Saturday 4 January 2020

Sir Humphrey would be spinning in his grave.

It is clear that the campaign to leave the EU , was more than just that it is a policy to create a right wing agenda throughout our lives.

 Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s chief adviser is calling for “weirdos and misfits” to apply for jobs in Downing Street, as part of a shake-up of how Britain’s government does business.
"For weirdos and misfits " right wing nit jobs intent on destroying the welfare state.
Cummings outlined what he said was the need to diversify the skills and backgrounds of policymakers and advisers, in a nearly 3,000-word post on his blog on Thursday.
The special adviser, who headed the referendum campaign for Britain to leave the European Union, said the government wanted to hire “an unusual set of people with different skills and backgrounds.”
They include data scientists, software developers, economists, policy experts, project managers, communications experts, as well as “weirdos and misfits with odd skills.”
He said the need to change was because of “profound problems at the core of how the British state makes decisions,” such as not having civil servants with dedicated, long-term expertise.
It was also because Brexit required large policy and decision-making structure changes, he said.
Johnson, who won a comfortable majority in a general election last month, has reportedly promised “seismic changes” to the civil service.
Cummings believes it needs to have fewer arts graduates educated, like him, at private schools and Oxbridge — the leading universities of Oxford and Cambridge.
Instead he wants “super-talented weirdos” and “some true wild cards, artists, people who never went to university and fought their way out of an appalling hellhole.”
“If you want to figure out what characters around Putin might do, or how international criminal gangs might exploit holes in our border security, you don’t want more Oxbridge English graduates who chat about Lacan at dinner parties with TV producers and spread fake news about fake news,” he wrote.
Ironic that Mr Cummings boss ,Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson , makes much of his Classic education .


One of the new recruits encouraged to apply would become his assistant, said Cummings.
The head of the FDA civil service union, Dave Penman, told BBC radio that “merit, not patronage” was key to recruitment and was essential for ministers to receive impartial advice.
“It would be ironic if, in an attempt to bring in radical new thinking, Cummings was to surround himself with like-minded individuals — recruited for what they believe, not what they can do — and less able to provide the robust advice a minister may need, rather than simply the advice they want.”
He also said government pay rates could put off world-class experts from join in.
Sir Humphrey would be spinning in his grave . but despite the portrayal  of him in  Yes Minister as manipulative  and intent on disrupting "Change" an independent civil service is essential.
The idea that a change in government means a change in senior civil servants , is something akin to that of the USA, but they have a transition period, and even then it as Trump has shown it leads to resignation of your own appointees as they are deemed to nor fully share their vision as outlined in Michael Lewis in his fascinating — and at times harrowing — new book The Fifth Risk.

No comments: