Defending Abi Tierney after the Telegraph revealed that the head of the Passport Office με 160,000 a year worked from home in Leicestershire, 100 miles from its London headquarters, Rycroft said she was the head of the global visa and passport business. . He added: “Abi’s workplace had nothing to do with the current passport situation, which was largely due to the drop in applications during the pandemic.” Really? Although the Passport Office has had two years to prepare for this obvious eventuality – Tierney can really be described as the head of a “world class” business when there is a huge volume of applications and holidaymakers have to wait more than 10 weeks for their passports? A “world-class” business would not have a website that is so unreliable that a “one-week” fast-track system has crashed twice in two days. In his highly defensive actions, Rycroft seemed to suggest that Tierney critics discriminated in some way not only against people working from home – but outside of the M25. “We are proud to be spreading opportunities and talent across the country, moving away from the outdated notion that everything has to be done in London,” said the Southampton-born Oxford graduate. Forgive me, but how does the head of the Passport Office, who works from the hospitable borders of a village in Leicestershire, help to “level” the deprived areas of the country? I understand that there are satellite passport offices outside the capital, which is not a bad thing – especially if Tierney managed to retire from her home office to work on some of them. But the idea that the Public Service is pushing – that working from home somehow helps elevate and that its opponents are obsessed with London – is both offensive and insincere. You are not helping to raise the bar by keeping middle-class professionals away from city centers and towns staffed by people for whom working from home is never an option. And it’s not clear that Tierney worked from the other Passport Office centers anyway. I am writing this column from home because I am lucky enough to have enough facilities and a decent internet connection to work remotely on Fridays. But I could not do my job to the best of my ability without coming to the office for the rest of the week. Sure, it may be more convenient to work from home and enjoy a better work-life balance, but we have a newspaper to go out and reporters do not receive stories sitting behind a desk in the office, let alone on their couch. . And apparently vacationers do not get passports unless someone is of course there to direct the show and solve the mess in which the Passport Office has fallen. The organization has become, to quote a minister, “a complete disaster.” (Rykroft, by the way, does not seem to have many trucks with ministerial checks. Last June, he was accused of trying to thwart their anti-alarm agenda by telling colleagues there was no need to “slavishly” pursue official policy. Of course he did Earlier this month, Interior Minister Priti Patel warned that Rwanda’s policy of sending asylum seekers did not have “sufficient evidence” to demonstrate the benefits of the system – but did not seem to say anything. for confusing part of the Ukrainian visa system.) All this talk reminds me of the great Brexit wars, when it was clear that many in the Civil Service were not only actively working against the government but also against the will of the people. And it is not just a matter of willing bureaucrats to defy the wishes of ministers and the public. It is also the ideological nature of the resistance. First we had the Remaniacs who could not accept that they had lost the EU referendum. And now we have the Zoomagogues who have turned work from home into a cult that seems to defy all logic. Not only do these people seem to be committed to remote work almost regardless of the signs that it is causing problems, but they are surprised when someone points out these issues and seems to despise anyone who opposes them. See the reaction to Jacob Rees-Mogg’s efforts to persuade civil servants to return to office. The Minister of Efficiency of the government nailed polite notes on empty desks that read: “Sorry you were out when I visited. I look forward to seeing you in the office very soon. ” It was destroyed for that by the Left, in that bastion of productivity and efficiency: Twitter. But it has a point, doesn’t it? I mean, if you’re going to be paid good money to help run the country, at least have the dignity to do it from taxpayer-funded offices – especially if you’re gaining weight in London and the evidence is that you’re not as efficient at remote operation. Otherwise, what is the use of all these expensive buildings? (Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries criticized Rees-Mogg’s plans as Dickensian, seemingly forgetting that her section would be completely unnecessary without a collective exchange of ideas in the fields of culture, media and sport – all based on physical participation) . Another Telegraph news this week revealed how work from home had made the λευκό 18 million’s “white elephant” council seat. The Cambridgeshire county council name that strikes New Shire Hall is almost empty because staff are required to stay home, months after the Covid rules were repealed. Why; Members of the public who visit the building report that no one works there. The Liberal Democrat-Labor coalition led by the council also refuses to hold full council meetings in the building. Ongoing measures for the coronavirus mean that no more than 22 people can be found in a room designed to accommodate more than 80. This simply erodes confidence in local democracy – not to mention raising suspicions that people are avoiding . Working from home makes her fans feel good about themselves – even morally superior sometimes. The attitude among this comfortable, so-called elite seems to be: “I make my life work for me.” The idea was summed up by Dorries’s partner, Sarah Healey, permanent secretary at DCMS, who last year boasted about how much she enjoyed working from home because it allowed her to spend more time on the Peloton exercise bike. It is as if it has now been billed as a bonus for public sector employees, like a gilded pension, even if it causes chaos to the public. Indeed, the only measure in which homework seems to work is employee satisfaction. While its staff can sit neatly, delays at the Passport Office have led to families being forced to cancel their vacations, grieving relatives who have lost their funerals and workers who are losing important business responsibilities. It was the same when the DVLA showed what the Prime Minister described as a similar “post-Covid mañana culture” failing to process several HGV licenses, causing fuel depletion. Boris Johnson threatened to “privatize the a — off” these organizations, unless they intensify. A simpler solution could simply be to insist that anyone working for a taxpayer-funded institution that fails in Britain to transfer their a — back to the office with immediate effect. However, given the level of resistance from the Civil Service, you have to wonder if ministers have the power to do even that.
