United Kingdom

Last edited Thu Feb 23, 2012, 07:21 PM - Edit history (5)

The fact people In Sheffield and elsewhere are talking about Harrison rather than the general iniquities of the government workfare policy means the cut-out is working as intended.

I dont have a single shred of human feeling for Ms Harrison or her kind. But it does not matter a badgers arse whether I think Harrison is guiltless paragon of virtue or the biggest scumbag who walked God's earth. Like many private sector 'contractor' sucking up the taxpayers money she and her company are employed partly so they can take the hit on behalf of the politicians and the senior civil servants when policies go shit faced. The sudden upsurge of interest in a criminal enquiry which appears to have been going on for years and her timely resignation from a meaningless non salaried government Tsar role is just a convenient piece of political theatre whipped up to divert the publics attention from the fact the flagship government workfare scheme essentially sank last Friday with all hands when most of the major employers engaged on the enterprise walked away from it.

If you watch the many government scandals over the years from IT fiascos to Health service failures you will find that being a professional scapegoat in the blame business has become quite a lucrative form of activity. Often companies that 'fail' miserably on one contract mysteriously still win new ones from different parts of government. A classic example was EDS taking the bullet for the National Tax Credits meltdown at the Inland Revenue under the last Labour government. The truth was that much of this IT disaster was not down to the contractor but was due to the fact that politicians and civil servants insisted on rushing a not fully tested system into production against the advice of the supplier. This inevitably led to many of the subsequent failures. As a consequence EDS took the fall and were booted out to be Inland Revenue contract. Alan Stevens the UK head of EDS even appeared before the Commons Public Accounts Committee to 'apologise' for the failure. Despite this apparent calamity EDS went on to win a lucrative contract with the MOD in the very same year. The reason was very simple. Instead of cutting up rough over their treatment and setting their lawyers on HMG EDS played the 'patsy' to perfection taking the rap for the Treasury and the Revenue thus ensuring another spin the taxpayer funded government roulette wheel. I fully expect a similar scenario to played out in a couple of years when the 'supplier' of the new Universal Benefit systems are ceremonially axed for the failures of that system. It is all a fucking game where the politicians, government departments, contractors and press all know the rules.