Given it’s self-assessment season, here’s a fun one. The bean counters over at HMRC spent 2025 beefing up their Diversity and Equality team throughout the year. Obviously at the expense of the taxpayer…
From January to September last year, HMRC spent an eye-watering £1,521,902 on total salary costs for its DEI team. The monthly costs to employ DEI staff have been ticking up, starting at £167,537 in January to £187,188 in September. Co-conspirators can use their imagination as to what they actually do. It’s probably not picking up the customer service helpline…
The government hands out £25 “Simply Thanks” awards to civil servants as an acknowledgement of their great work. In HMRC’s DEI team alone, 20 were given out between January and September. Nine of those awards were given out a month after staff planned an event titled “The Guilt of Being British” during working hours…
Tom Baldwin, author of Starmer’s hagiography, spoke to Times Radio:
Tom Baldwin: “I think he’d like to do something. He’s very dutiful and driven by service. That’s why he came into politics. I think that’s characterised his time as prime minister. He hasn’t always sought popularity or been good at being popular. But I think he has some of the necessary qualities that we actually do want in a prime minister. That resilience, that relentlessness, that ability to carry the weight and the job really does weigh very heavily on people and he carries that weight very, very well.”
Jo Coburn: “NATO Secretary-General?”
Tom Baldwin: “I think that’s something that he would be interested in. I think it probably requires Andy Burnham’s government to support him in that and these are some of the questions which Andy Burnham has to resolve quite quickly.”