No, no, Bob
… you will have a track record of quickly getting to grips with complex challenges, in a role in which you have taken a creative approach to achieving your objectives …
They’re looking to recruit high-flyers with real experience. Or, alternatively, a capacity to lie convincingly and, when found out, to blame someone else as Matt says. I’m sure that’s what ‘creative’ means. An accountant once explained it to me.
VB
Working out which milk to nick to make tea.
On the one hand I’m transfixed and perversely fascinated by every loathsome development in this turgid saga. On the other hand each development makes me simultaneously want to weep, and punch anyone even vaguely responsible for it.
The Tory high command have convened a meeting today on Whitehall to discuss the so called Malthouse Compromise. Can’t wait to see what kind of unicorn this committee of conservative cunts can conjure up.
You’d break your hands in no time. Use a cricket bat, the additional old empire connotations add a certain je ne sais quoi.
We aren’t very good with cricket bats at the moment & would, in all likelihood, miss.
It’s a HEO grade which in civil service is the first real rung on the management ladder, granted most HEO’s are young but we have HEO’s here managing small teams.
No doubt it will be the bestest unicorn made of cake. Everyone everywhere will want one except the ERG and DUP who will say NO to it.
In my old organisation the civil service grades were renamed using letters from A (so junior I don’t think we actually employed any) to H (department head, 100+ staff, £10M+ budget). An HSO became a Band D which was generally regarded as standing for Dogsbody. Few science Band Ds had staff and those that did might have just one or two. I was really surprised when I met two HEOs from the DWP on a training course. One of them had 60 staff.
VB
I see the London salary is over 30K for that DEFRA job… perhaps they can find a talented immigrant to fill fill the post, although that won’t apply outside of London at the bottom of the grade band…
There are also ads for jobs at three higher grades as well, just to alleviate your concerns that all that is being done is increasing the beverage production capacity.
It won’t be from a school then.
That’s foreign that is. Therefore, not applicable.
I know, these days it’s a junior grade, 2 down from the junior exec grade, which itself is only a 3rd report to Junior Director (non board) level.
In my early days I knew C1s (SSOs as you would know them) who managed 300+ engineers and technicians. It’s only departments like the DWP where you will find someone at C2 (ex HEO) managing any numbers of staff. Grade drift in the Civil Service has been used to make up for pay shortfalls on the basis that it was all about professionalising the Civil Service. Nett result is that not only policy decisions but also fairly menial managerial decision tend to get made at B2 (Ex G7).
Govt science can be strange in that it can be involved in ridiculously specialised areas where the competition is international. We struggled to justify doing anything that was ‘only’ nationally competitive since universities were capable of that and they could get bright students and post-docs to work for peanuts. We, on the other hand, had to compete with the US and European labs for staff which meant we had to pay them at least reasonably. B2s only had a genuine policy role as expert influencers. The big decisions were typically made two bands above i.e. by dept directors. And the really big ones (greater than, say, £10-20M) at the level above that and often with involvement by other research councils and the controlling government department. Order of magnitude, a middle-ranking person represents an organisational spend (staff+stuff) around £100k per year. So 300+ engineers and technicians would correspond to an activity with an annual budget in excess of £30M. We wouldn’t have left someone earning not much more than £40k a year in charge of that.
VB
Aaaaaaaaand … here we go
https://twitter.com/bbclaurak/status/1092452909227409408
If he really had any faith in this then surely he’d have wheeled the lawyers out before now.
VB
It’s the perspective of the proposed Court Case. essentially he says that the GFA guarantees that N Ireland remain a full part of the UK blah blah blah. Therefore any move to treat N Ireland differently to the rest of the UK is in breach of the GFA.
The upshot is he is challenging the EU and the UK Government view that the only issue is the border itself and is declaring war on the EU position (and essentially the Irish position) that the backstop is the only viable solution.
There does seem to be a pretty fundamental conflict between Brexit and the GFA. It doesn’t seem possible to legally have both. Hence all the fudging.