Читать книгу We’re British, Innit: An Irreverent A to Z of All Things British - Iain Aitch - Страница 42

With its name deriving from the Latin for ‘to lose documents and mislay CDs full of data’, the Civil Service is the backbone of British bureaucracy. Its stated purpose is to retain as much of your money as possible while also making it nigh on impossible for you to claim any of it back in times of need. The Civil Service includes the Government departments that deal with taxation, social security and prisons, though its name is most often linked with the administration and running of the Government itself, with Whitehall’s civil servants being some of the most powerful employees in the country. Despite having the word ‘civil’ in its title, the Civil Service does not insist on civility being a requirement of its staff when recruiting. In a 2002 survey only 14 per cent of civil servants surveyed identified as mildly to reasonably civil, whereas 45 per cent responded by simply hanging up the phone after leaving those asking the question on hold for 20 minutes.