CIVIL servants are at war with this government.
They will do anything they can to wreck a minister’s career and disrupt policy. Supposedly neutral, they have become a highly toxic enemy within.
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The latest to come a cropper was the Home Secretary, the admirable Suella Braverman.
She copped a speeding ticket. She asked her officials if there was a way she could do a speed awareness course by herself. They said no, so she took the points.
In truth, it was a bit dim of her to have asked, even if fixing up a private course is something a lot of people do.
Nothing wrong with it. But it would have played badly with the public if it had got out.
Of course, it DID get out. Civil servants reported their misgivings. The campaign of whispering and allegations had started.
Strangely, you might think, if you haven’t been watching, it reached the ears of the Labour Party.
They demanded Braverman’s removal. They have been after her blood for some time.
For once, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak demonstrated that he does indeed possess a pair of testicles. He decided she shouldn’t face an investigation.
Quite right. It would have been an absurdity. But do not for a minute think it will stop there.
The civil servants will continue to whisper and brief against Cabinet ministers they do not like.
The usual thing is to accuse them of bullying. This is what happened to a former Home Secretary, Priti Patel.
The blob of officials decided they would get her.
So they spread around information that she was a bully. They played the same trick on the former Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab.
It paid off and they got him to resign from his post.
The full extent of his horrible behaviour towards officials was then made clear.
He’d been a bit terse at times. And was sometimes irritated when officials had let him down.
Nobody with any experience of the real world could count what he did as “bullying”.
Now civil servants in the Cabinet Office have referred Boris Johnson to the police again over all that Partygate stuff.
Don’t forget that the original investigation into Partygate was carried by the neutral, unbiased civil servant, Sue Gray.
We now know that even as she was working on that investigation, she was lining up a top job with the Labour Party.
The truth is, the civil service hate this government and want it out.
And they are abusing their power in harming the Government at every turn.
And quite clearly there is a very busy, if secret, channel of communication between civil servants and the Labour Party.
Now, I don’t object to Labour leaping upon this stuff and causing trouble. That’s the point of an Opposition.
But it is odious that the source of the Government’s problems are their own officials.
Forty years ago a likeable left-wing Labour MP, Chris Mullin, wrote a book called A Very British Coup.
It was about how a left-wing Labour government was brought down by devious behaviour by, among others, the civil service.
As a now elderly Mullin put it this week, the attack on Braverman was “a piece of nonsense”.
Back in his day, the civil service hated Labour.
Now it hates the Tories.
IS TELLY FAME A CAUSE?
THERE was a marked lack of public sadness to greet the death of Aussie paedo noncemonger Rolf Harris.
No crowds of people singing “Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport” or that awful thing about two little boys.
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Not a surprise, really. I’m getting my claim for credit in quick, though – because even as a kid I couldn’t stand Harris. Nor Savile, come to that.
I didn’t know they were nonces, of course. I just found them supremely irritating.
“Can you tell what it is yet?” No, and I couldn’t give a toss.
And if you sing that song about the bloke with three legs once more I’ll smash the TV.
The odd thing is the sheer number of light entertainment stars who were later outed as either nonces or sex pests or both.
And the question I always have is: Were they nonces BEFORE they became stars? Or was it the idiot box that in some way noncefied them?
Difficult one, isn’t it?
THE French have just banned airlines from operating domestic flights for which the rail journey is two and a half hours or less. An excellent idea.
Why don’t we do the same? Nobody should be flying from London to Manchester, Leeds or Sheffield.
Problem, I suppose, is that the French have a first-rate (and nationalised) express train service.
Can’t quite say that about the UK, can you?
WRONG!…AGAIN
HERE’S another instalment – pretty much a weekly occurrence – on stuff the International Monetary Fund has got embarrassingly wrong.
A few months ago the IMF was predicting recession for the UK.
And it said we would have the slowest growth in the G7 nations. Nope! It’s just had to “revise” its forecast.
Admitted our economy IS growing and that we aren’t the worst in the G7.
Can’t these clowns find work more suited to their abilities?
I SEE that Black Lives Matter in the USA is going bankrupt.
Although its leaders have made quite a few dollars from it.
So much that some suggest the initials BLM stand for Buy Larger Mansions. It was always a corrupt and divisive ideology.
Looks like Americans are beginning to see the light.
Time to nail killers of hen harriers
A TOTAL of 94 of one of our rarest and most beautiful birds, the hen harrier, have been “mysteriously” killed since 2018.
That’s according to a new, very detailed, report by the group Raptor Persecution UK.
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It’s not that much of a mystery, really, though.
As the report makes clear, these ringed birds tended to suddenly stop existing when they flew above grouse moors.
Are these wonderful creatures being killed just to preserve a bunch of dimbo grouse for a handful of hooray Henrys to blast out of the sky come August?
It is time our National Parks did something about the grouse moor owners.
And time the police got more involved.
ANTS IN MY – FOOD
WE’VE got ants. In the kitchen.
Not that many, just enough to spook the missus.
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The advice on getting rid of them is of variable quality. Apparently they don’t like the smell of peppermint. Which is why there’s toothpaste all over the kitchen counter.
We thought about buying an antlion, an insect which eats ants. But they’re scarier than the ants, frankly.
I’ve tried negotiating with them, but it’s like dealing with Mick Lynch. They just won’t listen to reason.
Which leaves being scrupulously tidy – always a difficulty for me.
At the moment I’m tw*tting individuals with an elastic band, which is fun and makes me feel like a World War Two sniper.
But still they come . . . All suggestions welcome.
SOFT IN THE ED
THE ludicrous Ed Davey – leader of the Lib Dems – has just said that “quite clearly” women can sometimes have penises.
This is counter to scientific fact and common sense.
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The Lib Dems have been polling quite well recently.
I think it’s about time those nice middle-class people in the South East and South West who have started voting Lib Dem took a serious look at Davey.
He has all the allure and political clout of a hamster’s nutsack. And his party is way to the left of Labour.
