With respect, that would be disastrous for the country, no matter how frustrating it may be for a newly-elected party. It is the civil service that is the link between a new and an old administration. If every time we had a new government the civil service were cleared out and re-politicised according to the political orientation of the new government, the country would stand still while the new government learned the ropes. Furthermore, a politicised civil service would ultimately only become the mouthpiece of the government which can only have a negative effect on the quality of decision-making in the administration.

True enough that Labour didn't sack the public school Oxbridge type civil servants when they got in in 97.

However, Tony did supplant them all with pliable, bend-me-over-backwards-and-rub-me-on-the-tummy-Tone, Oxbridge, bum sucking, "triangulate-me-til-I-hurt", middle class, twenty-something, new media-type Grade A sh*ts who know nothing of the real world, as "Special Advisors".

Gawd, half of these spiv nobodies are Cabinet Ministers by now.

To which I can only say bring back the Old School Tie.

"They are of the same class as the Tories, all, Eton, Harrow Oxbridge types with an inbuilt conservatism."

It would seem that Mr Piper hasn't met many civil servants - or Tories for that matter.

Either that or he just likes spouting windy rhetoric - sounds impressive, but has no connexion with reality.

Sadly, I've had the misfortune of meeting both. It's strange you tories are getting upset, I'm simply agreeing with your guru.

I'm a Civil Servant and a Labour party member so resent Bobs comments and tone.

Mike, every clerk on the desk at the Job Centre is a civil servant, and I am no more suggesting they should get the sack than Dale is saying every tube driver on TfL should get the boot.

But if you are one of those senior civil servants who spend their time obstructing advising Ministers then I would have no compunction in saying you should go, in the same way Dale wants rid of Livingstone's advisers.

(I hadn't realised I was a Tory ....)

In many years' experience I've only met a handful of Etonian civil servants (and they untypical Etonians) and no Harrovians.

Most civil servants are apolitical/cynical. Amongst those who do support one party Conservatives are, if anything, under-represented (and tend to be old-fashioned pre-Thatcherite).

I'd also say there is in an inbuilt bias towards change, not (small "c") conservatism. The problem is that it's the sort of change that never achieves anything - activity is what's important in the civil service (preferably the sort that was fashionable last year), not outcomes.

I can see that the consequences of this might look to an outsider like conservatism, but its nature is quite different. The civil service is actually very bad at conserving things (especially good things).

It's a culture of permanent revolution perpetually going nowhere.

Anyway Bob, are you really arguing that the problem in the last ten/eleven years have come from the fact of someone OBSTRUCTING old Tone?! If anything, it's that he was able to whatever the bloody hell he liked, with nothing put in his path by the Labour Party, the PLP, Parliament, Cabinet or the civil service.

Truth be told, anonymous, he was the same bloody class.

When Labour were elected in 1997, Gordon Brown was given a standing ovation by Treasury civil servants.

Thatcher and Major spent a lot of their time complaining that the civil service were endemically opposed to whatever the Tories wanted to do.

The truth is that the civil service have a highly developed political ideology - and it's neither Tory nor Labour.

Tim, Gordon was given a standing ovation on his way OUT too, whatever that tells us.

I'm not reassured by the notion of the Civil Service having their own ideology, either, even were it to be true. Pissing in the same pot as the Tories, I would say.