Letter to the Rt Hon Frances Maude, 4th September 2011
Dear MinisterRe Looting in General
The nation is fed up with MPs pointing the finger in all directions re the recent looting without pointing the finger at themselves. I know that you have a particular interest in cleaning up the public sector.
David Blunkett states that the recent ‘riots were the biggest threat to our social cohesion in decades, and suggests that its time we tackled the malaise at the heart of our society’.
We claim, that the real ‘malaise at the heart of our society’ lies within Whitehall; politicians have long been uncaring about the enormous amount of incompetence, theft and fraudulence involving the public sector. We feel justified in pointing out just some of the enormous amounts of public sector looting and its abuse of the public in general.
Politicians are failing to gauge the public’s annoyance with politics, they fail to recognise that the nation suffers from the public sectors moral malaise, the nation needs more than cliché rhetoric about a ‘broken society’.
Westminster and Whitehall need to wake up to the fact that there is a lot of anger around. People concerned about uncontrolled immigration were put down as ‘bigots’ as the politically correct bulldozed away at our freedom of speech. This political ‘put down’ resulted in many a frustrated citizen taking to booze, creating havoc in our city centres, MPs need to wake up to the fact that our political system has created a ‘broken society’ that impacts badly on public morale.
While its not OK for rioting and looting to take place in our streets, so its not OK for MPs and civil servants to loot from our coffers’. They have set a bad example to the nation as a whole. The public was greatly annoyed at MPs blatant fiddling.
It needs to be recognised by the elite that vast amounts taken from public funds is also looting - made doubly worse because it was largely condoned or covered-up by political spin.
There is a need to break the cycle of fraud theft and crime that exists within all areas of government with the same vigour that is rightly being used against the urban rioters.
We have previously written re public sector theft that runs into millions, where ‘not all perpetrators are reported to the police, or confronted with internal discipline’. This is just another corrupting aspect of the ‘old pals act’ that drives disaffected law-abiding citizens into wishing for another Gunpowder Plot.
The electorate have allowed themselves to become subservient to party-hack politics and seriously inept civil servants. We would suggest that the Establishment’s efforts in putting the usual lid on a largely fraudulent and contemptuous public sector might well lead to more upheaval in the future.
The law-abiding citizen also feels like erupting, as political spin is deemed suitable for all occasions, Westminster and Whitehall have for too long expected citizens to be deferential and uncomplaining to those who abuse their office.
Governmental chicanery hardly ever ceases a former Chief Secretary to the Treasury claimed ‘unjustifiable expenses’ - he was barred from the Commons for 7 days? No Magistrate Court for him. There are just too many ‘allowed fiddles’ that make the public angry.
The seriously dysfunctional and corrupt departments like the MOD, the HO, the DWP and the Revenue etc, can pay their incompetent staff millions in unearned perks and bonuses annually – this is theft from the public purse – and much like looting - a criminal offence.
Soldier’s families are also annoyed and distraught as their sons suffer the consequences of fighting with inferior equipment purchased by the corrupt and treacherous MoD – a looter paradise!
Dead and maimed soldier’s families, along with the nation are also annoyed that such a corrupt and dysfunctional department could ever exist, despite numerous Ministers of Defence supposedly being in charge.
The public are much annoyed by the abuses from the MoD, the HO, the DWP and the Revenue etc, these departments have been awash with entrenched looting over many years, yet no politician ever thought of opening up ‘special’ Magistrates Courts to deal with looting civil servants.
Further ‘inner squalor’ can be seen as the highly fraudulent DWP, failed for 23 years running to get the NAO to clear its books. This infestation re crass ineptitude and fraud can be seen across all departments.
Anarchy, we would suggest is more prolific in Whitehall than on our streets. It is time to call for a ‘moral crusade’ to cleanse the many fraudsters and fiddlers and looters from the public sector. Too many shabby self-serving officials are contemptuous of ‘good governance’.
Mandarins can order up £millions to pay for unearned perks and bonuses for the most dysfunctional of officials and departments. Citizens are now recognising that theft, fraud and looting from the public purse is rife, yet hardly anyone has ever been imprisoned? One could catalogue untold thousands of wasteful and fraudulent acts that also indicate a serious malaise – a failure by the system that allows the elite to loot with impunity. Law-abiding citizens seethe at the injustice of it all. All looters need prosecuting.
The National Audit Office, a supposed public watchdog over waste and theft, has also joined the looters. With what can be described as anarchy against ‘good governance’, the NAO has paid some of its people up to £750,000 – it has handed out some £5.2m to just 25 staff?
When questioned the NAO claimed that all these payoffs have been made in accordance with Civil Service Rules? Its an abomination that civil servants, many of them self-serving, can award public money to each other at will. Are these Civil Service Rules on the statute book? Has such looting been made legal?
Although the infamous and corrupt Tammany Hall had the same sort of self-serving ‘rules’ running right through it –Tammany Halls fraudulence against the taxpayer was never legalised.
These Civil Service Rules encourage numerous collegiate abominations where collusive officials can award public money to all sorts of dodgy officials – 140,000 looting credit cards have been issued to mandarins. Even Fagin could not have got theft from the public purse so perfectly sewn-up! Such Rules are protecting criminality against the state’s coffers and are a leading factor in causing public distrust of the political system.
The public sector has produced a ‘something for nothing’ mind-set that runs parallel with the ‘jobs for life’ culture. Looting can be seen in virtually every quango, extremely costly and inefficient quangos have become vehicles for nepotism - giving its members opportunity to line their pockets.
Looting from the ‘trough’ has allowed the toothless Ofcom pay 8 members of its staff six-figure salaries. The payment of large unwarranted salaries to inept officials has become plague-like; this internal greed highlights the nation's decay.
Regarding governmental dysfunctionality; Sir Richard Mottram, once a top civil servant, claimed that Whitehall’s inner squalor; “suits some politicians, including Prime Ministers, that it suits some officials to run a system which is frankly a “ Variation on Anarchy”, where things do not get decided or implemented in a structured process driven way”. Such manipulated ‘anarchy’ allow mandarins to foul up on government projects at will – without any comeback. Such festering ‘anarchy’ hides the fact that mandarin’s failure to deliver has no impact on their jobs, their salaries, their pensions, perks or unearned bonuses.
The idea that bureaucrats, without strict supervision, will work towards ‘good governance’ is not historically validated. John Stuart Mill indicated that ‘bureaucrats left to their own devices will do all they can to perpetuate themselves’. Whilst Aristotle had argued that even ‘ideal’ bureaucrats, unsupervised - tend to become despotic.
Certainly Sir Gus ODonnells promotion of the inept mandarin to high office and his protection of their exorbitant fiddles and errors, is an abuse of office and our democratic system. It can be truly said, that Gus’s ‘old pals act’ is more powerful than the ‘rule of law’. The chance of ever getting ‘good governance’ from Whitehall is remote – the public is rightly angry with that.
Despite citizens having a right to expect civil servants to be competent and corruption free, Whitehall has become a Fagins den of iniquity, its contempt for good government, is responsible for increasing ‘anti-politics’ and a few aspiring Guy Fawkes.
The Establishment is in denial re the impact that a fraudulent public sector, that loses billions through fraud, theft and waste can have on the population. Neglected sick and needy citizens often find themselves locked away without representation, they have become aware of just how deep public sector fraud permeates their lives.
We again claim that we suffer from party hack politics, where the party always comes first, the gravy trains and quangos come second, and the nation’s woes come last. Citizens are rightly peeved at such neglect.
The public elects MPs to look after its interest - they are forced to pay extremely high taxes that have somehow, by devious design, become undemocratically entrusted to collusive and often fraudulent and looting officials straddling our unprotected coffers.
The looting of public sector office equipment, valued in millions, is taken annually from virtually all government departments; again no smashing windows for them – nor purposely set-up magistrates courts to tackle this costly public sector crime.
The public is still annoyed with the likes of the former Home Secretary Jacqui Smith and her spiv-like mentality. Like other Establishment figure she was never charged for looting extraordinary large expenses claims. Her recent escapades re employing ‘prisoners’ shows she is still allowed to ‘sup from the trough’.
The Establishment has become a scroungers paradise – the public sees that there is no theft or fiddle base enough, that cannot be conjured up by the system, that fraud, theft and fiddling has become second nature - an acceptable way of life for many within the public sector. More reasons for law-abiding citizen to seethe.
The nations is angry re the continued abuse of our coffers from all corners, law abiding citizens are sickened at the high salaries paid out to local government officials, who depart with large looting ‘golden handshakes’, yet fail to collect millions owing councils in unpaid rent and taxes?
The angry and often unemployed citizen sees how the ‘elite’ can retire from one quango with a large pay-off – then move into another well paid quango – with a chance of another pay-off.
The freeloading public sector can produce ‘gravy trains’ and manufacture ‘golden opportunities’ at the drop of a hat – the public is gradually boiling over.
The honest citizen is rightly annoyed at just what is hitting the public sector fan, how Ministers and police brown-nosed the vile Murdoch machine. From the Murdoch fiasco citizens learnt of the incestuous cover-up, the web of lies, the nepotism and ‘the general collusion’ against democratic government that exists in offices of power.
We see that too many of our ‘self-policing’ institutions are falling apart – the nation is not best served by insular party hack politics. We need a new form of government – political party’s waste enormous amounts of energy and talent scoring stupefying points off each other as the nation flounders. Members of the public have a right to be annoyed at the neglect and the lack of protection afforded our democracy. We have been badly let down by the inept and fraudulent government machine.
As the loss of trust in politics and police proliferate, the public realise, as proven in the riots, that there is safety in forming themselves into groups of vigilantes.
No one it seems is capable of putting a halt to what looks like immense state sponsored neglect of ‘good governance’.
One of the things that enable public sector corruption to continue unabated is that there are no proper democratic complaint systems in situ. With purposeful contempt, little or no investigation takes place; most complainants are dishonestly ‘put down’ by officials as being ‘vexatious’ even ‘malicious’.
The nation is greatly annoyed at this Orwellian set-up where complainants are vilified by crooked officialdom, the public sectors deceitful ‘closing of ranks’ re complaints makes the vulnerable even more desperate.
There are a litany of reasons why the concerned law abiding citizen feel that they live in ‘broken society’. They place the blame squarely with Westminster and Whitehall’s failure to deal with its historic internal fraud, theft and looting from the public purse, and its many ramifications.
Set up quick-fix Magistrates Courts for all looters, especially those within the public sector because they are ‘at it’ every day - encourage heavy sentences – public sector looting would halve within a month.
Yours sincerely
AW & I Tanner
cc to those interested in public sector fraud and corruption.