Not Much Of A Story ..

@Speed_Triple - you may know a lot of civil servants but I bet I know more.

And I'm not even counting the twenty-four years I was a civil servant myself.

That said, I don't know every civil servant in the country so if you know some with different experiences from mine, that's fair enough ... but you cannot generalise in any case. You'd be (and are) wrong in your assumptions.

 

And during those 24 years you were working up a pension entitlement and the sort of sickness benefits and job security that those in the private sector can only dream of. It's ok. You backed the 'boring' favourite - but don't moan please. Good luck to you!

 

What was I moaning about, Speedos? Do tell

I was correcting you on some of your inaccurate statements but if I moaned every time someone was wrong about the civil service ... I'd be Casey Stoner's moanier cousin, Moany McStoner-Moaner.

People tend to generalise about civil servants. I have a lot of experience of low to mid level staff.

Yes, there used to be great pensions in place (now phased out and unavailable for new staff), there are great sickness benefit arrangements which, sorry to say, get abused upon occasion, there are great annual leave terms and flexible working arrangements. There used to be job security - that too is being phased out. As a second income, a part-time civil service job is a pretty good bet.
On the other side of the coin, job advancement prospects are laughable, there are no "perquisites", no company cars, no health insurance, there is no esprit de corps (that was phased out twenty years ago). No Christmas parties. No presents from the boss. Psychological warfare is constantly waged upon staff by the Treasury (via management but sometimes also on management!), pay is fairly low for people who are the principle bread-winner in their household, the nature of the work is so shit that you lose the will to live and really, your career is over once you resign yourself to life* in the civil service.

*by that I mean, of course, "living death".

In short, yeah, there is, or more accurately, there was a lot to commend a job in the civil service but you have to be stark-bollock-shitbag-crazy to take a job there, even before the erosion of T&Cs. The terms that people rage over in respect of the civil service - pensions, etc - use to be compensation for some of the most soul-destroying, mind-numbingly, boring, tedious work there is. And those advantages are, as I indicate, steadily being eroded away.
I cannot wait for the time that there are no civil servants because the T&Cs have been reduced to the level of serfdom and no one wants to work in it.

Interestingly, the grade I was when I left the civil service used to command the same salary as an MP, back when I first joined the service. By the time I left the service, the MP salary was triple the size of mine. Nice.

 

Sorry. Didn't mean to say that you personally were moaning. Just generic civil servants who are disingenuous about "pay freezes" and working conditions.

In my experience they wouldn't last ten minutes in the hire-and-fire sales, marketing and journalistic environments I've spent my working life in, where you're only as good as your last sale, deal or story. .

 

I agree that civil servants get institutionalised and as a result, tend to struggle in the private sector. I didn't - I love the fact I escaped - but many people I've known have not flourished after they left the service. Some even returned after a brief hiatus in the private sector.

There are pay freezes in the civil service. They affect most staff because most staff have reached the maximum of their pay "spine" and thus they no longer receive incremental pay increases. When there's no cost-of-living pay increase (and there hasn't been one of those for years, now), people's salaries move backwards.
It happens. I've experienced it happening, I've watched it happening. Trust me on this.

 

They don't cope, fin. Not like those wood-chopping, car-fixing, whisky-drinking hard men North of the Wall.
F'ing amazing, those guys. If it weren't for the in-breeding, I'd be jealous of everything they are.

 

I know lawyers who've retuned to the protective working environment offered by the CPS because they couldn't survive the pressure of private practice, despite its greater rewards, which leads me to believe that there may be many such people working in the public sector.

And cost-of-living increases!!! Wow, does anyone in the private sector get those any more? My pay was cut relentlessly due to the recession/austerity/uncertainty created by the 2008 banking crisis, when the richest institutions in the country nationalised their losses after privatising too many huge gains. My pay was also cut because publishers thought they could get away with it. Other colleagues have had their roles downgraded or combined with those of colleagues to produce a job share and thus drive down the wage bill.

I got so fed up that I gave up most of my work when the rate for it dipped below half what I was earning in the same roles a decade previously. No holiday pay. No sick pay. Ever. And my idea of a bonus was being able to go home on time!

I had other options so arranged things so that I could dip out of the paid-employment route and now only take work if the rate is good enough, the work is interesting enough or the weather too bad to ride my bike and I feel the need to stay out of the pub. .

Sad thing is most of us work too hard making others rich to make any money for ourselves. I don't any more, I'm glad to say. In some says that's a pity because I really liked working. But when employers take the piss ...