Letter: The Civil Service is Neither a Rolls Royce Nor a Trabant

Published on: 18 Jan, 2022
Updated on: 18 Jan, 2022

From: David Roberts

In response to: Guildford’s MP is in a No-win Situation But Can We Trust the Inquiry?

Angela Richardson’s reticence may have more to do with her role as PPS to Michael Gove (a potential successor to Johnson) than to any other calculation. After all, might this be a chance of a real ministerial job, as opposed to her current lowly, unpaid role?

As a long-time former member of it, I think the civil service has suffered badly during the austerity years and from successive governments’ infatuation with the private sector. It is neither a Rolls Royce nor a Trabant but a, still reliable, Ford Escort.

Remember, it is the public sector, not business, that has preserved us through the triple disasters of the financial crash, Brexit and Covid. With climate change looming next, big government is back for good. But I doubt it can work without higher taxes.

I too feel sorry for Sue Gray, who is being bigged up by ministers, so they can claim Boris Johnson has been exonerated when, as she must, she fails to report that he should be hanged, drawn and quartered for crimes against humanity.

Responses to Letter: The Civil Service is Neither a Rolls Royce Nor a Trabant

Jim Allen Reply

January 18, 2022 at 2:26 pm

This is a bit rich. It is the civil servants which occupy Downing street and other government buildings, in the main. It was the civil servants generating a “disco” in the cellar, in what can only be described as an alcoholic haze, if we are to believe the national left-wing press.

Personally, I have never been allowed to drink and work or even drink at my place of work.

So surely it is the head of the civil servants whose head should be on the block for permitting such a lack of discipline within his team.

As a civil servant, one is subject to the official secrets act as I did when I was 16 years old. So why is any of this in the gutter press in the first place?

This whole debacle is caused by left-wing civil servants leaking like a sieve. It is verging on sedition, trying to bring down a legally elected government – nothing more, nothing less.
John Perkins Reply

January 19, 2022 at 10:07 am

I disagree, the Civil Service suffered badly from its politicisation under Tony Blair.

The suggestion that Brexit and Covid are similar disasters is risible and demonstrably wrong. The problem is that civil servants did their best to prevent the former and revelled in the latter.

Even a Trabant worked some of the time, though not always from home.

Jim Allen is right – most of those indulging in these parties were civil servants and a long hard day talking amongst themselves is no excuse for their behaviour.