Daily Prompt: Pants on Fire

Friday 22nd April  was the end of my penultimate week working in Local Government.  Monday the following week was the beginning of my last week in paid employment.  Not a full week however because it started with a bank holiday Easter Monday and finished with a Royal wedding and a day off work for everyone.  And not much in between as it happened because with accrued annual leave it meant that I had completed my last shift at South Holland District Council.

The following week I became an unemployment statistic and didn’t need that old suit anymore!

The Reasons not to Trust politicians

At the start of the UK political party conference season it appears that there is nothing but bad news for Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats.

Should we be surprised?

In 2010 the UK electorate, tired of extreme politics and disillusioned by Labour (the lies of Blair and the incompetence of Brown) did something new and tried to break the mould of UK see-saw party politics.  The electorate knew that it wanted rid of Gordon Brown but it was not prepared to give the next prime minister an overwhelming endorsement. Across the whole country and across the political spectrum, in an uncoordinated electoral strategy they denied a majority to either party by transferring their votes to what they thought was the centre ground of politics – the Liberal Democrats.

The former Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan once said, ‘There are times, perhaps once every thirty years, when there is a sea change in politics. It then does not matter what you say or what you do. There is a shift in what the public wants and what it approves of.”

The UK electorate thought that Clegg was someone to trust and so they gave him and his party a unique opportunity to hold the balance of power, to prevent extremism, at least in the short term, and govern in the national interest.  This was the clear message from the electorate, surely no one could misinterpret it, they didn’t want to give outright power to any one party and they thought Clegg was the man to make this a reality.

Unfortunately as soon as the polls closed, the ballot boxes emptied and the votes counted the Liberal Democrats forgot all their promises and in greedy pursuit of the power that had been denied to them for a hundred years and to satisfy personal ambition completely missed the point the electorate had made and negotiated to become part of a Government with an extreme right wing agenda.

Broken political promises are nothing new but ushered in by the Liberal-Democrats the coalition government has brought betrayals of manifesto commitments that, in number and scale, are unprecedented in British politics.  The Conservative Party did not have a mandate to implement their radical fiscal and economic policies but seduced Clegg into Government so that they could turn a blind eye to the electoral message.

If the political parties won’t pay attention to the electorate then what we need are legislative checks and balances.  A party without a clear majority should not be allowed to implement a radical programme of policies based on extreme party doctrine even with the assistance of coalition partners – no, especially with the assistance of duped coalition partners.  The electorate didn’t want the Tories to rule (they only achieved 36.1% of the vote) in the interests of the privileged few they wanted a Government that ruled in the interests of the majority.

Actually, I personally find it incredulous that the Conservatives can get anywhere near control of Government.  They represent the interests of only a fraction of the country.  The Labour Party should be the automatic party of Government.  They achieve power through false promises and lies and people who shouldn’t be voting for them for some reason vote for them.  I previously worked with people who voted Conservative and then complained when they lost their jobs in the Tory attack on public services.  They only had themselves to blame!

The General Election of 2010 will go down in history books as a missed opportunity.  The electorate almost achieved their objective but they failed to take into account the duplicitous nature of politicians who refused to receive the message that they were being given.  The Prime Minister David Cameron said that the UK’s first coalition in decades marked a “historic and seismic shift” in British politics, sadly it did nothing of the sort because the high handed Tories have presumed to govern in exactly the way the electorate told them not to!

This is a shame and cause for some despondency because I don’t believe the electorate will be so generous or as imaginative in 2015 when there will be a certain return to traditional extreme politics that we are used to, but, on the positive side at least this will be more honest because what we have now is right wing politics implemented through betrayal and deceit.

What is becoming clear is that Nick Clegg is finished and probably so are the Liberal-Democrats, they will get their just deserts when the electorate gets the opportunity to pass judgement on their blatant betrayal of trust and they will be swept away in a electoral tsunami which will return us to the two party system that we have suffered for three hundred years.  They will live to regret not embracing the alternative to coalition, which was to support the Tories on an issue-by-issue basis.  As for Clegg himself, there will be no justice and instead of the shame and obscurity he deserves he will probably be rewarded with a Knighthood and a lucrative job somewhere in Brussels!

Selfseekers and Politicians

On 27^th July 1965 Edward Heath became leader of the Conservative Party and so began the period when he and Harold Wilson alternated occupancy of 10, Downing Street.  Although these two party leaders certainly didn’t have the stature of Gladstone and Disraeli it is just about the last time in British politics when the two party leaders were almost evenly matched and this generated an interest in politics that has been sadly lacking since.  Probably the best thing about Heath and Wilson was the Mike Yarwood show!

Around about 1970, to my eternal shame, I even joined the Young Conservatives but I like to think that I quickly came to my senses and I didn’t renew my subscription when it ran out at the end of the first year.

Since that time I have had a complete disregard for politics and politicians but like everyone else has had to suffer a succession of greedy and incompetent Prime Ministers none of whom have contributed anything of value to our society.  Thatcher destroyed our industrial power base to transfer false wealth to her husband and other Tory cronies, Blair lied his way through ten years of power, Brown will probably go down in history as Britain’s worst ever Prime Minister and Cameron is currently setting about destroying the public sector and its services whilst lining the pockets of the bankers and his private sector pals.

I’ve forgotten one of course, John Major, he was ok – he liked cricket!

Cameron’s Scrapheap

Friday 22nd April 2011 was the end of my penultimate week working in Local Government.  Monday the following week was the beginning of my last week in paid employment.  Not a full week however because it started with a bank holiday Easter Monday and finished with a Royal wedding and a day off work for everyone.  And not much in between as it happened because with accrued annual leave it meant that I had completed my last shift at South Holland District Council.

I worked there for ten years and in truth it was a wonderful place to work, it was satisfying and rewarding and in the time that I was there I  had the privilege to work with an excellent bunch of people and I am proud to have been associated with an organisation that achieved an external inspection status of excellent.

I had hoped to work there for a while longer but then came the economic downturn which made life difficult for everyone followed by the biggest disaster to befall the country since 1997 and the election of a Government with a determination to make the public sector pay dearly for all of the failings of the commercial sector, the banks and their legions of cronies amongst the massively over rated private sector business classes.

And so it sems that everything worthwhile in our society must suffer.  Not just Local Government of course but the National Health Service, the Police and the state education system as well.

So with careers and reputations destroyed in a tsunami of  Tory dogma  hundreds, thousands, of committed public servants are swept away and sacrificed on Cameron’s scrapheap in a vicious attack to deliver an ideology of smaller government achieved through a crude and blood-thirsty process by little people whose bloated personal ambition exceeds their own modest abilities.

The last three months had been difficult.  Obliged to work an extended notice but obviously not part of the future, increasingly excluded from the present and the past all but air-brushed away as ten years work left the building in green recycling bags or suffered the ultimate indignity of going through the shredder!

And so began a different life starting with a ‘gap year’.  Except for a five week break in 2000 when I was made redundant in a previous job I have worked continuously since I left University in June 1975 so I  belatedly took the break that most people now seem to take immediately after study.  I will probably want to work again at some point but the problem with that is that what I do now is all I really know how to do and what I know is that I don’t want to do it anymore!

The following week I became an unemployment statistic and didn’t need that old suit anymore!

The Privatisation of Public Services

On 11^th February 1975 the Conservative Party choose Margaret Thatcher as their new leader and when she eventually became the first woman Prime Minister the country was engulfed in a wave of right wing extremism that as usual picked on local government for a real good kicking.

In the 1980s and 1990s because Margaret Thatcher thought that the private sector was, by definition, much more competent and efficient in these matters than the public sector and local authorities were required to offer certain services for open competition under what was called ‘Compulsory Competitive Tendering’.  If only she had known the truth – ‘Compusory Competitive Thieving’ would have been a more appropriate project title!

Rubbish collection was one of these services and so that the waste management companies could cope with all the new work and local authorities couldn’t cheat, the Government set out a phased three year programme and one by one local authority services were thrown into a private sector pond full of hungry piranha ready to strip the flesh off of public services, cynically reduce service standards and hopefully get fat at the council tax payer’s expense. As soon as the waste management companies spotted a contract they took a liking to they would express an interest, obtain the tender documents and specifications and go to work sharpening their pencils.

This was never a scientific process and the first thing the tendering manager did was to get up early one Monday morning and sit outside the council depot and count the dustcarts and the number of men in them as they left to go to work.  And that was about all there was to it and half an hour later over a bacon butty and a cup of tea he would write this down on the back of a fag packet and by mid morning he would have a price in his head.  Nothing else in his head, just the price!  Sometimes, if he was being especially thorough, he would go back on Tuesday morning just to check his calculations but this would be quite unusual.

The tendering manager at Cory Environmental was a man called Tony Palmer and for Tony arriving at the tender price was gloriously simple.  If the Council had ten refuse collection rounds, the company would do it with nine, and just in case the Council could do it for nine then they would do it with eight so that would immediately undercut the Council price by 20%.  Just to make absolutely certain they would find out how much a refuse collector was paid each week and then they would reduce that by 20% as well.  If the Council had three mechanics to keep the fleet running they would do it with two and so on and so on. There was no way these boys could fail to win tenders!

I worked for the private sector waste management companies for ten years between 1990 and 2000 and then thankfully was able to return to local government where services are provided properly through direct delivery so imagine my horror when ‘son of Thatcher’ David Cameron became Conservative Prime Minister in 2010 and has embarked on a similar dismantling of public services and twenty years after my first painful experience in the incompetent world of the private sector I find myself facing the same prospect all over again.

A Life in a Year – 27th July, Selfseekers and Politicians

On 27^th July 1965 Edward Heath became leader of the Conservative Party and so began the period when he and Harold Wilson alternated occupancy of 10, Downing Street.  Although these two party leaders certainly didn’t have the stature of Gladstone and Disraeli it is just about the last time in British politics when the two party leaders were almost evenly matched and this generated an interest in politics that has been sadly lacking since.  Probably the best thing about Heath and Wilson was the Mike Yarwood show!

Around about 1970, to my eternal shame, I even joined the Young Conservatives but I like to think that I quickly came to my senses and I didn’t renew my subscription when it ran out at the end of the first year.

Since that time I have had a complete disregard for politics and politicians but like everyone else has had to suffer a succession of greedy and incompetent prime ministers none of whom have contributed anything of value to our society.  Thatcher destroyed our industrial power base to transfer false wealth to her husband and other Tory cronies, Blair lied his way through ten years of power, Brown will probably go down in history as Britain’s worst ever Prime Minister and Cameron is currently setting about destroying the public sector and its services whilst lining the pockets of the bankers and his private sector pals. 

I’ve forgotten one of course, John Major, he was ok – he liked cricket!

A Life in a Year – 9th June, The Political Cycle and Public Services

I have discovered that if one thing is life is true it is that everything happens in cycles.  Take British politics for example – there are two main parties in the United Kingdom and every ten years or so they alternate in Government and everything changes.

If, like me, your career is in the public sector times are generally good when the Labour Party is in power when there is a wave of investment in state services and not so good however when the Conservative Party gets an election victory and takes up occupation in Whitehall. 

As a small side observation it’s a strange thing but many people who work in the Health Service and the Police and the schools actually vote Conservative and personally I find that a bizarre thing to do!

On 9^th June 1983 the Conservative Party won the General Election and Margaret Thatcher became the first woman Prime Minister and the country was engulfed in a wave of public sector bashing that as usual picked on local government for a real good kicking.

In the 1980s and 1990s the Tories thought that the private sector was, by definition, much more competent and efficient in these matters than the public sector and local authorities were required to offer certain services for open competition under what was called ‘Compulsory Competitive Tendering’.  If only she had known the truth!

Rubbish collection was one of these services and so that the waste management companies could cope with all the new work and local authorities couldn’t cheat, the Government set out a phased three year programme and one by one local authority services were thrown into a private sector pond full of hungry piranha ready to strip the flesh off of public services, cynically reduce service standards and hopefully get fat at the council tax payer’s expense.  As soon as the waste management companies spotted a contract they took a liking to they would express an interest, obtain the tender documents and specifications and go to work sharpening their pencils.

This was never a scientific process and the first thing the tendering manager did was to get up early one Monday morning and sit outside the council depot and count the dustcarts and the number of men in them as they left to go to work.  And that was about all there was to it and half an hour later over a bacon butty and a cup of tea he would write this down on the back of a fag packet and by mid morning he would have a price in his head.  Nothing else in his head, just the price!  Sometimes, if he was being especially thorough, he would go back on Tuesday morning just to check his calculations but this would be quite unusual.

The tendering manager at Cory Environmental was called Tony Palmer and for Tony arriving at the tender price was gloriously simple.  If the Council had ten refuse collection rounds, the company would do it with nine, and just in case the Council could do it for nine then they would do it with eight so that would immediately undercut the Council price by 20%.  Just to make absolutely certain they would find out how much a refuse collector was paid each week and then they would reduce that by 20% as well.  If the Council had three mechanics to keep the fleet running they would do it with two and so on and so on. There was no way these boys could fail to win tenders!

I worked for the private sector waste management companies for ten years between 1990 and 2000 and then thankfully with the return to power of the Labour Party was able to return to local government where services are provided properly through direct delivery.

You can probably imagine my horror therefore when ten years later ‘son of Thatcher’, David Cameron, became Conservative Prime Minister in 2010 and has embarked on a similar dismantling of public services and twenty years after my first painful experience in the incompetent world of the private sector I find myself facing the same prospect all over again.

A Life in a Year – 22nd April, Cameron’s Scrapheap.

Friday 22nd April represents the end of my penultimate week working in Local Government.  Monday next week will be the beginning of my last week in paid employment.  Not a full week however because it starts with a bank holiday Easter Monday and finishes with a Royal wedding and a day off work for everyone.  And not much in between as it happens because with accrued annual leave it means that I have completed my last shift at South Holland District Council.

I have worked there for ten years and in truth it was a wonderful place to work, it was satisfying and rewarding and in the time that I have been there I have had the privilege to work with an excellent bunch of people and I am proud to have been associated with an organisation that achieved an external inspection status of excellent.

I had hoped to work there for a while longer but then came the economic downturn which made life difficult for everyone followed by the biggest disaster to befall the country since 1997 and the election of a Government with a determination to make the public sector pay dearly for all of the failings of the commercial sector, the banks and their legions of cronies amongst the massively over rated private sector business classes.

And so it sems that everything worthwhile in our society must suffer.  Not just Local Government of course but the National Health Service, the Police and the state education system as well.

So with careers and reputations destoyed in a tsunami of  Tory dogma  hundreds, thousands, of committed public servants are swept away and sacrificed on Cameron’s scrapheap in a vicious attack to deliver an ideology of smaller government achieved through a crude and blood-thirsty process by little people whose bloated personal ambition exceeds their own modest abilities.

The last three months has been difficult.  Obliged to work an extended notice but obviously not part of the future, increasingly excluded from the present and the past all but air-brushed away as ten years work left the building in green recycling bags or suffered the ultimate indignity of going through the shredder!

And so I begin a different life which will begin with a ‘gap year’.  Except for a five week break in 2000 when I was made redundant in a previous job I have worked continuously since I left University in June 1975 so I will belatedly take the break that most people now seem to take immediately after study.  I will probably want to work again at some point but the problem with that is that what I do now is all I really know how to do and what I know is that I don’t want to do it anymore!

Next week I will become an unemployment statistic!

A Life in a Year – 11th February, Thatcher becomes Leader of the Tory Party and I become a Dustman

On 11^th February 1975 the Conservative Party choose Margaret Thatcher as their new leader and when she eventually became the first woman Prime Minister the country was engulfed in a wave of neo-Nazism that as usual picked on local government for a real good kicking.

In the 1980s and 1990s because Margaret Thatcher thought that the private sector was, by definition, much more competent and efficient in these matters than the public sector and local authorities were required to offer certain services for open competition under what was called ‘Compulsory Competitive Tendering’.  If only she had known the truth!

Rubbish collection was one of these services and so that the waste management companies could cope with all the new work and local authorities couldn’t cheat, the Government set out a phased three year programme and one by one local authority services were thrown into a private sector pond full of hungry piranha ready to strip the flesh off of public services, cynically reduce service standards and hopefully get fat at the council tax payer’s expense. As soon as the waste management companies spotted a contract they took a liking to they would express an interest, obtain the tender documents and specifications and go to work sharpening their pencils.

This was never a scientific process and the first thing the tendering manager did was to get up early one Monday morning and sit outside the council depot and count the dustcarts and the number of men in them as they left to go to work.  And that was about all there was to it and half an hour later over a bacon butty and a cup of tea he would write this down on the back of a fag packet and by mid morning he would have a price in his head.  Nothing else in his head, just the price!  Sometimes, if he was being especially thorough, he would go back on Tuesday morning just to check his calculations but this would be quite unusual.

The tendering manager at Cory Environmental was called Tony Palmer and for Tony arriving at the tender price was gloriously simple.  If the Council had ten refuse collection rounds, the company would do it with nine, and just in case the Council could do it for nine then they would do it with eight so that would immediately undercut the Council price by 20%.  Just to make absolutely certain they would find out how much a refuse collector was paid each week and then they would reduce that by 20% as well.  If the Council had three mechanics to keep the fleet running they would do it with two and so on and so on. There was no way these boys could fail to win tenders!

I worked for the private sector waste management companies for ten years between 1990 and 2000 and then thankfully was able to return to local government where services are provided properly through direct delivery so imagine my horror when ‘son of Thatcher’ David Cameron became Conservative Prime Minister in 2010 and has embarked on a similar dismantling of public services and twenty years after my first painful experience in the incompetent world of the private sector I find myself facing the same prospect all over again.