GOL No More

My former workplace (for a short while), the Government Office for London (GOL), is to go, reports the London Evening Standard.

This is a Good Thing, as although it was originally a great idea (merging four ministries' London offices into one, and the same elsewhere in England) it was transformed out of all recognition under Labour and was of very little value in the end, even though it had had a further six ministries' regional functions absorbed into the GOs in the meantime.

Perhaps "GOL" should now stand for "Grotty Old Labour", as they devalued the GOs as they tend to do with almost everything they touch...

Anyway, the formation of the Government Offices resulted in a considerable slimming-down of previously duplicated admin functions, such as personnel and (in my case) IT support, so I was made redundant as I couldn't be re-deployed with my so-called ADP Allowance intact. It was an awkward situation because of that, so I took the redundancy route happily enough.

That had been my best ever job, and I knew I'd miss it, but it was the right thing for the government of the time (this was 1996, so it was John Major's) to do. I never resented it in any way, despite not even being a Conservative supporter at the time.

Now, though, GOL itself is to be closed down, with some of its functions reverting to the relevant ministries and the rest passing to the London Mayor's set-up. This will apparently save some £15 million per year, which though a relatively modest saving is still useful. Sixty or so such savings would be around a US billion (or a milliard) of Pounds saved annually, to put it in context.

A quirk of this closure is that my part of GOL, from the then DTI, was originally a combined London and South-East England office, so half of it went to GOSE, the South-East Office located in Guildford, and that office seems to be staying...