{"id":219344,"date":"2025-06-27T19:05:09","date_gmt":"2025-06-27T19:05:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/219344\/"},"modified":"2025-06-27T19:05:09","modified_gmt":"2025-06-27T19:05:09","slug":"pensions-regulator-mandarins-spaff-20000-on-picnics-and-chair-yoga-guido-fawkes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/219344\/","title":{"rendered":"Pensions Regulator Mandarins Spaff \u00a320,000 on &#8216;Picnics&#8217; and &#8216;Chair Yoga&#8217; \u2013 Guido Fawkes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>        Pensions Regulator Mandarins Spaff \u00a320,000 on \u2018Picnics\u2019 and \u2018Chair Yoga\u2019    <\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\tmdi-fullscreen<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"199\" data-end=\"369\">Civil servants at The Pensions Regulator seem to have found a novel definition of \u201cwork\u201d: mixing office hours with staff network socials. According to an FOI request from the TaxPayers\u2019 Alliance seen by Guido, this year they\u2019ve bagged themselves a tidy \u00a320,000 budget for six internal staff networks: \u2018LGBT+\u2019, \u2018Mental Health\u2019, \u2018Disability\u2019, \u2018Women\u2019, \u2018Minority Ethnic\u2019, and \u2018Family\u2019. Each chair even gets 10% of their working hours ringfenced just for running these networks. Some more notable events to mark \u2018National Walking Month\u2019 this April include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u2018The Camino Connection\u2019<\/li>\n<li>\u2018Communities Picnic\u2019<\/li>\n<li>\u2018Wellbeing Walkshop\u2019<\/li>\n<li>\u2018Chair Yoga\u2019<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>For a budget of \u00a320,000, you could:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Provide 100 pensioners under-79 the winter fuel allowance.<\/li>\n<li>Fill 277 potholes.<\/li>\n<li>Fund 666 GP appointments.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Last year the quango\u2019s budget for staff networks was \u00a314,400, meaning the budget has increased by 38% this year. The taxpayer may have a view on which should be prioritised.\u00a0UK DOGE recommends costs are cut here\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pensions Regulator Mandarins Spaff \u00a320,000 on \u2018Picnics\u2019 and \u2018Chair Yoga\u2019 mdi-fullscreen Civil servants at The Pensions Regulator seem&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":219345,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3093],"tags":[51,474,2499,16,25678,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-219344","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-finance","10":"tag-personal-finance","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-uk-doge","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114756892962265104","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219344"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219344\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/219345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}