When Margaret Thatcher was interviewed on ITV's "Weekend World", she revealed that she wants a return to Victorian values.
One of the ways she intends to bring this about is to introduce her new, improved Thatcherite Victorian Civil Service Staff Rules, which will be implemented after the General Election.
Here are a few extracts, leaked to me by a reliable source:
1. Pay levels will be set just high enough to keep the required numbers of Civil Servants alive and able to work. Any expression of disagreement with this system will lead to instant dismissal.
2. Hours of work will be from sunrise to sunset, 18 hours per day, or until the employee falls unconscious, whichever is the longest.
3. Saturdays will be working days. The only day off will be Sunday.
4. Leave will be a matter of management whim: not just when it is to be taken, but whether it is taken. Managers are advised that one week of unpaid leave per year should be the maximum allowed.
17. Taunting of small boys employed in cleaning the ventilation systems of government offices, including banging on the ducts while the boys are inside, is punishable by a fine of one hour's pay.
24. Any employee seen smiling in the office will be fined three hours pay.
25. Any employee found singing, whistling, laughing or dancing in the office will be fined three hours pay for the first offence, one days pay for the second offence, and removed to a lunatic asylum to be chained to a wall for the third offence.
32. Any employee found to be a member of a trade union, friendly society, or like organisation shall be deported to the Falkland Islands.
33. Any employee who contacts the International Court of Human Rights, any foreign journalist, the Council for Civil Liberties, Amnesty International, the NSPCC or like "do-gooders" shall be taken to Level 4 and never seen again.
47. All grades up to and including Clerical Officer shall adopt a humble and subservient manner at all times. Members of the Executive grades should do so only in the presence of a person of superior rank. Hands shall be wrung. Failure to comply with this rule will lead to instant dismissal.
63. Any employee caught looking at any other employee of equal or higher rank without good cause will be fined three hours pay.
64. Any employee who exposes limbs, chests, or any other part of the body in a manner likely to distract other employees from work will be fined one day's pay and taken to Level 4.
65. Any employee who touches any other employee without the written permission of the Controller shall be fined one day's pay.
66. Any employee who talks about anything other than their work will be fined four hours pay.
79. Dinner breaks will last ten minutes.
80. Any employee heard complaining about the quality of the gruel will be fined six hours pay.
81. Tea breaks will last five minutes. Tea will be served cold to facilitate speedy consumption.
93. Any employee up to and including the rank of Clerical Officer who wishes to visit the lavatory during working hours must apply to Staff Branch in writing and must wait for a reply.
105. Clerical workers will write in copperplate, with no fall in speed. Failure to comply will lead to dismissal.
111. Employees will be responsible for the tidiness of their own desks and the areas around them. If litter is found on the floor the culprit will be dismissed. If no employee owns up, every employee who works within ten yards of the litter will be dismissed.
123. New rules will be introduced and old ones reinterpreted without consultation and without prior warning.
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Secrets of the Negotiating Table Revealed. (May 1983)
One of my team of fearless investigative journalists has been able to obtain a tape recording of the recent wage negotiations. Here is a transcript of part of it:
Official Side Spokesperson: In line with the government's Victorian values, I am empowered to offer you a revolutionary new pay and conditions package, which will save the country from economic ruin and make it once again the most powerful in the world.
Trade Union Side Spokesperson: I don't like the sound of that. Just give all Civil Servants an extra £12 a week each and cut our nett working week to 35 hours so we can get off down the pub instead of sitting here arguing.
OSS: Out of the question. Here are our proposals. Our economic experts, who have degrees, so they must be clever, have calculated that if all Civil Servants worked twice as many hours each week, we need only employ half as many, thereby complying with the government's guidelines on Civil Service reductions. We therefore offer you a reduction in nett working hours from 37 to 74.
TUSS: That's an increase. There's no way we can accept that. How can we pollibly be expected to accept an increase in working hours?
OSS: Well, technically, I suppose it it an increase. How does this grab you? We bring in a new apprenticeship rate for 16 to 17 year olds of nothing, and charge their parents sixpence a week for the valuable training they will receive. And when we lower the school leaving age to nine, the same rates will apply to the younger recruits.
TUSS: Nothing doing.
OSS: And we'll lengthen the age scales to 85.
TUSS: No thank you. Give us all an extra £10 per week and cut our hours to 36 and we'll go away and put it to our members.
OSS: And Assistant Clerks will receive £5.7.6d per annum and an allowance of a penny a month to buy quill pens.
TUSS: Is that water you're drinking?
OSS: And we'll bring back meal tickets for the younger Civil Servants. Each ticket will be exchangeable for a bowl of gruel.
TUSS: That's illegal under the Truck Acts. Hey, it is water. What's in it?
OSS: And all the staff we dismiss will be encouraged to go to Africa and colonise it. The world map will be pink once more.
TUSS: I've had enough of this. I'm going to lie down.
OSS: I thought you'd never ask. Your place or mine?
The rest of the tape contains only the sounds of scuffling, furniture being overturned, glass breaking, cries of pain,swearing and feet running away into the distance.
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A Brutal Farce. (July 1985)
Our pay cut has been the usual brutal farce again this year. All of us have been forced to accept less than the rate of inflation by the government attitude of insanely determined opposition to the maintenance of decent standards of living by the working classes. That includes you, friend. If you feel obliged to work here you're in one of the working classes. Younger workers have again done particulary badly to encourage others into YOBS schemes and to expect less than their parents expected.
A plague on all those whose greed drives them to increase their already fabulous wealth at the expense of the poor. May those who wish to exile us all to a fantasy world of Victorian Values rot in hell. And may a particularly unpleasant fate befall those whose ambition it is to see Civil Servants working for just enough to keep them alive.
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