Report after report recommends Civil Service Reform - but it never happens. Here's why:-
ukcivilservant.substack.com/p/civil-serv...
Includes references to writing by @andrewgreenway.bsky.social , @samfr.bsky.social & @iandunt.bsky.social
Every U.K. job ad is like “we seek a dynamic, world-leading expert to care for priceless, load-bearing activities. Salary: £28,000 p.a.”
I agree with Mr O'Brien's main thesis. Civil service performance management is generally poor and I suspect it has got worse in recent years following grade inflation etc. But I do not share his liking of 'enforced distribution' for instance.
I will respond at greater length via Substack asap.
Here are some enjoyable quotations about the UK Civil Service:-
ukcivilservant.substack.com/p/many-a-tru...
Amazed, last night, to hear that BBC Persian has 24 million followers on Instagram. Soft power much under-appreciated by politicians?
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason." - Mark Twain #Truth
"None of that fits in a victory video, no matter how many totally badass clips from movies and video games you include. And none of it can be resolved by having your press secretary announce that you’ve decided you’ve won:" - terrific piece by @eliasisquith.blog:
Here's a special International Women's Day newsletter:-
ukcivilservant.substack.com/p/women-book...
Imagine if Government gave hospitals a fixed sum for every MRI scan.
No need for the scan to be necessary or if the patient benefited - just show you've done it and get the money.
We would get a huge increase in unneccesary scans.
Yet that's our university funding system.
The environmental impact of this war (and the war in Ukraine) is devastating. What's the point of separating waste at home and encouraging the use of green energy when the world is being burnt down with toxic substances blown into the atmosphere and the ground poisoned on an unprecedented scale?
A widespread affliction (see @roberthutton.co.uk : thecritic.co.uk/the-dumb-dum...).
in the store just now and there was a couple looking at those prepped toddler meals and he was saying “everything’s better if you just cook from scratch” and she goes “they don’t look bad and they’d save me so much time” and he just kept repeating “it’s better if you cook”
I did not commit a crime
Shared services have more than one customer and so too often provide a poor service to everyone. As Accounting Officer, I refused to lose control of my HR& ICT teams. The Treasury, sensibly, also avoid joining shared services that they impose on everyone else. They even had their own Fast Stream.
Here are some enjoyable quotations about the UK Civil Service:-
ukcivilservant.substack.com/p/many-a-tru...
FT comments section this morning - saying what everyone else is thinking, right?
Tax exiles stuck in London desperately trying to get *back* to Dubai to avoid becoming tax resident in the UK? Just great stuff. giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...
it's sad the the 'before' picture is so commonplace (and so accepted as normal) in ireland
if they were displayed the other way around, you would think something cataclysmic had happened
This story is nuts
The journal ‘Pediatrics and Child health’ has been published an article type, for case reports, that are made up and fictional without having any clear notice 😱
retractionwatch.com/2026/03/03/c...
If anyone is friends with any Georgian air traffic controllers, buy them a nice bottle of wine. As guardians of pretty much the only narrow gap still available between Europe and Asia that avoids both Iran, the Gulf, Ukraine and Russia, they are under some substantial pressure.
Senior Trump official said Iran in nuclear talks was trying "to get us into a long, drawn-out process with meetings and experts and something that would have taken time in order to do the third meeting." Iran then gave US a longer, five-page proposal. "We joked that even though we were in Switzerland, the proposal was like Swiss cheese, because there were, you know, a lot of holes that they were able to go through."
The Iranians dared to go to the negotiations with a position paper
gilt yields up 25bps in two days, the FTSE down a few percent, gas prices up 90%, oil up 20% since the weekend, not the ideal backdrop for the Spring Statement, but #ThisIsWhyYouNeedHeadroom is probably trending in the Treasury.
1970s ad: GUESS WHO'S BUILDING NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS. The Shah of Iran is sitting on top of one of the largest reservoirs of oil in the world. Yet he's building two nuclear plants and planning two more to provide electricity for his country. He knows the oil is running out - and time with it. But he wouldn't build the plants now if he doubted their safety. He'd wait. As many Americans want to do. The Shah knows that nuclear energy is not only economical, it has enjoyed a remarkable 30-year safety record. A record that was good enough for the citizens of Plymouth, Massachusetts, too. They've approved their second nuclear plant by a vote of almost 4 to 1. Which shows you don't have to go as far as Iran for an endorsement of nuclear power. NUCLEAR ENERGY. TODAY'S ANSWER.
Fun ad from the 70s
Just as most chemists and biologists have no interest in building chemical or biological weapons, most Al researchers have no interest in building Al weapons - and do not want others to tarnish their field by doing so, potentially creating a major public backlash against Al that curtails its future societal benefits. Indeed, chemists and biologists have broadly supported international agreements that have successfully prohibited chemical and biological weapons, just as most physicists supported the treaties banning space-based nuclear weapons and blinding laser weapons. In summary, we believe that Al has great potential to benefit humanity in many ways, and that the goal of the field should be to do so. Starting a military Al arms race is a bad idea, and should be prevented by a ban on offensive autonomous weapons beyond meaningful human control.
• Fully autonomous weapons. Partially autonomous weapons, like those used today in Ukraine, are vital to the defense of democracy. Even fully autonomous weapons (those that take humans out of the loop entirely and automate selecting and engaging targets) may prove critical for our national defense. But today, frontier AI systems are simply not reliable enough to power fully autonomous weapons. We will not knowingly provide a product that puts America's warfighters and civilians at risk. We have offered to work directly with the Department of War on R&D to improve the reliability of these systems, but they have not accepted this offer. In addition, without proper oversight, fully autonomous weapons cannot be relied upon to exercise the critical judgment that our highly trained, professional troops exhibit every day. They need to be deployed with proper guardrails, which don't exist today.
When that letter was doing the rounds I remember thinking, very naively, "no shit Sherlock, ofc no one wants that". However, it's also worth comparing the shift in position between that letter in 2016 with Anthropic's response to the DoD. The ethical baseline has shifted a lot over the last 10 years
It is presumably no coincidence that Trump has chosen to attack Iran in the middle of Ramadan.
There is always a tweet.
As the analysis starts of the Gorton and Denton result, I wanted to flag some aspects that my experience yesterday suggests are being over or under-played
(Caveats - I went to Longsight, Gorton and Denton town centres and spoke to as many people as I could, but it was mostly during the working day)
Well worth reading for the Chris Mason story..., 😉
I hate to disagree with the IfG but Civil Service reform is a pointless distraction.
The key things to focus on are capability.
How does the Civil Service get rid of Palantir and the rest of the Techbro gatekeepers?
How do public services prepare for Agentic AI attacks?
Every political call for a public inquiry is an admission that the political mechanisms of accountability failed in real time.
@philipjcowley.bsky.social finding the head of the nail
