To be infuriated by civil servants asking for pointless meetings when a 10 minute phone call would suffice and sending out glossy brochures with info that would fit into a page of A4?

[Bubble99]

Why does the govt not make these people redundant?

We run two daycare nurseries and had asked for some basic info about nursery grants. We received a brochure 'The Nursery Grant and You' with (expensive) studio photos of every known minority group laughing and smiling and a request for a 'meeting' to discuss what was patently obvious.

The money this costs should be put towards nursery grants, IMVHO.

Please. Someone humour me. It's no fun ranting alone.

why deprive the suits of pointless bureaucracy and paper filing.they will implode without it

have a glass of wine ans big ole rant

absolutely agree - colossal waste of money IMO

oh god YES and if you go to the job centre because you have lost your job and want to claim job seekers, you know those buildings with all those EMPLOYED PEOPLE standing about in there, well they send you away with PHONE NUMBER....WTF ?
They cant help you, ring this number.

Thanks flowery.

What is it with these people?

The brochure is an obscene waste of money. We have parents struggling to keep a roof over their heads in London and they get a measly (by London standards) £1500 per year towards full-time pre-school education. Meanwhile these civil servants are sending out this expensive crap and asking for endless meetings to justify their salaries.

World gaaawn mad, innit?

Oh Good. I'm pleased a few others share my ranty views.

I've read recently that Mayor Ken has been (rightly) slagged off for his vanity glossy. He's also apparently spending £250k to send some buses to China to 'showcase' TFL.

Grrrrrrr.

I was a civil servant and I can only agree with the sentiment of overspending/pointless bureaucracy.

On the other hand, making me redundant (or the majority of people you're likely to make contact with at the Jobcentre or Local Authorities) won't help the problem. They probably hate the dumbass way they have to conduct business as much as you do...but they have to do as they're told or they lose their jobs!

It's the nimnods who make the decisions to print the leaflets that you should make redundant. And you won't EVER see them, as they're FAR too busy (probably designing brochures or holding meetings on what brochures to design) to deal with real life clients!!!!

I think they figure if they spend enough money on expensive brochures (with every ethnic minority/disability represented, so they can't be sued) they can hand those out to people instead of actually talking to/listening to them.

And it might put you buggers off claiming what is rightfully yours. And it might save the staff on the shop floor effectively dealing with people and having nothing to do for the rest of the day!!!!

Kicking a civil servant for doing the crappy job they do is a bit like kicking a patriotic soldier for fighting on the wrong side in a war.

As a Jobcentre plus civil servant, I agree squilly. No-one asked me if it was a good idea to send people away with a phone number. No-one else I work with thinks this is acceptable either.

When I last had a run in discussion with the job centre (so I could reclaim part of my child maintenance they'd illegally deducted from me) I took my Mum. Having spent years battling bureaucracy, she enabled to get to the counter and actually speak to a human being to get it sorted. Face to face contact - gets the job done.

Yet another jobcentre plus bod here, I totally agree with KatieScarlett. I always thought it absurd that people would walk in the door and ask to make a claim, and we'd direct them to a phone on the wall to ring a call centre. I was managing a jobcentre when this was brought in and it resulted in SO many more incidents of staff being abused by frustrated jobseekers.

Hi Forces, I was one of the abused. What do you think about the latest bright idea of not letting customers use the warmphones to call the BPC? Super customer service, I'm so proud!!!

FS & KS having not been unemployed for a long time I can't believe that is what people have to do!!! I am also a CS I tell you I got a written warning for returning a phone call to my solicitor when as a single parent I was buying a property & working full time. I was supposed to walk 10 minutes to the only payphone (for 1,000 staff) and use that (but could do so in work time - go figure!)

i sometimes wonder what percentage of their income our council spend on brochures

No you are not unreasonable Bubble.

We have often had heated discussions in the bigmouth house about Civil Servants (dh is one) versus Local Govt (I worked in Local Govt.) - I too became increasingly incensed in my job with the mindless bureaucracy and endless begging for pots of money from the faceless ones in whitehall. In the transport policy field we also had to deal with constant shifting departments and priorities - which to be fair is the fault of the politicians.

When you are trying to run a public service as part of a council or independantly, you are at the mercy of short termism and constantly have to find replacement funding when 3 year project funding runs out - really really frustrating.

Whereas DH feels that the Civil service tends to attract the creme de la creme (just because they have to pass an exam) - while Local govt are bumbling pen pushers (many are but you get what you pay for!).

I intend to return to local govt in some capacity when kids are older - but I fully expect to be frustrated by 'the system' as I was before - comes with the territory!

Katie, I wasn't aware of that as I'm on career break. That's insane!

Another public sector worker here, and it incenses me when we get yet another glossy from the Home Office of MoJ.

Yip ForcesSweetheart, all in the name of "reducing footfall", of course!

And to make matters even better, we don't have direct lines for staff to call the processing teams any more or dialogues for JSAPS or ISL to look it up ourselves. If we want to phone processing on behalf of a customer (which I have to do A LOT as a NDLPA) we have to use the customer numbers and go through press one for IS, etc. Makes my day, every time.

Stay on the career break for as long as possible. In 23 years I have never seen morale as bad as it is now. It makes the great selecting in exercise of 2004 seem like happy days.

How on earth can an NDLPA do their job without access to the benefit screens? My first EO job was as an NDLPA - most of the 3 week training course was on the benefit processing side of it and the IS screens coz it was such a huge part of the job - then I managed an NDLP team. I left local office eventually and am a region bod now but seriously considering applying to other depts at the end of my career break.

With difficulty, forces, usually by annoying the FLIO who does have access to the enquiry screens. Im studying at the moment, so once my DC's are older, I can leave and work somewhere else. ATM DWP are paying for my Masters and my p/t hours are really convenient (also I work 5 mins away from home, no commute, bliss).

It's a shame as I really like my job and get a great deal of job satifaction from what I do. The LP's I meet really do give me hope for the next generation (with a few exceptions, of course). However, I don't want or envisage a future career in JCP. I declined to apply for the last few promotion exercises. I just don't want the job.