So many examples, so little time.

Try this one.

An EU Embassy in London wants to move away from its expensive and old-fashioned practice of employing only people from its home country for every job (ie to have a mixture of ‘home-based’ staff and ‘locally employed’ staff’).

It approaches the FCO to ask for background on how we manage the practicalities and policy of this round the world.

Eventually a terse letter appears to this effect:

Unfortunately the FCO is not resourced to deal with questions like this.

This sort of thing spreads like wildfire round the Diplomatic Corps in London.

It is a textbook example of the unique combination of prissy unhelpfulness which has come to infect civil service procedure over the past decade.

Why? Because under unrelenting Treasury pressure civil servants spend hours filling in meaningless forms/spreadsheets/surveys on targets/goals/objectives and have so many drivelling ‘priorities’ they end up not doing their job – and (worse) being sanctimonious about their inadequacy.

Memo to next government:

Put a line through all that on Day One.

Issue a new instruction to the whole civil service thus:

Your first objective is to be courteous and helpful to everyone who shows up.

Then sack anyone who tries to hide behind ‘pressure of work’ or ‘stress’ as an excuse for being useless.

And see how morale and the quality of service soar.