Yesterday's article "From The Coal Face" has brought forth some very direct and unflattering comments from employees of HMRC about the "quality" of management in that fine organ of the state, and staff morale in general.One rather good suggestion was that Gordon "Smiler" Brown should read this site and the comments made. However, until I actually see a pig flying past my office window, I will assume that is unlikely to occur.
There was one very good suggestion that does, I think, have legs:
"My advice to all HMRC colleagues is to download from Intranet the grievance stencil (opens in Word) complete, sign and fire them into management. Don't pull your punches chaps and chapettes...the more grievances you raise the more the powers-that-be will get the message that things will have to change.
If I were a manager receiving a daily deluge of grievances from my staff it would certainly force my hand."
Use the system to defeat the system!
Plus, anonymously, air your grievances here in order to ensure that HMRC management is publicly humiliated into taking positive action.
Take action!
Tax does have to be taxing.
HMRC Is Shite (www.hmrcisshite.com), also available via the domain www.hmrconline.com, is brought to you by www.kenfrost.com "The Living Brand"
The Inland revenue have always been shite. Remember when they used to send out PAYE notices of coding before the new tax year and then have to send out new ones a few weeks later after the March budget. How much did that all cost ?
ReplyDeleteOur youngest child left school several years ago and yet every year we get a great wad of paperwork (times two, one each - both to the same address) telling us we have had no tax credits for him for the past year (well I never) and will not be getting any for the coming year either. A great big explanatory booklet is also enclosed (times 2 of course).
Talking of tax credits, you have often said they should scrap them and raise the basic tax allowances. That'll never happen. You don't have to "apply" and fill in overley complicated forms to claim a tax allowance.
Finally, I did a fairly accurate calculation of the tax take from me in the last tax year. Including PAYE, NI, VAT, DUTY, STAMP DUTY (amount paid divided by the number of years we expect to stay in the house), etc, etc. It turned out that just slighty over half of EVERYTHING I earn ends up in the government's pockets one way or another.
Morale here at the coal face is none existent. Management, ask yourselves, are a large number of my staff resigning, resigning and submitting positive dismissal cases, bringing grievance cases, going off sick with stress-related illnesses? If the answer is yes, you're doing it wrong. How long will it be before there is yet another suicide for HMRC to hush up? No amount of hammering will force a square peg into a round hole, and the objects getting the hammering... your staff! Does anyone else find it strange that, where posible, Senior Officers are Inland Revenue? With their nit-picking, micro-management. They have little or no knowledge of the C&E side of the 'business', so can't advise, mentor or, apparently, give a damn about the problems that are arising. If you go to them with a question, they glaze over till you have finished talking then demand you fill in yet another spreadsheet. The last time my husband (an employee of this Mickey Mouse outfit) was managed by these OCD morons he was so ill he nearly quit. Now they're back. About as welcome as Jack Nicholson coming through the door with an axe. And BOY are they doing an axe job on the staff. Take a look round the offices Gordon Brown. If your HMRC staff have their CVs on a disc in their top pocket, you are about to witness the mass exodus of the downtrodden. The tradgedy is, these are hard-working, consientious people, who are passionate about the work that they do, they deserve better than this. Yet they are never encouraged, praised, or thanked for what they do. Your management teams couldn't hit water if they fell out of a boat. Oh yeah, I nearly forgot. How much will it cost the cost-cutters, to recruit and train the replacements, for all the staff that leave or go on long-term sick? Have you thought of the skills that are being pissed away?
ReplyDeleteSadly, Gordon Brown has no interest in reading this site. However, you can bet your life that there will be an army of politburo apparatchiks employed somewhere at Headquarters regularly scouring the site to see if any of the anonymous contributors should give away the slightest clue of their identity so that a Great Purge can be launched.
ReplyDeleteAs long as his "government" collects its taxation requirement for the year, then he has absolutely no qualms about how he gets it - and the government would achieve its target pretty much whether HMRC was here or not, or whether one of the big accountancy firms got the job.
No, he hated the Inland Revenue because they have historically been seen as a "failing departnment" and he hated Customs and Excise because they messed up big time on MTIC fraud (albeit due to being given no resources to do the job). His brainwave was - join them together so that I can ditch the whole lot when they foul up.
The poor old officers stuck in the middle trying to do their level best don't get a look in and there is a veritable Stalinist crusade by IR dominated management to stifle all criticism. Brown sees the staff as shiftless and worthless and best disposed of as qiuickly as possible, despite the billions of punds they bring into his greedy coffers. All we are now fit for is being canon fodder either for filling in the reams of senseless IR inspired spresdsheets, or being moved from one totally useless office location to an even worse one as the IR management behaves like some insane First World War general, playing fast and loose with people's lives.
No, Brown will never read this column - he would need to get a conscience first.