Civil servants at The Pensions Regulator seem to have found a novel definition of “work”: mixing office hours with staff network socials. According to an FOI request from the TaxPayers’ Alliance seen by Guido, this year they’ve bagged themselves a tidy £20,000 budget for six internal staff networks: ‘LGBT+’, ‘Mental Health’, ‘Disability’, ‘Women’, ‘Minority Ethnic’, and ‘Family’. Each chair even gets 10% of their working hours ringfenced just for running these networks. Some more notable events to mark ‘National Walking Month’ this April include:
For a budget of £20,000, you could:
Last year the quango’s budget for staff networks was £14,400, meaning the budget has increased by 38% this year. The taxpayer may have a view on which should be prioritised. UK DOGE recommends costs are cut here…
Red Wall Labour backbencher Jonathan Brash told GB News that Starmer should resign:
“I’m completely fed up about it, and I think it’s got to the point now where I genuinely think that, as far as the Prime Minister is concerned, it’s not a case of if, it’s when.”