​From my journal, 6th February 2015: mediation session with John Lord. [Real name: Phil Earl - I've decided to stop protecting people who played a big role in endangering the health of every person in the country, knowingly.]
 
[Mediation was the idea of my line manager. The relationship between Lord and I had pretty much broken down. Amongst other things, he had recommended me for a poor annual report marking based on his 'perceptions' that I did not deal with stakeholders well (this following several years of top markings; the change oddly coinciding with him scuppering the new match test to the delight and no doubt rewarding gratitude of the chemical industry amongst others). This despite me providing several written testimonies towards my report, from a wide range of our stakeholders, including some opposed to the new test, all very positive. For example, Kevin Nimmo, who was chair of the British Standards group Steve and I sat on, covering furniture flammability, praised my hard work and ability to communicate difficult subjects well. He said it had been an honour to work with me over the years; which really did bring a tear to my eye. However, John's perceptions - without a single piece of evidence in support - apparently carried more weight.]
 
I spent an hour with the mediators, Alice and June, then John had an hour with them; then all four of us met for two hours. I said my piece first; then he said his; then we discussed. Sounds very civilised, doesn't it? And in many ways it was, at least on the surface (where everything counts most in the civil service).
 
In short, John put in a great performance: well acted, nicely judged; said he was sorry about six times; looked contrite . . . looked contrite; and therein was the problem: the mediators clearly assumed this was normal for John. What they didn't know was that he'd never before apologised to me about anything and had certainly never looked contrite. I assume Alice and June have been trained in mediation but it was pretty obvious to me they don't know a sociopath when they see one.
 
He even talked about how much it had hurt him to have to make difficult decisions that he knew I wouldn't be happy with (like the ones that have resulted in people dying in unnecessary house fires, John?) The mediators were too far away to see his eyes, which were essentially empty, but I could see his words softening their perception of him.
 
At the start of my turn I said, "I'm holding you personally responsible for all the extra deaths that have occurred because the new match test has been delayed." He didn't even blink. Just nodded a few times, which appeared to have one of the mediators nodding slightly in sympathy.
 
I wanted to tell them: "I've just accused this man of causing death by neglect. He can only have one of two valid reactions to that: either he breaks down and admits it's true or he gets angry because it isn't and threatens to sue me if I don't retract the accusation. But look, look, look! He hasn't done either!"
 
I then gave lots of examples of things he'd done but shouldn't and hadn't done but did, along with the effect they'd had on me. I said that I'd agreed to mediation because I wanted explanations for the way he'd behaved, since in our day-to-day jobs he never explained anything.
 
The smartness of his sociopathy showed in him never attacking me. The giveaway that this was not entirely natural - and again would have been missed by the mediators since they did not know his normal - was that he also did not bring up the few times when I actually had challenged him. He didn't even mention the one time I'd sworn, even though he'd often used it against me since. In other words, I knew that this calm reasonableness was totally fake but I guess there's no reason the mediators should.
 
Along with "Sorry" he put in a few variations around "I probably could have done more", which of course is not exactly self-criticism since everyone can always do more. Compare that with his wording about me: "Terry could be difficult to suggest things to . . . " Very clever; implies that I was often not open to listening to reasonable suggestions. In truth, the only times I was difficult about his suggestions were when they were patently designed to delay the test going ahead; that and when he was 'suggesting' (i.e. lying) about why he'd sabotaged yet another submission to the Minister.
 
His defence of any 'unfortunate decisions' he 'may' have made (translation: good decisions that Terry didn't happen to like) were:
 
1)         He had to do what Barbara told him to because she's his senior manager.
 
2)         He had to make political decisions which were often uncomfortable but he had no choice.
 
A good example of the first was the judicial review threat that had played a large part in Jo Swinson deciding to delay implementation of the new match test. Originally, I'd heard about it some time after it happened, and only because it was obvious that I knew something was up following hints of it in an Adjournment Debate between Swinson and Andrew Stephenson MP. Then, Barbara told me that FIRA and the NBF had phoned Swinson's office to say that if Steve and I were allowed to handle the consultation responses, they'd instigate a judicial review. Now, though, John told me that in fact an email had been sent to the Minister's office by Stephen McPartland MP. This was the first time I knew that John even knew about it since Barbara had told me that only she'd been told. I asked him why he hadn't told me about it at the time and he said because Barbara wanted to 'protect' me (which indeed was the reason she gave for not telling me earlier).
 
[Update: Even at the time, this was patently absurd, especially given that Barbara was trying to destroy my career! Later, of course, via my civil service code case I saw the emails concerned and finally understood why Barbara had lied: in short, she knew that John had leaked information to industry that would lead to an almost certain delay to the test. In time-honoured senior civil servant tradition, the right thing to do at such moments is not to protect the public and expose corruption in officials, it's to make sure one's own back is covered.]
 
"I don't need protecting," I said, "I need the truth." Which I realise sounds rather Hollywood court room scene when written down but I meant it. What they meant by 'protecting' me was of course protecting them. Besides, they were well aware that for a couple of years, Steve and I had regularly faced all manner of stakeholders, including big players who wanted to do nothing more than shoot us down. What protected us? The fact we always told the truth.
 
"So Stephen McPartland actually made the judicial review threat?" I said. "Yes," he replied. McPartland MP is [still is] Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for the furniture industry. Steve recently discovered that just a few weeks after Swinson had she wasn't ready to go ahead with the new match test, McPartland was given a place on the board of Furniture Village - minimum work for a cool £40K a year. Now we know why.
 
There is a mystery here, of course, which is why did John tell me this? He knew I'd been told by Barbara that it was FIRA and the NBF who made the threat and probably figured I'd never find out the real truth and even if I did, I wouldn't have fingered him, only Barbara - ah! so there it is; how cunning.
 
SIDEBAR:
 
This new information about the JR threat is probably on reflection the most useful part of the session for me. Barbara had told me that the basis of the threat was that Steve and I should not have processed the consultation returns. Of course, what BIS should have said by way of reply to whoever made such a threat was: "Bug off. It's perfectly proper that our two experts should do this work." Better Regulation had actually told Barbara this, and she knew it herself anyway. But they didn't send the accuser packing, which meant that Andrew Stephenson MP was able to repeat the claim about me and Steve in the Adjournment Debate with Swinson.
 
When Barbara first told me that FIRA/NBF had made this threat, she'd said they'd guessed Steve and would be handling the consultation returns. At the time, that seemed a pretty lame move but not implausible coming from FIRA/NBF. Now, I can see she'd lied and why: because if she'd told me it was McPartland, I'd have known he would not risk his reputation on a guess. Someone had told him about me and Steve. But the question is who?
 
What had happened was this: we had to process 113 consultation returns super-quick, because the deadline for implementation by April 2015 was very close. In fact, we only had a week to do it in. John put together a team of 5 to do the work: him, me, Nicola and the two analysts. But then he came up with this very complicated and cumbersome spreadsheet he insisted we use. Progress was very slow, not helped by him suddenly deciding to take two days leave. By the end of Friday, we'd only got through a quarter of the returns.
 
So I phoned Steve and asked him to come to London the following week and help me process the returns. He did so and we started fresh, without the stupid spreadsheet, and got through all the returns in just two days. In case anyone might protest that Steve should not have read the returns (even though, again, Better Regulation told us it was perfectly proper to have our technical expert work on them), only I read them, asking Steve specific questions where necessary.
 
When John found out, it was the only time I actually saw him lose his cool. At first, I thought this was simply because he already resented us - me for handling the project so much better than him, despite being two grades lower down the chain, and Steve for being, well, more of a man. But you know what: I reckon the real reason was that we'd scuppered his perfect tactic for delaying implementation. And that was sure to also upset whoever had told him to do so.
 
But, again, who told McPartland? Who needed to tell him, a) in order to get the delay back on and b) to cover the cock-up. Hmmmm, pretty obvious, really. [Update: later, when I saw the actual documents from the BFM and McPartland to Swinson carrying the JR threat, the timing was highly suspicious, i.e. the BFM wrote to McPartland to complain that Steve and I were handling the consultation responses just the day after we'd finished doing so. And at that time, only two people other than us knew about it. Yes, it could have been Barbara but all the evidence points to John. By the way, when I pointed out to my case officer that this was evidence that a BIS civil servant had possibly leaked information to industry resulting in an important piece of safety legislation being blocked, he turned white and refused to answer.]
 
SIDEBAR TO THE SIDEBAR:
 
Steve was at BIS this week and Barbara decided to have her long-delayed one-to-one with him. Later, Steve told me that when he came into our team's area with Barbara, John became extremely agitated - fidgeting, standing up, sitting down again - again, very unusual for him. This was probably because Barbara hadn't told him she was meeting Steve. For once, John wasn't in control and if I'm right about him, he may well have feared that Barbara had decided to cover herself by telling Steve the truth about the JR threat. Which might explain why he decided today to tell me about McPartland and thereby reveal that Barbara lied to me.
 
BACK TO THE SIDEBAR
 
So, John was no doubt furious because essentially: 1) we'd exposed his project management skills as shite (and/or he's corrupt) and 2) we'd got the project back on time.
 
But John then did something that further proved he's bent or at the very least allowed anger and pride to guide his actions: he decided to scrap all the work Steve and I had done and start again. He set up a new team to do it, including Mark Portman who did nothing but complain about it. When I pointed out to John that Portman has no knowledge of the Furniture Regs, he said he wanted to introduce a "fresh pair of eyes". What he really wanted of course, is what he got: that it took a further three weeks for them to process the consultation returns by which time we'd missed the deadline.
 
Now I think about it, there is something else that smells extremely fishy about this JR threat and probably explains why they keep hiding the details from me, which is that me and Steve handling the returns, even if wrong, is nowhere near enough to justify a JR challenge to a Minister.
 
The most likely explanation is that the JR threat was always designed to simply delay the new test - the fact of it, not the substance, which is why Barbara never intended to tell me about it. And the fact of it is clearly about collusion between all the parties who have a vested interest in preventing the new test going ahead: the chemical industry, FIRA, McPartland, Stevenson, John, Barbara and probably Swinson too, if only because to stand against it she'd have to side with the lower grade technical nutter against all those senior civil servants covering their backs, Tory MPs pushing her to support business before safety, and the chemical industry itself which clearly also always puts profit first.
 
To summarise, my best guess about what actually happened is this: John was determined (bribed) to scupper the project but without of course damaging himself in the process. He got a lucky break when Barbara turned up as his new boss only a month or so before we went out to consultation. He took advantage of her ignorance, steering her towards taking the cautious path of 'mitigating' the naysayers; then took full advantage of her breakdown at the experts' meeting to tip off the villains to come up with the JR threat (any suspicions were more likely to fall on the woman who'd cracked up and refused to inform the Minister that the experts gave us the go-ahead, than the smooth sociopath sitting quietly in the corner) which served all his purposes in one go: to block implementation and discredit me and Steve; well, and Barbara too.
 
Wow.
 
BACK TO THE MAIN THREAD:
 
So John's 'explanation' for sabotaging all those Ministerial submissions turns out to be that he had to do what a civil servant has to do; which, he said today, means giving the Minister what she needs in order to deal with 'the situation', i.e. not the truth. Which sounds absurd but hey it was delivered in that pleasant voice of reason (copyright Sir Humphrey). But here are the questions/points I put to him today that he couldn't and didn't answer:

• Everyone, including him, now agrees that the new test is good to go and the current one is dangerous to the public.

• If he didn't think it was good before the consultation, he should have said so then but didn't.

• I've always known the test is good and always said so.

 
Which means all that confusion after the consultation, which led to the project failing can only be down to him and Barbara but mostly him because she was new to the project while he was a year into it.
 
The fact he couldn't answer my points means he's guilty, of course. But silence in the civil service is often taken as innocence, as I've learned over the past few months. It suits senior management that way but, as Steve said, is really just another form of corruption.
 
Another example of his subterfuge that I questioned him about was the time when I'd yet again slogged away on another submission; finished it then heard him on the phone to Tracy in the Minister's office, telling her we weren't putting it up. I asked him today why he'd done that, and he said it had actually been Barbara's decision. I said, "But I saw you - you hadn't moved from your desk since I emailed you the sub; so how could it have been Barbara's decision?" And he said, "Barbara sent me an email about it." Which is ridiculous: if Barbara had thought the submission was no good, she'd have contacted Tracy direct, or at the very least had a word with me and John first. Also, John being heavily into self-protection means he would have told me at the time if it was B's decision. Doubly so since now he's implying he didn't actually agree with her decision so, again, would have made sure I knew at the time. But sociopaths think fast and I reckon he calculated there was no way I could now check this out.
 
AFTER-THOUGHTS:
 
What I'm now pretty sure of is this: everyone apart from me, Steve, most of the ground level fire services, most of Trading Standards (e.g. Toni) and the families of those who will die because of this delay - i.e. no one who really counts - wants this consultation to be negated. There will be mixed views on what happens next but all parties (except for the above) will want to kick the project back at least a year, leave it to the next government and so on. John will score plenty of brownie points over this, for taking the moderate, reasonable, mitigating line. Barbara will soon get back on her senior CS career course. The Minister can forget all about it. RW [owner of huge chemical treatment company] gets another year or more of scamming income. FIRA re-claims its position as furniture industry guru (although somewhat tainted by its antics). And so on. All because these days no one is ever held accountable when the public is at risk.
 
Result of mediation: absolutely nothing, other than that BIS HR can tick a box to say they followed the correct procedures.

​It often surprises me - although it probably shouldn't - how the way the Whitehall civil service works is a mystery to most people. So from time to time, I thought it might be useful to record a few true stories (all names changed, of course) so tax-payers can get a better idea of how their money is spent.
 
Samantha says to the Division, "I know you're all busy and that's probably why only one person emailed in with a 'brag'. So, who's got one they'd like to share with us now?"
 
Samantha - "don't ever call me 'Sam'" - is the big cheese of our Division, the Grade 3, the 'Director'. Everything about Samantha is neat to the point of rigid, including her way of speaking. Like most directors she is also very well-educated. However, she has just made a rookie's mistake, which I'll come to in a minute.
 
The Division comprises around 60-70 civil servants. Most of them work on EU-related topics with the odd anomaly, like the team I'm in, the Product Safety Team. It's an anomaly in that we are part of the Department for Business and yet my team is supposed to be putting consumer safety before business interests. This is one of the reasons Samantha hates me. She is about to get another one.
 
The Division meets every week in one of the conference suits in the Department's HQ in Victoria Street. These are always excruciating affairs which mostly see Samantha tell us some 'news' about Ministers, latest policies, etc, followed by someone giving a talk about their area of work and, well, you get the drift. At the end of each meeting, Samantha presents her 'Take the Biscuit Award', presenting someone with a packet of biscuits for doing their job exceptionally well. In all my time there, I never got to take the biscuit.
 
Actually, the winner is often not present since many people are either working from home or on flexi-leave or in Brussels, which means, like with the Oscars, someone has to accept the award on their behalf. Which tends to somewhat over-dunk the atmosphere, which to be honest was pretty stewed in the first place, mainly because the saner people present are so sick of meetings.
 
When I first started in the civil service there were very few meetings. Now, meetings are the main reason Whitehall exists. And because the only purpose of senior grades is to go to meetings, and because Whitehall is now top-heavy with senior grades, meetings go on round the clock.
 
Apart from meetings, the other thing that many senior civil servants suffer from is self-delusion. Which brings us back to Samantha's mistake.
 
An uncomfortable silence has fallen over the Division. I glance around at people looking anywhere but at Susannah, even those more senior types who are usually garrulous to the point of braying about how clever and well-connected they are. Apparently, cleverness and connectedness aren't actually achievements. Who knew?
 
By the way, 'brag' is Samantha's new word for achievement. I think she came up with it in the same way that the Department frequently tries to adopt more 'down to earth' language. Just recently, there were posters everywhere telling us to 'CHALLENGE' more - our managers mostly. Which of course no one will ever do since it would impact on their annual report. But it helps HR in their self-delusion that the modern civil service is keeping up with the hip world outside.
 
In short, Samantha has just asked everyone to speak up about any recent achievements they've made in their job.
 
But no one responds. No one. Not a single person has an achievement to report. Which means Samantha is facing the fact that her entire division, comprising fast streamers, all round policy wiz-kids and various teacher's pets, isn't actually doing anything, other than attending meetings.
 
How does Samantha deal with this potentially life-changing moment? In the time-honoured way of Sir Humphrey, of course. She simply never asks us again.
 
Oh, and that other reason she hates me? It's because I was the only one who put in a brag, which was that totally from my own initiative, and working with one of the country's leading test experts (not a civil servant), I'd come up with a change to the Furniture Regulations that would make the entire country's sofas and mattresses fire-safer, and greener, and save the furniture industry around £50m into the bargain. All this from the non-business orientated anomaly within the Department for Business.
 
What was my reward, apart from no biscuits? Simply that Samantha was going to make sure it never happened.

From my journal, 19th January 2015


For the first time, I find myself thinking that I should perhaps be careful about what I put in this journal. Essentially, I'm at the centre of a massive national scandal which, if it ever becomes public, will expose corruption and incompetence on a huge scale.
 
Today, the Minister's office hit with me even more questions she has before the round table meeting she's holding next month with stakeholders - while I was still answering her previous bunch. The fact that she has already had answers to most of them is not something that appears to be relevant. She's also not too keen on our (my) idea of announcing that we'll do all the amendments to the regs, including the new match test. She isn't saying why, of course, just that she still wants to get people to talk at the round table, to find out why some are objecting to the new match test, so that she can make up her mind about it. This despite the fact she has had all the reasons - or rather the lack of them - put to her several times.
 
As usual, I've run this through my government bullshit translation device which unfortunately is not perfect being that it is in effect my brain, and suggest that what she really means is:
 
I've had a lot of hassle over just one small change to these regulations. If I announce that the Department is going to bring in all the changes within a year or so, and if as is likely senior civil servants continue to screw things up, then it's going to look bad on me, even if I'm no longer a Minister or even an MP. On the other hand, if I can get the match test into the position where we can at least say it'll be in place in a year or so, then I'll look good if it does appear and less bad if it doesn't. On the other other hand, if all the changes go ahead on time, it's the new Minister that will get the credit, not me.
 
She also wants to invite lots of the 'enemy' to the round table, i.e. the Skipton Mafia and its mates. Which actually would have been a good idea since Steve (and me) would have been able to demolish their arguments in front of her. But of course Barbara has decided that we need 'protecting' and therefore have been banned from speaking. It isn't of course clear whether or not the Minister agreed to or even instigated this.
 
When I told Steve about all this, he said, "It's a set-up." And I think he's right:

• Swinson has not listened to the evidence-based advice she's been given, more to senior civil servants' opinions.

• If she really wants to get at the truth it makes no sense to invite so many naysayers, rogues and outright crooks and ban Steve and I from speaking. The more sensible thing would be to hold a meeting with test experts and listen to their views on the new test . . . oh, wait a minute, we already did that but Barbara decided not to tell her.

• She appears to have wilfully misread the advice I put to her last week, stating that the fire sector is negative towards the new test. I actually said it isn't, and cited the FPA telling us recently that they believe the current match test doesn't work and the new one will.

• With around 30 people and just an hour for the meeting, you're looking at less than 2 mins per person to speak. The usual suspects know the Minister is wobbling and will have just enough time to spout a negative opinion expressed as fact to keep her wobbling permanently.

• Add to this the fact that John sneaked up to the Minister's office yet again last week just after the latest submission went up, to once more suggest we should delay until things are clearer (like the exact amount of your pay-off, John?). He doesn't know about my spy up there . . .

 
All in all, Steve and I believe the Minister doesn't want any changes to actually go ahead on her watch. Best option for her is to set something in place that will come to fruition (or not) after she's gone, which means she can get some credit if it goes right and blame the next Minister/government if it goes wrong. As Steve said, something changed around the FPA's intervention and the Adjournment Debate, i.e. the big players got involved. Stephen McPartland MP for one (or whoever's actually pulling his strings) who of course has just been given a place on the board of Furniture Village, token input required for a far from token £40K+ per year; and Andrew Stephenson MP, he with a whole bunch of chemical treatment companies on his patch, including the biggest in the world - no guessing what he got for Christmas. And of course Sir Ken Knight who bullied Barbara and John into agreeing to a further unnecessary 12 months work on the new test through British Standards, which apart from delaying the changes, will be a nice little earner for BS; and I'm sure the fact Sir Ken is on their steering board has nothing to do with his suggestion.
 
In other words, there is Big Stuff (well, Big Money) behind all these shenanigans. Certainly, it's far too big for Barbara to handle. Inside that intellectually earnest permanent frown and well-enunciated vowels is a distinct lack of mental robustness. Not sure how robust my mentals are either, but unlike her I'm not hampered by an ever-present terrified need to protect my career backside no matter what it takes, e.g. destroying my reputation.
 
On that last point, here is just one example:
 
Barbara took Nicola to one side to say she needed to have a conversation with her about my behaviour (Barbara, like many senior civil servants has no real working relationships so is prone to making the big mistake of assuming the same is also true for lesser ranks, i.e. she would believe I'd never find out about this). Did Nicole remember, says Babs, the time when Terry threw a pen at her (Babs, that is)?
 
I was flummoxed about this piece of nonsense at first, then Nicole remembered when the three of us were talking in a meeting room together. Barbara had taken me in there to let me know about her latest stupid advice to the Minister but rather oddly (it seemed at the time) had pulled Nicola in, too.
 
At one point, I'd slapped my pen on to the table in frustration. Barbara, however, wanted Nicola to say that I'd thrown it at her, hadn't I? Nicola said no, thank God. And then it became clear to both of us that Barbara had gambled. She'd taken Nicola into our meeting, knowing that what she was going say would frustrate me, and hoped I'd do something that she could then blow up, get witnessed and have me disciplined for accordingly, probably even taken off the job. Unfortunately for Babs, she's a bad reader of character otherwise she'd have known Nicola is not the type to tell lies about a colleague.
 
[Update: Barbara, incredibly, first wrote up this meeting for my annual report, still claiming that Nicola agreed I'd thrown the pen. However, Nicola protested again, so Barbara changed the text to read that she felt as if I'd thrown the pen at her. Later still, when giving a statement in my Civil Service Code case, presumably realising that this was too lame to put into an official statement, then claimed that in fact I'd slapped the pen on to the table where it had bounced towards her! It unfortunately goes without saying that when I complained about these contradictory and untrue statements, nothing at all was done about it.]
 
Steve and I know that my position is extremely tenuous. They'd love to get rid of me but are hampered by the fact that I have far greater knowledge of the Regulations than they do. Also, ironically, I have much better relationships with our stakeholders. Hence, if they get rid of me they will be forced to deal directly with people who on the whole are far more savvy than they are. That, and no one to blame when it all goes horribly wrong as their deepest, darkest, most scary instincts know is inevitable.

From my journal, 10th January, 2015
 
[Note: in December 2014, Jo Swinson decided, in a meeting with Oliver Letwin, that she did not feel confident enough to go forward with the new match test to the original timetable. This left the changes somewhat in limbo, and there was the looming problem of what do we do next?]
 
Barbara, John and I had a meeting two days ago to talk about next steps with the match test, or in their case how to avoid taking any. Essentially, I put to them the idea of doing all the amendments to the FFRs (i.e. new match test plus all the other updates everyone's wanted for years now) by April 2016. Barbara was resistant at first which confirmed that she'd been planning to take the classic civil servant route of doing nothing - hoping the Minister would lose interest before the election in a few months' time. But I argued that doing nothing is not really an option, mainly because of the very public problems with the current match test, not least that it mostly doesn't work. She seems to have forgotten that our lawyers strongly urged us to get the new match test in by April next year or there could be law suits flying around all over the place. And her memory also appears to have blocked out the fact that Trading Standards have told us they can no longer prosecute breaches under the match test; that and the potential press scandal, etc. The mind of a senior civil servant is a wonderfully diverse organ, supporting any direction but the bleeding obvious. Finally, I reminded her that industry would have no arguments left if we announced that we're going to get everything done by April. I watched her mind checking this particular direction and concluding that it probably represented the best personal safety option.
 
So, late yesterday I put up a submission to the Minister. This is the second in a row Barbara's told me to put my name on. She never does anything without a self-serving reason and my theory here is that she's restoring a Terry-led chain for the project in the hope that in time it will distance her from any shit that may hit the fan. She can then point back to a small blip in the process which meant she had to step back in and take control - if it all goes wrong - or claim the credit for encouraging her staff to take responsibility - if it all goes right. The mind of a senior civil servant is wonderfully flexible, providing all the options point to covering their back.
 
Then John did a very weird thing. Just before the submission was to go up, he told me (with Barbara out of ear and eye shot) he was concerned that the Minister might get angry again at us for pushing her into a timetable and that perhaps we should hang on for a bit. I swear he was trying very hard to squeeze the shine of integrity into his gaze as he said this but it just looked like moral constipation to me. And this is not of course what what Barbara had said but it is him trying to delay things again. And pretty desperately this time. Then something occurred to me: the biggest losers from the new match test are going to be the big 3 flame retardant companies - Chemtura, ICL and Albemarle - yet they've been suspiciously quiet during this consultation period. When the test finally comes in, they will lose up to £50m a year, and even more shortly after when new technologies kick in. There are two windows for bringing in new regulatory changes - April and October. It's going to be tight bringing in all these changes by April next year. If we had to delay by just one window that would represent a gain of around £25m for the FR companies. Plenty of dosh, therefore, to aid them in steering the best-placed individual. And who is best-placed to cause such a delay? Well, the candidates are Barbara, myself and John. I take pride in the fact that aside from the odd meal or two, the FR industry has not tried to bribe me (or Steve for that matter). Barbara does have back-covering reasons to delay, but these appear to have been mitigated now with my idea of doing everything at once.
 
John, on the other hand, was the person who took a clandestine trip up to the Minister's office when the very first submission went up last year, to tell them that these changes probably weren't going to go ahead (not that Barbara has ever done anything about that - too much scandal for her to handle, no doubt, and perpetrated by one of her staff that she should have had under control in the first place). He also twice more said similar things on the quiet to private office. In other words, I have them both under suspicion, with John as the more likely outright corrupt of the two.
 
Either way, Barbara and John appear to be utterly without conscience. Which is perhaps strange, given that they are both active Christians (he sings in the church choir and she's a vicar's wife) but this appears only to help them justify treating any non-Christians as 'fair game'. Barbara has odd habit of staring you in the eye when she wants to appear sincere. I suspect some vicars have adopted the same tactic. But it's actually a symptom of assumed moral high-ground that is nothing more than self-justification bolstered by a belief system sponsored by the absolute authority of the entire universe. And I'm not talking about the Permanent Secretary.
 
Steve told me tonight that he is thoroughly sick of everyone's antics. He's working out whether or not the sabotage on the new test was deliberate or just incompetence. Neither of us trust Barbara or John one inch. Another example of Barbara's manipulative ways: the Minister wants to hold a round table meeting with stakeholders before she leaves office (probably next month). When the team discussed it a couple of days ago I mentioned that Steve would obviously need to be there [as BIS's technical advisor on the proposed changes]. But Barbara said no - because she wants to 'protect' him. The same excuse she gave for not telling me about the Judicial Review threat a couple of months ago (accompanied by 'sincere' stare into my eyes). Steve does not of course need protecting - he has after all faced hundreds of people, some quite hostile, over the course of the build-up to the consultation last August - and I don't either; well, only maybe from Barbara and John. No, the real reason she doesn't want Steve there is because he tells the truth so is likely to remind the Minister and everyone else present that people are dying as a result of further delays. That and the additional work on a new test foam proposed by the FPA (which will cause that delay) and which they will push at the Minister again is utterly pointless.
 
Originally, I'd thought that this next part of the process - aiming for all the amendments by April next year - should be quite straightforward. But of course it won't be. There'll be more and more shenanigans both from industry and civil servants - because while they all want the overall amendments to come in, what they don't want is the new match test to come in.
 
If I could I would drop Barbara and John into the shit - expose them to the press and be damned with the Data Protection Act or whatever other protections civil servants are so good at awarding themselves. It's totally what they deserve but hey, they're no doubt, looking forward to taking their place in Heaven when the time comes; that or make a packet out of flogging FRs to Hell.
 
One thing I resent is the incredible amount of time that Steve and I have to spend unpicking their real motives. They never declare them, of course, and disguise them behind what they know are genuine motives. So, Barbara, for example will talk about making the match test safe, but at the same time throw in a concern that we must listen to all stakeholders and try to please them. Including the FR industry who also say they're all for fire safety, but only if it's accomplished via tons of their products.
 
We all know money talks. But so does career-protection. Remember: thou shall not kill, John and Barbara? And thou shall not bear false witness against your staff member? But I guess these have been superseded by the modern eleventh commandment: thou shall cover one's back by any means available and in pursuit of which thou art entitled to breach any of the previous ten.
 
 
  

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