Anyone got any idea what the Government Office of the South West or GOSW (pron: goz-wer) actually does? Our best guess is that Oxbridge civil service no-hopers who can’t make the grade in Whitehall are sent down here to keep them out of harms way.
GOSW was the brainwave of John Prescott’s Office of the Deputy Prime Minister or ODPM (pron: taxpayer funded vanity project for serial adulterer). And the idea seems to be to get 273 well-paid civil servants engaging in inconsequential meetings with each other in the tasteful environs of some rather plush riverside offices at Temple Quay.
The cost of this farrago was £14,684,860 last year and next year the staffing costs alone are expected to be £10.51 million. It doesn’t take a genius to realise that this doesn’t leave them with very much money to spend on actually doing anything if the staffing costs account for 70% of their spending. Then there’s the small matter of the rent to be paid for the luxury offices…
There are eight other Government Offices in the country and the total staffing costs are £93.75 million. Bargain!
If anyone knows what GOSW does perhaps they could let us know?
They spend their time interfering in local government and making sure that it conforms to the NuLab vision…
Quality article BB. The big question for me is, would anyone notice if they shut the whole of the civil service tomorrow? Ok so our bins might not get emptied, but imagine the tax savings – we each could charter a yacht to take our rubbish somewhere distant so we dont need to think about it anymore. Similar figures were mentioned in a recent Private Eye for the amount committed to pension credits – basically 98% of the budget went on paying the twats in the DWP to push paper around, 2% actually got to low income pensioners. It’s a fucking scandal. Kafka just couldnt make it up.