Who Says They Have No Work Ethic?

A senior civil servant with security vetting was allegedly paid for three full-time jobs by different Government departments – at the same time. The mandarin who, it is understood, was able to work from home, is said to have duped his bosses to secure the taxpayer-funded roles. He then worked at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and at least one other department, on two occasions.

Three jobs? And no-one noticed? This will be another nail in the coffin for WFH won't it? 

This was despite him going through the Government's vetting procedures, designed to ensure rogue agents do not make it into Whitehall. An internal audit in 2022-23 discovered the worker had withheld his employment history when applying for the roles.

That's all it takes to evade vetting procedures?  

The civil servant no longer works for the Government and has been charged with one count of fraud. He has not indicated a plea.

Why only one? Why not two? 

The NFI report looked into remote working practices following the pandemic. It found there was 'even more opportunity for individuals to commit fraud by gaining employment with several local authorities at the same time but failing to fulfil all of the roles'.

Yup, the only reason this is making headlines is to have another pop at WFH, mark my words. 

No Doubt This Will Be Used As 'One Of The Perils Of WFH'..?

A crooked tax officer who embezzled thousands of pounds from HMRC to pay off her mortgage has been jailed for two years. Joanne Connell took advantage of her position in the bankruptcy team to swipe £193,000 between April and September 2022.

How was someone like this ever in a position where she could manage this? 

Connell had worked for HMRC for approximately 15 years in various roles. At the time of the offence, she was an administrative officer in the bankruptcy team. The court heard that Connell created fraudulent credits while working from home using her HMRC laptop.

And it'll be seized on as a reason to stop all WFH, despite the fact that she could have done the same from behind a desk in the office, if their security is that lax that a low grade such as this can bypass any checks on her work, both managerial and system-based.  

Connell was off work with ill health in June 2022 after having been admitted to hospital. She subsequently indicated to her managers that she had difficulty understanding and following instructions.

Isn't that a requirement in her job description? 

However, an HMRC investigation revealed Connell continued to embezzle money throughout her sick leave. She will now be subject to confiscation action under Proceeds of Crime legislation to recover monies illegally obtained.

I'm only surprised they didn't commend her on her work ethic! 

Not 'Misguided' - Call Them What They Were: 'Incompetent'....

...and sack them. We'll all be safer without them.

Security minister Dan Jarvis said ‘there was sufficient risk for the perpetrator to have been managed through Prevent’, adding: ‘There are serious questions about how various agencies failed to identify and collectively act on the warning signs.’ Southport MP Patrick Hurley said: ‘Some of the details in this report, in this review, beggar belief.’ Yesterday the damning insight of the case revealed how Rudakubana, now 18, had admitted carrying a knife at school more than ten times, talked about ‘getting teachers murdered’ and wanted to knife a boy he had attacked with a hockey stick to ‘finish him off’.

Which should, in a sane world, suffice to finish off the careers of the idiots in Prevent who handled his case. But won't, of course. They won't even be named.  

Yet in a rush to close his case ‘prematurely’, experts may have failed to consider all the evidence because his name was misspelt in files, the report said. Prevent also did not complete lines of inquiries and concerns that he posed a risk to staff and students were brushed off as a ‘knee-jerk reaction’.

Misguided officers placed ‘too much focus’... ‘on the absence of a distinct ideology’, and missed signs of his escalating risk, the report concluded.

In short, they were incompetent at the very basics of their job. As is so often the case with those tasked with protecting us. Perhaps understandably so, as those who do a good job and do it well are often punished for it years later.  

Yesterday Mr Jarvis announced that Rudakubana will be considered as a ‘registered terrorist offender’ after he was jailed last month for 52 years for the murders and for producing the poison ricin using a terrorist manual.

Finally, common sense breaks out! 

Head of Counter-Terrorism Policing Matt Jukes said the Prevent system was ‘not equipped’ at the time to deal with ‘emerging risks that were very different to those it had been built to address’.

Or with good spelling and grammar, which would seem to be a good place to start. Who knows how many other threats are lurking in the database with different spellings preventing them from being collated? 

Then The Civil Service Should Pay

The science secretary, Michelle Donelan, received government advice before she tweeted a letter in which she accused an academic of supporting Hamas, Downing Street has said. No 10 refused to say what advice officials had given her and whether she actually followed it, but insisted she had “acted in line with established precedent”.

Lame response - find out! Signed, a bill payer. 

Kate Sang, a professor at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, sued Donelan for libel after the minister published a letter to UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) in October urging it to cut links with her and another academic, Dr Kamna Patel of University College London. Donelan expressed her “disgust and outrage” at their appointment to an expert advisory group to Research England on equality, diversity and inclusion. However, in a statement posted to X on Tuesday, Donelan admitted she was wrong and had misunderstood the social media posts. The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) later said it had paid £15,000 to settle the case without admitting liability, out of public funds.

Take it out of the civil service budget. She cleared it with them.  

On Thursday evening it was reported that Donelan’s letter was cleared by her department’s legal team. Politico said civil servants had flagged concerns during the drafting of the letter – to which numerous people, including top officials, contributed – but that the legal team had decided the position was solid.

Not that that stops Labour idiots grandstanding: 

The shadow leader of the Commons, Lucy Powell, asked whether Donelan had followed “appropriate advice” that was given to her, or had gone against it. “Because if [she went against it], then surely she should personally pay the costs,” Powell told MPs.

The person responsible for clearing it should pay. Not me and you, eh, Reader? 

Do We Need Any More Evidence Of The 'Long March'..?

Prison officers have been ordered to stop calling criminals 'convicts' on the grounds it is 'offensive'.

Civil servants at the Prison Service headquarters have also instructed warders to drop the phrase 'ex-con' for former prisoners - and refer to them as 'persons with lived experience' or 'prison leavers'.

So, if you haven't been to prison, you haven't lived? Hmmm... 

Another prisons source said: 'This is real nanny state stuff. Yet again, do-gooding civil servants are spending their working hours trying to manipulate the English language to fit their personal world view, rather than concentrating on things that really matter.

'While they are sending out diktats about 'persons with lived experience', the jails are full to bursting, prison officers are leaving in droves and crime is at a record high.'

All part of the plan, no doubt! 

Tory MP Craig Mackinlay described the Prison Service's latest intervention as 'nonsense'.

Yes, it is. What does Sunak and his cronies plan to do about it? 

He added: 'This new agenda that has taken hold right across government departments has to stop. It is not respected by the public. It's just pure nonsense.'

Anything at all? Or does rooting it out get filed in the 'too much like hard work' column?