From my journal, 4th June 2015
 
I feel as if I’m living in a parallel world to most other people. At the end of the European Branch team meeting today, Susannah [I’m now using these people’s real names, by the way], Our Leader, said that two teams had won the “Take the Biscuit” award this week. One was the “Fancy Dress” team, as she put it, and at first I thought it must be a bunch of people who’d put on a fancy dress evening recently (similar things have won). But then I realised she meant the team that had dealt with the recent “Watchdog” campaign, to extend the Nightwear Regs. 
 
[Claudia Winkleman’s daughter had been badly burned by a candle, her cheap and highly flammable fancy dress outfit going up in flames very easily. I was in charge of the Nightwear (Safety) Regulations, as well as the Furniture Regs. They are both UK-only regulations. The BBC and others were calling for stricter flammability requirements for fancy dress outfits. Certain flame retardant-loving types like Paul Fuller had been campaigning to have fancy dress outfits included in the Nightwear Regs, a move which could easily lead to lots of flame retardants in children’s clothing.]
 
I hadn’t made the connection because in reality it hasn’t been dealt with at all. Susannah went on to praise Phil [previously known in this blog as John Lord] and Richard because apparently, they’d . . . well, here’s the thing: I can’t remember what she said exactly – because it was false, or falsely reasoned. But in effect she was saying they’d got the Minister on board with our ‘solutions’. She mentioned me in passing then Richard, to applause, goes to get the prize; the biscuits. Parallel worlds, because I was thinking that the reality is this:
 

• Phil tried to exclude me from the process
• I found out anyway and produced a ton of stuff they didn’t know about
• I briefed Richard who’s supposed to be a standards expert but, well, isn’t, even if he knows a lot 
• a) it was actually me who did the important work, but b) they couldn’t even get that right in what they finally put to the Minister
• The result being that they haven’t come up with any solutions at all. They’ve bodged things, kidding themselves they’ve done good work when in fact whatever actually happens next is a lottery

 
Then we had a Furniture Regs project meeting. Parallel worlds again because I’m the Box 3 SEO who apparently can’t deal well with stakeholders but, once again, they have to keep asking me for advice and giving me the meaty action points, because despite their higher pay grades, they do not actually understand anything.
 
In short, they’re in a state of panic because they have no overview. They can’t handle me because I do. They can give me the lowest box marking for my annual report and generally treat me like crap but they can’t get round me because I know. Knowing comes from being always-on, coupled with commitment and insight.
 
By contrast, they’ve sold their integrity to an organisation that has long given up being actually effective. They spend their days managing – or trying to – everything down to their level of limited and fragmented understanding. Most of the time this works because they never get challenged by the real world outside. They can’t handle the Furniture Regs because they’re the UK’s responsibility and therefore represent the real world that’s sneaked inside these EU-dominated walls.
 
I send them emails or tell them in meetings that in effect a war’s coming and I watch the scared flickering shadows in their eyes, the “not me, surely?” thoughts. They try to fragment the issues so they can more easily deal with them. But the issue is not fragmented: it’s the fact that the government has failed the public. 
 
The two person team of me and Steve has been incredibly more effective than the numerically far superior groups we’ve been up against. We’ve faced hundreds of them across dozens of meetings and events and often been attacked and lied to and scorned. But they couldn’t beat us because we’re intact in our perceptions and moral underpinnings. The awareness matrix we’ve built between us has always been ahead of their games – not that it’s necessarily worked, of course.
 
FIFA built a shadow matrix, a network of connections and mutual deceptions which was rooted in greed. Which meant it was actually always using them, not the other way around. So, when the FBI comes calling, it all collapses instantly, with everyone at FIFA turning on each other. That can never happen with a positive matrix because it is formed around actualinsights. The shadow matrix is formed around weakness, self-deception, fantasy and greed. Crucially, the members of the shadow matrix aren’t actually in control of it. So, when it deserts them, they have nothing left to work from, to think from, to be from.
 
My lot are not exactly like FIFA but they have formed a shadow matrix. Phil is the main operator and puppeteer within it. But he’s still its creature. Chris has sold her soul to it when she should have trusted me – two of us would probably have been enough to make the difference. But here I’m missing the point: you can only join or form a positive matrix if you’re already a seeker after truth and integrity. You can perhaps be the supporter of a positive matrix, if you aren’t directly challenged by the needs of the shadow matrix opposing it; but that’s the subject of a whole different kind of process.
 
Richard Hull [professor of fire toxicity at UCLAN] recently made the point to me that BIS has probably never before had to deal with this kind of case, and he thought that was to my advantage. I wasn’t sure about that but I told him that I was no longer stressed; and that’s because I’m right and if that means they ultimately all get taken down, so be it.

Below in bold is a press statement made yesterday by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. I thought it was worth reproducing (along with my comments) because it’s illustrative of how difficult it is for Grenfell Tower fire survivors to get justice. Many of the people I work with remark on how government officials these days lie uniformly and/or simply refuse to respond to matters of public safety, electing instead to protect their careers, pensions and, quite frankly, their right to do bugger all in their day jobs. This is routinely happening with MHDCLG officals, too, when questioned about buildings legislation in relation to Grenfell.
 
It becomes rather tiresome to point out that this statement, like all the others from BEIS in recent years, is not only full of untruths, it offers absolutely no evidence or facts in support of its claims. Note, too, what it doesn’t do, e.g. provide any links to the relevant documents such as BEIS’s own 2014 proposals on a new match test with the accompanying research and scientific proof of the Technical Annex. Why? Well, almost certainly because anyone reading those will immediately see this statement for what it is: a ghastly, unfounded, self-justification for keeping the entire country at risk from toxic poisoning in their own homes.
 
 
A BEIS spokesperson said:
 
“We have sought views, consulted and proposed ways forward but there is not yet consensus across the sector and Government will not take risks with people's safety. (1)
 
“The UK has the highest furniture safety requirements in Europe and we are committed to improving environmental outcomes and reducing toxicity but need to do so in a clear, well evidenced way which also improves fire safety.” (2)
 
 
Additional Information: 

• The Government considers the safety of consumers to be a priority, and consumers should have confidence that the products in their homes are produced to rigorous safety requirements. (3)
• We are committed to improving environmental outcomes and reducing toxicity but need to do so in a clear, well evidenced way that also improves fire safety. (4)
• UK furniture safety requirements are acknowledged as being the highest in Europe.  We are committed to reviewing these regulations to ensure that the highest levels of fire safety are both maintained, and improved, for UK consumers. (5) 
• Revision of the regulations is complex, with a broad spectrum of views expressed by respondents from industry, fire services, charities and regulators. (6)

 
 
(1)  There wasn’t consensus when they proposed exactly the same changes (as in 2016) back in 2014 but the Minister, Jo Swinson and the next Minister, Anna Soubry ordered that the new test should come in regardless – which was also agreed by the fire sector. BEIS’s own Better Regulation unit advised – rightly – that you’ll never get consensus when some parties will lose out financially, and that consultations are not intended to get consensus over a matter of public safety. And the government IS taking risks with people’s safety! It’s refusing to put right the unsafe situation that Richard Hull’s paper (and other works) proves is in place, e.g. that a UK sofa is more dangerous than an EU sofa.
 
(2)  No it doesn’t – because BIS proved they don’t work! The UK government is currently being challenged by European furniture makers, via the EU Commission, on the basis that the Regulations are an unjustified barrier to trade, because they’ve been proven not to work. There is no proof at all that these regs save any lives – but we do know they’re putting millions of lives at risk through toxic poisoning. The BIS 2014 condoc and technical annex was ‘clear’ and ‘well evidenced’ – since then they haven’t produced a single piece of evidence for anything they’re saying now – 21 months since the 2016 consultation closed and still no change: this hardly constitutes a ‘committed’ approach.
 
(3)  The furniture products in our homes are NOT safe – they’re poisoning us, both in their normal state and especially when they burn.
 
(4)  BIS’s own 2014 consultation document and technical annex (widely praised by the country’s leading test experts) proved in a ‘clear, well-evidenced’ way that there are big safety problems with these regulations. Since then, BEIS has replaced its in-house regulations experts with a couple of people who recently demonstrated that they do not even know the requirments in these regulations are based on British standards. The Grenfell Fire Forum has not been able to find any evidence at all that BEIS officials have done any work on ‘improving environmental outcomes’, other than adopting a deflecting tactic in recent months. This is to keep back their Furniture Regulations officials and instead send Jon Elliott of their Science Unit in the Office of Product Safety and Standards to attend meetings and say things like, “We needto look at environmental outcomes” [my emphasis]. At the same time he tells people that the issues with the match test (that fails in most cases in practice) were ‘then; this is now’, etc.
 
(5) Actually, they’re not; now that the EU knows the truth about how they don’t work. 
 
(6) The same views were expressed by the same respondents in 2014 and dealt with. No evidence at all that they’re consulting anyone on these ‘complex’ regs. The first time in nearly two years that BEIS officials actually went out to visit a stakeholder was a few weeks back, when they booked themselves a trip to IKEA in Almhult, Sweden. 
 
The bottom line is simple: if BEIS puts these regulations right – either by implementing a new match test or by changing to just a smoulder test like the rest of the world – the former producing fire safety, the latter producing FR-free products, which the Grenfell Fire Forum and others believe is the better option) – the following industries will lose out big time financially:

• Flame retardant industry
• Chemical treatment industry
• Furniture industry (by losing its coveted trade barrier to the rest of the world)
• Testing industry (less testing required)

 
Given that all four work together closely – the core group often referred to inside the business as ‘The Skipton Mafia’ – and blocked the 2014 changes despite offering no evidence at all to support their complaints; and given that back then BIS had two full-time national experts working on the regulations, but now has none . . . there is absolutely no chance of these regulations being put right any time soon. The likes of Jon Elliott know this of course and are simply covering their backs until we get to Brexit which they somehow hope will sort everything for them.
 
Meanwhile, Jon, I advise that you buy your sofas and mattresses from outside the UK, if you care about your family being poisoned while they sleep.

Extracts from my journal, 15th June 2017
 
Grenfell Tower, a huge housing block in Kensington, caught fire last night and is still burning. About a dozen people so far have died, and around 40 injured. A reporter I know phoned today to talk about it and said he thought the timing might be suspicious. 
 
The clouds of dark smoke pouring out of the tower are that colour mainly because of flame retardants - and that smoke will include hydrogen cyanide. And yet not one single person has mentioned this in the media, even though hundreds of people, including firefighters have been breathing it in for hours. Which may or may not be a great sleight of hand act on the part of the FR industry. On which point, there was an article in the Guardian yesterday by Dr Malcolm Tunnicliff, who dealt with 12 casualties from the fire. He says:
 
"We knew in advance that it was a fire in an enclosed space so we also knew there was a real risk of cyanide poisoning from foam in older furniture burning. So we had lots of cyano kits – which contain the antidote to cyanide poisoning – ready and waiting to give people. Happily tests shows that none of them had; that was a relief."
 
I find this suspicious - first that he would be talking at all to the press and offering views on the fire before there's been any kind of investigation. Second, that he mentions burning furniture foam as a possible source of cyanide poisoning but does so wrongly, i.e. while foam in older (by which I suspect he means pre-1988 when the Regulations came in) was toxic when burned, modern foam is far more toxic because it contains FRs. Third, he claims victims were tested for cyanide but I thought that diagnoses of blood for cyanide poisoning takes quite some time. [We also learned later blood tests were taken from none of the survivors. I wrote to Dr Tunnicliff about his statements but he did not reply.]
 
Some possible issues/factors:
 

• Richard Hull has just given a talk at BFR 2017 on his work that proves a sofa treated with FRs is more toxic than an untreated sofa. The FR industry as usual was present; also present, and not usual, was Dave Sibert of the FBU.

 

• The Fire Safety Order 2005 removed the requirement upon the 'responsible person' to get a professional fire risk assessment made of his property - which is part of the general issue of industry gradually weakening safety requirements.

 

• TV says that every one of the survivors suffered from smoke inhalation; none from fires/burns, which means we need protection from toxic smoke produced by burning FRs more than from fire. When I mentioned this to Steve Owen earlier today he said, "Well, obviously," but it's not obvious to most of the population and those who advise them on fire safety.

 
The reporter who phoned me wants to do a big story on toxic smoke and furniture, bringing in Richard Hull's research, showing that the Furniture Regs can be used as a good/bad example of failing fire safety requirements, i.e. they don't work; don't increase escape time; produce highly toxic fumes. 
 
I also have some dark thoughts that I do not want to fully express, even in this journal. But I'm concerned that BEIS still may finally implement a new match test that will hugely reduce FRs in furniture cover fabrics, which in turn may lead to getting rid of them altogether (as in the US and rest of the EU). A move that might be triggered by Richard Hull's BFR talk and forthcoming paper on the same subject. The FR industry lost its US market then failed in its attempts to gain the EU market, and is at risk of losing its main supporter, the UK - at a time when it is trying to build new markets in India, Africa and Asia. And if it transpires that FRs killed many if not most of the people in Grenfell Tower when they and the Furniture Regs don't work, well, that would be very seriously damaging. Not just for the FR industry itself but also for those who get paid to promote it, including fire services officials and at least one BEIS official. In this respect, it will be very interesting to see if attention regarding the Grenfell fire remains everywhere but on burning furniture.

Today, on the Grenfell Inquiry livestream you could watch a fire officer being questioned because he had led the initial response to the fire. He looked uncomfortable throughout. At one point, he admitted to not following national safety guidance when carrying out a check on Grenfell Tower in 2016.
 
Behind the relative calm of the Inquiry proceedings, a lot of largely unseen activity is taking place, some of it near-frantic, with various people trying to cover their backs, suppress the truth and, no doubt, encourage the finger of blame to point at the more obvious targets, like those who were directly involved in fighting the fire.
 
The Grenfell Fire Forum has had some strange interactions recently with people we know well, some of whom have been helping our efforts to reveal the truth. At least, that's what they said they were doing. Why strange? Well, let's just suppose that there is a network of people with vested interests that work counter to public safety that might just get exposed through the Inquiry. Let's just suppose that the Grenfell Fire Forum has put a lot of information together that shows these links. Because when you know where to look you find the same names cropping up time and again, on the various associations for fire safety, for standards-making, on related trade associations, government advisory groups, etc. 
 
Let's also suppose that the Grenfell Fire Forum has contacts with good people who do not want to be named but who do want to provide information that further connects the same names to the same activities. Let's suppose also that the same names know that we know about them.
 
Well, these are clever people in some ways; at least, where making a buck or two is concerned. But they often underestimate those who may not be as high-ranking but don't have greed fuelled by panic at being exposed governing their thinking. Hence, we notice when someone decides to cut all ties with us a few hours after we've been talking to someone else they have links with but don't know that we know that.
 
We also notice for example how the Department for Business has just possibly lied in a press release announcing that there is no need for a recall of the fridge-freezer type that started the Grenfell fire. We know where to find the same names once again behind this issue, and how there is mutual back-covering going on. We also see the bottom line: that the same BEIS officials who are protecting themselves where the failing furniture regulations are concerned are prepared to wave through the risk that another fridge-freezer will cause another Grenfell Tower fire to the same end.
 
So, yes, there may well have been mistakes made by front-line firefighters. But they don't make the policies such as 'stay put'. Those same names are involved in that process and their reasons are not always to do with public safety.
 
One of those names has been telling people that I approached him recently and said, "I know where you live." Apart from the fact I don't know where he lives, I have never threatened anyone with anything but the truth. What I actually did was to remind him of the fact that back in 2014 he had agreed with the government that the current match test fails and the new one would work. But that he and others of those same names had then talked our Minister into endorsing an unnecessary 12 months further work with British Standards, following which the match test would be implemented in April 2016. But they never undertook the work. I questioned them publicly at the end of 2017 about why they had done nothing in the past 4 years about a test they agreed does not work and therefore is pumping everyone full of more flame retardants than necessary, including their own firefighters. He said now that they didn't tell the Minister that 12 months more work was needed, and I said I have you on record. And I do.

Below is a link to the presentation I did in Ireland in May this year. 
 
To put the issue raised in these slides into perspective: the Grenfell Inquiry has been running for nearly ten months, the Hackitt Review has concluded, as has the Inquiry's Experts Panel, yet so far the actual main cause of death in the Tower has not even been mentioned, let alone investigated. Which is:
 
The majority of deaths in Grenfell Tower were from toxic smoke poisoning and the majority of toxic smoke came from burning upholstered furniture.
 
Adjacent to this is the fact that UK upholstered furniture is three times more toxic than furniture in the EU, the reason being that it contains up to 30% by weight of flame retardant chemicals.
 
Or, to put it another way, flame retardant chemicals were responsible for most of the deaths in Grenfell Tower. Yet they have been barely mentioned either, in the Inquiry/Hackitt Review/Experts Panel.
 
Why? Well, there is big money in flame retardants, as I talk about elsewhere on this site. And there are plenty of people happy to take the FR industry's money in return for falsely claiming that they save lives from fire, even if in the case of fire union officials, that means it hugely adds to rising cancer rates in their own people (and the rest of the population). 
 
Slide presentation, Dublin, May 2018.
 

 
As I've described elsewhere on this site, the Grenfell Fire Forum met BEIS officials recently to discuss the Furniture Regulations. Three of us also spoke at a Fire Congress in Dublin on 31 May and took the opportunity to meet up the day before with officials and others from the Irish government to discuss the same issue (Ireland is the only other country in the world that has the same furniture flammability regulations as the UK). 
 
During my time at BIS/BEIS I had met the same Irish officials many times, both in Ireland and London. We had a good working relationship; indeed, when I spoke at another fire safety conference in Dublin earlier this year, I met two of them for a drink the night before. They are good company. However, I couldn't help notice that they spent the first half hour or so that night talking about their pensions.
 
We met BEIS on 3 May. As I've described on the Grenfell Tower page, they refused to answer our first question, although by the end of the meeting they promised to answer it in writing. Five weeks later, and despite three written reminders, they still have not replied. The question put to them several times at the meeting and in writing was:
 
a)         Do you agree that BIS/BEIS's published documents - the 2014 consultation paper, the 2015 Technical Annex, and the 2016 consultation paper - prove, through testing evidence and scientific reasoning, that the current match test fails in up to 90%* of cases in practice, confirmed by Trading Standards' in-field work, and that UK furniture is therefore unsafe**? Please answer Yes or No.
 
b)         If your answer to a) is 'No' please provide the evidence to justify it.
* "Up to 90%" is based on the fact that Trading Standards report they are finding 84.3% failures in the match test in practice but that figure is based on just two of the failings of the test: undertreatment and stain-repellent spraying. It does not take into account failings caused by flammable materials close to the cover or the presence of a fibre-wrap layer in most sofas - 5.7% being a conservative estimate for these two factors.
** For example, from BIS's Technical Annex (our emphasis): "Consumers are, in many instances, being led to believe that the furniture they buy is match resistant when it is not so in its final form (because it has been sprayed by persistent and flammable materials or has covers which behave favourably in test but not in the finished item or has components near the surface which are flammable) ... The Regulations rely upon a combination of ignition resistance measures; if any one of these measures is compromised it can lead to catastrophic failure of actual final composites."
They managed to avoid answering this question for two hours, in the process displaying a stunning lack of knowledge of the regulations they are responsible for; that, and producing incredibly convoluted and contradictory statements which amounted to them claiming that the evidence they need in order to act has yet to be gathered.
 
Let's be clear about what this means: the people responsible for ensuring the public is safe when it sits on its sofas and when it sleeps on its mattresses are in fact deliberately keeping the entire British public at risk - both from flammable products and the vast amounts of toxic flame retardants in those products used in order to meet flammability requirements that don't even work.
 
They are doing this knowingly. Why? Because, evidently, their pensions and having a smooth career that doesn't cause their senior managers problems is more important to them.
 
The Irish have failed to act, too. And in their case they can't claim ignorance since the same people have been in charge of their regulations for many years more than the BEIS officials.
 
Here are a few of the explanations they gave us for why nothing has changed in Ireland:
 
"We are citizens, too, so we have to face the issue that we may be sitting/sleeping on unsafe and toxic furniture."
 
Our response: But you know there's a problem and therefore can make a choice about what furniture you buy. The vast majority of Irish citizens do not.
 
Their response to that was to say that there had been several articles in the Sunday Times which had alerted the Irish public to the problem. 
 
Our response (leaving aside the obvious point that even if this were true, they should still have acted by now): Those articles were very short and did not alert the Irish public to the overall problem [we have copies of the articles and knew exactly what was in them].
 
"We are short of resources but we have made this subject a priority for 2018."
 
However, they appear to have done nothing so far, five months into the year.
 
We asked why they haven't been working with/consulting anyone on these regulations. Their response was to state that they can't do so when they are forming policy: it has to go to the Minister first. 
 
Our response: Yes, the Minister has to sign off policy but you are completely free to consult anyone while gathering the information and evidence you need to draft the policy (which is exactly what was done at BIS in the build-up to the 2014 consultation on a new match test).
 
"Evidence is often not that important in forming policy."
 
This is ridiculous. Yes, at times some parts of policy may be formed around incomplete evidence but a) all the necessary evidence was in place for the 2014 proposed new match test and b) you don't have any new evidence anyway. 
 
So, once again, we have officials in charge of public safety regulations, knowing that they don't work and therefore their entire population is at risk, coming up with complicated 'reasons' for their inaction when in fact they are simply protecting themselves.
 
Similar attitudes are at play in the Dame Hackitt Review, of course. 
 
The worrying thing is that the same department, BEIS, is handling the Brexit work. The one thing we can be sure of is that every effort will be taken by those officials to make sure their pensions are safe.

From my journal, 30th April 2015
 
Yesterday: all-staff BIS meeting in Westminster Hall. The heads of the CBI and TUC gave talks, and so did Vince Cable. Oh, and also that Jiminy Cricket lookalike Permanent Secretary of ours, Martin Donnelly. Clearly basking in the nice things the others had said about BIS, he waxed on about how great the team working is in his department. He said he would continue his promise (not sure any of us knew he'd made one) that every member of his staff will be respected, treated professionally and listened to.
 
At times like that, I believe myBIS must exist in a parallel universe. In the meeting I had with Samantha later (to discuss my future) I told her that I did not feel respected, was not being treated professionally and was not being listened to. She dutifully logged this in her notebook.
 
Today, myself and Frank my union guy, had our first meeting with Jen Davies, the case officer in my complaint against John and Barbara. We met in a tiny, sweaty room with thin walls, surrounded by other meetings which could easily hear us if they wished to.
 
Jen introduced herself, and said she'd been commissioned by Samantha. Frank and I protested at this, i.e. because Samantha is Barbara's line manager, and Barbara is John's, and there is therefore just the small chance that such an appointment might not be as neutral as it should be. [In retrospect, we should have refused to go on with the case until a case officer was appointed that both sides could agree was neutral. However, the civil service is very good at selling you a dummy early on in the process, when you don't want to cause too much aggro because you want your case to stand a fair chance. Of course, the government did the same thing with the Grenfell Inquiry - chose the case officer who immediately established limiting terms of reference.]
 
I asked what might be the outcomes of the case and Jen said that Susannah would make the final decisions! We protested even more at this, pointing out that Susannah is B's line manager, etc. Jen said she'd look into it but we might as well start. [Again, with hindsight we should have refused to move on until this point was settled.]
 
In short, I only got through half my story in the allotted hour, and we had to agree to reconvene. At the end, I repeated that Samantha should not be making the decision, and if she did, I'd drop the case and go straight to the Civil Service Commission.
 
Back in the union room, Frank reckoned that the Commission would scare the shit out of the Department, especially following on from all those nice things said about it at the all-staff event. I said I was tired of the cock-ups with this case and may just go straight to the Commission anyway. Frank said he'd raise the issue with the union that BIS does not even have a CS Code case officer and no one has a fecking clue how to run a complaint case.
 
I found out later that, incredibly, Jen continued with (separate) interviews with John and Barbara following my meeting with her. This, despite her not even knowing yet what my case is about! Frank and I decided to keep this one up our sleeves for now, but it perfectly illustrates how utterly inept BIS is at - what was it Donnelly said? - oh yes, listening to its staff.
 
Someone asked me later how Jen was and I said, not fucking tough enough. She appears to listen (most of the time) but lacks that incorruptible steely glint in the eye. Instead, I see a dark Samantha-shaped silhouette lurking there.
 
8th May:
 
Steve and I had a chat tonight. He mentioned that Jo Swinson has lost her seat and commented that this had a karmic inevitability to it, after how she'd handled the Furniture Regs. At first glance, I tend to dismiss such views but now, in light of my case at BIS, it may need to be looked at with a more open mind.
 
Steve mentioned Swinson's round table meeting back in February, something he's (rightly) still irritated about. In short:
 

• Steve and I muzzled
• Toni Eldridge set up for a fall by B and J
• The on-the-make villains given freedom to lie their flame-retardant pants off
• John playing toady both to them and the Minister
• Swinson, for whatever reason, choosing darker motives over true ones

 
On the surface, the dark side won. Steve's and my position - built on intelligence, hard work and integrity - was rubbished. I can see now that my tendency in such situations is to seek a re-balance, in this case via the correct channels - complaint case, etc - rather than to allow myself to think about taking revenge.
 
But . . . 
 
In terms of the power of the mind, ours are in fact far more powerful than theirs. Which raises the question of what then should be done with it? In other words, it's a responsibility, not an option.
 
In say five years time, we will see what karma has done to the likes of Barbara, John, Dave Sibert, Paul Fuller, David King, etc. What we may not ever know is how much was down purely to natural karmic anti-thesis. When, say, I make a strong case for public safety, based on facts and moral expediency, and Barbara blocks it, how does she deal with the power of the mind that she is perverting? What does it do to her? 
 
I need to fully realise that I have the power. And that power stems from being right, both technically and morally. This may mean that I need a dual approach from now on:
 

• Outer calm. No need to be drawn into over-reacting or being argumentative.

 

• Inner reliance of the power that I hold, that they are utterly bereft of.

 
Yesterday Samantha had a branch meeting which she based around 'change', specifically the government changes that will stem from the forthcoming election. She told a story about when she was at DWP: how she'd had to cut lots of posts but felt that people wouldn't accuse her of protecting her job because that was being cut anyway. Translation: we all know more cuts are coming so I'm getting it in now that it won't be MY fault.
 
Which reminded me of the time when she (unconvincingly) told me that she'd played no part in any of our end-year box markings (when John gave me the lowest box marking). All of which demonstrates that despite her education, self-control, excellent enunciation, etc, she lacks power. I have far more power than her, even if she ruins my career.
 
I have more power than Martin Donnelly. Why? Because he said he was continuing his promise that every single person in BIS will be treated with respect and listened to when it isn't true and he knows it isn't true.
 

On 27 April 2015, I submitted papers to the case officer handling my Civil Service Code case. The case, put simply, was that I was being forced by senior managers to commit breaches of the Code via their misinforming our Minister. 

The Code states:

As a civil servant, you are appointed on merit on the basis of fair and open competition and are expected to carry out your role with dedication and a commitment to the Civil Service and its core values: integrity, honesty, objectivity and impartiality. In this code:

• ‘integrity’ is putting the obligations of public service above your own personal interests
• ‘honesty’ is being truthful and open
• ‘objectivity’ is basing your advice and decisions on rigorous analysis of the evidence
• ‘impartiality’ is acting solely according to the merits of the case and serving equally well governments of different political persuasions

My case officer was appointed by Samantha, the overall head of our unit, who herself was complicit in the breaches. I and my union official objected to this appointment but were told we had to accept it. With what I have learned since I would definitely not accept it, and instead insist on a more independent person running the case. Below is my overview paper.


Terry Edge – Civil Service Case Overview, April 2015
 
 
This case revolves around the Department's largest 'Out' project under the Red Tape Challenge. In essence, it was to bring about a change to the Furniture and Furnishings (Fire) (Safety) Regulations 1988 that would save industry millions of pounds per year, make UK furniture greener and more fire-safe, as well as put right problems with the current flammability requirements. 
 
Against my better judgement, senior management pressured me to bring forward the money-savings changes, ahead of the overall amendments I'd been working on, so that the current government could claim the credit. Along with Steve Owen (of Intertek), BIS's technical advisor, I brought the changes in on time, under enormous pressure from Ministers, BRT, senior civil servants, etc. 
 
However, following the public consultation, and due to a combination of insufficient knowledge, lack of trust in the experts working for them, professional jealousy and career risk-aversion, Barbara Middlemiss (my Grade 5) and John Lord (my line manager, Grade 6) misinformed the Minister in such a way that the project has now been delayed by at least a year (and probably considerably more). 
 
I believe their actions constitute a breach of the Civil Service Code and their insistence I follow their direction puts me in danger of such a breach; also that their persistent undermining of my work and reputation in order to protect their mistakes constitutes bullying.
 
Examples of misinformation:

• Assured the Minister that extra research work was needed to prove the validity of the test when this wasn't true (and they now admit it isn't)
• Briefed the Minister that negative criticisms of the proposals were valid even though there was no evidence to support them
• Ignored the advice of a group of leading experts who informed them that BIS had proven the case for the changes - and continued to brief the Minister that more work needed to be done
• Gave in to vested interests, criminal in one case at least, that wanted the changes delayed/stopped
• Failed to inform the Minister that stakeholders had lied and/or provided false information at a round table meeting
• Deliberately obscured and withheld the truth in the government response to the public consultation on the proposed changes, in order to mislead the public into believing that more work was needed, and caused other government Ministers to sign off the response without having the evidence required to make a valid decision.
• Deliberately failed to answer a single question raised by consultation responses despite me having provided them with answers to allthe questions raised

 
As a consequence:

• Extra fire deaths and many more house fires will ensue
• Trading Standards cannot prosecute cases (leading to more non-compliant furniture getting into the UK, leading to more deaths and house fires)
• UK furniture will continue to contain large amounts of flame retardant chemicals now known to damage health and the environment
• Retailers such as XXX will be forced to continue selling unsafe products and face damaging public outrage if the media finds out, along with possible huge costs of recalling literally millions of products
• Large-scale criminal activity will continue

 
Because I refused to support their efforts to misinform the Minister, in what I believe is a breach of the Civil Service Code, they have subjected me to bullying in the following ways:

• Consistently undermined my work and reputation
• Sabotaged submissions to the Minister which would have made her aware of the truth behind the proposed changes
• Caused me huge stress by not trusting my work (or that of Steve Owen)
• Damaged my reputation with stakeholders
• Exaggerated/lied about my behaviour towards stakeholders
• Presented falsified evidence at my end-year review to suggest I have a behavioural problem with stakeholders
• Used my end-year review unfairly, and against all the evidence to the contrary, as a tool to build a counter-argument to this Civil Service Code case
• Tried to lever me out of my post (and may still do so)

 
I have evidence to support all the claims made above. 
 
Summary Overview
 
The key point is that all the necessary research and testing work to support the proposed changes had been completed by the time of the consultation launch on 7th August 2014 – as agreed by John Lord and signed off by the Minister. This was further confirmed by a meeting of the UK’s leading test experts at BIS on 21st November 2014. By the time of the Ministers’ round table meeting on 9th February 2015, the majority of stakeholders present had had nearly two years in which to present BIS with any ‘further work’ which those with vested interests claimed needed doing. In the event, all that was put forward at that meeting as further work was that BIS should commission British Standards Institute to spend a further 12 months working on a test foam formula that already exists in the current Regulations and was including in the proposals in the consultation document.
 
Barbara and John originally claimed to believe that extra work could be done. Later, they admitted that this was not the case but that we had to be seen to do something because “it’s what the Minister wants” (but because they had briefed her so). They are now claiming that every view by any stakeholder is valid, even if there is no evidence to back it up; that, if a stakeholder claims there is more work to be done but doesn’t know what it is, that is still something BIS should take seriously and delay accordingly.
 
This view is further undermined by the fact that neither Barbara nor John has sought for or come up with a single piece of additional work that needs doing, despite having had 8 months (since the consultation launch) in which to contact a huge choice of stakeholders. Similarly, they have intentionally and systematically ignored the evidence in favour of the proposed changes.
 
Also key to the case is John Lord’s behaviour in delaying the implementation of the proposed changes. I believe this was motivated mainly by professional jealousy and (self-confessed) risk-aversion. The first delay was caused by him going to private office when the first submission was sent up, to tell the Minister’s Private Secretary, [TB], that “these changes are probably not going ahead”. This act alone meant we then faced a huge uphill struggle to convince the Minister and get the changes through in time. On at least two more occasions, I heard John on the phone to [TB] sabotaging submissions (that had been agreed by him and Barbara Middlemiss): once, to tell her a submission would not be going up (in time to meet a critical deadline) because it “wasn’t working”; another time, she phoned him and he agreed with her that “it just isn’t working; the Minister just doesn’t understand”.
 
Another key delay he caused was with work on the consultation responses. He instigated a complicated spreadsheet which the response team found very time-consuming to fill in. By the deadline for completing the work, only about a quarter of the returns had been processed. I invited Steve Owen to come to BIS and help me go through the responses and we completed them all in two days. John refused to use this work; instead he set up another team – including at least one person with no experience of the Regulations – with the result that the processing work took nearly three weeks.
 
By the time the Minister reached the final deadline to enable implementation in April 2015, she was still being given mixed messages by our team, exacerbated by the delays, with the result she informed other Red Tape Challenge Ministers that she did not have enough information to be able to go ahead with the changes in time.
 
 
 
Terry Edge, April 2015
 

From my journal, 9 April 2015
 
Yesterday, Samantha [the Grade 3] came over to ask me about my holiday in Cornwall (we went to Scotland). She then said she'd like to have a short meeting with me in the afternoon. She's never asked about my holidays before, or anything to do with my life come to that, so I thought oh-oh.
 
She started by telling me that my case [Civil Service Code case against Barbara and John] was going to be investigated soon (case officer appointed by Samantha); that it should be finished within 40 working days and if it isn't her boss has to look into it (which of course is the real reason for keeping to time, not that I get a fair investigation).
 
She then said she had a 'proposition' for me. This involved her speaking solidly for 8-9 minutes at the end of which it was clear that I was expected to just say yes. In short, it's that I should move to another job in another team for 40 days, while the case is going on. Her 'reasoning' was:
 
1)         She wants to be fair to me and it can't be good for me to be working to a policy I don't agree with.
 
2)         She also needs to be fair to Barbara and Phil, since I've expressed my disagreement with them.
 
3)         It will help me expand my whatevers (I forget the exact word but it amounts to bollocks, possibly in both senses of the word), towards furthering my career.
 
4)         I'm very capable (apparently) and this new job is in a priority area.
 
On 1) I said I don't disagree with the policy; just the way it's being managed, the policy being surely that we all want to make the regulations safe. Also, there is a distinction, I said, between the work going forward and the case which is based on the past. Before the case is decided, it doesn't seem fair that I should be the one to have to leave my job.
 
On 2), the same logic says you might as well move Barbara and Phil to different jobs.
 
On 3), I said this is not particularly relevant since I'm already past retirement age and the only reason I'm staying on is to see these regulations put right.
 
As for 4), it hardly seems fair to expect a new line manager to have to train me just for 40 days work. [My gut feeling that she was lying about it being just for this period was confirmed later when she made similar 'propositions' to me. In short she is a bully of the most cowardly sort. Instead of simply telling you that you will do what she wants, she tries to pretend that you made the choice. I now know damn well that the first day I'd have turned up in the new job the line manager would have had no idea at all it was just for 40 days - either that or he/she would have played along with Samantha's lie.]
 
At this point, I recalled that Barbara and Phil were both on leave this week, i.e. she probably promised them a Terry-free unit upon their return.
 
She also specifically mentioned FW/6 [the British Standards Institute's working group on furniture flammability, on which I represented BIS] and asked me what I would do there regarding BIS's proposal. My instinct pinged at this, suspecting a trap.
 
[Which it was. What had happened was that Phil completely perverted the official government response to the 2014 consultation. Apart from rejecting my honest assessment of the responses, telling the Minister that I had a CS Code case on the go when it was supposed to be kept confidential (thereby forcing her to accept his response version), censoring the papers sent out to other Departments, the greatest con he pulled was stating at the end of it that BIS would work with British Standards to improve the new match test, with a view to implementing it in April 2016. Hence, everything depended on this 'work' with BS going ahead. But I'd been pointing out to the team that BS would struggle in this since there actually was no more work that needed doing. The problem being that I was the BIS person on FW/6 - which of course may well have been part of Samantha's plans to move me on, so that a more pliable person could be moved in. So, what Samantha was no doubt hoping with this question was that I would answer by saying that I would not toe the policy line, giving her the perfect excuse for moving me on.]
 
I told her that I only had two realistic choices: either say nothing or put across the BIS line (even though I knew it to be false). Extraordinarily - or perhaps not - she agreed. So much for the truth.
 
Then I showed her that I'd pushed her into a little trap of my own. I told her that Barbara actually told British Standards' management that the work we were asking them to do didn't need doing; but it was what the Minister thought was needed, therefore it had to be done (unless BS were stupid, I don't suppose they had much trouble in working out why the Minister might think that). Barbara, I said, quoting pretty much exactly, also told BS that "The minister has this strange idea that you can test a test. We know that isn't true of course, but we have to try to please her." (Ditto for BS working out why the Minister would think such a thing.) Finally, the clincher: I said that Barbara had asked me to confirm that at the FW/6 meeting, Steve and I would vote down BIS's proposition to do more work! (Amazing, but true. I suspect this was because she only had to cover-off the delay until April 2016; therefore, just the fact of BS being involved was enough.]
 
Much note-scribbling went on as I spoke, that and a furrowed brown of "why didn't they tell me this"itis.
 
When she'd finished I said, "So, do I act enthusiastically at FW/6 about the work we want them to do or just repeat what Barbara told their management?" While her brow was convoluting further at this I went on to suggest that the team needed to work out its objectives and vision since we didn't have these things - something a Grade fucking 3 should of course be able to spot from a million miles away but which she'd completely missed in her gymnastic efforts to get rid of the one person in the team who was more concerned about public safety than protecting his career.
 
I told her I'd think about it but I already knew what my answer would be.
 
 

In 2002, John Hunt Publishing published a book I wrote called "DO WHAT?: THE CIVIL SERVICE". I also wrote a book on film and TV for the same series. It was my agent's idea that I write one on the civil service because, well, I was in it. I wasn't keen at first but in the event enjoyed the research, structuring the content, writing the cartoons, etc. I'd joined the civil service quite late in life, needing a steady job that would allow me to continue my writing career without too much interference. I approached the subject, quite naturally, as an idiot about it and therefore was I think able to put the material across clearly to its intended audience of teenagers. My Department, DTI (at the time), liked it enough to give a copy to all new entrants.
 
I thought it might be interesting to include a bit of it on this blog, if only to provide a contrast to the somewhat different views about the civil service that I developed later in my career there.
 
* * *
 
CHAPTER 5: WHAT DOES A DEPARTMENT STORE?
 
"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy." Ernest Benn
 
YOU CAN'T ESCAPE THE LAW
 
Imagine you're taking a walk along your road to the shops at the end of it. Look at everything around you - the houses, pavement, road, hedges, trees and the sky. Well, you won't see anything that isn't controlled by government legislation or law.
 
If you live in town, then every house you pass has to conform to the law. For example, no one can simply build a bit onto their house without planning permission. If a man wants to have a giant plastic shark sticking out of the top of his roof (and there is such a man in Oxford) he'll have to spend years fighting the local authorities who will insist that the law doesn't allow for large marine life to be obstructing the skyline. Artists and people with a sense of humour might like it but then they're not paid to uphold the law.
 
Even the satellite dishes on people's walls are only there because legislation says they can be, providing they're not bigger than a certain size. Not only that but several different Departments will have had a say in the legislation. The Department for the Environment,  Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) would have had a lot to say about where you can actually put them. The Radio Communications Agency of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) would have had a lot of input about wavebands and licenses. The Treasury would want to know how much it's all going to cost. And then DTI would have had another say where telecommunications is concerned, and so on.
 
Even the height of garden walls is controlled by law, and in conservation areas you can't paint your house without getting the colour approved by the proper authorities. Perhaps you can begin to see why there are so many civil servants.
 
It isn't any different if you live in the country. You may be surrounded by fields and trees but everything in the country is controlled too. Even the air around and above you is covered by legislation which says who can fly in what kind of machine and when and where, and how much factories can and can't pollute it.
 
At present, if you were to wake up tomorrow morning with new super-powers, you could simply leap out of your bedroom window and fly to school. This is because we don't have any laws about super-heroes. Which is because the government doesn't believe there are any. But it wouldn't be long before the Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions (DTLR), probably working closely with DEFRA, brought in new legislation called 'The Control of Unmotorised Airborne Youths Who Wear Brightly Coloured Underpants Outside Their Bodystockings Act 2002'.  
 
So, Departments are places where the government's policy is put into action. The policy has to be backed up by law, which is what Parliament does. Once the laws are made they're passed to the Departments, which then do all the paperwork, print the brochures, hire the lorries and so on which make the policies work.
 
As you know, the people who do all this work in the Departments are civil servants. They are not politicians. Civil servants are neutral, which means they put the government's policies into action without being for or against them. A civil servant may have private views about whether a policy is a good or a bad thing but he won't let it affect his job.
 
And of course, a lot of government policies are unpopular with all sorts of people. For example, if the government wanted to ban fox hunting, it would first propose a Bill to do it. This Bill would then have to go through the House of Commons, be looked at by the House of Lords, and finally become law. After it becomes law, there are all sorts of bits of it which civil servants need to put into practice, as well as deal with the effects the new law may have on the rest of the world. For instance, if Scotland doesn't ban fox hunting too, then there'll be problems along the border of England and Scotland. Imagine a legal hunt in Scotland chasing a fox that is clever enough to nip over the border into England where it's illegal.
 
While the anti-fox hunting Bill is going through Parliament, lots of people will write to the government with their views for and against. Someone has to answer these letters, emails faxes and phone calls. And even after the Bill becomes law, there will be a never-ending stream of letters and such like from people complaining about how unfair it is that they can no longer gang up on a small animal and enjoy seeing it torn to pieces buy packs of hounds.
 
Well of course, it's also civil servants who answer all these letters and phone calls.
 
As we've seen, when the government changes the civil servants stay in their Departments. If all the civil servants were changed too, it would be very difficult to run the country. A minister may be in charge of say the Department of Trade and Industry for only a year or two. While he's there, he will have to get to know something about hundreds of different schemes, committees, proposals, laws and so forth. But he will know only the main points. Each of these areas will be covered by a whole team of civil servants, many of whom will have been working on one particular point for years.
 
So it make sense to keep the civil servants when the government changes. At least, that's what they've convinced us is the sensible thing to do.
 
 
 
 
here to edit.