Permanent Tax Secretary Hartnett likes being wined and dined!

From the Telegraph, linked here:

Mr Hartnett topped a survey of civil servants that had been most wined and dined. According to researchers at City University, Mr Hartnett accepted 107 invitations to eat, drink or else do both at such venues as the Hilton in Park Lane, the Cinnamon Club and the Savoy hotel in London over a three year period.

Why was he not sacked today, there cannot be one mitigating factor that can be put forward in defence of his continued employment at 160,000 pounds a year heading a department in complete and utter chaos while he is dining in Mayfair, what did those who paid the dining bills get in return?

The spending cuts that are coming and the entertainingly dubbed "ausreity" that will follow will surely feel like abject poverty and misery after the years of mis-spending, none of the pampered and cosseted senior mandarins and others who have salted away huge future pension entitlements stand a hope in hell of getting what they expect. Sack Hartnett with no pension and the entire process can be summed up in the decades to come as 'getting a Hartnett'. Present prime candidates for which are Blair, Brown and Balls with the rest of the last Cabinet to follow shortly behind!

Hypocrite Hartnett must go!

What kind of blinkered numbskull could allow these two statements to be broadcast on the very same day?

Firstly -"Mr Hartnett told BBC Radio 4's Money Box programme: "I'm not sure I see a need to apologise. I've read the papers, listened to the media and heard stories of HMRC blunder and IT failure. Neither of those are true.

Secondly - " I apologise if my remarks came across as insensitive.

"I am working flat out with my colleagues to ensure everyone's tax is correct and the new computer system will help us do this.

"It was this new system that revealed the extent and size of reconciliations required and will help us be more accurate in future but we do not underestimate the distress caused to taxpayers and once again I apologise."

The flat contradiction makes the belated apology even more insulting, as Treasury spokesman Lord Oakeshott, quoted in The Independent, earlier accused Hartnett of being "in a world of his own; I wonder what planet he is on."....."This is the latest in a series of management failures in the HMRC going back many years. If Mr Hartnett cannot see why he should apologise for this one, then he really should be reconsidering his own position..."

The full catalogue of disasters is detailed in the Telegraph , by Paul Farrow, linked here, giving the lie to Lord Oakeshott's words. Hartnett should not be considering his position, it being quite clear he is so besotted and befuddled by POWER that he is incapable of rational thought, he should therefore be summarily dismissed, "pour encourager les autres" as was once said of the executed Admiral Byng, read here. Any serving Civil Servant, MP or other troughing public official had better quickly realise that such arrogance guarantees a tax revolt in the longer run, if not in the immediate short term, and all their disgustingly high pensions entitlements, stretching decades into the future, if not yet at risk today, will certainly never eventually materialise until the public sees clear evidence that the loot from such corrupt excesses has been returned to the Treasury - thus perhaps allowing a small percentage of these huge sums to be paid where genuine and honest service can be seen to have been provided.

As suggested repeatedly on this blog an essential start should be the return of the MP expenses funded property portfolios of the Prime Minister and his Deputy, the firing of 'Dave' Hartnett without pension now seems an extra first necessary step.

Another face of Britain's smug, self-satisfied and hopeless Civil Service

After foreign wind-farm promoter and retired grandée and inquirer into the walking offence against humanity that is the habitual liar Tony Blair, one Sir John Chilcot mentioned on this blog in connection with Britain's corrupted civil service, most recently on 29th August, we can now bring you another mechéant mandarin: Permanent Secretary for tax (does that title indeed not say it all, for were he not permanent there might be some chance of rectifying the appalling mess that is Britain's tax system) one Dave Hartnett. (Spelling?? The BBC also has Harnett???)

Listen to the stupefying glibness of this publicly employed overseer of a department so riddled with incompetence that it boggles the mind. It arrived on the Today programme via a "Moneybox Programme" interviewer as the subject and his department refused to be interviewed on the BBC flagship current affairs radio programme, which with his odious comments and attitude says it all really.

Click here and listen from 55 seconds into the clip.

Britain's Tax Fiasco

On Saturday 4th September, I blogged on the misplaced hilarity with which the BBC Today Programme greeted the outrage that has become the HMRC tax grab. The link is now available and that broadcast item may be heard from this link.

Max Hastings in the Daily Mail hits the correct note as I quote from his column today, linked here as follows:

I am not much frightened of Al Qaeda, the Taliban or things that go bump in the night. But I am petrified of making a mistake about tax.

Havoc

This is why the public is richly entitled to vent its anger about the PAYE fiasco. All the fear and penalties for error lie on one side of the counter — ours.

We would need the assistance of a powerful microscope to measure the chances that anyone on HMRC’s payroll above the rank of office cat will lose one hour’s pay, far less their jobs, after inflicting havoc on the lives of millions of innocent taxpayers.

It would be nice to suppose that the Coalition Government can carry out root-and-branch reform to make the HMRC once more an effective and trustworthy organisation.

This is, after all, the outfit that three years ago lost computer discs containing personal details of 25 million people.

Yet reform will be very hard. So desperate is the condition of Britain’s schools that employers of all kinds have difficulty recruiting office staff with basic literacy and maths skills.

This applies as much to HMRC as to the Department of Transport, British Telecom or Tesco.

Why should today’s young tax clerk be better equipped to do his sums than any other British school-leaver? Tony Blair and Gordon Brown expanded the state, created one of the most complex tax systems in the world and presided over the drastic deterioriation of our schools.

The best comment I have read so far to this article is the following:

The British people recently re-elected the same bunch of thieves and fiddlers that they knew had been robbing them blind for years and years. They will hand over their money to the revenue gathering arm which these corrupt politicians use to fleece them yet further without so much as a whimper. They simply haven't got any spirit or fight in them. Our ancestors would be deeply ashamed of this craven behaviour and how we kowtow to the bullying, bloated state.

- Fiona, Exeter, Devon, 7/9/2010 7:06