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February 26, 2009
Selling off the silver ....
So our esteemed ex- EU Commissar, Lord Mandelson, is trying to sell off the Royal Mail and offering all sorts of sweetners and "guarantees" to get it through that House of Perfidy in Westminster. The Royal Mail is in a mess precisely because this same bunch of dangerous buffoons allowed its profitable bits to be "cherry picked" in an earlier botched attempt by the Civil Service to "free up RM to focus on its core business." Well, guess who's behind this latest attempt?
You guessed, the Civil Service again. Show me one project the Civil Service have managed to deliver on budget, on time or indeed according to plan.
Royal Ordinance was "privatised" with guarantees that our armed forces would still have access to UK based production of their weapons and munitions. Well that lasted about five years and then, guess what, the bits were sold off and now all our arms and all our munitions come from outside the UK. The MOD was ordered by this government to close its hospitals and care facilities for wounded service personnel and give it all to the NHS - on the grounds that it would save money and the NHS would provide the specialised services and support. Guess what, the money has vanished into that well known Black Hole and the services for the military have failed to materialise - so now we have desperately ill and wounded men returning to be treated badly by ill equipped and ill prepared medical staff alongside Tom, Dick, Harry and Harriet and be abused by the Civil Servants this same shower of incompetents have put in charge. Ask the lad with his leg blown off and serious injuries who was asked by a "manager" to remove his uniform because it "upset" some of the layabouts in A&E where the "caring" NHS had dumped him.
Let's ask about the £165 million written off in an IT project the Civil Service has decided to abandon because it can';t be made to work and do what they were wanting. Or the £400 million overspend on building the Scottish Parliament.
The Royal Mail may not be the most efficient organisation in the Public Services, but it is a hundred times more efficient than anything else in Whitehall! The only reason this government can have for further selling off of the family silver is that they stand to gain from it. I wonder who is lined up for a Directorship on which Board in the buyers?
And here's a funny thought for the day. Napoleon fought and lost a war to take us over and conquer Europe. Lord Mandelson and his cronies seem to have done very well handing the country, its industry and its services over to Napoleon's successors. The bits they haven't given to the Brussels Bureaucracy they have sold to French Companies, Spanish Banks or anyone else with the right price and the right incentives. Perhaps that's why they are terrified to hold a referendum on our continued subsumation into the USE to be.
Posted by The Gray Monk at February 26, 2009 04:15 PM
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Comments
GF would love to comment on Government IT projects
Posted by: Gorsefox at March 1, 2009 10:32 PM
I just bet you would! Trouble is I think you'd probably drop a nuke.
Posted by: The Gray Monk at March 2, 2009 12:28 PM