[Tubby Isaacs]

That could work. It was a very popular policy but the renewables auctions seem to be going well anyway.

There are some civil service reforms planned. The Guardian straight in referring to them as Trumpian.

Dealing with poor performance, especially at senior level, seems like a better idea than voluntary redundancies and hiring freezes. Sometimes the people who go for voluntary redundancy are the people most confident of getting another job. And you need new people coming in.

I’ve noticed that lots of people BTL on the Guardian steam into senior civil servants when they’re up before committees as “the man”. But when it’s suggested generally that there could be a general issue there, then they don’t like that either.

[The Weeping Angel]

That could work. It was a very popular policy but the renewables auctions seem to be going well anyway.

There are some civil service reforms planned. The Guardian straight in referring to them as Trumpian.

Dealing with poor performance, especially at senior level, seems like a better idea than voluntary redundancies and hiring freezes. Sometimes the people who go for voluntary redundancy are the people most confident of getting another job. And you need new people coming in.

I’ve noticed that lots of people BTL on the Guardian steam into senior civil servants when they’re up before committees as “the man”. But when it’s suggested generally that there could be a general issue there, then they don’t like that either.

I've noticed a tendancy in the Guardian to label things they don't like as Trumpian. George Monbiot did an article claiming that planning reform was just like DOGE. More on GB Energy here.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... d-miliband

The UK government is reportedly weighing up the possibility of cutting planned funding for GB Energy, the state-owned company set up by Labour to drive renewable energy and cut household bills, in June’s spending review.

Cuts to the £8.3bn of taxpayer money promised over the five-year parliament would be another blow for Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, after he was overruled by the government when the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, backed the expansion of Heathrow’s third runway.

GB Energy, a vital cog in Keir Starmer’s plans to “supercharge” Britain’s clean energy revolution, was only given an initial £100m in October’s budget to cover its first two years.

Ministers are carrying out a “zero-based review” of all government spending, which has been given additional impetus after Starmer’s pledge to boost investment in defence.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Miliband wouldn’t be the only minister who might get less money than they expected. Probably happening with health too, but Starmer v Streeting isn’t quite the same psychodrama value.

I’d rather GB Energy got less if benefits couldn’t be cut.

[The Weeping Angel]

More here on the spring statement.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9qjn879lr4o

The Treasury has blamed global economic policy and geopolitical uncertainty over the outcome of conflicts in Ukraine and Middle East, for raising government borrowing costs.

Possible other announcements that are being reported include:

Reducing the £20,000 tax-free annual limit in cash ISAs, to encourage more people to invest their savings in stocks and shares

Confirming details of how international aid funding will be reallocated to defence, following the prime minister's announcement that UK defence spending will rise to 2.5% of national income by 2027.

Government sources have been keen to state that this event is not a major one because it will not include tax rises, only spending cuts.

A debateable tax hiking policy could be announced, however, if Reeves decides to extend the freeze on the thresholds at which people start to pay different rates of income tax.

[The Weeping Angel]

TRUMPIAN!

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... il-service

Highly controversial plans to revolutionise Whitehall by introducing performance-related pay, an accelerated exit process for under-performing mandarins and more digitalisation will be announced this week in what ministers say is a programme to “reshape the state” so it can respond to a new “era of insecurity”.

The proposed changes, to be announced by Cabinet Office minister Pat McFadden, will inevitably provoke alarm and resistance from civil service unions, and be seen as the government using the current wave of global uncertainty as cover to drive through radical modernisation of civil service methods and culture.

They will also be seen as following Donald Trump’s decision to set up a Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) run by the billionaire X owner Elon Musk to reduce spending and increase performance.

[Andy McDandy]

Remember, journalists aren't as clever as they think they are; and assume their readers are fucking morons. They know they're spouting shit, and the fuckers are gobbling it up like chocolate.

And one of the basics is that everything must be contextualised by comparison to something recent and vaguely similar.

[The Weeping Angel]

See also this response from this tedious fucker.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

In other words what every sensible mandarin has been advocating for the past 20 years...

[Bones McCoy]

I sense that Trump's presence has revived the Ming Vase.

Starmer played a blinder in the week after Zelensky Friday in the White House.

He faces a narrowing tightrope ahead.
And a lot of hostiles, home and abroad, waiting to leap on the first slip.

[kreuzberger]

What a shabby do. Is this largely ill-defined pop at civil servants - the blob - an attempt to divert attention away from the blaring, careering, turbo-shitting elephant in the room?

Poland is aiming to militarily train every man in the land, Germany and France are exploring a nuclear alliance, and the former is preparing to chuck every available cent at arms production. Having been off-grid for a week, I am coming back to a Europe which seems to be in an acutely perilous predicament and one from which the UK is certainly not isolated.

These are the scariest times we have known in the last eighty years. At least, they should be.

Pony up, HMG - what have you got?

[The Weeping Angel]

I mean they've announced increases in defence spending. Also trying to make the civil service more efficent isnt Trumpian nor is it an attempt to distract from the Ukraine.

[Tubby Isaacs]

I think that bit may have been a quote, but it's a silly quote.

[Bones McCoy]

The Civil Service will always be an easy target.

On the one hand you have the best minds of their generation providing continuity service to great offices of state.
On the other you have poor sods on obsolete computer systems providing frontline services to the public.

It's the easiest conman's trick in the book.
Rage about some selected salaries from the first group.
Convince the chumps that "Colin on the hotline" is earning more than the P.M plus a gold plated pension.
Watch the rage explode.

[The Weeping Angel]

Fancy that.

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2 ... SApp_Other

Predictions that adding VAT to private school fees would set off a wave of parents moving children to the state sector have been proved wrong at their first key test, according to figures from councils in England.

While critics including the former chancellor Jeremy Hunt had predicted that up to 90,000 children could flood the state sector if VAT of 20% was charged, most councils say they have seen no impact from the policy in applications to start at state secondary schools later this year.

Forecasts of widespread shortages of school places have also fallen flat, based on application figures for places in year 7, the first year of secondary school, that show more families receiving their first choice of school this year.

A government source said: “Despite all the doom-mongering and ululating from the private schools lobby, as well as their Conservative and Reform lackeys, there hasn’t been a massive exodus from private schools.

“This government will deliver for working families who want a brilliant state education for their children.”

Experts had identified the transition from primary to secondary school as the time when parents would be most likely to opt for state education after an increase in private school fees with the addition of VAT. Any shift in significant numbers would mean fewer families getting their first choice of places at state schools, and erode the £1.5bn the government expects to raise from the tax in the first year.

I distinctly remember the Telegraph and Times telling us it would be a disaster.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

The word 'expert' is doing some heavy lifting, there...

[Tubby Isaacs]

I've no idea who Ben Dunnell is up there, but I wonder if I looked at his posting history whether I'd find him saying words to the effect of "Simon Case is shit"? Or perhaps the odd diatribe against Oxbridge? But unthinkable there might be poor performance among heavily Oxbridge senior civil service levels, apparently.

[The Weeping Angel]

I've no idea who Ben Dunnell is up there, but I wonder if I looked at his posting history whether I'd find him saying words to the effect of "Simon Case is shit"? Or perhaps the odd diatribe against Oxbridge? But unthinkable there might be poor performance among heavily Oxbridge senior civil service levels, apparently.

He's someone I've come across on Bluesky and has devloped a permanent downer on the government. They're not serious about dealing with our problems apparently and he's decided he won't vote for Labour at the next GE.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Good thread on how hated potholes are. I live in an affluent part of Herefordshire, which leads the world in terrible roads, so potholes come top of my local issues, even though as a national issue I'd not put it very high at all.

The Government's gone for potholes with a lot of money, for which they'll probably get no credit at all.

https://bsky.app/profile/tomcalver.bsky ... wmbm2xfk2d

[kreuzberger]

I mean they've announced increases in defence spending. Also trying to make the civil service more efficent isnt Trumpian nor is it an attempt to distract from the Ukraine.

I didn't suggest that trying to sort out the civil service is "Trumpian", largely because I am not a bone idle journalist who grasps at tabloid straws to make sense of my bollocks reporting.

"The" Ukraine has been simply "Ukraine" since god was a wee lass. Moreover, Ukraine is fast becoming a fragile bulwark against Russian hegemony and the corner in to which Putin has painted himself. Once Trump hands him Ukraine, he has to try it on with the EU or declare illness and retreat to one of his many Dachas, hunkering down with al-Assad while the wannabe successors fight like rats in a sack. The latter looks as improbable as his suing for peace.

Therefore, a really nasty spat with Russia must potentially be on the cards, and the UK is poorly prepared and ill-equipped to face up to it.

I suspect - as the boy who might be crying wolf - that the flash point will come at sea, probably in the Baltic, when a Russian, cable-cutting agitator will be dispatched without ceremony, thereby precipitating an Article 5 escalation.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Bloke from the Institute of Government is more positive about McFadden's plans than the Observer.