Lazy, feckless bastards

I have written a number of times about the seeming inability of the civil service or any other public body to sack their staff. What happens when there are no punishments for misbehaving? Well, people take advantage, and we end up with situations like that in Swindon.

Around 60,000 days were lost by Swindon Borough Council to long-term sick leave in one year, a six of which was for "psychological" reasons.

Figures released under the Freedom of Information Act show that about 500 employees took long-term sick leave between September 2005 and 2006.

Long-term sick leave is defined as being absent for more than 20 days.

Let me make it absolutely clear that I consider every, single one of these fuckers to be taking the fucking piss. As Timmy points out, we should sack the lot of them as working at Swindon Council is obviously making them ill. What we should not be doing is continuing to pay these malingering bastards.

But Bob Cretchley, Unison representative for Swindon, blamed constantly shifting work patterns.

He said: "They're under pressure and having jobs and location changed. It is very hard for people to perform adequately in those circumstances."

That's absolute fucking horseshit. If they don't like it, they can fuck off and do another job.

I have taken one sick day in ten years of full time work and that was because my hands were so cracked and bleeding that it would have been a severe hazard to go to work (I was working as an Auxiliary Nurse at the time, i.e. wiping arses and dressing wounds).

If there are no disincentives to take the piss, then a certain type of person will do so; it is a pity that so many of them seem to be hoovering up taxpayers' cash, especially as (as Chris notes) public sector workers now earn more, on average, than private sector workers (despite the upward creep of the minimum wage).

Mr Bluh said: "We have on-site occupational health service and all stress-related cases are referred there so they can be quickly assessed.

I wonder how many private sector workers have such a service? Not many, I'd suggest. And yet all of this, no doubt extremely expensive, counselling seems to be doing fuck-all for your levels of permanent holiday leave sick leave.

"We want to get people back to work as quickly as possible but if they are stressed and upset, that is not good for anyone."

Well, absolutely. May I humbly suggest that, if they are incapable of doing the job for which they were hired, then they fuck off and do something else rather than get paid for sitting around doing cock-all, the lazy, feckless, shiftless, malingering, cheating cunts.

Meanwhile, as Wat Tyler correctly notes, Council Tax has nearly doubled under Labour's "prudent" stewardship.

Average Council Tax in England has doubled since Labour came to power (up 96.3% since 1996-97), whereas the basic state pension has increased by just 38% (yes, that's right- see here). It's an enormous gap that has hit all but the very poorest pensioners hard.

Wonder how Robin would have dealt with such outrages?

Well, the BBC's current Robin Hood would probably have hired some balck outreach workers and paid them £38,000 plus benefits.

This is the only problem with encouraging local government: the people manning it are even more fucking lazy, corrupt and useless than our MPs. Bastards, the fucking lot of them.