Reply to: Former Gravy Train Operative urges toy-throwing!

[woohoo]

You lost, get over it. We have a bright future ahead and I daresay we will be back running the world in a few years. I imagine those Germans will be begging us to come back and put those pesky French in their place.

That's the opposite of your world view.

Circles and roundabout and all that.

This night nurse is strong stuff!

[darmstadt]

[darmstadt]

I meet this Sir Ivan type in work all the time. They think they know it all, and because they have a few years experience it makes them right. Then you suggest improvements and ways of doing things differently and they come up with a thousand reasons why it won't work.

Sounds like any Brexiter you talk to

[SueEllen]

Indeed. He is only a Public Servant. Why let a little thing like Duty interrupt his cossetted and pampered existence?

He's worked in the private sector between public sector posts according to what I was listening to earlier.

If he's like a couple of former managers I've worked with in the PS who worked in a similar way as they know they are employable in the private sector so they simply don't take tulip if the powers that be have stupid ideas.

[PurpleGorilla]

Former Gravy Train Operative urges toy-throwing!

I meet this Sir Ivan type in work all the time. They think they know it all, and because they have a few years experience it makes them right. Then you suggest improvements and ways of doing things differently and they come up with a thousand reasons why it won't work.

But ask them for ideas and they come up with tulip, and the world keeps on spinning to the same old tulip. Then you manage to get passed these monolithic road blocks and suddenly start making huge improvements and a real difference.

Teresa May wants a UK deal, a good deal, a deal better than Norway and Switzerland. Fook yeah! That's the way you make things happen - you have to go in with ideas, and passion, and put the bar as high as you can stretch.

[darmstadt]

You're all missing the obvious. He's a bureaucrat who wants to leave his salaried job and come back as a megabucks consultant to ride the Brexit gravy train. Kerching!

Sensible chap, that's what we're all doing isn't it? He's also another government finance chap who chops and changes:

Rogers left the civil service in 2006 to become Head of the UK Public Sector Group at Citigroup. In 2010 Rogers transferred to be Head of the Public Sector Industry Group, UK and Ireland, at Barclays Capital from 2010 to 2011.

[VectraMan]

He's a bureaucrat who doesn't want to help reduce bureaucracy. Who'd ever have thought it?

You're all missing the obvious. He's a bureaucrat who wants to leave his salaried job and come back as a megabucks consultant to ride the Brexit gravy train. Kerching!

[Chuck]

He's a bureaucrat who doesn't want to help reduce bureaucracy. Who'd ever have thought it?

[shaunbhoy]

What input he has tried to give has been ignored or fobbed off by Downing Street because it didn't fit with their blinkered view of how things were going to be. No point in staying and doing the job if no-one is going to listen to you anyway.

Says you. And as you seem to have sight of the minutes of all their meetings, care to share with us what else was discussed?

[DaveB]

ftfy

Except it wouldn't be because he was due to stand down at the end of his term in a few months anyway so would have had no real input in the negotiations. What input he has tried to give has been ignored or fobbed off by Downing Street because it didn't fit with their blinkered view of how things were going to be. No point in staying and doing the job if no-one is going to listen to you anyway.

Politicians need to be told things they don't want to hear, otherwise they just exist in an echo chamber that repeats back their own views without challenge or debate. it's the job of the civil service to tell them these things.

[shaunbhoy]

He's a piece of slimy refuse that has walked away from the single biggest challenge of his working life in a stupendously petulant manner

ftfy

[NickFitz]

I would rather people said what they thought without having to read between the lines, would make things so much simpler.

He's a diplomat. Part of the job is saying things diplomatically.

So, for example, rather than saying "The government has no plan for Brexit whatsoever" and "May is in denial about what a pig's ear she's making of this and needs to be told what an utterly stupid idea it is", he says "We do not yet know what the Government will set as negotiating objectives for the UK’s relationship with the EU after exit" and "Serious multilateral negotiating experience is in short supply in Whitehall… I hope that you will support each other in those difficult moments where you have to deliver messages that are disagreeable to those who need to hear them". Tactful, see

[woohoo]

And reading between the lines, May didn't like what what the messenger was saying, so he left before he got shot.

I would rather people said what they thought without having to read between the lines, would make things so much simpler.

[original PM]

Indeed. He is only a Public Servant. Why let a little thing like Duty interrupt his cossetted and pampered existence?

Indeed when the going gets tough etc......

[shaunbhoy]

He's loaded and has a nice pension so why should he take the stress?

Indeed. He is only a Public Servant. Why let a little thing like Duty interrupt his cossetted and pampered existence?