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Should Whitehall be Treated Like Just Another Workplace?

by J. Sorel
2 May 2023 3:00 PM
Yes Minister, BBC sitcom, by Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn programme with Paul Eddington and Nigel Hawthorne

Yes Minister, BBC sitcom, by Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn programme with Paul Eddington and Nigel Hawthorne

Years before he founded what would become the modern city of Singapore, a young Stamford Raffles got his start as a scribe for the East India Company. The Company’s head office, where he worked, was a squat late Georgian rectangle – almost a barracks. Inside was a warren of offices with almost no natural light. Raffles spent long hours cooped up in fetid darkness. He copied documents, and then copied those copies. The work was boring; the pay was terrible. For his part, Raffles seems to have been happy to slum it, and carried on this troglodytic existence for 10 years.

But why? Why not join the circus instead? Even to this 14 year-old, the answer was obvious. Politics is more interesting than most things. It is more interesting than waste management. It is more interesting than food. It is more interesting than taxation law, or insurance, or eyeglasses, or shoes. The East India Company ruled over many millions in Asia. It was a government of its own, with its own army – the largest in the world in 1800. For Raffles, it was the tempting prospect of rule over fellow creatures that drove him on.

For a long time this was the implicit bargain of English public life. The country was ruled by a tiny group of people, often of a very young age, who were expected to burn the candle at both ends. The example that everyone knows is Pitt the Younger, who was made prime minister at the age of twenty-four. In order to cope he drank three bottles of fortified wine a day, and he died. The reward for excruciating toil was supreme power over others, and it was reward enough.

The only sensible attitude towards the inquiries into Priti Patel, Dominic Raab, and Steve Barclay is indifference. The essential concession, that Whitehall is a workplace, has already been made. Over the past decade, the British civil service has openly announced itself as a factor in politics. This has, so far, passed off with little fuss, something that is largely due to the TV show Yes Minister, which was always apologia rather than criticism. They themselves have turned Whitehall from an office into an arena of politics. Their relationship with elected politicians is now a constitutional one, not a workplace one.

Everyone who wants to exercise power knows exactly what they are getting into. They want to make decisions that will affect millions, decisions that will be enforced, ultimately, by the threat of violence. They play a high stakes game with other people’s lives. Nothing could be more thrilling, and it is what most people aspire to do. Nothing about this has changed since the days of Raffles and Pitt, except for self-awareness. Until 1945 the centre of British politics was parliament. What was it? It was the place where political power was fought over. It was a place for patrician agon: those who won would be rewarded with sovereign powers, those who did not would slink back onto the backbenches, or into genteel obscurity. It was the place where the law was decided, and it would have ceased to be so by definition if there was ever any professional code of conduct. There was no law above these people; to suggest that one protagonist in this system could ‘bully’ another wouldn’t have made any sense.

You cannot demand the thrills of political power without its dangers, and this is what the civil service is asking for. The elected power is only too happy to give it to them, because it has the same illusions about its own role. Few believe in the cant that members of parliament work for their constituents, or do anything for them at all. We accept that our local area is the vehicle for someone else’s ambitions. Newport East has a member of parliament because Newport East is required to. We dutifully elect someone and let them get on with it, sometimes cordially, mostly sullenly. Any other ruling class in history would’ve been satisfied with this. A real leader, who accepts that they have power over others, only requires obedience from those they rule, not their love. Our sovereign lawmakers now insist we forget the fact that they govern us. They want to invert the relationship, to make themselves into employees and the voters into their bosses. The new sentimental kitsch of “Constituency Work” is part of this effort. It is in this light that we must see Stella Creasey’s long campaign to wring workplace concessions from her employer, something that takes no little chutzpah, given that her employer is the ordinary people of Walthamstow. Ms. Creasey is in Westminster to exercise power over people, and demands that these same people thank and compensate her for it.

It would be wrong to call this venal. Britain’s MPs, civil servants, and judges are perfectly happy to act as the voice of authority, but will recoil in genuine anger and shock when they are treated as such. They demand a boss, a human resources department to intervene when someone bullies them, calls them an ‘Enemy of the People’, or trolls them on Twitter – this is demented, they are the bosses. They are in power, it is by definition impossible to victimize them, and it is delusional and sinister for these people to insist otherwise. Britain’s governing class would make all of Britain into a workplace, a place where authority is hidden by a sham camaraderie. We should not oblige them, and should instead ceaselessly remind them that they constitute power – with all the hatred, contempt, and struggle that goes with it. Those who rule us uphold a particular consensus, and a particular social order: let them defend it if they can.

Tags: Dominic RaabPriti PatelSteve BarclayWhitehallYes Minister

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40 Comments
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Mogwai
Mogwai
1 year ago

Can you imagine if they’d had a PCR test for flu and for years prior to 2020 it was just normal and encouraged by government health officials to use these LFTs and PCRs routinely, even if you didn’t have any symptoms? We’d be dab hands at this lockdown business by now wouldn’t we? The world would have ground to a halt years ago because it would be inevitable that they could manufacture a flu ”pandemic” every single year based solely on mass testing. The entire scamdemic rested entirely on the testing.

Even the PsyOp wouldn’t have had much effect without the testing because those ‘positive’ test results needed to be generated. Otherwise people would twig and think, ”what’s all the fuss about? I feel fine/no worse than previous viruses I’ve had. Why do I need to stay home and stop living? Only the old people are dying, like they do every winter” So, without turning this into an essay, the only way they can even attempt a future scamdemic is if they go back to mass testing, this time for another ”novel” and ”deadly” virus that we allegedly have zero immunity against. And if the same people fall for that humongous farce again then they really have got excrement for brains.

Last edited 1 year ago by Mogwai
90
0
FerdIII
FerdIII
1 year ago

Hancock is a loathesome piece of trash but so is this fake inquiry, handled by the Rona true believers (the mafia investigating itself).

But as the article states there will be a ‘consensus’ around Wancocks’s views.

‘Dames, Ladys, Sirs’….what a joke. Our ‘betters’, ‘superiors’.
No they are not smart. They are as dumb as they look and more corrupt. All of them swilled in the Rona trough of billions.

$120 mn quid this will cost us. For what?

To tell us that we will be imprisoned and stabbed again circa 2025 to 2030, to meet Agenda 2030’s goals?

We need a real inquiry, by real people, with real questions, real data, real facts, about real things like LD and stab deaths and injury, vs the real 20K dead from Rona, not with fake tests.

We don’t need the usual pantomine which asks nothing of importance. I wouldn’t doubt if the ‘report’ is already written.

105
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TheBasicMind
TheBasicMind
1 year ago
Reply to  FerdIII

To be fair, in defence of his strategy, I reckon I could suppress Matt Hancock “out of the air.” I just require a Titan sub to do it.

Last edited 1 year ago by TheBasicMind
15
0
FerdIII
FerdIII
1 year ago
Reply to  TheBasicMind

I would love to suppress Wancock with a very large rock dropped from a cliff on top of the soyboy below, as he fondles his married lover.

21
0
7941MHKB
7941MHKB
1 year ago
Reply to  FerdIII

Ferdill,
It Has been suggested by some heartless people, perhaps those naughty “far-right” folk we are constantly warned about; that we need a Real Inquiry, with Real Peasants, Real Flaming Torches and Real, well sharpened Pitchforks.

Whilst such an Inquiry might be more productive than your sensible and quite modest proposal, I fear we are extremely unlikely to get either.

8
0
huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
1 year ago
Reply to  7941MHKB

😀😀😀

0
0
transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
1 year ago

There was no pandemic

91
-1
nige.oldfart
nige.oldfart
1 year ago
Reply to  transmissionofflame

Yep no painted cross on any door I saw, no carts going round collecting the dead, but some Welsh councils did dig some extra graves just in case. A lot of “measures” were a modern version of the King Charles 2nd version of 1666, so there was some planning.
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/lessons/2267-popup.htm

28
0
huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
1 year ago
Reply to  transmissionofflame

Sadly – needed repeating tof.

2
0
stewart
stewart
1 year ago

It seems to me like the strategy of the establishment for cementing lockdowns, testing, masks and jabs as the default response to future “pandemics” is to pretend that the effects of flu are radically different to coronavirus or other respiratory viruses, and so require a radically different approach.

I suppose the public aren’t scared enough of the flu so they need to be gaslighted into thinking flus and colds are so radically different as to requite radically.different approaches

71
0
transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
1 year ago
Reply to  stewart

One of the essential ingredients of the hoax, yes.

19
0
RW
RW
1 year ago

The reason why this committee met last in 2010 is obviously that there was never a reason to exist for it at all save as Government’s doing something!
headline generator at a time when the WHO was trying to inflict another Deadly pandemic!!1 onto mankind. 2009 – swine flu hoax. 2010 – end of political fallout from that.

40
0
TheTartanEagle
TheTartanEagle
1 year ago

Give me patience, Lord, and please administer a celestial size 11 boot up the backsides of these numpties.

There was no pandemic. There have been no real “public health” emergencies in decades, except for those that seem to have been caused by “authority” insisting on mandated poisoning of the environment and the animal and human populations.

I don’t recall growing up under the shadow of fear from disease, this is a new thing created in the last 20 years. Seems that those with vested interests like to perpetuate the myth that disease and pestilence would be stalking the population without them riding to rescue on white chargers brandishing syringes full of the latest patented prophylactic.

37
0
RW
RW
1 year ago
Reply to  TheTartanEagle

I don’t recall growing up under the shadow of fear from disease, this is a new thing created in the last 20 years.

2004, to be precise, the Bird Flu pandemic which never was and also the time when flu vaccines started to be marketed aggressively. By that time, I was very much surprised that someone even considered vaccinating people against the flu.

18
0
mariawarmth
mariawarmth
1 year ago
Reply to  RW

Yes and the line of questioning or reading between the lines of the KC seems to suggest his own bias and the inquiry conclusion already. Lock down sooner, more control in plans, harder lines of forced compliance, any suggestion of a novel virus treat as deadly to all, more control of the elderly …
And if they are still doing lateral flow tests to testify at this expensive spectacle ? Then it is a forgone conclusion. Authoritarian recommendations for the future.

11
0
RW
RW
1 year ago
Reply to  mariawarmth

When ignoring all the side issues, ie, hordes of Scottish and Welsn teetotalers charging into the hospitality industry on their wooden hobby horses, Corona was a giant money-making scam which probably only came to an end because taxpayers had been plunderen so thoroughly that there was nothing more left to take. The second season is to follow as soon as economic recoverly is complete enough that the merry looting can profitably recommence.

10
0
ELH
ELH
1 year ago
Reply to  TheTartanEagle

Have you noticed that people now often define themselves by their malady, “hello I’m diabetic/asthmatic/have ME/MS, an auto-immune disease/allergy? No longer are they the butcher, baker,candlestick maker. We need to stop talking about medical conditions and go back to talking about the weather…..

13
0
The Real Engineer
The Real Engineer
1 year ago

Ok, I think that you have not quite understood the tactics of the KC here. He is gradually asking questions to limit the answers that can be given later, Hancock has already said faster harder lockdowns, but there is no evidence that these did any good, and a great deal that they did so far, untold harm. The next question in module 2 will be something like “what made you think that lockdown was the correct policy”, followed by “what eveidence have you from the first, to decide on more?”. This puts the so called experts right on the line when they have to answer “none at all!”. Then “why did you call for the then”?

The next part will be expert evidence on the PCR tests (forget the lateral flows, they were just nonsense placebos, which were very non-specific). The answer to that will be they are very good and accurate. Except that they were not, because they were misused in method. 40 cycles would find a single incidence of a small bit of DNA in a sample. But it is widely known that this is far too sensitive, and does not show replicating anything! A test at 20 cycles (in other words about a million times less sensitive) would show a large population of the DNA, therefore likely real infection. The chance of a single incidence of something causing infection is very small.

As all of the above is well known science, why did they do 40 cycles? Because the Chinese told them to! There you have the whole scam in one sentance. Who profited? The Chinese. Who suffered severely, US. Job done!

8
0
RW
RW
1 year ago
Reply to  The Real Engineer

As all of the above is well known science, why did they do 40 cycles?

As far as I know, that was because the two guys who developed and sold the original tests (Christian Drosten and a business partner of him who owns/ owned a company manufacturing such test kits) recommended doing so. Possibly unspecifically: Start with 20. Increase until you find something. That got us the pandemic where each and every conventional measure of disease was supplanted with positive test results plus something, eg, death because of skull trauma after getting hit by a cow suddenly falling from the sky with a positive test result a fortnight ago => COVID death, positive test result without anything else => asymptotically sick, chronic nosebleed because of constant swabbing => long COVID and so on.

3
0

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