Work

  • Revealed: UK’s HR woes deepen

    The UK doesn’t have a reputation for HR work, but, for some reason, HR workers like to think they have one anyway, as a default for their thinking.

    In recent weeks their (so-called) issues have been coming up in news politics. It’s social media this, racism that, and social discordance elsewhere.

    These are not their issues, however, but as an example of poor or false categorisation, the self-appointed emperors are consulted from their high positions.

    The UK has to regain a footing on this, and take back control from nuisance faux intellects. Many seem to barely know a reason why each of us do some things.

    The UK work ‘scene’ is crying out for a change. We want this part of a workplace to be resourced first and then consulted on its position. This is the only way.

  • Out of office

    This site will resume Monday 30 March 2026 for more reporting on conservative matters.

  • GCHQ has a long history of service provision 

    It’s believed that GCHQ has come together over time out of many different efforts to defend the country in different political climates and across social dividing lines.

    It cannot state all of it publicly because it’s a secret, but the type of work that has emerged from such unidentified individuals has been used to great effect by many of our public representatives.

    In a bigger sense, GCHQ has emerged out of some serious service during the two world wars. It’s documented by many of those that have had the privilege to watch its progress and to approve investment so that it could build to its current form.

    It’s now a key part of the UK’s capability. It’s proving to have a variety of ‘helps’ that serve all of us in different ways but from an elevated position. These are high-tech, intelligent, and locally relevant measures.

    Many of its key skills and some of its important leaders were honed and promoted during the tumultuous time in Europe that’s now called the Second World War.

    It took in much information through some of its bases, one being Bletchley Park, and used such ‘news’ to work on fixes to the British approach to fighting Hitler to victory in Europe.

    The tasks in hand, however, were far more complex than knowing what was going on. The mysteries of coding and breaking these in hostile environments were studied and exposed relentlessly by those that worked loyally for us here.

  • Public service is hard in many ways

    The job of doing government isn’t straight forward for those that are employed to do it. It can’t follow as being a normal job but then again, it has many similarities to other jobs. This is a context that only the most focused can handle.

    A side shot of the frontal edge of the Department for Transport building in central London.

    The new, nationalised Great British Railways is one example of a tough task ahead. The Department for Transport and its Civil Servants will need to work hard to get it fully off the ground. It’s proved a difficult task for others so far.

    The volume of passengers is one facet, and the numbers involved in a government service have to be taken into account. It’s also an issue of money and how it all works out in practice. There’s also staff and all the problems that result.

  • Revealed: “Miss Matrix” fraud

    The allure of MI5 work is never reflected in the reality of it, but it’s enough for some to get too close and to get burned. This has never been truer than in recent times, as a number of female applicants formed a “Miss Matrix” group in the early stages of their interviews. It led to ignorance during training and later mistakes in their work. They were all decommissioned but it just goes to show that sometimes fiction rubs up against fact too closely.

  • Exclusive: Parliamentary staffing disarray

    In an exclusive for Conservative News Site, it’s believed staffing arrangements in Parliament have broken down. This is due to expired staff contracts still being used to prolong employment. It’s said staff are feeing “exasperated” by the ongoing disarray in simple movements of people.

  • Why is safety of such low importance?

    The UK has a crisis of safety. The issues now stack up. The measures in place are improving, but the human resources aren’t. There’s a lag in replacing ineffective staff. There’s a gap in people power at the very core of Policing and uses of force. The disarray is now palpable.

    The UK suffers from a lack of legitimate human activity. Meanwhile pliable staff sit at terminals and watch the chaos happen. They speak up the game and swing the near misses, but their lack of ethic is clear. The public aren’t fooled by lazy employees or scatterbrained managers.

  • Sex at work is wrong

    The trend of familiar sexual intercourse at work is concerning for some. “It’s the same as doing it in my living room,” one banking executive said to me. It’s disconcerting that he had to witness it at his level of work, but it’s a truism of today’s culture.

    There’s a lot happening that we don’t realise until it’s divulged. The nature of Journalism is shifting toward it, toward finding out home truths that aren’t known widely yet. This is the work of finding out the nitty gritty anywhere it’s found.

    Age Of Consent (Credit: ChatGPT).

    The fact of sex at work is only after the matter. It’s always seen as a choice by developmental psychologists, and so the offence is real if it’s felt. It’s the substance of many workplace disputes. The arguments aren’t over who, but over the matter of it.

    The privacy of home life or a hotel room somewhere else is far removed from an office block. There isn’t much to hide if it’s the scene of sexual activity between anyone that works there. It’s going to play a part in the corporate culture, if not in the workforce itself.

  • The Treasury’s new digital era

    The Treasury’s step into the modern era has apparently been a giant leap. Today, Darren Jones MP (Bristol North West/Labour), Chief Secretary to the Treasury, illustrated some of the changes to the Institute for Government.

    “We’re using technology, dashboards, AI. We’re talking about things across departments with the cabinet. This is very different to the way it used to happen with the Treasury bilaterally via Excel spreadsheets, with not everyone knowing what was happening… And we will develop a single digital interface that sits over the top of these IT solutions and will bring the data up into the centre of government to allow us to look at financial and performance management.”

    This is a positive move for the Civil Service, albeit it now requires a different type of Servant. The computer savvy, data-orientated, and graphics inclined need apply. No need to like staplers, glasses of water, and boxes of noodles.

  • Long Report: The embers of service

    It takes time to set anything up. I was told this by a Tory grandee, whose marquee role in the party set him up to know practically anything about it.

    He’d seen more people try to make a quick buck out of it than those who didn’t. The few who tried it found it took a lot of work to do something great just within its own walls.

    It would be the only work they could do because of the effort it involved. The rest of the story is a bleak outlook.

    The way things go in Whitehall today, it’s not a case of asking who our greats are. They aren’t great. They don’t work hard, and often their plans don’t get turned into projects.

    At least, it’s what I caught sight of as I had a look. The ‘insight’ was brief, but lasting. It showed me that for all that’s said, little is proactively done as a result.

    Workplace fevers

    As it seemed any colleague would quit their job at a second’s notice to join a protest, a cheapening of the state began in earnest that shaped its future course.

    It was said higher up that a “quick win” would solve any issue. All it took is a “bright idea” and a lot of “science”, they said.

    The problem is there were already problems in the delivery of services that explained many of the issues, and these were due to such “fads”, or ideas.

    In the next stage, they believed in it. However, it was only a fervour in “doing government the right way”, and plans folded out that weren’t going to work.

    A new low

    It seemed to be this way in politics, and government. The new appointees saw work would take a shorter time than play, and it kicked off a culture war.

    The increase in striving for leisure activity led to bitter fights for control in all realms of state, and it led to huge upset.

    A moment in Whitehall sums it up. A person said swingers in a nightclub had been replaced with “Staples” and “Screwdrivers” who worked hard and didn’t play.

    It spread upset in Westminster. The Tory grandee was right, this one time. There were chancers everywhere trying to draw on past scandals to make their way.

    Change ahead

    In a surprising twist, an answer came from Whitehall. There was a move to recruit properly. There were ideas for new computer systems to drive efficiency.

    There was a call for simplification in politics to make it more clear what was being asked for. A pattern emerged of stating things straightforwardly.

    This made it obvious who was working, and who wasn’t. It helped reward progress, and discipline failure. It meant work was done, and results may come out.

  • Long Report: Journalism in dark places

    I spent nearly 10 years fighting to understand a town in the heart of Berkshire, but it’s not easy to say. I arrived without fanfare, having done it before.

    I had no help. I didn’t work with anyone. The people already here, ironically, left. They didn’t find much interest in a large town. They didn’t seem the types, anyway.

    They went on to find “gold, and glory” elsewhere. It felt odd they did it, and bitter. I saw the back of them and didn’t want to know any further. They also looked the wrong sort.

    I explored the town in work, leisure, and social time at a few churches. It wasn’t easy because I wasn’t supposed to fit in. I didn’t try, and so I didn’t fail, either, in what I tried.

    Justifying the dark

    It begins without light, and slowly grows. It’s my experience in working in hardship and in the lives of others. They feel pain I don’t get, and I feel anguish I can’t share.

    It’s tough, but I love the results. I can’t see it at times, and it’s laborious work to make things happen. To begin with it takes a week, and at once it took a whole month.

    In the process, other people don’t understand. They have an air of arrogance, and think a different method is better. I almost have to justify the dark, to get on.

    The horror that accompanies a deep work is difficult to shake. I still have to get over the things I saw. I found people in a bad condition. I witnessed awful things.

    Believing incredibly

    The biggest task I had to tackle is the issue of obsession. I encountered people with too many hangups about life. Mostly it was about democracy, which is sad.

    In England, politics is a slow but winnable game. It takes time, but over time people get the gist and make it work for themselves. In Reading, no such belief existed.

    It was like that for various reasons, and on one hand were those who believed it so because of previous offenses. They felt this party was bad, or that party shit.

    I later met the two men who were behind it. They were Labour and Conservative supporters respectively, and made things turn on their enjoyment of it.

    It wasn’t pleasant, or pretty, as it went on. They were too insistent for more impressionable residents. As luck would have it, they found broad support as well.

    Ending madness

    It was a maddening experience, over nine years of hell. I had to deal with endless criminal types, awful manipulation, and interference from far off actors.

    In my experience, people tend to cause trouble because on a personal level it’s what makes sense. It’s not my work that’s going to be relevant, but their needs.

    The job was to investigate, and to produce research. What it took was time, and a lot of angst. I don’t like difficult situations, and I don’t fare well in it, either.

  • What is farming worth these days?

    The sight of Clarkson’s Farm on Amazon Prime (season one, for me) is something to behold, considering what we know about farming in the UK.

    It’s not often that a positive image of a farm is found through a medium such as television. It doesn’t present well because of the mud and the grit, perhaps. We’re used to seeing that in more military surrounds, and not in the backwoods of the Cotswold’s.

    Yet, Jeremy Clarkson – a well-known television presenter and journalist in the UK – has turned his fortunes around after an ailing Top Gear stint to prove that farming is still relevant, even in rural areas.

    The sight of Diddly Squat Farm is more of a miracle, than a feature, of the English countryside.

    In that, farming shops do ok, but they’re not a booming business as much as fancy bread shops in a center of town or even the artisanal section of a supermarket.

    A farm is what it is; muddy, dirty, and tough work. It looks it. Yet, it’s also a vital part of our food provision. It’s what we need, after all, for a healthy and sustainable diet.

    I like farming culture as well. It looks fanciful for me to try it, but the attitude and the awareness farmers tend to have toward conservation – and yes, even climate change – is a noble feature of it.

    In our history, nobility often retreated to the countryside to think more sager thoughts, and it would appear we have others today who seek to do the same thing, if to make a few quid off it, as well.