The more I hear about Boris Johnson’s lockdown parties, I hark back to my time in the DWP. As far as I can remember, we did have office parties at Christmas once the working day was over, after which we’d decant to the local pub. Then, in 1994, everything changed. This is from the BBC website:
‘A senior DWP manager e-mailed the guidance to staff to remind them ahead of Christmas in November 2021, four months after England’s ‘Freedom Day’.
He wrote: “The use of DWP premises for holding any sort of functions apart from normal business was curtailed some years ago due to an incident at a party.’
The incident in Salford involved two men who fell to their death from a fifth floor window and office parties were banned, never to be unbanned. The BBC story goes on:
“At this time and given the current Coronavirus guidance, the holding of social functions on a DWP site is not permitted.”
The guidance added: “The best present is to know we have kept each other (and our relatives) safe from coronavirus.”
I’m sure there were very few staff remaining in the DWP in 2022 who recalled the tragic incident of 1994, but I know one thing: everyone knew the rules, that office Christmas parties were not allowed and if you wanted to party, then do it away from work premises in your own time. None of us felt this rule was unreasonable. Clearly, the rules which were drawn up by those at the top didn’t apply to them.
No one should have been surprised at Johnson’s wilful ignoring of Covid rules. This represents a part of what he is: rules are for other people. A power-hungry narcissist without a single redeeming quality is one way of describing him. An habitual liar, shyster and huckster are other descriptions which certainly apply to him. But what I don’t understand is the civil servants in and around Downing Street. Obviously, I’ve come across the odd wrong ‘un over the year but in general I have found them to be honest, decent human beings whose main aim, after putting bread on the table, is to serve the public. This obviously means playing by the same rules as the Great British Public. Yet some civil servants clearly didn’t do that. Why not?
An old saying, with which I happily concur, is that a fish rots from the head downwards. That is the same in almost every walk of life you can think of. People at the top set the rules and lead by example. It is obvious to me that we have a government, led by a wrong ‘un who doesn’t care. I can imagine the civil servants working in an atmosphere of anything goes concluding that anything goes. The head honcho enjoys a piss up in the garden of 10 Downing Street so presumably it must be all right for everyone else? You’d have thought, wouldn’t you, that someone might have pointed out that the rules they told our colleagues to conform to also applied to them?
You cannot have missed the bullshit from Johnson’s apologists about how both he and his staff worked terribly hard and were entitled to hold a Bring Your Own Booze party at the end of the day. Well, I was not aware that doctors and nurses at hospitals up and down the land were partying outside of A&E, or exhausted teachers were getting slaughtered in the playground after a punishing day in the classroom or care home staff were bringing in suitcases full of booze to drink in the car park or even the TV room when the residents had gone to bed. My feeling is that it would never have occurred to these heroic workers to have a piss up and anyway they’d have been far too knackered. Were the Downing Street politicians, their partners, their friends and the civil servants really have been as exhausted as any of the staff I have named? I think not.
If they’ve broken the rules, they need to be disciplined, hauled over the coals, as they say. Why not re-assign the guilty civil servants to Jobcentres where they can train as work coaches in order to force the unemployed to do minimum wage jobs no one wants to do? Because that’s what this evil government has done today, telling the unemployed that if they can’t get a job in their area of skills within four weeks of signing on – say an engineer or plumber – to take any literally minimum wage job that comes along. “Yes, I know you were a highly trained engineer at Rolls Royce, but if you don’t take this job on night shifts at the local care home, I’m stopping your benefits.” You’ll soon see what the real world looks like, then. No wine and cheese parties there.
The truth is that if this scandal – and that’s what it is – had engulfed any other group of workers, they’d have been sacked from their jobs and charged for criminal activity. A few insincere apologies from Johnson must not be allowed to let him off the hook.
