About

What do you do with an ex-civil servant? What do you do with 100,000 ex-civil servants? The first question is one that I’ve continually thrown at myself, and the other one…I’ll leave to the policy makers and think tanks – for now.

This is my blog. Part personal, part professional, part out-of-this-world – no, really. Those of you who didn’t know me prior to me getting my hands dirty social media-wise will probably be more familiar with a creature called Puffles the dragon fairy – who I look after on Twitter. Upon me leaving the civil service, Puffles had 1,800 “non-spambot” followers including MPs, councillors, civil servants, doctors, teachers, lawyers, barristers, soldiers, police officers, firefighters, nurses, trade unionists, public sector workers, accountants, small business owners, journalists, trade associations charities and campaign groups. The question several of them have been asking has been along the lines of:

“What are you going to do with Puffles?”

Quite. What does one do with Puffles? (Many ex-pats on leaving India upon independence from the UK may well have asked the same thing about pet elephants – what does one do with Jumbo?!?)

Puffles will continue to be Puffles – eating jellybellies, munching on freshmint, digging up stuff online and generally lightening the load in the complicated world of the Whitehall jungle. This blog however, will be my outlet – allowing me to throw lots of thoughts and ideas “out there” to see what people think. There will be the odd rant thrown in, though my style is to lampoon rather than rant. I’m not in the business of adding to the interwebz hate that is already out there.

I hope you’ll find the content both stimulating and enjoyable to read. I’m not looking for everyone to agree with everything I write – the world would be a boring place if we did. (Think of the Prime Minister being asked lots of loaded questions at Prime Minister’s Questions – exactly).  Feel free to disagree – but play the issue, not the writer – and please keep it polite.