An Army Of Bureaucrats

A quick update. Do you recall all those 'contractor cuts' and staff cuts that were supposed to be occurring in the bloated Dept Work and Pensions? Well the contractor numbers are actually increasing not decreasing in some parts .... I personally know of one more contractor who has just been taken on, on a 6 months contract .... and the existing contractor in that dept that I wrote about? Well he's still there, and heading for his second year anniversary ... he's covering several roles that they can't find any permanent staff to perform.

The latent ability of the UK civil service to resist any cuts is amazing.

As far as I am aware, the only time their numbers were capped or cut in post war Britain was under Maggie T ... Blair and Brown added 100,000 plus more to the payroll to cover their various schemes (while cutting troop levels in the army by 25,000), and it appears that Cameron and Clegg are in much the same mould .... we have defence cuts (and yet more cuts on top of cuts) that mean we have less soldiers and no working aircraft carriers, while fighting four wars (Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and the Balkans [Bosnia, Kosovo]), and continuing to posture at the big table as though we can actually exercise independent power.

The UK Has Four Civil Servants For Every Soldier

If wars were won by bureaucracy and bureaucrats then the UK would still be a super power .... but they are not and we ain't.

Coals To Newcastle?

In a funny twist on the Indian jobs outsourcing issue, some major companies have started bringing call centres back to the UK. So far Bank Santander and New Call Telecom have announced these moves .... New Call Telecom said: "Employees (in the UK) are loyal, unemployment rates are quite high. In contrast, in India jobs are plentiful and we suffer a lot from attrition. A similar call centre down the road may offer a more lucrative salary and pull staff away and we need to keep going out there for retraining." So now its the UK that's the 'low wage, low skill, economy' ... a sign of things to come, and something our politicians should be shamed by.

Low Wage Economy Jobs Brought Back To UK 

 

They also apparently finally realised that Indians don't speak English, and speak a sub language called Inglish ... this, and cultural response issues (they can't take blame, and refuse to take ownership of an issue), meant that using call centres based in the sub continent usually involved spending hours trying to get issues resolved. I myself  have experienced a 'Dell Hell' moment, when I wasted hours of my life that I won't get back, on an issue that took less than half an hour to resolve when I finally insisted on talking to someone in Ireland (US customers refused to deal with Indians, so get an Irish call centre).

Santander said that "This is what our customers have told us is the most important factor in terms of the satisfaction with the bank, and we have listened to them and decided to bring all of our retail call centres back from India."

As result of that experience with Dell I won't ever buy from them again ..... I also favour British based companies in high street banking (National Westminster Bank), and 'O2' for broadband, both of which have kept their call centres in the UK.

I Fought The Law And The Law ....

In a scene that should make politicians the world over cringe, the mayoress of Davao City in the southern Philippines, Sara Duterte, launched her fists of fury and repeatedly punched a court official Abe Andres in the face, after he refused to delay the demolition of a slum area while she negotiated with protesters.

Of course in the UK, we have had our own Kung Fu panda .... old fat-boy himself John "Two Jags" Prescott

 
and others ... Georgia  
 

 
Indian girl slaps ...  and Iraqi politicians fight it out (update ... sadly as is the way with the ephemeral Internet, the videos for these have died with the YouTube accounts).

Czech politician fight with Shaolin techniques.

Incidentally, a friend of mine hates and detests John Prescott, and he would have given good money to have been in punching range of 'Fatboy' .... he would have kicked his ass.

The End Of The World .... What Again?

The end of the world? Maybe, but not as we know it .... no its coming up to the latest 'End of the World prophecy time.


Christian Minister Harold Camping

This follows hot on the heels of the geriatric Christian minister Harold Camping, who predicted that the world would end on the 21st of May 2011.

Benefits Britain

What happens when the welfare state and the culture it engenders becomes the norm for too many people? Well for a start you get stories like these ....

Clare Jones, a 38 yr old woman from Tonypandy, Rhondda, had claimed she could only walk 25 metres without crutches in order to milk the benefit system, only to be filmed walking freely and then skydiving at 12,000 ft (3,657m) ..... and the excuse for this fraud? Her legal defender stated that she had done the parachute jump after her father was diagnosed with terminal cancer. And he added that "The jump is suitable for people with worse disabilities than she has including amputations." .... so that's OK then.

Hazel Maddock was jailed and her daughter Jasmine given a suspended sentence after they left Mrs Maddocks mothers body in a bedroom so that they could continue to claim her old age payments .....Hazel Maddock, 61, pleaded guilty at Liverpool Crown Court to unlawful prevention of burial and benefit fraud. She was given an 11-month jail term. Her daughter got a suspended sentence.

Now these are not isolated cases, in fact a simple search on the Internet prompts umpteen reports of the welfare system fraud that is now rife in the UK. Nearly everyone of us knows of at least one person who is either blatantly defrauding the state (working and getting benefits), or is exaggerating their 'incapacity levels' in order to maximise their benefit levels. I know of one man who claims he can't walk more than 10 yards in order to qualify for mobility benefits, but in fact parks his car several hundred yards away from the pub so that he can avoid getting spotted by the police for drinking and then driving. He is in fact simply grossly fat .....


“..... the party of those ripping off our society"

Now there are Benefit Cheat Hot Lines, so in theory we could report all these cheaters in our midst, but in fact, for everyone of us reporting the fraudsters, there is an army of 'welfare advisers' employed by councils and charities etc, whose sole aim is apparently to widen welfare benefit take up ..... its reached such an epidemic in the UK that even the Labour Party leader felt moved to say that "under Gordon Brown, Labour came to be seen as the party of benefits cheats and bankers" .... “the party of those ripping off our society". Better late than never, but as the architects of the system that makes far too many of the British too lazy to work, its not hard to see that they have no interest in reforming the system that provides them with so many voters.