David Lock

Some great quotes here

BBC NEWS | Politics | Many civil servants 'deserve axe'


The ex-CBI chief described being a junior minister as "one of the most dehumanising and depersonalising experiences" anyone could have.

dl

jacrobat

They probably wanted to put him on a diet.

warrenm2

My mate is a civil servant and agrees, clearly incompetent people are still there year after year despite getting the lowest ratings on performance reviews

cster

It is the nature of the beast unfortunately.
No threat of sack combined with a self agrandising empire-building culture adds up to mass wastage.
One can only hope that the current economic malaise will force some radical prunage of the public services.
It would meet with some almighty resistance though.
I might add I'm no great believer in socialism.

JonMc

iTrader: (51)

I have had many civil servants work for me in the past. As in any walk of life you get good ones and bad ones. The issue with the civil service is rules and regulations. Because the governments has to be seen to prim and proper, you cannot reward the good one by allowing them to recieve gifts from industry etc (as you would in industry - free tickets to football, rugby F1 etc) as this is seen as corrupt, so these people walk into a job outside the civil service where they get their just rewards. Again rules make it nigh on impossible to get rid of the bad ones. I had 2 cases of PROVEN gross misconduct, and because of the rules and regs that civil service have I could not sack these people, I had to initiate restoring efficiency action. These people understand the difficulties we face in sacking them and also how to exploit every loop-hole and we end up stuck with them as they ride the gravy train.

But to reiterate, there are good ones out there, some of them don't do it for the money or the reward, but just because they want to serve their country. It is the same in all walks of public service life.