Whitehall: the domain of wastrels

Allegedly, if we believe the Westminster MSM, the Nation was only occupied with three issue during the last couple of weeks. In no particular order, these were travel ‘guidance’ and vaccine passports, covid and covid jabs and the Olympic Games. 

Well, nature, that is ‘political nature’, as red in tooth and claw as Nature herself, is back with a vengeance, with the blood sport that is ‘briefing against a colleague’. Now that ‘red’ and ‘blue’ have become unusable because their political connotation has been perverted we have, in the green corner, BJ and Carrie and in the black corner – black for trying to balance the budget, not because: ‘racist!’ – we have Rishi Sunak and the Treasury. 

According to leaks by BJ’s allies he ‘went tonto’ over Sunak’s demand to scrap the ‘traffic-light’ travel scheme. ‘Tis utterly amazing that our wonderful MSM all used the same expression, ‘going tonto’. That’s not a very respectful way to describe one’s PM, so I wonder if a certain snake in the grass didn’t have his snakey hands in this.

Allegedly, the tonto-going PM was thinking of demoting Sunak and give him the DHSC while a certain Mr Gove is rumoured to get the Home Office and deal with immigration. ‘Friends of Sunak’ then said, allegedly, that he’d ‘go backbench’ rather than accept demotion. Of course, from that position he’d have ample time and opportunity to campaign on ousting BJ. 

However, it’s not just about that traffic-light scheme which, as we all know, the ‘blessed’, i.e. ministers and secretaries of state, don’t need to observe. It’s about wasting taxpayers’ money, and not just on Carrie and BJ’s beloved ‘greenery’.

There’s the question of WFH and getting civil serpents back into their offices. BJ seems to be extremely relaxed on that point and civil service trade unions are already taking a stand, saying that thanks to covid the world has changed and WFH is the new normal. They believe that going to their offices two or maybe three times a week or a month is perfectly fine.

It is actually unbelievable when you see what the Whitehall wastrels are getting away with. The Times had a poll showing that ‘people’ believe it’s up to businesses to sort out WFH themselves. Obviously those polled haven’t understood that Whitehall and the Civil Service are there for us: we pay them, we are their employers . Now see what they’re getting away with:

“Gillian Keegan, the apprenticeship and skills minister, said that only a quarter of desks at the Department for Education were filled on a typical day. Officials at two other departments said that they were reporting attendance as low as 10 per cent on an average day. […] The Treasury was described as a “ghost town” by an insider: “They haven’t even bothered opening the café.” A cabinet minister said: “If you go into the Treasury building it is entirely security guards. It’s as if the attitude is to stop people coming into the building.” (link, paywalled)

I bet this is the case not just at the Treasury but at the Home and Foreign Offices as well, but for the anti-Sunak campaigners it’s useful to have that sort of Treasury dirt to throw around. After all, nobody cares if any work gets done at the Dept of Education!

However, given the exorbitant sums of money all these departments have wasted on our behalf, it’s satisfactory to see that Sir Iain Duncan Smith is echoing other ministers who propose travel allowances and the ‘London Wighting’ ought to be scrapped for those who WFH and don’t come into London:

“Tory grandee Sir Iain Duncan Smith […] also suggested London weighting should be scrapped for home workers. ‘If you’re not travelling anywhere you don’t carry any extra cost,’ he said.” (link)

I couldn’t agree more – after all, ‘we’re in this together’, so why should these wastrels get more of our money which they don’t need? And since we’re slowly sliding towards autumn and winter: no, they’re not entitled to get ‘home office heating cost allowances’ because their energy bills might rise. Energy costs are rising for everybody, not just for the poor WFH-ers.

Which brings me to green blobbery and Carrie &BJ’s plan to make the country ‘Net Carbon’ by 2050. This, rather than Sunak’s foray into covid ‘politics’, proposing to scrap the ‘travel’ schemes, seems to me to be the reason for BJ ‘going tonto’:

“Chancellor Rishi Sunak is thought to be leading push-back against Johnson’s commitment to go net-zero by 2050, fearing it will spark a cost-of-living crisis with energy bills already on the rise and inflation spiking as Covid lockdowns ease. A Treasury review into the costs of meeting the net-zero 2050 goal has already been delayed twice from its original spring publication date. According to the Sunday Telegraph, the delay is due to fears that analysis shows working class families bearing the heaviest share of the burden.” (link)

Now there’s astonishing, innit! Also amazing is that Starmer’s outfit isn’t worried about green stuff disproportionally hitting their alleged clients – the working poor. The whole Westminster cabal seems to think that there’s enough money around and that we serfs can still produce more while they and their Whitehall cronies WFH, on our money. Here’s a break-down of the cost – it’s eye-watering:

“The cost of hitting the net zero target is thought to be around £1.4trillion […] That includes £400billion spent on making buildings carbon neutral, £300billion on upgrading vehicles to electric, £500billion to de-carbonise power generation and £46billion to clean up industry.” (link)

BJ however is going to be generous with our money. Having first taken it from us, he’s “thought to favour issuing households with cheques worth hundreds of pounds to compensate for the costs of going green.” (link) – isn’t that nice of him! I bet he and Carrie don’t need to worry about heating bills for No 10 and Chequers … But bad Rishi isn’t playing ball, allegedly:

“Mr Sunak – who is already searching for ways to pay off the UK’s £400bn Covid bill – is said to have baulked at the cost to the Treasury of those plans, which is thought to be around another £400bn.” (link)

Well, he can surely claw back the travel compensation and London weighting from all those WFH Whitehall wastrels! There’s another saving he can make. It’s only peanuts in the grand scheme of government waste but it is significant for another reason:

“Hundreds of publicly funded bodies have been paying the LGBT group Stonewall a total of £1 million a year in taxpayers’ money for diversity advice, a report says. Most of the money has gone straight to the Diversity Champions scheme, which has been criticised for its stance on transgender rights. Public spending campaigners claim that the payments amount to taxpayer-funded support for a lobby group. They are demanding an end to the scheme.” (link, 

It’s not just that our money, meant to pay for universities or the running of Whitehall departments, is being handed back to lobby groups – other NGOs are also getting nice little earners from us – it’s that these groups then use our money to ‘educate’ those who make decisions about how to educate our kids. How sick is that! 

There’s one other point, rounding up this latest political warfare. With the exception of the Taxpayers’ Alliance report which you can find here, the ‘tonto’ allegations and the rest of the ‘briefings’ all come from the well-known ‘sources’ inside Whitehall.

How is that possible when there’s nobody working in the whole of Whitehall, everybody enjoying their cushy WFH lifestyle? Isn’t this, as we’ve said many times, just gossip based on nothing substantial, whispered down telephone lines to selected Westminster hacks?

And we’re meant to take this seriously? We’re meant to believe all that, and are meant to accept being re-educated, from LBGTXYZ stuff to ‘green’ stuff, on our money? We’re meant to accept meekly the consequences of all that bovine excrement? Seriously? Enough is enough! 

KBO!