The list of absurd events in woke Whitehall just gets longer. The Cabinet Office earlier this month was inviting civil servants to a “Beginners Guide to Crystal Healing and Deep Relaxation”. Yes, you read that right…

Guido has got hold of the Wednesday, November 3^rd list of activities and events for civil servants to do if they don’t fancy doing any actual work, as distributed by the Cabinet Office:

• 0900 Counselling Session for Ethnic Minority Colleagues – an hour long counselling session with a therapist

Midday gives skiving civil servants 2 choices:

• 1200 “It’s all about me” is a “2-day wellbeing event open to all Civil Servants. Sessions will focus on being kind to yourself.”

If 2 days is a bit too long to go missing from your desk you could opt for:

• 1200 “Reshaping negative thoughts and language into positive affirmations” which was an interactive session around affirmations and being kind to ourselves.

Afterwards a stressed civil servant could find time to attend:

• 1400 “Time to Unmind” participants will be given “Tools, training and exercises to support your mental wellbeing.”

The highlight of the day in Guido’s view was the training session – which took place at 2pm after their lunch break, obviously – “A Beginners Guide to Crystal Healing and Deep Relaxation“ open to all crystal enthusiasts regardless of experience. The programme was interactive and taught attendees about the “benefits of crystals” followed by a session of “deep relaxation”. What a great way to finish off a busy day for the determined civil servant keen to avoid working at the job taxpayers pay them to do.

On the same day these events were happening (November 3^rd) the powerful Public Accounts Committee found that civil servants could not explain where £16 billion of extra funds was going in the Ministry of Defence. Perhaps it was going towards funding Whitehall’s woke wellbeing nonsense? Maybe, now they have had the training, civil servants could use a crystal ball to determine where taxpayers’ money is going…

UPDATE: Minister tells Guido: “This is hocus pocus bollocks which you’d expect in LA, not in Whitehall”

UPDATE II: A Cabinet Office spokesperson has provided a comment:

“Like most large organisations, the Civil Service runs events aimed at improving the wellbeing of staff. We are putting in place additional due diligence to ensure our internal offer to staff is appropriate and value for money. The session in question incurred no cost to the taxpayer.”

The Cabinet Office’s claim that no taxpayer cost was incurred can only be true if the Civil Servants were taking unpaid leave to attend the event during office hours, which Guido does not believe was the case. They added that the crystal healing session was hosted by a ‘civil service network’, and that it was open to all civil servants – not just those in the Cabinet Office. The more the merrier…