Not civil, and not providing a service

Civil servants want to ‘work’ from home and, now that winter is setting in and energy prices have taken a hike, they want their heating bills paid for. You read that right the first time; they want both to work at home and be paid extra for doing so. Bless their little cotton socks, although they may be better off with thick woollen ones if they want to keep warm. This is like someone robbing your house and, in the extremely unlikely event that they are caught by the police, expecting you to cover their legal expenses.

Applying the ‘wait a wee minute’ test to this shows just how unjustified it is. For a start, what about the savings that they will be making? According to the Trades Union Council (TUC) (remember them? They were big in the 1970s) the average time it takes people in the UK—and civil servants are people—to commute to work is 59 minutes at a cost of £1,738 annually. That is the average commute and, while I cannot put my hands on anything specific, it became apparent during the Covid inspired lockdown that many in the civil service lived well away from London and undoubtedly commuted a great deal longer than 59 minutes. No mention of that.

Then, the TUC continues, the effect of all this commuting includes: ‘stress, anxiety, increased absence, and reduced productivity’ adding that the situation can be improved by offering ‘Flexible or remote working’. ‘Reduced productivity’ juxtaposed against ‘increased absence ‘and ‘remote working’ is a good one. Since lockdown and the institutionalisation of working from home, the productivity of the civil service has plummeted. You don’t need Comedy Central when you have the TUC.

Take passport processing, a recent piece of verbal diarrhoea from HM Passport Office informs us: ‘There is no backlog in passport processing as a result of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. However, we are now seeing unprecedented demand as more than 5 million people delayed applying for passports during COVID-19 because of restrictions in international travel.’ I don’t know about you, but that reads suspiciously like a ‘backlog’ to me.

Then, there are driving licences. There seems to have been some progress with ordinary applications and, indeed, my daughter received her new driving licence the morning after she submitted her change of address details online. In fact, she received it prior to sending in her old one cut in two as instructed on the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) website, which the website assures you will not happen. However, if you have a medical condition that needs to be declared the DVLA: ‘is still failing to process medical driving licence applications in the timeframe it achieved prior to the Covid-19 pandemic’. The question surely arises as to why?

Then there is that inaptly named section of the Civil Service called Border Force who seem to have no force, or wilfully refuse to use it. With respect to borders, they merely stand on the beaches of the South East of England to ensure that the invading hordes of illegal immigrants know what to aim for. There’s always a hot cup of tea, a warm blanket, a hotel booking and an instruction sheet for claiming benefits in their own language waiting for them. They ought to be called ‘Boarder’ Force.

The civil service is made up of a bewildering array of departments. Check them out and see how many you can name. I did not recognise many of them which suggests that they have little impact on my life and, therefore, probably do not do anything especially useful. I did recognise a few, though, and amongst these were the Department of Health & Social Security (responsible for the NHS which is doing so well), The Department for Education (responsible for schools which do many things to the exclusion of education) and the Department for Transport (driven on a motorway or taken a train lately?). And there are over half a million of these people who make nothing, do little and whose average salary is £30,000 annually. Did I mention that they want to be allowed to carry on working from home and have us contribute to their heating costs? Don’t make me laugh.

Roger Watson is a retired academic, editor and writer. He is a columnist with Unity News Network and writes regularly for a range of conservative journals including The Salisbury Review and The European Conservative. He has travelled and worked extensively in the Far East and the Middle East. He lives in Kingston upon Hull, UK.