The civil service, value for money ?

As a person who works in the private sector I have long held the view that the Civil service in the UK is a necessary evil. And should be as small as possible to remain effective, if it ever was effective!

Having spoken to a number of people in public service over the years they seems, as a generalisation, to not understand that they are a cost to the economy and they need to be as efficient as possible. It appears to be almost impossible to lose your job and no one is accountable for failure and you are encouraged to spend money left in your budget regardless of the need to do so. I could go on but my blood pressure would go up, the story below does nothing to change my view

No tax reminder for thousands as HMRC runs out of paper

Sarah Coles
Jul 26th 2011 at 5:00AM

Filed under: Taxes

You might have thought the taxman had managed every possible variation on the stupid mistake. However, it has just come up with another. Hundreds of thousands of people have yet to receive a reminder about the tax they are due to pay this month, because HMRC ran out of paper.

So what does this mean for them... and for you?
The mistake
The crunch point is the end of this month, as 31st July is the payment date for those people who complete a self-assessment form. They have to pay half at the end of the year and the other half by the end of July.

HMRC sends out reminder letters indicating what is due, and hammering home the expensive danger of missing the deadline - and the fines and interest that can be imposed on anyone missing the deadline or failing to pay.

However, this year HMRC failed to order enough of the paper it needed in order to print the letters, so hundreds of thousands will not be getting a letter until well after the deadline.

Apparently the problem was that the number of statements due to be printed has soared and no-one told the genius tasked with ordering the paper. It's just the kind of seamless internal communications we would expect from the government, and the level of competence in particular we have come to expect from HMRC.