75ZT Community

Can't show you the article as you need to be a Times Online subscriber but the gist:-

The Border Agency recently made 475 staff redundant at a cost of some 42 million pounds in redundancy payments.

They are now recruiting approximately 800 staff.

Am I not seeing the logic here?

The person who made the decision probably has shares in the recruitment agency used by UKBA to replace these people, he said sarcastically.

That's quite some redundancy payment, assuming all got the same amount 88.5K per person.

There may be logic of a sort, not any I would understand but, if those made redundant were high earners, whereas, the new staff will be on the lowest pay grade. I wonder if the actual figures are available to us common folk?

Shuttered and fragmented policies, obsessively dominated by head count reductions are so often the strategy of today's management. Unfortunately kudos is often gained by how many you can wipe out - not the lack of performance resulting from the action, resulting in re-recruiting those paid off. Bit like the Third Reich - ideality over efficacy.

Short term thinking can be beneficial for obscure reasons.

Take apparently salutary attempts to pacify the mob after recent pecuniary advantage escapades came to light. While members may be aware that occasionally these posts are mildly critical of politics, politicians and anything connected to government, in short, authority, sometimes it’s pleasing to report the other side and here’s a snippet to warm the cockles:

There is a government post called Parliamentary Standards Commissioner. The responsibility of the Commissioner is to ensure the continuing observance of high standards of probity, and the rigid adherence to Parliamentary rules, in such areas as Members’ expenses.
The current Commissioner is John Lyon. Since 2008 Mr. Lyon has claimed £58.95. £54 was splurged on a trip to Birmingham. Yes, you read that correctly.

Short term thinking? Well, the gentleman has been in situ since 2008. His personal observance of duty is exemplary. Is anyone aware of anything approaching the sea change in matters apropos that was promised?

His 'success' was with a lot of help from the Daily Telegraph. Don't forget Lyon initially rejected a complaint into Jacqui Smith's £116k second-home allowances claim, just 24 hours after Tory MP Ben Wallace raised the issue.

With a salary of £108k for a 4 day week, his self disciplined austerity can be afforded, some would say.

Leaving aside the numerous and wide ranging conversations such an official must have in the course of a working day, with many influential official persons, he only reports to a select committee. Or parliamentary equivalent. Select, that is.

Presumably some subjects in committee might be considered to be ‘not in the public interest’ and therefore more appropriate to be considered in camera. So compliance with new regulations, say, on MP’s expenses for instance, may take a great deal of ’managing’. So the expedient short term thinking, apparently to get a serious matter resolved promptly for the good of parliament‘s reputation, may not have been so short term after all.

Maybe it is safe to assume that the Telegraph has a back burner somewhere. And maybe Leveson will eventually usher in draconian measures to prevent similar investigative expeditions.

Even so, expenses of such modest and pecuniary awareness for such an exalted public servant are quite remarkable. Rather reminds of the practice of dragging a scent to avoid killing the fox?
My brain hurts.