Outsourcing the government

[darmstadt]

I take it that this doesn't mean that they're going to get a taste of their own medicine?

[RichardCranium]

I actually splurted over the hypocrisy in that!

Excuse me, but who has been in charge this past ten or so years?

[Mich the Tester]

No. See the phrase ' relocating some of the 132,000 civil servants and 90,000 employees of "arm's-length bodies" currently based in London and the south-east'.

Would you put it past Gordon to shift these probable labour voters out to nice rural Tory villages and towns with continued full London pay and juicy pension arrangements?

[EternalOptimist]

I was involved in Gordons last big effort to move 17,000 civil servants out of London, a few years ago.
We migrated 350 of the statisicians to the new information centre in Leeds at a cost of millions upon millions. Everything was set up, then half the people said they wouldnt move, so graduates were recruited to take the place of these world renowned experts and the NHS kept the originals on in London.
The new centre then had to employ its own spin department of course.

Result - an INCREASE in the number employed, and statistics coming from two sources instead of one, with the resulting bun fight.

[NotAllThere]

Before anyone is allowed in government they should be forced to pass a test entirely based on "Yes Minister" and "Yes Prime Minister".

Who will implement all these changes to the Civil Service. Er... that'll be the Civil Service. Who'll have to take on more people to deal with all this change.

[Tarquin Farquhar]

As Paxman said last night, the mandarins have seen this one off before.

[threaded]

Another time they tried doing it was by moving a load to Sheffield.