Whitehall is insanely inefficient – how can it shocked by 91,000 civil service job cuts?

The shirkforce

IT is a catastrophe that the one workforce pivotal to the smooth running of the country is insanely inefficient and yet with such a grotesque sense of entitlement.

The squeals from Whitehall at the plan to cut 91,000 civil service jobs to generate billions for tax cuts are deafening.

It would still only reduce numbers to 2016 levels, hardly the apocalypse. But what did they expect?

For two Covid-blighted years they have luxuriated at home, dodging the stressful and pricey commute.

Instead of then accepting the inevitable return to the office they double-down, not only insisting on home-working rights forever but even demanding to do so ABROAD if they so fancy.

Some claim they’re more productive at home. Tell that to a public hit by scandalous DVLA and passport delays.

This is a “Blob” of stubborn anti-Tories on coveted pay and pension deals the private sector can only dream of.

Yet they demand, via their union, an even cushier life.

Talk about leading with your chin.

Brussels pout

“YOU signed the deal. Live with it.” Is this really the only argument the EU and its Remainer chums have on Northern Ireland?

Their blinkered petulance won’t solve the problem. Which is that the protocol agreed as part of Brexit is repugnant to a large unionist population and is rendering the place ungovernable.

Given its history no one should ignore that.

The Tories had no option but to sign the deal in 2019 to get Brexit over the line, end the cynical paralysis of Parliament by Remainers and quell rising anger among 17.4million thwarted Leavers.

But thanks to Brussels’ intransigence, it isn’t working. An international treaty it may be — but it must be fixed or binned. The status quo is not an option.

That angers the EU and its fans. But their motives are disingenuous and their rage betrays them: the protocol is not an honest attempt to protect the peace.

More a ruse to keep part of the UK effectively in the EU despite Brexit.

No wonder they cannot bear to lose it.

Meddle winners

THE Sun always said half-price supermarket deals were vital to the lowest-paid.

That cut no ice with £82,000-a-year MPs — or the metropolitan nanny-state obesity obsessives who would rather people were miserably poor than overweight.

But we congratulate the Government for seeing sense at last and ditching both its looming ban on buy-one-get-one-frees — and on screening junk food ads before 9pm.

Neither would have worked anyway.

Why, though, did soaring inflation and genuine hardship have to set in before this supposedly Conservative Government reluctantly stopped meddling in our lives?