David M

Accountant , father to two great boys, liverpool supporter !.

[David M @davidjmy]

A tricky one to explain to the Mrs

[Polymarket Sports @PolymarketSport]

🚨BREAKING: Someone just put $1M on Spain to WIN their match vs Cape Verde today

This pays out is $1,085,943.48 on Polymarket

[David M @davidjmy]

And people wonder why their taxes are so high !

[Maxi @AllForProgress_]

A whistleblower has revealed this month that civil servants across multiple Whitehall departments have been gaming the flexitime system to award themselves up to fifty extra days of paid holiday a year

That's about 2.5 months of full-time work lifted off the public payroll without record, on top of the CS-norm 26 days of annual leave, the eight public holidays, the contractual sick days, and of course the parental allowances that are already part of the standard package.

The methods and techniques by which this fraud has been accomplished are worth dwelling on, because the detail tells you something about the institution.

The first technique is the laptop-open-on-the-kitchen-table move. Here, the civil servant clocks off for all intents and purposes at 5pm but leaves a work laptop on, accumulating "active hours" from a home Wi-Fi connection, registering the evening as labour without performing any of it.

The second trick is the commuting-time-as-paid-hours wheeze, in which the round trip from Surbiton to Whitehall - coffee-and-podcast - is logged as part of the working day.

The third con, which the whistleblower reported as the most brazen of them all, is the straightforward falsification of office attendance against the three-days-a-week-on-site rule that this government, having promised the public a return of civil servants to civil-service buildings, has manifestly failed to enforce. The falsifications, in some cases, have been running for years.

Sit, for a moment, with the kind of person who does this and the kind of institution that permits it.

The person doing it is, in the main, a desk-bound senior official on between £55,000-130,000 a year, with access to a clocking system that runs on trust, who has decided, with the active connivance of his line manager and the silent assent of his department, that the appropriate response to that public trust is to defraud it.

And it's not even ambitious or spectacular. At least with a major fraud, you have a level of vision and nerve you have to admire even as you despise the motivating corruption. No, here, it's done through a series of small, deniable engineered manoeuvres that together transfer large sums of public money into undeserving pockets.

No honour among thieves, but some thieves are even less honourable than others.

The institution that permits it is the British Civil Service, an organisation whose senior cadre has spent the last decade in a state of escalating public-facing self-pity about its working conditions while the country it is paid to run has visibly fallen apart underneath it.

These are the same people who inherited the mandate of Brexit and, because the idea ran against the Metropolitan class bromides by which they orient their lives, hashed it up on purpose to punish the electorate whom they are duty-bound to serve.

And it's the same civil service that could not, in the end, manage a single COVID procurement contract without losing about £30 billion out of the back of the warehouse.

In light of this general disposition, a flexitime fraud is its small, daily, individual expression.

And the cost is not abstract. The Civil Service pay bill runs to roughly £15 billion a year. Headcount has grown by approximately a hundred and fifty thousand since 2016, with the deepest expansion in the policy and "leadership non-teacher" desk grades, the exact cohort the whistleblower says is gaming hardest.

Every 50-day phantom holiday, on a senior salary, is around £20k of public money paid for nothing. The country has been told for years, under successive governments, that there is no fiscal room for the things the country actually wants, like policing, prosecutions, courts that sit, borders, doctors, dentists, because the public finances are too tight.

Bollocks are they. You've got a whole parallel economy of piss-artist leave-taking running in Whitehall, and there'll be plenty more cash coming in to keep its subsidy even given this whistleblower's report. I don't for a second believe that no one senior saw it or knew about it, just as I don't believe that the rampant inequities in our police departments go unnoticed by whole legions of bystanders.

But the bystanders are not arsed.

That's why I say "Hooray for the whistleblower." Their life is going to be hell. They will be hugely unpopular. They will be described as bitter, disloyal, mentally ill, motivated by personal grievance, and unrepresentative of the dedicated public servants who go above and beyond.

That is what these institutions always say when one of their own breaks ranks. It is what they said to Maggie Oliver about Rotherham, to Alan Bates about Horizon, to the survivors of the Letby ward, the Cumberlege report, and the Sussex maternity unit. The smothering of internal dissent is now part of what the British civil service does for a living. The actual public service is something it has subcontracted to itself, badly, in stolen office hours, from the kitchen table.

I was the Civil Service comprehensively remade in this country, the only way such things are ever made, which is by changing the people and all the incentives under which they operate.

These people have been on the public payroll for fifteen years and have produced nothing for which the public can be grateful.

It's time to find out where the hours went, and dispense with those who are wasting them, along with our money.

[David M @davidjmy]

I'm interested, your original stance was that any increase was unaffordable to fans in the current climate and would mean nothing to the club overall in terms of revenue - what factors lead to you agree to the 3% rise ? If they had only proposed a 3% 1 year rise at the outset would you have still protested ?

[J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling]

.@zarahsultana I assume this is a different Zarah Sultana MP to the one who was recently filmed clapping along to loudspeaker chants for intifada, on a street in Surrey.
https://t.co/J9nLlYtw59

[David M @davidjmy]

I'm so glad our Mayor is out in Madrid discussing Gaza while Jews are being stabbed on the streets of London thanks to the hatred he helps to create.

[Sadiq Khan @SadiqKhan]

Great to meet Spanish PM Pedro Sanchez in Madrid. At a time when too many leaders are looking the other way, it matters that we stand together. We discussed Gaza, Europe & the shared values that unite London & Spain.

Progressive, internationalist politics is here to stay. 🇬🇧🇪🇸

[David M @davidjmy]

@spiritofshankly @Andrew_Heaton @John_W_Henry City never sell out - they can hardly increase prices . Cost of living is just an excuse.

[David M @davidjmy]

Starmer has to go for this…

[Ross Kempsell @RossKempsell]

IMPORTANT: PMQs Wed 4 Feb

Starmer asked 'did the security vetting he received mention Mandelson's relationship with Epstein'

Starmer answers: 'yes it did'

So Starmer had seen the DV vetting

So how can he have been unaware that Mandelson had failed that DV?

#receipts

[David M @davidjmy]

@robbohuyton this is your website where i could subscribe for £10 a month to hear you talk about a club you obviously hate. Gareth Roberts | Instagram | Linktree

[David M @davidjmy]

@robbohuyton why don't you first answer my question about ticket price inflation since FSG took over instead of saying that prices in the SKDS stand should be £14. No wonder they don't want to discuss this with you if that's your starting point.

[David M @davidjmy]

@robbohuyton And I’ve now looked up your website which you link to all your quotes - £10 a month for a podcast - I think I know why you’re doing all this PR work … and it’s not to save fans money.

[David M @davidjmy]

@robbohuyton I looked it up - since fsg took over ( which is the only relevant starting point as it’s them you’re complaining about ) prices have increased well below inflation. Again please show me your proposal for what should happen with ticket prices.

[David M @davidjmy]

@robbohuyton It’s called inflation .. maybe you could look it up sometime. The club spent £450m on players - they’re not doing it because they need the money. What’s your proposal - that prices should never increase ?

[David M @davidjmy]

@dlmjnk The atmosphere is awful because it’s full of season ticket holders in their 60s who just go to moan but still want season tickets at historic prices. Maybe season tickets should just be scrapped totally - give everyone a bette chance.

[David M @davidjmy]

@JayMcKenna87 It’s their club - if you don’t want to pay the prices they want to change don’t go - 99% of Liverpool fans don’t go to games

[David M @davidjmy]

Thought they should have bought him ….quite glad they did #salah

[David M @davidjmy]

Not very happy it is looking like @lfc are signing this guy http://t.co/ycYgEUfpfa - @John_W_Henry any comments ?

[David M @davidjmy]

@johngibbonsblog I can see why Jones doesn’t get in the team but the passing by everyone is so shocking

[David M @davidjmy]

@EylonALevy Can’t decide if it’s the same guy we met in Washington last summer

[David M @davidjmy]

@HenryPryor Surely the surveyor on the original purchase should have pointed out to them the risk of erosion.