Flabbergasted

I have decided that the continuing appearance of a new found level of incompetence amongst the British (well, mainly it seems the public sector British) will attract the sobriquet 'flabbergasted' henceforth. And so it is I am, once again.

We have had a spate of incidents recently, where the emergency services have attended various incidents as sort of official spectators, leaving the victims very much to their own devices, in case safety rules were transgressed. But now we have a new twist. A couple have died after their car was buried under a mud slide. Our heroes in uniform (including the councils Highways department) of fluorescent yellow attended and decided it was a lot of mud, was completely blocking the road, so perhaps the road should be closed.

The genius of these people was not compromised by any thought that the road might have been being used at the time of the mud slide for the purpose for which it was designed; not by a car or, heaven help us, a dog walker. Nope, adhering to the incompetence directive essential to the consistent running of any state service, they checked for adverse outcomes as a result of the event in no way at all and went home for tea.

Not a problem though. Just a couple more deaths due to public sector incompetence. It's not something as outrageous as say, asking public service workers to actually pay for their pensions, like everyone else. It should not dent the image of the saintly people who work in the public sector (an image invented and promoted by, the public sector).

We have an inquiry if a train crashes and kills 50 people, but the NHS kills at least that many every day and we claim it is a health service the world envies (but strangely, no one has copied). I have an idea. Maybe we should require higher standards, you know, in general not just of public sector workers.