Guido noticed that civil servants are now complaining on a Reddit forum about not having enough work to do. It beggars belief…

Have a read of some of their comments:

• “My team and some in other teams have not been given any cases for around a month and I’ve been doing voluntary e-learning in the meantime.”
• “I worked on a casework team that did this for like 2 whole years. It was mental. They did a mass recruitment of 300 caseworkers and had no work for us. We were sharing single cases between 20 people and stretching out simple administrative tasks like spreadsheets over the space of a month.”
• “My experience was identical just over two years ago. I think they recruited dozens of caseworkers just to meet a target and so the gov should showcase all the extra resource they were putting into REDACTED compliance.”
• “At the beginning of the year this is exactly where I was and it’s incredibly frustrating! We have had work come through now, not loads and our managers are still moaning about how busy they are without passing work to us.”
• “I once went several months without being given any work, I spent the time learning Android development and building an app that would send me chapters of Charles Dickens books on the schedule that they were originally released.”
• “I had the same problem over Christmas. Went 6 weeks without a case.”
• “I’m in a similar situation but I started as an SEO about 6 weeks ago and haven’t been given any work yet.”
• “Sounds like where I am. Huge recruitment program and work coming through in dribs and drabs. I am not complaining as I got a promotion out of it.”
• “I’ve been on training for the last 9 weeks was meant to start my actual job on Monday and they still haven’t done it. Wtf is going on? Tired of waiting tbh.”

Jacob Rees-Mogg tells Guido in response to the comments: “Boris Johnson had a plan to reduce the civil service by 91,000. This level of inactivity is a reminder of the costly overmanning of the public sector all of which is paid for by the private sector.” This is increasingly the case.

Jeremy Hunt vowed to cut civil service numbers at Tory conference last year when its ranks actually grew by 3.2%. That added 15,400 more pointless, unproductive pen-pushers to the blob. The civil service now employs over half a million, an increase of 69,000 from pre-pandemic levels. Meanwhile, its pension scheme is extremely generous – increasing numbers of bureaucrats are now retiring on annual pensions of £50,000 or even £100,000. Those pension benefits are indexed-linked, unlike the pensions the rest of us get in the private sector. Civil servants (and MPs) can even get through to HMRC more quickly on a special “VIP line” while they are shut down for the rest of us. And despite all that they constantly complain of having to come into the office while PCS, the civil service union, is pushing hard for strike action to get “a significant shortening of the working week with no loss of pay.” The cheque for which would be written by the tax-crushed private sector…

AFUERA!