more 'you're not working hard enough' to civil servants

There are the Civil servants who work hard on the front line trying to do more with less, under appreciated and not really that well paid, and then there are the "Senior" Civil servants on very high salaries who seem increasingly to work to their own agenda and try to subvert the tasks given to them. "Yes, Minister ! " in the real world.

Mrs B was a Civil servant for one of the front-line departments for over 41 years. During that time she saw, time after time, policies that had been tried before being regurgitated as "the next big solution" by straight-out-of-university policy "advisers" who would not listen to those who had tried to implement the same policies decades before without success. Also saw policies that were having a positive effect canned by a change of administration because of idealogical differences.

The CS used to pride itself as being impartial and to serve whichever admistration that was in power without bias - that does not appear to be the case today. Just as current politicians are seen as being out of touch and not really competent due to a lack of actually having worked for a living before entering politics, so it is with many Whitehall senior civil servants.

Aother depressing though is that Local Govenment organisations are substantially less comptetent than the national departments, yet operate on higher salary scales. You should be worried when you hear thet changes are made to give Local Authorities more control over budgets & how nationally decided schemes are implemented at a local level - can't think there are many examples where that has worked out better !

Nigel B.