According to reports from last night, millions of people are getting ready for a cost-of-living squeeze as Foreign Office civil workers had a £50,000 drinking spree in the air aboard the Prime Minister’s aircraft.
Pictures of the ‘giggling’ mandarins entering the ‘Baby Boris Force One’ aircraft, where they would have enjoyed cream leather seats with fake wood panelling, upscale crystal glasses, and exquisite bone china dinnerware, sparked a heated response from campaigners.
While taking a break from their daily tasks dealing with the conflict in Ukraine, representatives of the foreign office paused to take pictures on the runway.
Before the new prime minister’s travel to Balmoral on Tuesday, they then rested on a 700-mile round drive from Stansted airport to the Lake District and back. The government referred to this excursion as “maintenance.”
The Foreign Office acknowledged to the Sun that there was alcohol on board but would to disclose if any was drunk. Staff reportedly dug into a gourmet supper while this was going on. According to sources, the celebration probably cost approximately £50,000.
The party of 12 men and women, who ordinarily would have been working on significant international problems, maybe including the conflict in Ukraine, looked to enjoy their VIP-style day out, snapping pictures on the red carpet set out for them and once again after boarding the Airbus A321.
The trip produced an estimated 300kg of CO2 emissions, going against the government’s green programme.
“This would be completely terrible behaviour at the best of circumstances, but in the heart of our country’s present crisis, it is awful beyond words,” said Labour’s shadow trade secretary Emily Thornberry.
“Taxpayers will question why pen-pushers got the opportunity of taking a government plane out for a spin,” said John O’Connell, CEO of the TaxPayers’ Alliance.
However, according to an aviation expert, the examination might have been finished in as little as 45 minutes.
According to a government spokeswoman, the aircraft was legally required to do a repair fly before September 4 or face hefty extra storage charges. This was done to comply with Airbus and aviation industry norms.
After calling the plane to pick him and his family up from a beach vacation in Cornwall, Boris Johnson faced criticism for using it as a personal taxi service.
In recent months, civil workers have been accused of taking advantage of a variety of benefits, including agreements to work permanently from home.
According to official statistics, since the epidemic, the number of government workers with special “home-working” contracts has practically quadrupled.
In eight of the major Whitehall departments, there were 183 home workers in 2019–20; this number increased to 309 the next year and 530 in 2021–22.
The Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs (Defra), where the number increased from 117 before to Covid’s strike to 380 earlier this year, had the largest rise.
Over the same time period, the number increased at the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) from 14 to 60.
Meanwhile, analysts cautioned that the taxpayer would incur an additional £6 billion in costs this year alone as a result of the new gold-plated pensions granted to MPs, civil officials, and other members of the public sector.
When they arrive in Kigali, Rwanda, in June for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, Boris Johnson and his wife Carrie get off of their aircraft.
This would increase the enormous yearly cost for retiring state personnel, which is now £60 billion, or one-third of the defence budget.
Additionally, it will intensify a simmering conflict over “pensions apartheid” between the superior, riskier plans offered to workers in the wealth-generating private sector and the generous public sector pension system.
The president of the third-largest energy company in the UK said that millions of people would experience “a winter like never before” amid allegations that the number of people living in poverty in the UK will increase from three million to fourteen million.
With annual gas and electricity prices expected to hit £7,263 by next April, Ovo Energy CEO Stephen Fitzpatrick has said that assisting low-income households with energy bills ‘needs to be the first order of business’ for the next prime minister.
And if gas prices stay as high as they are right now, inflation might reach 22.4 percent next year, according to a horrifying prediction by Goldman Sachs.
The government employees’ beloved aircraft, which had a recent £900,000 paint job, is anticipated to transport the incoming Prime Minister to Balmoral for the Queen’s oath of office next Tuesday.
According to a government spokesperson quoted by the Sun, “the aircraft was legally required to undertake a repair trip before September 4 or face significant extra storage charges.”