Originally Posted by
langleybaston
Originally Posted by
_Agrajag_
Surely you are not correlating the "highest number of civil servants per capita" as any sort of measure of success for a population, are you? My experience suggests that the reverse should be true, a truly meritocracy should have the LOWEST number of civil servants per capita, as ultimately they are little more than a burden upon taxpayers.
Thank you for those kind words, belittling 41 years of dedicated professional service in the M o D Met.Office, during which I paid a lot of tax.
In that time the staffing was reduced from about 5000 to about 2000, and the output improved, driven by early take-up of main frame computers. Staffing on military stations was always minimal, usually covered 24/7/365, and sick leave was almost unknown. Staff suffered frequent upheaval, being posted every 3 years and undertaking short detachments at very short notice.
Little has changed since I retired except forecasts continue to improve.
The next time you look at a weather forecast remember, it is not magic, it depends on a small nmber of highly skilled but rather inadequately rewarded civil servants.
For goodness sake, tone down the hypersensitive, lets take this completely out of context in order to wind someone up for no purpose, mode!
My intent was very clear, and I was also a civil servant for 16 years after serving queen and country for 22 years before that. I was not in any way, shape or form, criticising civil servants, as you would realise if you had actually taken the time to read my post. What I was criticising was the merit of using the ratio of numbers of civil servants to the total population as a measure of success of a state or part thereof.
Would you argue that NI would be seen as a world beating state if 50% of the population were Met Office staff? I would guess you would not, any more than I would not argue that having 50% of the population of NI made up of civilian ROs was a good metric.
Sometimes it helps the flow of sensible intercourse to be reasonable and allow a bit of give and take, and not choose to be hyper-sensitive and criticise a point that has not even been stated.