Incompetence is fine: but being offensive is sure to get you sacked

Richard Bates

"If you haven’t received one of these texts or emails about ‘Baby P’, then I would suggest that you are not part of the modern world, and you have my envy. You probably know nothing of Simon Cowell, or John the Dancing Pig, or Georgina Baillie, or the exciting electro-grime artist Vibezkid, or Dora the Explorer. In other words, you are one archaic mofo, and good luck to you."

I know who Georgina Baillie is, but have never heard of any of the others. I seem to be doing rather well. (But then I've no idea what an archaic mofo is either.)

needhat

If you haven’t received one of these texts or emails about ‘Baby P’, then I would suggest that you are not part of the modern world, and you have my envy. You probably know nothing of Simon Cowell, or John the Dancing Pig, or Georgina Baillie, or the exciting electro-grime artist Vibezkid, or Dora the Explorer. In other words, you are one archaic mofo, and good luck to you."

I have heard of some of them but have no idea what they do with themselves all day.
I am indeed fortunate.

Words of advice Rod; Have a fancy looking mobile but never turn it on unless you want to call someone, and only give the number to your most trusted mistress.
Richard- I believe a "mobo" is a computer motherboard so I fear you can work out what Rod is calling you.

Jim

I don't know who started the modern world, but who is Kerry Katona? I see stories about her, but I can't work out what she does.
As regards Baby P, in this new age, criminals are not punished but forgiven. So that gets Haringey off. But the Lanarkshire joke is an offence, because it shows a lack of love, and we must all love each other, apparently. Nobody seems to want to love me though, but I have let myself go, if truth be told.

Bickers

This is a chilling insight into the PC lunacy that now pervades the public sector. Rod's comments about the child that drowned in Manchester who would most likley have been saved is a scary indictment of how as a society we have lost our way.

Huw Morgan

Please publish this correction - Rod Liddle refers to "Special Constables" in Manchester in his piece, the two involved were Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs). PCSOs are not warranted officers, whereas Special Constables are. Special Constables are volunteers who work for no pay but are full police constables. There is therefore a significant difference.

Joe Camel

@ Huw Morgan, does that make it better or worse? When you say PCSOs are "not warranted" you mean they are not entitled to arrest people, is that correct? What does that have to do with preventing sccidents?

MikeF

I suspect the child in the carrier bag might have been a young boy - in which case the joke would have been deemed 'homophobic'. But, as Rod Liddle correctly points out, what else would you expect from a public sector organisation saturated in the doctrines of what it regards as 'liberalism', 'multi-culturalism' and 'non-judgmentalism', but which in reality are those of intolerance, self-righteousness, bureaucratic conformism and staggering incompetence.

Max

AND

there is the case of the lesbian who received £190,000 for hurt feeling while a soldier gets £161,000 for having an arm and a leg blown off.

But, what are you actually doing about all the madness Rod?

What are any of us actually doing about it? Obviously our much vaunted democracy isn’t working.

Some answers please – anyone?

Dwight Vandryver

Let's put it this way: if you were a forty something bachelor walking along the pavement and a 9 year old boy came cycling towards you and then fell off his bike, would you: (a) rush over to stem the blood spurting from his thigh with your hand, or (b) turn smartly around and walk in the other direction?

Kram Ekosum

Mr Liddle, thank you once again! Good questions Max.... Rod you are a brilliant polemicist but what do we actually do with this sorry messed up country? Could you stand as an independent (a la Martin Bell) at the next election?

James

A member of an extreme Puritan sect asked his minister if having sex standing up was sinful. This was referred upwards to the Supreme Synod (or whatever) and the eventual decision was that while not inherently sinful, it should be discouraged "as it could lead to dancing". See? PC Boll***s has been around forever.

Marc O'Polo

Excellent postings! Really good piece,Rod. I really could not believe what I was hearing when they came out with that lunatic piffle of a potential transgression of health and safety. Yeh, it was bad for his health, getting shot at point blank range, and I guess the safety of the other passengers was somewhat compromised. Gawd knows what sort of H & S directives have been so recklessly ignored by those gentlemen in Mumbai, just now. But, if there is an inquest, I certainly hope that their human rights are fully recognised, and I reckon (after all, the prcedent's been set) that it should be on the grounds of a possible lapse in Health and Safety directives.

Mark Solomon

Plus ca change - before we get all het up about the Brazilian's assasins being condemned on 'Elf 'n Safety grounds, perhaps we should remember that in the end what put Al Capone away were the accountants doing him for tax fraud - I mean all the mob killings were just put in the shade by his failing to pay the proper tax! There ain't nuffink new out there! By the way I am a totally archaic mofo as I know none of them and am only 45!

Andrew

I suspect that working for the public sector is considered a privilege as the work one does is not considered productive, and doesn’t rely on end of year earnings reports. This cushiness only requires that you show up and follow guidelines and procedures, hence the ease at which you can be replaced since you are spared any thinking and ‘logic’ unlike for instance, an architect, a barrister, or well remunerated private sector employee. This menial work is a great many peoples self-actualisation; little responsibility or accountability, brainless pay, a guaranteed pension and job-security. Every so often a situation arises, as in Lanarkshire, where standards of zero-tolerance are maintained due to the aforementioned guidelines and procedures, whereas in the heinous case of Baby P where common sense, logic and thought are involved what appears clear-cut is obfuscated due to a lack of doctrine when attempting to force a square into the polygon that is individual child care; a task that is too great a burden on our public sector drones.

Max

To quote Theodore Dalrymple in the Times.

“……..the fundamental purpose of the British public service is to provide a meal-and-mortgage-ticket for those who work in it, especially at management level. The ostensible purpose of an organisation is rarely its real purpose. I know this from my experience in the Health Service.

“Thus, when a problem reveals itself, the response is a curious one, that is to say simultaneously one of work creation and work avoidance.”

“The work creation consists of instituting ever more “failsafe” and “best-practice” procedures, usually with all their associated paperwork, which are then bowed down to and worshipped like the Golden Calf. Of course, this creates the impression of terrific pressure of work, that can be relieved only by the employment of more and more staff with strange titles such as Compliance Manager and Best-Practice Co-ordinator.

“This work creation is dialectically related to the work avoidance. So much effort goes into the procedure that no time, energy or inclination is left over to secure the alleged purpose of the procedure.

“Documentation is its own justification; and a superstition now exists among the police, nurses, doctors, social workers, prison officers and no doubt others that nothing can go wrong if the forms are filled in correctly. Anyone who has been to a coroner's court lately will know that this is a superstition shared by many coroners”.

All very true - but what are we doing about it? Or are we all just waiting to die?

Donald H

Similarly the awarding of damages to the Lesbian Corporal in the Royal Artillary which were in excess of the those awarded to personnel injured in Iraq/Afghanistan. Perverse sense of priorities in this, now ruined, Nulab country.

Mal Tucker

This is a genuinely brilliant article which deserves a much bigger audience than the right wing loons (like me) who read The Spectator.

A. MacAulay

Social Workers, like Teachers suffer from stress, nervous disorders and depression more than other professional groups. This is presumably because they start their careers with a degree of fuzzy, lefty idealism that is soon buried beneath the reality of their being mere misery administrators, with no possibility of actually changing or improving the lot of their "clients", or even pupils.

Indeed, the realistion that "the System" has no interest in helping the "victims" of poverty, racism, unemployment, age, etc., etc., to do anything other than remain victims must be crushing to a persons self respect. Solving a problem means that it goes away and if it goes away then one has to justify ones existance and salary with some other unsolved problem.

Social Workers, the poor dears, have an insoluble conflict betwen their personal security and the futility of their work. And the last thing that any of them can afford to do is make a decision about anything because this might endanger the former and alter the latter.

Its not just 60 or so visits that failed to see that a small child was being murdered by parts or that some "community" service persons in uniform were unable to wade into pond and save a childs life, but that this institutionalised blindness and cowardice is repeated, in smaller ways, in tens of thousands cases every day.

After all, one must assume that when a person, group, society or whatever has a problem or symptom and that the solution or cure is easily available or even imaginable, and this is not taken, then the problem has a higher value to that person, etc., than the solution.

One way of dealing with a "conflict" is to make a joke about it. This is why most jokes are about sex or shit. The Lanark joke wasn't that funny, but you had to be there. Clearly not in the same league as the putrid, "Little Britain". It clearly dealt with a conflict that made the 15 nervous and being punished for this proves that Social Workers have even more reasons to be depressed than we can imagine and that the person of responsibility who sacked them is an ignorant fool.

James R

Whether to go in to bat for unfairly sacked social workers...Hmmm....that's what they call an ethical dilemma.

Anthony

Rod, you say: "The question, though, is how we have allowed ourselves to attain this extraordinary position."

Might I posit that you actually went a great way to answering this question in that rather brilliant essay you wrote earlier this year on the legacy of 1968 in - of all things - the Daily Mail (as a Daily Mail reader, I wish you were in it more often).

It's a reversion of priorities isn't it? And where does all this come from - Marx, Gramsci and the far Left, who now have cultural control of everything including the way that we construct out values, be it through the law or what is deemed acceptable in print or on stage.

I don't think it will be going away any time soon - at least not until you're writing more of the same sort of sensible essay for the Daily Mail and more and more people can see how this all came to pass.

As for it being the 'holy bible of the permanently sclerotic', Rod, you don't have to read it all. I don't read all The Spectator or all the Telegraph but I always read you and I like all your 'Heffer and Liddle Unleashed' videos too.

I read the Mail mainly for Quentin Letts and Richard Littlejohn, both of whom put me in stitches on my way to work. And then there's also good guest commentators in it, like that chap Rod Liddle.

I hope my endorsement doesn't make you lose your 'cool' credentials - sorry, Rod.

vivek sharma

it depends on ones attitude, justice and grivence.comitting on;
once ability is justified and jerapproised.