FURY OVER WFH FOOD FREEBIES?

If you have a good memory, it’s possible that you may remember a time when the BBC was genuinely an independent and objective broadcaster, going to great lengths to ensure accuracy and balance. There is no such balance today as our national broadcaster, cowing at threats from this hard right Tory government, merely repeats its attack dog lines. Take today’s Sun front page. Here I quote directly from the BBC’s newspaper review:

‘The Sun leads with reports that civil servants have been given around £30m in gift cards to spend in shops and restaurants. The paper says the tokens – which were handed out amid a government pay freeze – were given for good performances, despite half of them working from home and “huge failings in Whitehall departments”.’

So far as I am aware, some government departments do reward good performance with vouchers. If it’s £30 million, then in the grand scheme of things it’s an insignificant sum. It’s certainly true that many civil servants, if not most, have had real terms pay cuts pretty well every year since 2010. I would have thought rewarding people doing an exceptional job – and that in my experience is what my old colleagues do – was A Good Thing. The Sun, that scourge of the working class, despite deriving much of its income from the working class, clearly thinks not. But it’s the last bit that gets me: despite half of them working from home and “huge failings in Whitehall departments”.

What does that actually mean? What does working from home have to do with it? I know scores of people who worked from home and continue to do so, albeit in more of a hybrid form of working and the evidence is that they are even more productive.  Yes, even more productive.  My experience, gleaned throughout a near lifetime of public service, is that the public gets a very good deal from its public servants. Benefit fraud investigators, border patrol staff, tax inspectors, driving instructors, Jobcentre coaches; these are the very best of us and many don’t anywhere near the national average wage. Many use food banks and claim the very benefits they pay out in order to make ends meet. The fact that some have worked from home, by way of management instruction by the way, should not detract on their exceptional public service. And that there are “huge failings in Whitehall departments” is hardly the fault of those on the frontline, is it? Again, my experience is that most, of not all, failings are down to underfunding and inept and incompetent politicians.  Let’s call it out for what it is: a tacky, right-wing scandal sheet is repeating the lines it has been given by government spin doctors. If you are a civil servant who reads The Sun, it’s worth remembering how much it hates you.

The Sun says there is ‘FURY OVER WFH FOOD FREEBIES’. Is there? Is there really? Or is this tacky little organ trying to create fury among its hard of thinking readers? I think we know the answer. It’s the usual Murdoch gutter press at work, dripping with lies and hate. Our wonderful front line public sector workers deserve so much more than that.