Saturday, January 19, 2008

Brown to create new Government department?

Received wisdom says that Brown will hold his first Cabinet reshuffle after the elections in May. What changes might come then though? Most people presume Hain will be out on his ear, but what about the creation of new departments? Take a look at this advert (advertised since Thursday) looking for something called an "Employee Relations Secretariat" on Total Jobs.
My client in Central London has a vacancy for an Employee Relations Secretariat. The aim of this role is to facilitate effective employee relations in a new government department. This will be through the establishment of a system for managers, colleagues and trade unions meet [sic] and discuss issues affecting staff.
Duties will include taking informal minutes but "also ensuring staff are informed of legacy issues". Sounds like a new department being created which is going to be taking on roles of an existing department doesn't it if there are going to be "legacy issues" - read "redundancies".

My guess is that he's going to merge the Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland Office into one single department for the devolved nations, hence the "legacy issues" that an HR person is going to have to deal with. This will also neutralise all those "two jobs" accusations if there is just one person responsible for all the nations together - not that there is much to do anyway.

Feel free to speculate wildly and further though.

14 comments:

Barnacle Bill said...

Dizzy I know this is a bit off topic, but may I bring this to your attention.
With a bit of editing it could be aimed at our own politicians.

James Higham said...

Some say Milliband will oust Brown.

Anonymous said...

Deckchairs on Titanic?

Anonymous said...

Perhaps they mean new as to mean created recently, i.e. When Brown got in.

Anonymous said...

some say David Miliband will oust Brown, some say Alan Johnson will oust Brown. That's fine by me. :)

Unsworth said...

Ministry of Justice?

dizzy said...

Justice isn't very new, nearly a year old.

Anonymous said...

Ministry of lying through its teeth oh hang on we got them already.

Barnacle Bill said...

Two options -
1 A nationalized Northern Quicksand or,
2 The Smith Institute is to come in out of the cold.

Anonymous said...

It is going to be the Ministry of Incompetence and will be headed up by that nice chap from Wales. It will be sponsored by the GMB

Anonymous said...

Dear Dizzy Thinks,

You may have stumbled across the next big media story.

The Career Support Network or Redeployment Network is notorious in the Civil Service where all redeployed (but no job to go to) staff go to after "restructurings".

There is only one teeny weeny problem. There is NO EXIT STRATEGY from this network. The Government and Trade Unions will not "move people on" through compulsory redundancies.

Consequently there has been a little known - and secret - problem building up throughout the Labour Administration's time in office.

Namely that there are hidden TENS -even HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS - of staff in this Network - waiting to be redeployed to proper jobs.

The clever bit is that the Network staff are kept on the payroll until they eventually choose to leave the Public Sector i.e. hardly ever BUT EACH INDIVIDUAL DEPARTMENT continues to pay for its own redeployed / redundant staff in order to HIDE THE FIGURES in lower level departmental figures that will not be noticed by the Press or other Political Parties. Cute eh!

Your advert may be the early attempts to address this dirty little secret before it gets out.

Good Luck

Robertus Hood

Scary Biscuits said...

No, the new department will actually be the Ministry of Administrative Affairs.

Mr Brown hesitated to imitate the well known comedy series but in the end decided that the 'long term interest' of the country was more important. He is also keenly aware of the need to be decisive and to take hard choices. He has therefore yet to formally make up his mind.

BBC sources claim that Mr Incompetence (aka Mr Hain) is the front runner to head up the new department.

Anonymous said...

Don't get over-excited. I'll wager you a fair amount that this post is based in the Department for Universities, Innovation and Skills.

Anonymous said...

Ministry of information? Ministry of Truth??

Z.