The DWP tea party

Pay monkeys, get peanuts

The latest in management training? A day observing the group behaviour of chimpanzees. I was going to say that you could substitute a day watching the DWP, HMRC, or Student Loans (new entry) offices. But the chimpanzees will be less dysfunctional and harder working. They will not wait until the second their allocated time starts ticking to begin their day. They won't scoot off back to their shelter at the stroke of five regardless of what remains to be done. They won't be off sick / off smoking / at lunch. Their phones won't be left ringing because it's out of hours / during peak hours (that covers all day every day, right?).

This illustrates the attitudes and the expense they cause:

Fire Brigade Workshops. Any day of the week. Fire crew (on full pay but not operationally available) arrive with a spare engine, to collect theirs. They need to drive both into the yard and pull all the gear off one and onto the other.

It's 12:55 and the mechanic working on their appliance is replacing the last wheel nuts before signing it over to them.

At 13:00 a hooter sounds.

Clang!

That's the sound of the mechanic's spanner hitting the garage floor as he goes off to lunch with all the others. Two nuts away from finishing the job.

Four qualified firemen play pool and do the Telegraph crossword for an hour, until the hooter sounds again at two o'clock. This time there's a slow traipse back to work, via the bogs.

For the record, I believe that imperfect as this is, that it is better than the outsourcing-mania that appears the only alternative politicians of any hue will consider. I'll also take blue-collar company over white collar shiny-arse clock-watchers any day. They bore me. Rigid. Chimpanzees are interesting.

Feel free to insult me

Reform Section 5: join the campaign. It is currently an offence to use insulting words. It seems banter is against the law.

We are living in the days of the perma-offended. Political correctness has a legacy of pantomime offendees hitching up their polkadot petticoats and running about the stage waving their arms and squealing about their sensitivities.

Personally I'd ramp it up a bit and make it an offence to take offence. I'd incorporate robustness in the national curriculum. I'd have a three strikes and you're out policy on over-sensitivity. I'd make Frankie Boyle the Minister for the Sensitive.

The problem I have with the over-sensitive (and, apparently I'm at the red end of the autistic spectrum) is their lack of ability to empathise with the counter-sensitive. Rabid Muslims cannot imagine how halal meat might offend animal rights. How many times have you heard someone say: “X? Fair game. Y? Fair game. Z? Beyond the pale, you can't joke about Z, mate. That's just not funny.”

The only equitable solution is for everything and everyone to be fair game. Take your turn. It don't last forever and it's only words.