So, Britain can’t keep our borders secure, the government mishandles the response to a novel virus, and has trashed the economy. There’s little money or enthusiasm within government for creating and implementing policies that the British people might actually like, such as improving healthcare, better and more honest and equitable policing, migration control and extending and returning rights, such as that of free speech, that have been lost in recent decades.
But, you will no doubt be both unsurprised and disgusted to hear, there is plenty of money available in government for yet more worthless and unnecessary activities that I refer to as ‘diversity guff’. This stuff, normally in the form of dubious training of staff, is unnecessary, costly and possibly divisive and dangerous. However, according to a report in the Daily Mail from the 19th September, various government departments were worryingly enthusiastic about spending the taxpayers money on diversity guff.
According to the Mail report there are 180 civil servants whose primary duties are to promote diversity and inclusion. Even the Ministry of Defence is not immune to an enthusiasm for diversity snake oil. They are seeking a ‘diversity and inclusion director’ at an advertised salary of £110,000 per year.
This is an astounding amount of money for what amounts to little more than a non-job, a worthless beauracratic excresence, when these funds could and should be spent on something more worthwhile and useful.
The Daily Mail said:
Whitehall mandarins have been criticised for wasting money on ‘non-jobs’ after it was revealed that at least 180 diversity officers are on the payroll across nine Government departments.
In a series of parliamentary questions, Tory backbencher Neil O’Brien asked Ministers how many members of their departmental staff had ‘one or more of the words “equality, diversity, inclusion, gender, LGBT or race” in their job title’.
Top of the pile was the Cabinet Office with 66 such employees, which included 41 members of the Government Equalities Office.
What do all these staff actually do? Why does the Cabinet Office alone require 66 of these diversity prodnoses? I can’t think of anything that they could possibly contribute to the workings of the Cabinet Office or any other Government department. My experience of working in environments where there is a strong diversity agenda, is that these staff do little more than bully, cajole and shame staff into thinking differently and in an ‘approved’ way. They occupy their time with pointless meetings and compiling even more pointless and in some cases damaging reports. They harm staff morale with their adherence to the left wing idea of the ‘victim stack’ where Orwell’s claim in Animal Farm that ‘some animals are more equal than others’ is enforced on staff and discernable by all. Diversity staff get in the way of the normal business of government, if we are speaking of the public sector and simply business in general if they have ensconced themselves in the private sector.
The hiring of these people for these posts is an inexcusable waste of public money and shows the contempt that both the elected government and the permanent government of the Civil Service, treat those from whom they’ve borrowed their power and who pay their wages. This utter waste in a misguided attempt by the organs of government to appear ‘right on’ has only come to light because a Tory MP decided to put common sense before party loyalty and ask the awkward question as to how many ‘diversity wallahs’ were sucking off of the teat of the taxpayer. If Mr O’Brien had not asked this question in Parliament then we most surely would not have known about the contemptuous waste of money represented by these diversity posts. Maybe we need more MP’s like Mr O’Brien who are prepared to ask awkward questions about how unfathomable amounts of public money are being wasted on unnecessary, unwanted and often dangerously politicised guff like this?
