the hours I spend at work trying to ensure that the public get a say in their government. I've already been threatened with a law suit this week. Why don't you go back to writing subsidised puff pieces and try to have a bit more empathy for people who work extremely hard.
Sympathies on your husband. Life is tough
Nonetheless we have to get a grip on the malingering workshy muppets who mainly staff government offices. This attitude of mine might be coloured by the fact I am now waiting ANOTHER YEAR for foreign tax documents to be stamped by HMRC. All they have to do is stamp them. It’s taking a year. And my agent has just told me this is now costing me £££
We need to sack 30% of government staff - literally a third - and halve the incomes and pensions of the rest, and tell them if they don’t like it they too will be sacked
And then wait even longer?
The focus on staff numbers is arse about face. Keep the current processes and we probably need more civil servants. Remove some of the pointless process (the stamp sounds like one, from your previous posts) and there will be roles that can be lost without impacting on service.
Focus on streamlining processes, then set the workforce to the correct level for that.
If you have a job, do you do better work when your workplace is well staffed and you're treated with respect, or do you do better work when you are facing the sack, your workplace is understaffed and everyone is having their pay cut? This attitude from the populist right is just performative cruelty: they perceive a group as the enemy and want to punish them. It is utter idiocy to imagine it would produce any improvement in the work.
Elon cut 80% of Twitter and it works better than ever and has palpably shifted western politics firmly to the right
What’s not to love?
Do the same for the layabout civil servants eating biscuits at home
I am back from Scotland late last night and I fly out again this afternoon. Make it stop
Not a good day to be travelling to an airport in London if you use public transport - no tubes or DLR.
As I imagine you travel light, you can get to Heathrow on one (or two or possible three) of Sadiq Khan's wonderful Superloop buses or get a bus to a Thameslink train if you're going to Gatwick (can't quite imagine the lead travel correspondent of the Flint Knappers going from Gatwick, Luton or Stansted).
Elizabeth line is still running which would get him to Farringdon so not so far from his den of iniquity
Nothing in this country will change until we scrap the OBR which has the Treasury in chains.
Remember folks, we can't afford teachers but we can afford the poor economic results of the consequences of not enough teachers. We can't afford a functional criminal justice system but we can afford crime. Rinse and repeat at both local and national level.
If we want to spend more, raise taxes to pay for it. Or cut other spending.
We already have 100% debt to GDP. Interest spending exceeds that of education or criminal justice already and more borrowing will make that worse.
The OBR is only reporting on whether the government meets its own rules - it can change the rules if it wishes. In fact, the rules were last changed less than 12 months ago.
Silly to scapegoat the OBR.
We're chained to it politically. And you're right about debt - it's a real problem.
In business when you want to cut expenditure you usually invest. A new computer system to reduce opex. New fridges in a convenience store to cut energy bills. We need to *significantly* cut our operating expenses as a nation. We need to invest in new things to save us money but we can't do so because political stupidity and OBR rules.
We can't raise taxes without tanking economic output further. We can't keep borrowing to throw money on bonfires like the NHS. But to fix things like the NHS we need to invest a little more on the replacements to then save significantly.
Again I make the point - we already spend more by not spending the money than we save. You can't just cut the emergency spending created by the existing cuts - that will cost even more. So we need to borrow to invest, and gain the return on that investment. You know, capitalism.
Our problem is economic wazzockry and the OBR has become the knot at the heart of this.
Re. the discussion in the last thread, the Probate Officer will be employed by HM Courts and Tribunal Service i.e. the most well known under-funded part of public life in the last 20 years. It isn’t the “civil service” as is commonly understood.
Isn't it? That's how I understood the "civil service"!
I was puzzled on the last thread by a complaint that a government service was slow and therefore the solution proposed was to cut staff. How is that going to make the service better?
Coz they will be terrified they’ll be the next to go in the next round of cuts. Put the fear of god in them
Give them hard targets to meet and if they don’t meet them - gone
This is the new £350m for the NHS delusion.
It’s really not. We are all going to experience the “fear of god” in the next few years, in regards to our careers and crafts - the civil service will and should be no exception. We should utilise the moment to make them WORK
As a Civil Servant myself, go to hell. I work my arse off in a background of rising abuse from the public due in no small part to the lazy pontificating of people like you.
Why the feck are you posting on here? At 09:50 on a working day? I can do it because I’m self employed - and I employ you with my taxes. I am your boss
Get back to the office you lazy scrounger
I'm using an annual leave day to care for my sick husband if you want to know. I can't use them to actually go and travel because he's too ill so I might as well use them to provide a bit of extra care than I can provide in between the hours I spend at work trying to ensure that the public get a say in their government. I've already been threatened with a law suit this week. Why don't you go back to writing subsidised puff pieces and try to have a bit more empathy for people who work extremely hard.
Sympathies on your husband. Life is tough
Nonetheless we have to get a grip on the malingering workshy muppets who mainly staff government offices. This attitude of mine might be coloured by the fact I am now waiting ANOTHER YEAR for foreign tax documents to be stamped by HMRC. All they have to do is stamp them. It’s taking a year. And my agent has just told me this is now costing me £££
We need to sack 30% of government staff - literally a third - and halve the incomes and pensions of the rest, and tell them if they don’t like it they too will be sacked
Sorry to be that guy, but 30% isn't 'literally' a third. Thank goodness you don't have a palsied hand on the running of a civil service department.
That Leon can't do numbers isn't news on here!
And the size of the civil service has ballooned since, and to a significant extent due to, Brexit - which Leon voted for - intended get us out from under all those EU "bureaucrats" (who were roughly equivalent in number to the "bureaucrats" employed by Surrey County Council).
The problem we have is that we don’t actually know where civil service numbers have gone up. What we have is a very large black box where we get told that numbers have gone up yet in the parts that I deal with continually see people leave and not get replaced.
So we have a mystery that definitely needs to be solved attached to a generic statement that it employs more people then it used at a random point in the past - and the detail we actually require isn’t available
How is that detail not available? Staffing numbers in every department, agency, quango are FOIable.
Nothing in this country will change until we scrap the OBR which has the Treasury in chains.
Remember folks, we can't afford teachers but we can afford the poor economic results of the consequences of not enough teachers. We can't afford a functional criminal justice system but we can afford crime. Rinse and repeat at both local and national level.
Sorry RP, that's just completely wrong. Liz Truss demonstrated that the OBR has no power over the Treasury at all.
I know it's very boring but ultimately the issue is politicians don't have the incentives to act in the long-term interests of the country. It's that simple.
There's an argument that they should be listening, to real people in their constituencies, rather than worrying about what people (or not-people, bots) say on Twitter.
Nothing in this country will change until we scrap the OBR which has the Treasury in chains.
Remember folks, we can't afford teachers but we can afford the poor economic results of the consequences of not enough teachers. We can't afford a functional criminal justice system but we can afford crime. Rinse and repeat at both local and national level.
Interesting point, but there is more to be said. Once you accept that money and resource is not infinite and that to govern, tax, spend and legislate is to have to make choice between desirable things then you have a problem.
The analysis and conclusion that scrapping the OBR is the solution ignores the issue of having to choose between excellent governmental aims with a finite resource. The OBR is not telling government to avoid spending on teachers and criminal justice. The OBR is saying that unless state finances are run effectively you get into an unmanageable crisis.
SFAICS there is not a single item of government expenditure about which there is agreement that it should fall. Almost all areas command agreement that expenditure should rise.
In what sense does the OBR put the Treasury in chains?
The OBR polices the rules set by the politicians, who now find politically they are bound by it. Treasury orthodoxy is even worse, but scrapping the OBR is a first step.
I am by no means proposing to just keep borrowing and spending, I'm proposing to borrow to invest so that we can stop borrowing to bonfire money on things like the vast NHS bureaucracy.
Nothing in this country will change until we scrap the OBR which has the Treasury in chains.
Remember folks, we can't afford teachers but we can afford the poor economic results of the consequences of not enough teachers. We can't afford a functional criminal justice system but we can afford crime. Rinse and repeat at both local and national level.
Interesting point, but there is more to be said. Once you accept that money and resource is not infinite and that to govern, tax, spend and legislate is to have to make choice between desirable things then you have a problem.
The analysis and conclusion that scrapping the OBR is the solution ignores the issue of having to choose between excellent governmental aims with a finite resource. The OBR is not telling government to avoid spending on teachers and criminal justice. The OBR is saying that unless state finances are run effectively you get into an unmanageable crisis.
SFAICS there is not a single item of government expenditure about which there is agreement that it should fall. Almost all areas command agreement that expenditure should rise.
In what sense does the OBR put the Treasury in chains?
Worse than that, there are some areas where the public thinks the government spends too much, but mostly becuase they have a totally wrong idea of how much they cost;
Ignorance is just as rampant when it comes to how the government spends its money. If you ask people what government spends the most money on then among the top five answers are first the NHS – a good guess. But these are then followed in descending order by “spending on migrants and asylum seekers”, debt interest, MPs’ expenses and international aid. In reality, MPs’ expenses make up about 0.01% of public spending. And yet getting on for a quarter of the population think they represent one of the top three items of expenditure.
Guardian's list of runners in deputy leader race is a bit white and middle class. I can't see the members being happy, understandably as it suggests McSweeney has total control.
Ribeiro-Addy is not white.
And the Fab Four (Starmer, Lammy, Mahmood, Reeves) are already half and half.
How to you allocate them to the chips and rice, respectively?
(Confused the hell out of me at one of my first canteen lunches when I worked in Cardiff and the lady serving my curry asked whether I wanted half and half - half and half of what?!)
I saw a story today about someone who went to KFC and ordered a chicken leg
Nothing in this country will change until we scrap the OBR which has the Treasury in chains.
Remember folks, we can't afford teachers but we can afford the poor economic results of the consequences of not enough teachers. We can't afford a functional criminal justice system but we can afford crime. Rinse and repeat at both local and national level.
No, the OBR is the only good idea George Osborne ever had. Scrap the OBR and you can add 100bp plus to bond yields.
But if he hadn't created it, primarily as a political device, scrapping it wouldn't. A disastrously clever bit of politics, that as a result we're now stuck with.
What a wasted administration that was, oozing arrogance and complacency.
He made many mistakes but the OBR is a good idea. All the OBR does is come up with an independent fiscal and economic forecast. It fulfills the same function as the CBO in the US. It reassures markets that the government is not marking its own homework. As a result we get to borrow more cheaply. The UK's problem is a failure to address the fiscal costs of ageing. Osborne has some responsibility here, if course, owing to the disastrous triple lock. Labour too with the gimmick of the winter fuel allowance. The public are to blame too for voting against anyone who dares try to address the issue. Because we don't address the underlying issue, our fiscal position worsens year by year and we keep trying to cut spending on everything else or tax anything that moves. The government keeps finding itself in a bind, coming up against its own fiscal rules that it keeps trying to meet by the smallest of margins. Blaming the OBR is like a drunk driver blaming the breathalyzer.
Re. the discussion in the last thread, the Probate Officer will be employed by HM Courts and Tribunal Service i.e. the most well known under-funded part of public life in the last 20 years. It isn’t the “civil service” as is commonly understood.
Isn't it? That's how I understood the "civil service"!
I was puzzled on the last thread by a complaint that a government service was slow and therefore the solution proposed was to cut staff. How is that going to make the service better?
Coz they will be terrified they’ll be the next to go in the next round of cuts. Put the fear of god in them
Give them hard targets to meet and if they don’t meet them - gone
This is the new £350m for the NHS delusion.
It’s really not. We are all going to experience the “fear of god” in the next few years, in regards to our careers and crafts - the civil service will and should be no exception. We should utilise the moment to make them WORK
As a Civil Servant myself, go to hell. I work my arse off in a background of rising abuse from the public due in no small part to the lazy pontificating of people like you.
Why the feck are you posting on here? At 09:50 on a working day? I can do it because I’m self employed - and I employ you with my taxes. I am your boss
Get back to the office you lazy scrounger
I'm using an annual leave day to care for my sick husband if you want to know. I can't use them to actually go and travel because he's too ill so I might as well use them to provide a bit of extra care than I can provide in between the hours I spend at work trying to ensure that the public get a say in their government. I've already been threatened with a law suit this week. Why don't you go back to writing subsidised puff pieces and try to have a bit more empathy for people who work extremely hard.
Sympathies on your husband. Life is tough
Nonetheless we have to get a grip on the malingering workshy muppets who mainly staff government offices. This attitude of mine might be coloured by the fact I am now waiting ANOTHER YEAR for foreign tax documents to be stamped by HMRC. All they have to do is stamp them. It’s taking a year. And my agent has just told me this is now costing me £££
We need to sack 30% of government staff - literally a third - and halve the incomes and pensions of the rest, and tell them if they don’t like it they too will be sacked
Sorry to be that guy, but 30% isn't 'literally' a third. Thank goodness you don't have a palsied hand on the running of a civil service department.
That Leon can't do numbers isn't news on here!
And the size of the civil service has ballooned since, and to a significant extent due to, Brexit - which Leon voted for - intended get us out from under all those EU "bureaucrats" (who were roughly equivalent in number to the "bureaucrats" employed by Surrey County Council).
The problem we have is that we don’t actually know where civil service numbers have gone up. What we have is a very large black box where we get told that numbers have gone up yet in the parts that I deal with continually see people leave and not get replaced.
So we have a mystery that definitely needs to be solved attached to a generic statement that it employs more people then it used at a random point in the past - and the detail we actually require isn’t available
How is that detail not available? Staffing numbers in every department, agency, quango are FOIable.
They are published on a regular basis. The last time I looked at it the main issue is grade inflation (making up for real terms cuts in salaries).
The stats also show that the vast majority of civil servants are tied up in DWP/HMRC/Probation and similar roles. I think there is scope for a lot of automation there, but there temptation will be instead to do more instead of cutting costs.
Nothing in this country will change until we scrap the OBR which has the Treasury in chains.
Remember folks, we can't afford teachers but we can afford the poor economic results of the consequences of not enough teachers. We can't afford a functional criminal justice system but we can afford crime. Rinse and repeat at both local and national level.
No, the OBR is the only good idea George Osborne ever had. Scrap the OBR and you can add 100bp plus to bond yields.
Scrapping the OBR is just sticking your fingers in your ears and screaming LA! LA! LA!
The bad news is still that if you keep spending more than taxation for long enough, interest payments on debt will start swallowing all the money.
The trouble with the OBR, or troubles, are that first, its forecasts are invariably wrong; second, it takes forever to model budget proposals which is why Reeves' budgets are so late in the year; third, any attempt to remove the OBR from the process causes panic in the markets. Like most of George Osborne's wheezes, the OBR harms Britain and especially his own party – ask Liz Truss.
Nothing in this country will change until we scrap the OBR which has the Treasury in chains.
Remember folks, we can't afford teachers but we can afford the poor economic results of the consequences of not enough teachers. We can't afford a functional criminal justice system but we can afford crime. Rinse and repeat at both local and national level.
Interesting point, but there is more to be said. Once you accept that money and resource is not infinite and that to govern, tax, spend and legislate is to have to make choice between desirable things then you have a problem.
The analysis and conclusion that scrapping the OBR is the solution ignores the issue of having to choose between excellent governmental aims with a finite resource. The OBR is not telling government to avoid spending on teachers and criminal justice. The OBR is saying that unless state finances are run effectively you get into an unmanageable crisis.
SFAICS there is not a single item of government expenditure about which there is agreement that it should fall. Almost all areas command agreement that expenditure should rise.
In what sense does the OBR put the Treasury in chains?
The OBR polices the rules set by the politicians, who now find politically they are bound by it. Treasury orthodoxy is even worse, but scrapping the OBR is a first step.
I am by no means proposing to just keep borrowing and spending, I'm proposing to borrow to invest so that we can stop borrowing to bonfire money on things like the vast NHS bureaucracy.
This is just crazy. It's like blaming the police for enforcing the law.
Why are Phillipson and Rayner touted as ‘working class’ figures needed to redress the balance, when Sir Keir was dragged up by a toolmaker and a nurse straight outta Reigate?
Thornberry used the fact her parents had split up and down at heel credentials before, even though her Dad was Head of the UN or something
@ZiaYusufUK · 7h Reform will transform the civil service from a bloated, failed organisation hostile to the interests of the British people into a lean, performant machine that makes our country proud. 🇬🇧
On the face of it, this doesn't sound like anything to be worried about. What do you see as problematic with it?
The risk is the criteria will involve a politicisation of the civil service
Honestly it can't be worse than what we have today.
For example, my dad is executor for his best friend's will, he died a year or so ago. The estate value was barely over the IHT limit, the tax is all paid and yet a year later the probate office is still in jobsworth mode asking for the original will, even though multiple copies have been provided, they had the original previously and have sent it back but for whatever reason they need it again.
This is a tiny, tiny bit of officialdom needed for a nothing size estate where the tax has already all been paid and yet the probate office, the state, is making nonsense paperwork and hassle for my dad as executor and the beneficiaries who still can't close the book on the death of their father.
In what world is this a good job? How have the civil servants in the probate office helped anyone with their nonsense bureaucracy in this instance? Who benefits from them not just getting it done, there isn't going to be some mad revelation which means the estate will suddenly be worth 10x more and loads of tax will be payable. It's this kind of shit that's causing the nation to slow down, these useless bureaucrats sticking their noses in to justify their jobs and pensions and making life miserable for ordinary people.
Get rid of them all I say, 50% cuts in the bureaucracy and stop interfering in people's lives.
As I mentioned a couple of weeks back I'm going through this as executor for my own father. I expect to encounter much state stupidity along the way, including I am told a wait of 16 weeks from submission to probate being granted.
Today I've had a letter from the DWP. It says "yes, we owe the estate some money, please tell us where to send it along with a probate letter".
Except nowhere in the letter does it state a how much they owe. A number which I need in order to obtain said probate.
So, I will have to ring them up, and ask them to send another letter. At which point they will no doubt demand several reams of paperwork to prove I am permitted to see said value. Why not just send everything needed the first time? Even Yorkshire Water, yes, Yorkshire Water managed that.
I can of course calculate it roughly myself - approximately 1 week of state pension, a trivial amount in the grand scheme of things - but HMRC will want the exact figure in writing so that they can claim their 40%.
Ho hum. At least I'm not paying for a solicitor to chase this up (yet).
Is it any wonder I'm thinking of giving enough away to stop the government getting a penny?
FPT but from my experience it is perfectly acceptable to use estimated figures for the probate if you are held up on stuff, especially chickenfeed stuff, like this. Thje figures have to be stated as explicitly estimated. This is a godsend with stuff that is dragging on, especially small stuff. But do check the instructions on your probate paperwork (different for Scotland IIRC).
Plus stuff crops up even months or years after probate. Some is completely unexpected. E.g. my late mother had bought shares in the RBS flotation that caused all the trouble, and was paid compo years after her demise; she had life assurance policies on my dad's life which didn't pay out till he died a decade later; and it turned out that one life assurance company had underpaid by 14K, and so on - I only found out when it occurred to me when doing the final wrap up that the rate of return was suspiciously low ... so I didn't finally settle her estate (I think!) for 10 years after probate.
The main thing, as I understand it, is that HMRC get a sufficiently detailed probate valuation up front to assess whether IHT is liable or not and, if so, to get their chunk before anyone else does.
If there is no IHT payable, it's up to the executor to tell them if enough dosh comes in later to change the figures upward enough to hit the magic IHT level.
If IHT turns out to have been overpaid - usually if a house sells for less than the probate valuation - then you can claim the overpaid IHT back.
Edit: I forget HMRC's wording when they accept the proibate, but they basically say"okay, you've signed this, and that's done, but you have to let us know if anything happens to change the levels of tax due"
Thanks, yes - I expect an estimate will suffice but it would be nice to get things right. It just leaves more things to tie up when you'd much rather just get it over with.
I don't understand why they would send such a letter though - it seems to be deliberately unhelpful.
Maybe there is some legal nicety that I am missing, but it just gives the impression that one department doesn't talk to another. Who and what are these processes for?
I know the feeling, but -
Also: as well as the previous PS which you may or many not have missed, I'd emphasise that there are inevitably loose ends anyway, so it's not as if you won't have to deal with HMRC after the grant of probate. You will usually need to get in touch with HMRC anyway, to deal with tax during the executry period, eg dividends or bank interest that accrued after demise until the accounts were closed. That isn't part of the IHT calculation for the probate valuation (made as if on the day of demise) but forms part of the estate to account to beneficiaries, of course. But in my experience that's usually very simple.
As for keeping the probate valuation updated, I just updated the Excel spreadsheet I used for the probate application with anything new, using red ink, so I could keep track of the pluses and minuses and whether it changed the IHT. It didn't, in my cases, but was ready to use if HMRC ever asked.
Well, the good news is I now have a figure, although they will not send it in writing.
I rang the phone number on the letter, and was told it was the wrong part of DWP (not the 'bereavement service') and was given a different phone number. I rang the new phone number and got through to someone who after a helpful 5 minute discussion gave me a figure.
So that was 2 unnecessary phone calls.
None of the DWP staff were slacking or not doing their allocated job, but a bit of investment or thought in the process and it could have saved 10 minutes of their time and at least that of mine. Multiply that enough times...
As has been pointed out, sacking everyone immediately won't actually help. For a while it actually needs excess so there can be a few lazy sods that go round asking why the hell they are having to do X and them having access to someone with the capacity to fix it. 100% busy people are a hindrance to change.
Re. the discussion in the last thread, the Probate Officer will be employed by HM Courts and Tribunal Service i.e. the most well known under-funded part of public life in the last 20 years. It isn’t the “civil service” as is commonly understood.
Isn't it? That's how I understood the "civil service"!
I was puzzled on the last thread by a complaint that a government service was slow and therefore the solution proposed was to cut staff. How is that going to make the service better?
Coz they will be terrified they’ll be the next to go in the next round of cuts. Put the fear of god in them
Give them hard targets to meet and if they don’t meet them - gone
This is the new £350m for the NHS delusion.
It’s really not. We are all going to experience the “fear of god” in the next few years, in regards to our careers and crafts - the civil service will and should be no exception. We should utilise the moment to make them WORK
As a Civil Servant myself, go to hell. I work my arse off in a background of rising abuse from the public due in no small part to the lazy pontificating of people like you.
Why the feck are you posting on here? At 09:50 on a working day? I can do it because I’m self employed - and I employ you with my taxes. I am your boss
Get back to the office you lazy scrounger
I'm using an annual leave day to care for my sick husband if you want to know. I can't use them to actually go and travel because he's too ill so I might as well use them to provide a bit of extra care than I can provide in between the hours I spend at work trying to ensure that the public get a say in their government. I've already been threatened with a law suit this week. Why don't you go back to writing subsidised puff pieces and try to have a bit more empathy for people who work extremely hard.
Sympathies on your husband. Life is tough
Nonetheless we have to get a grip on the malingering workshy muppets who mainly staff government offices. This attitude of mine might be coloured by the fact I am now waiting ANOTHER YEAR for foreign tax documents to be stamped by HMRC. All they have to do is stamp them. It’s taking a year. And my agent has just told me this is now costing me £££
We need to sack 30% of government staff - literally a third - and halve the incomes and pensions of the rest, and tell them if they don’t like it they too will be sacked
And then wait even longer?
The focus on staff numbers is arse about face. Keep the current processes and we probably need more civil servants. Remove some of the pointless process (the stamp sounds like one, from your previous posts) and there will be roles that can be lost without impacting on service.
Focus on streamlining processes, then set the workforce to the correct level for that.
Yes, it's not that we have too many staff, or that those staff aren't working hard. It's that so much of what gets done is so remarkably inefficient. So much of the efforts of the public sector go towards talking to other bits of the public sector.
"So much of the efforts of the public sector go towards *not* talking to other bits of the public sector" - due to stupid systems, fiefdoms and all the rest.
It's why I think the NHS is the National Healthcare Prevention Service - the number of times doctors and other staff have told me they are going round the system to get something done, rather than the system helping them treat patients...
Ergonomic is not a dirty word, Blackadder. Unlike "Crevice"
Some of this occurs in all organisations. These sorts of things happen in the private sector, they happen in the third sector. Life is complicated. So, yes, put in the work streamlining processes etc. There's no magic solution here.
I am back from Scotland late last night and I fly out again this afternoon. Make it stop
Not a good day to be travelling to an airport in London if you use public transport - no tubes or DLR.
As I imagine you travel light, you can get to Heathrow on one (or two or possible three) of Sadiq Khan's wonderful Superloop buses or get a bus to a Thameslink train if you're going to Gatwick (can't quite imagine the lead travel correspondent of the Flint Knappers going from Gatwick, Luton or Stansted).
Elizabeth line is still running which would get him to Farringdon so not so far from his den of iniquity
The Elizabeth Line is already very crowded on days when there isn't a tube strike, which is slightly amazing given how long the trains are and how many carriages they have. The good thing about it is that they might start building Crossrail 2 pretty soon because of the success of Crossrail 1.
I am back from Scotland late last night and I fly out again this afternoon. Make it stop
Not a good day to be travelling to an airport in London if you use public transport - no tubes or DLR.
As I imagine you travel light, you can get to Heathrow on one (or two or possible three) of Sadiq Khan's wonderful Superloop buses or get a bus to a Thameslink train if you're going to Gatwick (can't quite imagine the lead travel correspondent of the Flint Knappers going from Gatwick, Luton or Stansted).
Elizabeth line is still running which would get him to Farringdon so not so far from his den of iniquity
The Elizabeth Line is already very crowded on days when there isn't a tube strike, which is slightly amazing given how long the trains are and how many carriages they have. The good thing about it is that they might start building Crossrail 2 pretty soon because of the success of Crossrail 1.
From what I understand, the work at the British Library is part of their refurbishment and they are future proofing for a station incase Crossrail 2 ever gets the nod. There is no funding or parliamentary approval for it at the moment, so it's probably decades away.
Nothing in this country will change until we scrap the OBR which has the Treasury in chains.
Remember folks, we can't afford teachers but we can afford the poor economic results of the consequences of not enough teachers. We can't afford a functional criminal justice system but we can afford crime. Rinse and repeat at both local and national level.
If we want to spend more, raise taxes to pay for it. Or cut other spending.
We already have 100% debt to GDP. Interest spending exceeds that of education or criminal justice already and more borrowing will make that worse.
The OBR is only reporting on whether the government meets its own rules - it can change the rules if it wishes. In fact, the rules were last changed less than 12 months ago.
Silly to scapegoat the OBR.
We're chained to it politically. And you're right about debt - it's a real problem.
In business when you want to cut expenditure you usually invest. A new computer system to reduce opex. New fridges in a convenience store to cut energy bills. We need to *significantly* cut our operating expenses as a nation. We need to invest in new things to save us money but we can't do so because political stupidity and OBR rules.
We can't raise taxes without tanking economic output further. We can't keep borrowing to throw money on bonfires like the NHS. But to fix things like the NHS we need to invest a little more on the replacements to then save significantly.
Again I make the point - we already spend more by not spending the money than we save. You can't just cut the emergency spending created by the existing cuts - that will cost even more. So we need to borrow to invest, and gain the return on that investment. You know, capitalism.
Our problem is economic wazzockry and the OBR has become the knot at the heart of this.
I think (not sure) what you are saying is that we need to spend (a lot?) less operationally in order that the borrowing we already make (about £150 bn annually) is used on effective investment instead of borrowing to pay day to day bills and interest payments.
In what way is the OBR stopping the government adjusting its priorities in such a way?
And while increasing the use of borrowing for more effective investment, what and where are the operational cuts coming from? They have to be large.
We are all familiar with retail's great line 'The More You Spend the More You Save' but you need to cash this out in a bit of detail. I think this would be top of the liost of things the PM and the CoE would like to know.
Nothing in this country will change until we scrap the OBR which has the Treasury in chains.
Remember folks, we can't afford teachers but we can afford the poor economic results of the consequences of not enough teachers. We can't afford a functional criminal justice system but we can afford crime. Rinse and repeat at both local and national level.
No, the OBR is the only good idea George Osborne ever had. Scrap the OBR and you can add 100bp plus to bond yields.
Scrapping the OBR is just sticking your fingers in your ears and screaming LA! LA! LA!
The bad news is still that if you keep spending more than taxation for long enough, interest payments on debt will start swallowing all the money.
The trouble with the OBR, or troubles, are that first, its forecasts are invariably wrong; second, it takes forever to model budget proposals which is why Reeves' budgets are so late in the year; third, any attempt to remove the OBR from the process causes panic in the markets. Like most of George Osborne's wheezes, the OBR harms Britain and especially his own party – ask Liz Truss.
All forecasts are wrong. The question is whether they are biased. The OBR doesn't take any longer to model policy changes than the Treasury did. And markets want the OBR involved because they don't trust the government's own forecasts. That's why Truss's idiotic mini budget was punished. But what do I know, I only work in the bond market...
Re. the discussion in the last thread, the Probate Officer will be employed by HM Courts and Tribunal Service i.e. the most well known under-funded part of public life in the last 20 years. It isn’t the “civil service” as is commonly understood.
Isn't it? That's how I understood the "civil service"!
I was puzzled on the last thread by a complaint that a government service was slow and therefore the solution proposed was to cut staff. How is that going to make the service better?
Coz they will be terrified they’ll be the next to go in the next round of cuts. Put the fear of god in them
Give them hard targets to meet and if they don’t meet them - gone
This is the new £350m for the NHS delusion.
It’s really not. We are all going to experience the “fear of god” in the next few years, in regards to our careers and crafts - the civil service will and should be no exception. We should utilise the moment to make them WORK
As a Civil Servant myself, go to hell. I work my arse off in a background of rising abuse from the public due in no small part to the lazy pontificating of people like you.
Why the feck are you posting on here? At 09:50 on a working day? I can do it because I’m self employed - and I employ you with my taxes. I am your boss
Get back to the office you lazy scrounger
I'm using an annual leave day to care for my sick husband if you want to know. I can't use them to actually go and travel because he's too ill so I might as well use them to provide a bit of extra care than I can provide in between the hours I spend at work trying to ensure that the public get a say in their government. I've already been threatened with a law suit this week. Why don't you go back to writing subsidised puff pieces and try to have a bit more empathy for people who work extremely hard.
Sympathies on your husband. Life is tough
Nonetheless we have to get a grip on the malingering workshy muppets who mainly staff government offices. This attitude of mine might be coloured by the fact I am now waiting ANOTHER YEAR for foreign tax documents to be stamped by HMRC. All they have to do is stamp them. It’s taking a year. And my agent has just told me this is now costing me £££
We need to sack 30% of government staff - literally a third - and halve the incomes and pensions of the rest, and tell them if they don’t like it they too will be sacked
Sorry to be that guy, but 30% isn't 'literally' a third. Thank goodness you don't have a palsied hand on the running of a civil service department.
That Leon can't do numbers isn't news on here!
And the size of the civil service has ballooned since, and to a significant extent due to, Brexit - which Leon voted for - intended get us out from under all those EU "bureaucrats" (who were roughly equivalent in number to the "bureaucrats" employed by Surrey County Council).
The problem we have is that we don’t actually know where civil service numbers have gone up. What we have is a very large black box where we get told that numbers have gone up yet in the parts that I deal with continually see people leave and not get replaced.
So we have a mystery that definitely needs to be solved attached to a generic statement that it employs more people then it used at a random point in the past - and the detail we actually require isn’t available
How is that detail not available? Staffing numbers in every department, agency, quango are FOIable.
Knowing that the Department for Administrative Affairs has 26,000 civil servants does not get you very far in understanding what they do and whether it could be done better. (Sorry, can't find clip.)
@ZiaYusufUK · 7h Reform will transform the civil service from a bloated, failed organisation hostile to the interests of the British people into a lean, performant machine that makes our country proud. 🇬🇧
On the face of it, this doesn't sound like anything to be worried about. What do you see as problematic with it?
The risk is the criteria will involve a politicisation of the civil service
Honestly it can't be worse than what we have today.
For example, my dad is executor for his best friend's will, he died a year or so ago. The estate value was barely over the IHT limit, the tax is all paid and yet a year later the probate office is still in jobsworth mode asking for the original will, even though multiple copies have been provided, they had the original previously and have sent it back but for whatever reason they need it again.
This is a tiny, tiny bit of officialdom needed for a nothing size estate where the tax has already all been paid and yet the probate office, the state, is making nonsense paperwork and hassle for my dad as executor and the beneficiaries who still can't close the book on the death of their father.
In what world is this a good job? How have the civil servants in the probate office helped anyone with their nonsense bureaucracy in this instance? Who benefits from them not just getting it done, there isn't going to be some mad revelation which means the estate will suddenly be worth 10x more and loads of tax will be payable. It's this kind of shit that's causing the nation to slow down, these useless bureaucrats sticking their noses in to justify their jobs and pensions and making life miserable for ordinary people.
Get rid of them all I say, 50% cuts in the bureaucracy and stop interfering in people's lives.
As I mentioned a couple of weeks back I'm going through this as executor for my own father. I expect to encounter much state stupidity along the way, including I am told a wait of 16 weeks from submission to probate being granted.
Today I've had a letter from the DWP. It says "yes, we owe the estate some money, please tell us where to send it along with a probate letter".
Except nowhere in the letter does it state a how much they owe. A number which I need in order to obtain said probate.
So, I will have to ring them up, and ask them to send another letter. At which point they will no doubt demand several reams of paperwork to prove I am permitted to see said value. Why not just send everything needed the first time? Even Yorkshire Water, yes, Yorkshire Water managed that.
I can of course calculate it roughly myself - approximately 1 week of state pension, a trivial amount in the grand scheme of things - but HMRC will want the exact figure in writing so that they can claim their 40%.
Ho hum. At least I'm not paying for a solicitor to chase this up (yet).
Is it any wonder I'm thinking of giving enough away to stop the government getting a penny?
FPT but from my experience it is perfectly acceptable to use estimated figures for the probate if you are held up on stuff, especially chickenfeed stuff, like this. Thje figures have to be stated as explicitly estimated. This is a godsend with stuff that is dragging on, especially small stuff. But do check the instructions on your probate paperwork (different for Scotland IIRC).
Plus stuff crops up even months or years after probate. Some is completely unexpected. E.g. my late mother had bought shares in the RBS flotation that caused all the trouble, and was paid compo years after her demise; she had life assurance policies on my dad's life which didn't pay out till he died a decade later; and it turned out that one life assurance company had underpaid by 14K, and so on - I only found out when it occurred to me when doing the final wrap up that the rate of return was suspiciously low ... so I didn't finally settle her estate (I think!) for 10 years after probate.
The main thing, as I understand it, is that HMRC get a sufficiently detailed probate valuation up front to assess whether IHT is liable or not and, if so, to get their chunk before anyone else does.
If there is no IHT payable, it's up to the executor to tell them if enough dosh comes in later to change the figures upward enough to hit the magic IHT level.
If IHT turns out to have been overpaid - usually if a house sells for less than the probate valuation - then you can claim the overpaid IHT back.
Edit: I forget HMRC's wording when they accept the proibate, but they basically say"okay, you've signed this, and that's done, but you have to let us know if anything happens to change the levels of tax due"
Thanks, yes - I expect an estimate will suffice but it would be nice to get things right. It just leaves more things to tie up when you'd much rather just get it over with.
I don't understand why they would send such a letter though - it seems to be deliberately unhelpful.
Maybe there is some legal nicety that I am missing, but it just gives the impression that one department doesn't talk to another. Who and what are these processes for?
I know the feeling, but -
Also: as well as the previous PS which you may or many not have missed, I'd emphasise that there are inevitably loose ends anyway, so it's not as if you won't have to deal with HMRC after the grant of probate. You will usually need to get in touch with HMRC anyway, to deal with tax during the executry period, eg dividends or bank interest that accrued after demise until the accounts were closed. That isn't part of the IHT calculation for the probate valuation (made as if on the day of demise) but forms part of the estate to account to beneficiaries, of course. But in my experience that's usually very simple.
As for keeping the probate valuation updated, I just updated the Excel spreadsheet I used for the probate application with anything new, using red ink, so I could keep track of the pluses and minuses and whether it changed the IHT. It didn't, in my cases, but was ready to use if HMRC ever asked.
Well, the good news is I now have a figure, although they will not send it in writing.
I rang the phone number on the letter, and was told it was the wrong part of DWP (not the 'bereavement service') and was given a different phone number. I rang the new phone number and got through to someone who after a helpful 5 minute discussion gave me a figure.
So that was 2 unnecessary phone calls.
None of the DWP staff were slacking or not doing their allocated job, but a bit of investment or thought in the process and it could have saved 10 minutes of their time and at least that of mine. Multiply that enough times...
As has been pointed out, sacking everyone immediately won't actually help. For a while it actually needs excess so there can be a few lazy sods that go round asking why the hell they are having to do X and them having access to someone with the capacity to fix it. 100% busy people are a hindrance to change.
I’m sorry I’m at a loss as to where time could be saved.
You called a generic helpline number where after confirming what you wanted they gave you the appropriate number
After a 5 minute chat that you said was helpful while they worked out what you wanted and calculated the figure they gave you the number
Yet you say it was a waste of 10 minutes.
Trust me it wasn’t because no department is going to put everything on line because that requires way, way more and money l then someone checking what you actually need and giving you a quick estimated figure to use.
If you want to be scared I can tell you how much creating a gov.uk service costs and it’s £x00,000 minimum
Compare that to a phone call that cost probably £5 to process and then work out if that call occurs 10,000 a year because unless it does there are better uses for automation
Elon cut 80% of Twitter and it works better than ever
It really doesn't
It got rid of you, and your kind, as you all fled to that sad lefty ghetto Bluesky, where no one can hear your pathetic epicene whining except other people like you
Elon cut 80% of Twitter and it works better than ever
It really doesn't
It got rid of you, and your kind, as you all fled to that sad lefty ghetto Bluesky, where no one can hear your pathetic epicene whining except other people like you
Win win
having complete control over the timeline that is 1 way I view the world is a definite win for me.
The fact Musk and co can inject anything into your feed without you realizing is a problem that you haven’t actually grasped.
@ZiaYusufUK · 7h Reform will transform the civil service from a bloated, failed organisation hostile to the interests of the British people into a lean, performant machine that makes our country proud. 🇬🇧
On the face of it, this doesn't sound like anything to be worried about. What do you see as problematic with it?
The risk is the criteria will involve a politicisation of the civil service
Honestly it can't be worse than what we have today.
For example, my dad is executor for his best friend's will, he died a year or so ago. The estate value was barely over the IHT limit, the tax is all paid and yet a year later the probate office is still in jobsworth mode asking for the original will, even though multiple copies have been provided, they had the original previously and have sent it back but for whatever reason they need it again.
This is a tiny, tiny bit of officialdom needed for a nothing size estate where the tax has already all been paid and yet the probate office, the state, is making nonsense paperwork and hassle for my dad as executor and the beneficiaries who still can't close the book on the death of their father.
In what world is this a good job? How have the civil servants in the probate office helped anyone with their nonsense bureaucracy in this instance? Who benefits from them not just getting it done, there isn't going to be some mad revelation which means the estate will suddenly be worth 10x more and loads of tax will be payable. It's this kind of shit that's causing the nation to slow down, these useless bureaucrats sticking their noses in to justify their jobs and pensions and making life miserable for ordinary people.
Get rid of them all I say, 50% cuts in the bureaucracy and stop interfering in people's lives.
As I mentioned a couple of weeks back I'm going through this as executor for my own father. I expect to encounter much state stupidity along the way, including I am told a wait of 16 weeks from submission to probate being granted.
Today I've had a letter from the DWP. It says "yes, we owe the estate some money, please tell us where to send it along with a probate letter".
Except nowhere in the letter does it state a how much they owe. A number which I need in order to obtain said probate.
So, I will have to ring them up, and ask them to send another letter. At which point they will no doubt demand several reams of paperwork to prove I am permitted to see said value. Why not just send everything needed the first time? Even Yorkshire Water, yes, Yorkshire Water managed that.
I can of course calculate it roughly myself - approximately 1 week of state pension, a trivial amount in the grand scheme of things - but HMRC will want the exact figure in writing so that they can claim their 40%.
Ho hum. At least I'm not paying for a solicitor to chase this up (yet).
Is it any wonder I'm thinking of giving enough away to stop the government getting a penny?
FPT but from my experience it is perfectly acceptable to use estimated figures for the probate if you are held up on stuff, especially chickenfeed stuff, like this. Thje figures have to be stated as explicitly estimated. This is a godsend with stuff that is dragging on, especially small stuff. But do check the instructions on your probate paperwork (different for Scotland IIRC).
Plus stuff crops up even months or years after probate. Some is completely unexpected. E.g. my late mother had bought shares in the RBS flotation that caused all the trouble, and was paid compo years after her demise; she had life assurance policies on my dad's life which didn't pay out till he died a decade later; and it turned out that one life assurance company had underpaid by 14K, and so on - I only found out when it occurred to me when doing the final wrap up that the rate of return was suspiciously low ... so I didn't finally settle her estate (I think!) for 10 years after probate.
The main thing, as I understand it, is that HMRC get a sufficiently detailed probate valuation up front to assess whether IHT is liable or not and, if so, to get their chunk before anyone else does.
If there is no IHT payable, it's up to the executor to tell them if enough dosh comes in later to change the figures upward enough to hit the magic IHT level.
If IHT turns out to have been overpaid - usually if a house sells for less than the probate valuation - then you can claim the overpaid IHT back.
Edit: I forget HMRC's wording when they accept the proibate, but they basically say"okay, you've signed this, and that's done, but you have to let us know if anything happens to change the levels of tax due"
Thanks, yes - I expect an estimate will suffice but it would be nice to get things right. It just leaves more things to tie up when you'd much rather just get it over with.
I don't understand why they would send such a letter though - it seems to be deliberately unhelpful.
Maybe there is some legal nicety that I am missing, but it just gives the impression that one department doesn't talk to another. Who and what are these processes for?
I know the feeling, but -
Also: as well as the previous PS which you may or many not have missed, I'd emphasise that there are inevitably loose ends anyway, so it's not as if you won't have to deal with HMRC after the grant of probate. You will usually need to get in touch with HMRC anyway, to deal with tax during the executry period, eg dividends or bank interest that accrued after demise until the accounts were closed. That isn't part of the IHT calculation for the probate valuation (made as if on the day of demise) but forms part of the estate to account to beneficiaries, of course. But in my experience that's usually very simple.
As for keeping the probate valuation updated, I just updated the Excel spreadsheet I used for the probate application with anything new, using red ink, so I could keep track of the pluses and minuses and whether it changed the IHT. It didn't, in my cases, but was ready to use if HMRC ever asked.
Well, the good news is I now have a figure, although they will not send it in writing.
I rang the phone number on the letter, and was told it was the wrong part of DWP (not the 'bereavement service') and was given a different phone number. I rang the new phone number and got through to someone who after a helpful 5 minute discussion gave me a figure.
So that was 2 unnecessary phone calls.
None of the DWP staff were slacking or not doing their allocated job, but a bit of investment or thought in the process and it could have saved 10 minutes of their time and at least that of mine. Multiply that enough times...
As has been pointed out, sacking everyone immediately won't actually help. For a while it actually needs excess so there can be a few lazy sods that go round asking why the hell they are having to do X and them having access to someone with the capacity to fix it. 100% busy people are a hindrance to change.
Amazon is one of the largest companies on the planet, led by a certified genius. For the last couple of weeks I've been trying to persuade them to fix their computer so I can buy more stuff. I've even spoken to actual humans on the electric telephone. TL/DR; it thinks it needs to send me the dvd which I have in my hand already.
Rymans, headed by top BBC Dragon Theo, last week phoned to remind me to collect an order I'd collected the week before.
The idea that the private sector is magically better than the public sector has taken root but is demonstrably false. The common factor is running on a shoestring works most of the time, perhaps nearly all of the time, but, as you say, lacks the capacity and knowledge to deal with edge cases.
@ZiaYusufUK · 7h Reform will transform the civil service from a bloated, failed organisation hostile to the interests of the British people into a lean, performant machine that makes our country proud. 🇬🇧
On the face of it, this doesn't sound like anything to be worried about. What do you see as problematic with it?
The risk is the criteria will involve a politicisation of the civil service
Honestly it can't be worse than what we have today.
For example, my dad is executor for his best friend's will, he died a year or so ago. The estate value was barely over the IHT limit, the tax is all paid and yet a year later the probate office is still in jobsworth mode asking for the original will, even though multiple copies have been provided, they had the original previously and have sent it back but for whatever reason they need it again.
This is a tiny, tiny bit of officialdom needed for a nothing size estate where the tax has already all been paid and yet the probate office, the state, is making nonsense paperwork and hassle for my dad as executor and the beneficiaries who still can't close the book on the death of their father.
In what world is this a good job? How have the civil servants in the probate office helped anyone with their nonsense bureaucracy in this instance? Who benefits from them not just getting it done, there isn't going to be some mad revelation which means the estate will suddenly be worth 10x more and loads of tax will be payable. It's this kind of shit that's causing the nation to slow down, these useless bureaucrats sticking their noses in to justify their jobs and pensions and making life miserable for ordinary people.
Get rid of them all I say, 50% cuts in the bureaucracy and stop interfering in people's lives.
As I mentioned a couple of weeks back I'm going through this as executor for my own father. I expect to encounter much state stupidity along the way, including I am told a wait of 16 weeks from submission to probate being granted.
Today I've had a letter from the DWP. It says "yes, we owe the estate some money, please tell us where to send it along with a probate letter".
Except nowhere in the letter does it state a how much they owe. A number which I need in order to obtain said probate.
So, I will have to ring them up, and ask them to send another letter. At which point they will no doubt demand several reams of paperwork to prove I am permitted to see said value. Why not just send everything needed the first time? Even Yorkshire Water, yes, Yorkshire Water managed that.
I can of course calculate it roughly myself - approximately 1 week of state pension, a trivial amount in the grand scheme of things - but HMRC will want the exact figure in writing so that they can claim their 40%.
Ho hum. At least I'm not paying for a solicitor to chase this up (yet).
Is it any wonder I'm thinking of giving enough away to stop the government getting a penny?
FPT but from my experience it is perfectly acceptable to use estimated figures for the probate if you are held up on stuff, especially chickenfeed stuff, like this. Thje figures have to be stated as explicitly estimated. This is a godsend with stuff that is dragging on, especially small stuff. But do check the instructions on your probate paperwork (different for Scotland IIRC).
Plus stuff crops up even months or years after probate. Some is completely unexpected. E.g. my late mother had bought shares in the RBS flotation that caused all the trouble, and was paid compo years after her demise; she had life assurance policies on my dad's life which didn't pay out till he died a decade later; and it turned out that one life assurance company had underpaid by 14K, and so on - I only found out when it occurred to me when doing the final wrap up that the rate of return was suspiciously low ... so I didn't finally settle her estate (I think!) for 10 years after probate.
The main thing, as I understand it, is that HMRC get a sufficiently detailed probate valuation up front to assess whether IHT is liable or not and, if so, to get their chunk before anyone else does.
If there is no IHT payable, it's up to the executor to tell them if enough dosh comes in later to change the figures upward enough to hit the magic IHT level.
If IHT turns out to have been overpaid - usually if a house sells for less than the probate valuation - then you can claim the overpaid IHT back.
Edit: I forget HMRC's wording when they accept the proibate, but they basically say"okay, you've signed this, and that's done, but you have to let us know if anything happens to change the levels of tax due"
Thanks, yes - I expect an estimate will suffice but it would be nice to get things right. It just leaves more things to tie up when you'd much rather just get it over with.
I don't understand why they would send such a letter though - it seems to be deliberately unhelpful.
Maybe there is some legal nicety that I am missing, but it just gives the impression that one department doesn't talk to another. Who and what are these processes for?
I know the feeling, but -
Also: as well as the previous PS which you may or many not have missed, I'd emphasise that there are inevitably loose ends anyway, so it's not as if you won't have to deal with HMRC after the grant of probate. You will usually need to get in touch with HMRC anyway, to deal with tax during the executry period, eg dividends or bank interest that accrued after demise until the accounts were closed. That isn't part of the IHT calculation for the probate valuation (made as if on the day of demise) but forms part of the estate to account to beneficiaries, of course. But in my experience that's usually very simple.
As for keeping the probate valuation updated, I just updated the Excel spreadsheet I used for the probate application with anything new, using red ink, so I could keep track of the pluses and minuses and whether it changed the IHT. It didn't, in my cases, but was ready to use if HMRC ever asked.
Well, the good news is I now have a figure, although they will not send it in writing.
I rang the phone number on the letter, and was told it was the wrong part of DWP (not the 'bereavement service') and was given a different phone number. I rang the new phone number and got through to someone who after a helpful 5 minute discussion gave me a figure.
So that was 2 unnecessary phone calls.
None of the DWP staff were slacking or not doing their allocated job, but a bit of investment or thought in the process and it could have saved 10 minutes of their time and at least that of mine. Multiply that enough times...
As has been pointed out, sacking everyone immediately won't actually help. For a while it actually needs excess so there can be a few lazy sods that go round asking why the hell they are having to do X and them having access to someone with the capacity to fix it. 100% busy people are a hindrance to change.
Amazon is one of the largest companies on the planet, led by a certified genius. For the last couple of weeks I've been trying to persuade them to fix their computer so I can buy more stuff. I've even spoken to actual humans on the electric telephone. TL/DR; it thinks it needs to send me the dvd which I have in my hand already.
Rymans, headed by top BBC Dragon Theo, last week phoned to remind me to collect an order I'd collected the week before.
The idea that the private sector is magically better than the public sector has taken root but is demonstrably false. The common factor is running on a shoestring works most of the time, perhaps nearly all of the time, but, as you say, lacks the capacity and knowledge to deal with edge cases.
And the OPs complaint is that the edge case hasn’t been automated away in way that allowed him to do so online.
Which thinking about the 200 bookmarks for various gov.uk sites doesn’t make sense - because those bookmarks exist due to how impossible it is to find the exact HMRC calculator you need to confirm x rather than y
Elon cut 80% of Twitter and it works better than ever
It really doesn't
It got rid of you, and your kind, as you all fled to that sad lefty ghetto Bluesky, where no one can hear your pathetic epicene whining except other people like you
Win win
having complete control over the timeline that is 1 way I view the world is a definite win for me.
The fact Musk and co can inject anything into your feed without you realizing is a problem that you haven’t actually grasped.
Are you joking? I love it. And all the appalling dreary lefties are on Bluesky moaning to no one. It’s fab
@ZiaYusufUK · 7h Reform will transform the civil service from a bloated, failed organisation hostile to the interests of the British people into a lean, performant machine that makes our country proud. 🇬🇧
On the face of it, this doesn't sound like anything to be worried about. What do you see as problematic with it?
The risk is the criteria will involve a politicisation of the civil service
Honestly it can't be worse than what we have today.
For example, my dad is executor for his best friend's will, he died a year or so ago. The estate value was barely over the IHT limit, the tax is all paid and yet a year later the probate office is still in jobsworth mode asking for the original will, even though multiple copies have been provided, they had the original previously and have sent it back but for whatever reason they need it again.
This is a tiny, tiny bit of officialdom needed for a nothing size estate where the tax has already all been paid and yet the probate office, the state, is making nonsense paperwork and hassle for my dad as executor and the beneficiaries who still can't close the book on the death of their father.
In what world is this a good job? How have the civil servants in the probate office helped anyone with their nonsense bureaucracy in this instance? Who benefits from them not just getting it done, there isn't going to be some mad revelation which means the estate will suddenly be worth 10x more and loads of tax will be payable. It's this kind of shit that's causing the nation to slow down, these useless bureaucrats sticking their noses in to justify their jobs and pensions and making life miserable for ordinary people.
Get rid of them all I say, 50% cuts in the bureaucracy and stop interfering in people's lives.
As I mentioned a couple of weeks back I'm going through this as executor for my own father. I expect to encounter much state stupidity along the way, including I am told a wait of 16 weeks from submission to probate being granted.
Today I've had a letter from the DWP. It says "yes, we owe the estate some money, please tell us where to send it along with a probate letter".
Except nowhere in the letter does it state a how much they owe. A number which I need in order to obtain said probate.
So, I will have to ring them up, and ask them to send another letter. At which point they will no doubt demand several reams of paperwork to prove I am permitted to see said value. Why not just send everything needed the first time? Even Yorkshire Water, yes, Yorkshire Water managed that.
I can of course calculate it roughly myself - approximately 1 week of state pension, a trivial amount in the grand scheme of things - but HMRC will want the exact figure in writing so that they can claim their 40%.
Ho hum. At least I'm not paying for a solicitor to chase this up (yet).
Is it any wonder I'm thinking of giving enough away to stop the government getting a penny?
FPT but from my experience it is perfectly acceptable to use estimated figures for the probate if you are held up on stuff, especially chickenfeed stuff, like this. Thje figures have to be stated as explicitly estimated. This is a godsend with stuff that is dragging on, especially small stuff. But do check the instructions on your probate paperwork (different for Scotland IIRC).
Plus stuff crops up even months or years after probate. Some is completely unexpected. E.g. my late mother had bought shares in the RBS flotation that caused all the trouble, and was paid compo years after her demise; she had life assurance policies on my dad's life which didn't pay out till he died a decade later; and it turned out that one life assurance company had underpaid by 14K, and so on - I only found out when it occurred to me when doing the final wrap up that the rate of return was suspiciously low ... so I didn't finally settle her estate (I think!) for 10 years after probate.
The main thing, as I understand it, is that HMRC get a sufficiently detailed probate valuation up front to assess whether IHT is liable or not and, if so, to get their chunk before anyone else does.
If there is no IHT payable, it's up to the executor to tell them if enough dosh comes in later to change the figures upward enough to hit the magic IHT level.
If IHT turns out to have been overpaid - usually if a house sells for less than the probate valuation - then you can claim the overpaid IHT back.
Edit: I forget HMRC's wording when they accept the proibate, but they basically say"okay, you've signed this, and that's done, but you have to let us know if anything happens to change the levels of tax due"
Thanks, yes - I expect an estimate will suffice but it would be nice to get things right. It just leaves more things to tie up when you'd much rather just get it over with.
I don't understand why they would send such a letter though - it seems to be deliberately unhelpful.
Maybe there is some legal nicety that I am missing, but it just gives the impression that one department doesn't talk to another. Who and what are these processes for?
I know the feeling, but -
Also: as well as the previous PS which you may or many not have missed, I'd emphasise that there are inevitably loose ends anyway, so it's not as if you won't have to deal with HMRC after the grant of probate. You will usually need to get in touch with HMRC anyway, to deal with tax during the executry period, eg dividends or bank interest that accrued after demise until the accounts were closed. That isn't part of the IHT calculation for the probate valuation (made as if on the day of demise) but forms part of the estate to account to beneficiaries, of course. But in my experience that's usually very simple.
As for keeping the probate valuation updated, I just updated the Excel spreadsheet I used for the probate application with anything new, using red ink, so I could keep track of the pluses and minuses and whether it changed the IHT. It didn't, in my cases, but was ready to use if HMRC ever asked.
Well, the good news is I now have a figure, although they will not send it in writing.
I rang the phone number on the letter, and was told it was the wrong part of DWP (not the 'bereavement service') and was given a different phone number. I rang the new phone number and got through to someone who after a helpful 5 minute discussion gave me a figure.
So that was 2 unnecessary phone calls.
None of the DWP staff were slacking or not doing their allocated job, but a bit of investment or thought in the process and it could have saved 10 minutes of their time and at least that of mine. Multiply that enough times...
As has been pointed out, sacking everyone immediately won't actually help. For a while it actually needs excess so there can be a few lazy sods that go round asking why the hell they are having to do X and them having access to someone with the capacity to fix it. 100% busy people are a hindrance to change.
I’m sorry I’m at a loss as to where time could be saved.
You called a generic helpline number where after confirming what you wanted they gave you the appropriate number
After a 5 minute chat that you said was helpful while they worked out what you wanted and calculated the figure they gave you the number
Yet you say it was a waste of 10 minutes.
Trust me it wasn’t because no department is going to put everything on line because that requires way, way more and money l then someone checking what you actually need and giving you a quick estimated figure to use.
If you want to be scared I can tell you how much creating a gov.uk service costs and it’s £x00,000 minimum
Compare that to a phone call that cost probably £5 to process and then work out if that call occurs 10,000 a year because unless it does there are better uses for automation
By putting the actual figure I needed on the original letter, no phone calls would have been needed. By putting the correct phone number on the original letter, only one phone call would have been needed.
I doubt either change would cost £x00,000.
[I'm aware this might not be the best example, but it is the one I encountered today]
“In the UK, unemployed foreigners who don't speak English are given some of the most sought after housing in London, ahead of English people, and without paying the cost.
I can't get over how absurd this is. Unemployed foreigners could live almost anywhere in the world, yet the system ensures they occupy what is among the most important housing in the world”
We do treat being allowed to settle in this country as a privilege. You have to go through a long and difficult process. To get citizenship takes even longer, and a big wodge of money.
YouGov is consistently giving slightly lower readings for Reform compared to most other pollsters. I'd be interested to know why this might be.
TSE posted about it earlier. They weight down non voters from last time (which is a key Ref support source) Pretty much inverse mirror of FoN approach
Yes, because non-voters are habitual non-voters and habitual non-voters do not vote.
Except when they do which is why even Nigel Farage thought Remain won the Brexit referendum.
As thing stand, the next GE is going to play along very similar lines to the referendum. There is a party with momentum fuelled by a distrust of the status quo, it could be a mistake to discount those who say they’re going to vote for them
“In the UK, unemployed foreigners who don't speak English are given some of the most sought after housing in London, ahead of English people, and without paying the cost.
I can't get over how absurd this is. Unemployed foreigners could live almost anywhere in the world, yet the system ensures they occupy what is among the most important housing in the world”
Only if they are refugees given leave to remain, we need to ensure they are genuinely in fear of their lives. Minorities at risk from the Taliban who helped western forces and Ukranians from the Russian occupied territories yes, others need to be reviewed
@ZiaYusufUK · 7h Reform will transform the civil service from a bloated, failed organisation hostile to the interests of the British people into a lean, performant machine that makes our country proud. 🇬🇧
On the face of it, this doesn't sound like anything to be worried about. What do you see as problematic with it?
The risk is the criteria will involve a politicisation of the civil service
Honestly it can't be worse than what we have today.
For example, my dad is executor for his best friend's will, he died a year or so ago. The estate value was barely over the IHT limit, the tax is all paid and yet a year later the probate office is still in jobsworth mode asking for the original will, even though multiple copies have been provided, they had the original previously and have sent it back but for whatever reason they need it again.
This is a tiny, tiny bit of officialdom needed for a nothing size estate where the tax has already all been paid and yet the probate office, the state, is making nonsense paperwork and hassle for my dad as executor and the beneficiaries who still can't close the book on the death of their father.
In what world is this a good job? How have the civil servants in the probate office helped anyone with their nonsense bureaucracy in this instance? Who benefits from them not just getting it done, there isn't going to be some mad revelation which means the estate will suddenly be worth 10x more and loads of tax will be payable. It's this kind of shit that's causing the nation to slow down, these useless bureaucrats sticking their noses in to justify their jobs and pensions and making life miserable for ordinary people.
Get rid of them all I say, 50% cuts in the bureaucracy and stop interfering in people's lives.
As I mentioned a couple of weeks back I'm going through this as executor for my own father. I expect to encounter much state stupidity along the way, including I am told a wait of 16 weeks from submission to probate being granted.
Today I've had a letter from the DWP. It says "yes, we owe the estate some money, please tell us where to send it along with a probate letter".
Except nowhere in the letter does it state a how much they owe. A number which I need in order to obtain said probate.
So, I will have to ring them up, and ask them to send another letter. At which point they will no doubt demand several reams of paperwork to prove I am permitted to see said value. Why not just send everything needed the first time? Even Yorkshire Water, yes, Yorkshire Water managed that.
I can of course calculate it roughly myself - approximately 1 week of state pension, a trivial amount in the grand scheme of things - but HMRC will want the exact figure in writing so that they can claim their 40%.
Ho hum. At least I'm not paying for a solicitor to chase this up (yet).
Is it any wonder I'm thinking of giving enough away to stop the government getting a penny?
FPT but from my experience it is perfectly acceptable to use estimated figures for the probate if you are held up on stuff, especially chickenfeed stuff, like this. Thje figures have to be stated as explicitly estimated. This is a godsend with stuff that is dragging on, especially small stuff. But do check the instructions on your probate paperwork (different for Scotland IIRC).
Plus stuff crops up even months or years after probate. Some is completely unexpected. E.g. my late mother had bought shares in the RBS flotation that caused all the trouble, and was paid compo years after her demise; she had life assurance policies on my dad's life which didn't pay out till he died a decade later; and it turned out that one life assurance company had underpaid by 14K, and so on - I only found out when it occurred to me when doing the final wrap up that the rate of return was suspiciously low ... so I didn't finally settle her estate (I think!) for 10 years after probate.
The main thing, as I understand it, is that HMRC get a sufficiently detailed probate valuation up front to assess whether IHT is liable or not and, if so, to get their chunk before anyone else does.
If there is no IHT payable, it's up to the executor to tell them if enough dosh comes in later to change the figures upward enough to hit the magic IHT level.
If IHT turns out to have been overpaid - usually if a house sells for less than the probate valuation - then you can claim the overpaid IHT back.
Edit: I forget HMRC's wording when they accept the proibate, but they basically say"okay, you've signed this, and that's done, but you have to let us know if anything happens to change the levels of tax due"
Thanks, yes - I expect an estimate will suffice but it would be nice to get things right. It just leaves more things to tie up when you'd much rather just get it over with.
I don't understand why they would send such a letter though - it seems to be deliberately unhelpful.
Maybe there is some legal nicety that I am missing, but it just gives the impression that one department doesn't talk to another. Who and what are these processes for?
I know the feeling, but -
Also: as well as the previous PS which you may or many not have missed, I'd emphasise that there are inevitably loose ends anyway, so it's not as if you won't have to deal with HMRC after the grant of probate. You will usually need to get in touch with HMRC anyway, to deal with tax during the executry period, eg dividends or bank interest that accrued after demise until the accounts were closed. That isn't part of the IHT calculation for the probate valuation (made as if on the day of demise) but forms part of the estate to account to beneficiaries, of course. But in my experience that's usually very simple.
As for keeping the probate valuation updated, I just updated the Excel spreadsheet I used for the probate application with anything new, using red ink, so I could keep track of the pluses and minuses and whether it changed the IHT. It didn't, in my cases, but was ready to use if HMRC ever asked.
Well, the good news is I now have a figure, although they will not send it in writing.
I rang the phone number on the letter, and was told it was the wrong part of DWP (not the 'bereavement service') and was given a different phone number. I rang the new phone number and got through to someone who after a helpful 5 minute discussion gave me a figure.
So that was 2 unnecessary phone calls.
None of the DWP staff were slacking or not doing their allocated job, but a bit of investment or thought in the process and it could have saved 10 minutes of their time and at least that of mine. Multiply that enough times...
As has been pointed out, sacking everyone immediately won't actually help. For a while it actually needs excess so there can be a few lazy sods that go round asking why the hell they are having to do X and them having access to someone with the capacity to fix it. 100% busy people are a hindrance to change.
I’m sorry I’m at a loss as to where time could be saved.
You called a generic helpline number where after confirming what you wanted they gave you the appropriate number
After a 5 minute chat that you said was helpful while they worked out what you wanted and calculated the figure they gave you the number
Yet you say it was a waste of 10 minutes.
Trust me it wasn’t because no department is going to put everything on line because that requires way, way more and money l then someone checking what you actually need and giving you a quick estimated figure to use.
If you want to be scared I can tell you how much creating a gov.uk service costs and it’s £x00,000 minimum
Compare that to a phone call that cost probably £5 to process and then work out if that call occurs 10,000 a year because unless it does there are better uses for automation
By putting the actual figure I needed on the original letter, no phone calls would have been needed. By putting the correct phone number on the original letter, only one phone call would have been needed.
I doubt either change would cost £x00,000.
[I'm aware this might not be the best example, but it is the one I encountered today]
Yep that’s a bad example because adding an address to a template letter isn’t difficult.
Adding the figure to that letter is a whole pile of work with date implications when I would have just added £1000 to my probate calculation, flagged it as estimated and got on with the task in hand of estimating the full estate value
Nothing in this country will change until we scrap the OBR which has the Treasury in chains.
Remember folks, we can't afford teachers but we can afford the poor economic results of the consequences of not enough teachers. We can't afford a functional criminal justice system but we can afford crime. Rinse and repeat at both local and national level.
No, the OBR is the only good idea George Osborne ever had. Scrap the OBR and you can add 100bp plus to bond yields.
Yup look at what happened to Liz Truss when she chose to ignore it. If Labour attempt to scrap the OBR it will be a very strong signal to markets that they intend to blow out the budget and gilt prices will crash. Indeed, when it looked like Starmer might have been thinking about replacing the useless Reeves with an even bigger spender and she cried in parliament we had a preview of what would happen if the government attempted to scrap the OBR.
Additionally as we head towards a likely Reform or Reform led government, the OBR is a body we will fundamentally need to keep them in check and not destroy the economy with massive spending rises and tax cuts like Liz Truss attempted or Trump is doing in the US.
Re. the discussion in the last thread, the Probate Officer will be employed by HM Courts and Tribunal Service i.e. the most well known under-funded part of public life in the last 20 years. It isn’t the “civil service” as is commonly understood.
Isn't it? That's how I understood the "civil service"!
I was puzzled on the last thread by a complaint that a government service was slow and therefore the solution proposed was to cut staff. How is that going to make the service better?
Coz they will be terrified they’ll be the next to go in the next round of cuts. Put the fear of god in them
Give them hard targets to meet and if they don’t meet them - gone
This is the new £350m for the NHS delusion.
It’s really not. We are all going to experience the “fear of god” in the next few years, in regards to our careers and crafts - the civil service will and should be no exception. We should utilise the moment to make them WORK
“In the UK, unemployed foreigners who don't speak English are given some of the most sought after housing in London, ahead of English people, and without paying the cost.
I can't get over how absurd this is. Unemployed foreigners could live almost anywhere in the world, yet the system ensures they occupy what is among the most important housing in the world”
Only if they are refugees given leave to remain, we need to ensure they are genuinely in fear of their lives. Minorities at risk from the Taliban who helped western forces and Ukranians from the Russian occupied territories yes, others need to be reviewed
No, they need to be deported. 100,000s of them
And while we’re doing that impose the rule that no refugee or asylum seeker gets free housing in london. It is absurd. They are living in houses which Britons can only dream of. And the Britons are PAYING THEM to live there for free
@ZiaYusufUK · 7h Reform will transform the civil service from a bloated, failed organisation hostile to the interests of the British people into a lean, performant machine that makes our country proud. 🇬🇧
On the face of it, this doesn't sound like anything to be worried about. What do you see as problematic with it?
The risk is the criteria will involve a politicisation of the civil service
Honestly it can't be worse than what we have today.
For example, my dad is executor for his best friend's will, he died a year or so ago. The estate value was barely over the IHT limit, the tax is all paid and yet a year later the probate office is still in jobsworth mode asking for the original will, even though multiple copies have been provided, they had the original previously and have sent it back but for whatever reason they need it again.
This is a tiny, tiny bit of officialdom needed for a nothing size estate where the tax has already all been paid and yet the probate office, the state, is making nonsense paperwork and hassle for my dad as executor and the beneficiaries who still can't close the book on the death of their father.
In what world is this a good job? How have the civil servants in the probate office helped anyone with their nonsense bureaucracy in this instance? Who benefits from them not just getting it done, there isn't going to be some mad revelation which means the estate will suddenly be worth 10x more and loads of tax will be payable. It's this kind of shit that's causing the nation to slow down, these useless bureaucrats sticking their noses in to justify their jobs and pensions and making life miserable for ordinary people.
Get rid of them all I say, 50% cuts in the bureaucracy and stop interfering in people's lives.
As I mentioned a couple of weeks back I'm going through this as executor for my own father. I expect to encounter much state stupidity along the way, including I am told a wait of 16 weeks from submission to probate being granted.
Today I've had a letter from the DWP. It says "yes, we owe the estate some money, please tell us where to send it along with a probate letter".
Except nowhere in the letter does it state a how much they owe. A number which I need in order to obtain said probate.
So, I will have to ring them up, and ask them to send another letter. At which point they will no doubt demand several reams of paperwork to prove I am permitted to see said value. Why not just send everything needed the first time? Even Yorkshire Water, yes, Yorkshire Water managed that.
I can of course calculate it roughly myself - approximately 1 week of state pension, a trivial amount in the grand scheme of things - but HMRC will want the exact figure in writing so that they can claim their 40%.
Ho hum. At least I'm not paying for a solicitor to chase this up (yet).
Is it any wonder I'm thinking of giving enough away to stop the government getting a penny?
FPT but from my experience it is perfectly acceptable to use estimated figures for the probate if you are held up on stuff, especially chickenfeed stuff, like this. Thje figures have to be stated as explicitly estimated. This is a godsend with stuff that is dragging on, especially small stuff. But do check the instructions on your probate paperwork (different for Scotland IIRC).
Plus stuff crops up even months or years after probate. Some is completely unexpected. E.g. my late mother had bought shares in the RBS flotation that caused all the trouble, and was paid compo years after her demise; she had life assurance policies on my dad's life which didn't pay out till he died a decade later; and it turned out that one life assurance company had underpaid by 14K, and so on - I only found out when it occurred to me when doing the final wrap up that the rate of return was suspiciously low ... so I didn't finally settle her estate (I think!) for 10 years after probate.
The main thing, as I understand it, is that HMRC get a sufficiently detailed probate valuation up front to assess whether IHT is liable or not and, if so, to get their chunk before anyone else does.
If there is no IHT payable, it's up to the executor to tell them if enough dosh comes in later to change the figures upward enough to hit the magic IHT level.
If IHT turns out to have been overpaid - usually if a house sells for less than the probate valuation - then you can claim the overpaid IHT back.
Edit: I forget HMRC's wording when they accept the proibate, but they basically say"okay, you've signed this, and that's done, but you have to let us know if anything happens to change the levels of tax due"
Thanks, yes - I expect an estimate will suffice but it would be nice to get things right. It just leaves more things to tie up when you'd much rather just get it over with.
I don't understand why they would send such a letter though - it seems to be deliberately unhelpful.
Maybe there is some legal nicety that I am missing, but it just gives the impression that one department doesn't talk to another. Who and what are these processes for?
I know the feeling, but -
Also: as well as the previous PS which you may or many not have missed, I'd emphasise that there are inevitably loose ends anyway, so it's not as if you won't have to deal with HMRC after the grant of probate. You will usually need to get in touch with HMRC anyway, to deal with tax during the executry period, eg dividends or bank interest that accrued after demise until the accounts were closed. That isn't part of the IHT calculation for the probate valuation (made as if on the day of demise) but forms part of the estate to account to beneficiaries, of course. But in my experience that's usually very simple.
As for keeping the probate valuation updated, I just updated the Excel spreadsheet I used for the probate application with anything new, using red ink, so I could keep track of the pluses and minuses and whether it changed the IHT. It didn't, in my cases, but was ready to use if HMRC ever asked.
Well, the good news is I now have a figure, although they will not send it in writing.
I rang the phone number on the letter, and was told it was the wrong part of DWP (not the 'bereavement service') and was given a different phone number. I rang the new phone number and got through to someone who after a helpful 5 minute discussion gave me a figure.
So that was 2 unnecessary phone calls.
None of the DWP staff were slacking or not doing their allocated job, but a bit of investment or thought in the process and it could have saved 10 minutes of their time and at least that of mine. Multiply that enough times...
As has been pointed out, sacking everyone immediately won't actually help. For a while it actually needs excess so there can be a few lazy sods that go round asking why the hell they are having to do X and them having access to someone with the capacity to fix it. 100% busy people are a hindrance to change.
I’m sorry I’m at a loss as to where time could be saved.
You called a generic helpline number where after confirming what you wanted they gave you the appropriate number
After a 5 minute chat that you said was helpful while they worked out what you wanted and calculated the figure they gave you the number
Yet you say it was a waste of 10 minutes.
Trust me it wasn’t because no department is going to put everything on line because that requires way, way more and money l then someone checking what you actually need and giving you a quick estimated figure to use.
If you want to be scared I can tell you how much creating a gov.uk service costs and it’s £x00,000 minimum
Compare that to a phone call that cost probably £5 to process and then work out if that call occurs 10,000 a year because unless it does there are better uses for automation
By putting the actual figure I needed on the original letter, no phone calls would have been needed. By putting the correct phone number on the original letter, only one phone call would have been needed.
I doubt either change would cost £x00,000.
[I'm aware this might not be the best example, but it is the one I encountered today]
Yep that’s a bad example because adding an address to a template letter isn’t difficult.
Adding the figure to that letter is a whole pile of work with date implications when I would have just added £1000 to my probate calculation, flagged it as estimated and got on with the task in hand of estimating the full estate value
How can it be a big pile of work when
a) The letter said we owe you money b) The person on the phone was able to tell me how much straight away
Anyway, I'm not going to argue any more about this - as I say, it was only what I encountered today.
Comments
So we have a mystery that definitely needs to be solved attached to a generic statement that it employs more people then it used at a random point in the past - and the detail we actually require isn’t available
It's not the same as the CDU/CSU refusing to work with AfD or Chega and the PSD in Portugal. It's more akin to VOX and PP in Spain though now the "hard right" party has twice as many seats as the centre-right party in Norway so the balance on the "Blue" side has shifted.
I do wonder if it was wise for Phillipson to stand as a member of the cabinet and what happens if she loses ?
EDIT: Her finest hour...
She was heavily criticised for apparently suggesting that Labour's election pledges were liable to be broken: in talking about the EdStone, she commented: "I don't think anyone is suggesting that the fact that he's carved them into stone means that he is absolutely not going to break them or anything like that." She said that she had been quoted out of context.
Remember folks, we can't afford teachers but we can afford the poor economic results of the consequences of not enough teachers. We can't afford a functional criminal justice system but we can afford crime. Rinse and repeat at both local and national level.
When one of the first acts of a PM in a national emergency is to suspend procurement processes then I'd say the corruption question is settled.
That might be it
Otherwise, why on earth would any MP vote for their own ejection from Parliament years before they legally have to face the electorate?
I could write fanfiction that would lead to those kind of outcomes, but none of it would be particularly likely to happen.
We can't afford to invest - therefore nothing will ever improve...
Tweet 'we have to start listening' then turn off replies to that tweet.
https://x.com/EmilyThornberry/status/1964628680602464747
If you want things to work better, I wouldn't be starting from here, Sir. But anyone who thinks that mass experimental sackings are the answer is just showing that they are a chump who works in an organisation where temporary collapse is an option, becuase their job isn't actually all that important.
Unfortunate metaphor considering the judgement that Paris is currently displaying.
Isn't Bell Ribeiro-Addy also running? Burgon is marshaling the SCG behind her
The government is free to ignore the OBR, it’s also free to issue a triple-lock style guarantee that the big three income taxes will be set at the requisite level to minimise the budget deficit at whatever level is deemed appropriate.
That it does not do these things is by choice, not necessity.
We already have 100% debt to GDP. Interest spending exceeds that of education or criminal justice already and more borrowing will make that worse.
The OBR is only reporting on whether the government meets its own rules - it can change the rules if it wishes. In fact, the rules were last changed less than 12 months ago.
Silly to scapegoat the OBR.
I believe we have now tested to destruction the idea that diversity hires are better just because
The best Starmer can hope for is a Critical Friend, with as much emphasis on the "Friend" bit as possible. Not my party, don't understand the workings, but they all feel like they fall in that category in a way that a SCG group candidate wouldn't.
What a wasted administration that was, oozing arrogance and complacency.
1.) Minister wants improvement in massive flagship service without any increase in funding or staff
2.) Department identifies service which is resource heavy but used by comparatively few people and proposed cutting it.
3.) The few people who rely on that service kick up an almighty stink which leads to disobliging coverage in the press
4.) Minister runs for cover and tells the department to keep funding the service whilst still demanding the improvements in the flagship service.
Only trouble is I seem to have forgotten how to walk.. or my right foot has. I can't seem to bend my foot and pick my heel up. I'm sure it'll come back to me; I've had plenty of practice
While I was in waiting area one at the fracture clinic, I noticed a very neatly handwritten notice on the noticeboard: "Water drinking machine in Waiting Area Two"
When I got to waiting area two I was most disappointed, though not at all surprised, to discover that it was just a drinking water dispenser, not a machine that drank water
The analysis and conclusion that scrapping the OBR is the solution ignores the issue of having to choose between excellent governmental aims with a finite resource. The OBR is not telling government to avoid spending on teachers and criminal justice. The OBR is saying that unless state finances are run effectively you get into an unmanageable crisis.
SFAICS there is not a single item of government expenditure about which there is agreement that it should fall. Almost all areas command agreement that expenditure should rise.
In what sense does the OBR put the Treasury in chains?
It's why I think the NHS is the National Healthcare Prevention Service - the number of times doctors and other staff have told me they are going round the system to get something done, rather than the system helping them treat patients...
Ergonomic is not a dirty word, Blackadder. Unlike "Crevice"
https://bsky.app/profile/alexpartridge87.bsky.social/post/3lyfh62zdhs2x
In the City to hear Kemi Badenoch set out her offer to work with Keir Starmer in the “national interest” to cut welfare spending
Badenoch went to a comp and Sussex Uni, neither public school, let alone major public school, nor Oxbridge
The bad news is still that if you keep spending more than taxation for long enough, interest payments on debt will start swallowing all the money.
Farage would therefore need the confidence and supply of the forecast 44 Tory MPs remaining to become PM, if they abstained then he could still become PM but would need Tory support to pass any bills
After all the hype of 357 billion people signing up to the website it all goes cold. We might get a name at a possible 'mid Autumn' foundation conference (that a week and a half into Autumn hasnt been announced to allow people to plan attendance)
Meanwhile Polanski hoovers up the left/gaza vote. If hes ruthless he should strangle these ridiculous fruits at birth.
NEW: Weekly YouGov voting intention poll for The Times/Sky News
Reform goes backward after party conference
RFM 27% (-2)
LAB 22% (+2)
CON 17% (=)
LDEM 15% (=)
GRN 10% (+2)
What’s not to love?
Do the same for the layabout civil servants eating biscuits at home
https://x.com/david_ornstein/status/1965330883596222716?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q
In business when you want to cut expenditure you usually invest. A new computer system to reduce opex. New fridges in a convenience store to cut energy bills. We need to *significantly* cut our operating expenses as a nation. We need to invest in new things to save us money but we can't do so because political stupidity and OBR rules.
We can't raise taxes without tanking economic output further. We can't keep borrowing to throw money on bonfires like the NHS. But to fix things like the NHS we need to invest a little more on the replacements to then save significantly.
Again I make the point - we already spend more by not spending the money than we save. You can't just cut the emergency spending created by the existing cuts - that will cost even more. So we need to borrow to invest, and gain the return on that investment. You know, capitalism.
Our problem is economic wazzockry and the OBR has become the knot at the heart of this.
I know it's very boring but ultimately the issue is politicians don't have the incentives to act in the long-term interests of the country. It's that simple.
I am by no means proposing to just keep borrowing and spending, I'm proposing to borrow to invest so that we can stop borrowing to bonfire money on things like the vast NHS bureaucracy.
Ignorance is just as rampant when it comes to how the government spends its money. If you ask people what government spends the most money on then among the top five answers are first the NHS – a good guess. But these are then followed in descending order by “spending on migrants and asylum seekers”, debt interest, MPs’ expenses and international aid. In reality, MPs’ expenses make up about 0.01% of public spending. And yet getting on for a quarter of the population think they represent one of the top three items of expenditure.
https://portland-communications.com/uk-politics/when-it-comes-to-the-nations-finances-ignorance-can-no-longer-be-bliss/
This was a bad enough problem before we all started getting our news perfectly tailored to our prejudices .
“Which side”
“Right I guess… what’s the difference”
“Mash or baked potato…”
The UK's problem is a failure to address the fiscal costs of ageing. Osborne has some responsibility here, if course, owing to the disastrous triple lock. Labour too with the gimmick of the winter fuel allowance. The public are to blame too for voting against anyone who dares try to address the issue.
Because we don't address the underlying issue, our fiscal position worsens year by year and we keep trying to cut spending on everything else or tax anything that moves. The government keeps finding itself in a bind, coming up against its own fiscal rules that it keeps trying to meet by the smallest of margins. Blaming the OBR is like a drunk driver blaming the breathalyzer.
The stats also show that the vast majority of civil servants are tied up in DWP/HMRC/Probation and similar roles. I think there is scope for a lot of automation there, but there temptation will be instead to do more instead of cutting costs.
Thornberry used the fact her parents had split up and down at heel credentials before, even though her Dad was Head of the UN or something
I rang the phone number on the letter, and was told it was the wrong part of DWP (not the 'bereavement service') and was given a different phone number. I rang the new phone number and got through to someone who after a helpful 5 minute discussion gave me a figure.
So that was 2 unnecessary phone calls.
None of the DWP staff were slacking or not doing their allocated job, but a bit of investment or thought in the process and it could have saved 10 minutes of their time and at least that of mine. Multiply that enough times...
As has been pointed out, sacking everyone immediately won't actually help. For a while it actually needs excess so there can be a few lazy sods that go round asking why the hell they are having to do X and them having access to someone with the capacity to fix it. 100% busy people are a hindrance to change.
https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/construction-to-start-next-year-on-part-of-the-crossrail-2-railway-83248/
Never sure about these 'we can help' opposition tactics
Hold that thought! Suggestions Lucy Powell may now be "reconsidering" having earlier decided to go for it ...
In what way is the OBR stopping the government adjusting its priorities in such a way?
And while increasing the use of borrowing for more effective investment, what and where are the operational cuts coming from? They have to be large.
We are all familiar with retail's great line 'The More You Spend the More You Save' but you need to cash this out in a bit of detail. I think this would be top of the liost of things the PM and the CoE would like to know.
Pretty much inverse mirror of FoN approach
You called a generic helpline number where after confirming what you wanted they gave you the appropriate number
After a 5 minute chat that you said was helpful while they worked out what you wanted and calculated the figure they gave you the number
Yet you say it was a waste of 10 minutes.
Trust me it wasn’t because no department is going to put everything on line because that requires way, way more and money l then someone checking what you actually need and giving you a quick estimated figure to use.
If you want to be scared I can tell you how much creating a gov.uk service costs and it’s £x00,000 minimum
Compare that to a phone call that cost probably £5 to process and then work out if that call occurs 10,000 a year because unless it does there are better uses for automation
Win win
The fact Musk and co can inject anything into your feed without you realizing is a problem that you haven’t actually grasped.
Contrary to most on here, I actually quite like Lucy Powell.
Rymans, headed by top BBC Dragon Theo, last week phoned to remind me to collect an order I'd collected the week before.
The idea that the private sector is magically better than the public sector has taken root but is demonstrably false. The common factor is running on a shoestring works most of the time, perhaps nearly all of the time, but, as you say, lacks the capacity and knowledge to deal with edge cases.
Last night I sat through three hours of Labour and Lib Dem MPs advocating for migrants.
That is not their job. Their job is to do what’s best for the British people.
Being allowed to settle in this country is a privilege and we should treat it that way.
https://x.com/katie_lam_mp/status/1965340658597855737?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q
Which thinking about the 200 bookmarks for various gov.uk sites doesn’t make sense - because those bookmarks exist due to how impossible it is to find the exact HMRC calculator you need to confirm x rather than y
Except when they do which is why even Nigel Farage thought Remain won the Brexit referendum.
By putting the correct phone number on the original letter, only one phone call would have been needed.
I doubt either change would cost £x00,000.
[I'm aware this might not be the best example, but it is the one I encountered today]
“In the UK, unemployed foreigners who don't speak English are given some of the most sought after housing in London, ahead of English people, and without paying the cost.
I can't get over how absurd this is. Unemployed foreigners could live almost anywhere in the world, yet the system ensures they occupy what is among the most important housing in the world”
https://x.com/jonatanpallesen/status/1965292080839729230?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw
Adding the figure to that letter is a whole pile of work with date implications when I would have just added £1000 to my probate calculation, flagged it as estimated and got on with the task in hand of estimating the full estate value
Additionally as we head towards a likely Reform or Reform led government, the OBR is a body we will fundamentally need to keep them in check and not destroy the economy with massive spending rises and tax cuts like Liz Truss attempted or Trump is doing in the US.
And while we’re doing that impose the rule that no refugee or asylum seeker gets free housing in london. It is absurd. They are living in houses which Britons can only dream of. And the Britons are PAYING THEM to live there for free
a) The letter said we owe you money
b) The person on the phone was able to tell me how much straight away
Anyway, I'm not going to argue any more about this - as I say, it was only what I encountered today.