Reposted by UK Gov Camp
For wider circulation among colleagues with responsibility for public administration, institutional memory, and unexplained rustling:
@ukgovcamp.com @gavinfreeguard.com @fdaunion.bsky.social
The Office is grateful for appropriate onward distribution of this communiqué.
![Colleagues,
At the opening of a new season of boxes, I wish to record my appreciation for the work undertaken across the Departmental Mousing Service. Much of it occurs beneath desks, behind panels, and beyond the sightline of those who later announce that nothing happened. That is often evidence of success.
Departmental Mousers occupy a distinctive constitutional position. We are permanent, impartial, and politically untempted, except by chicken.
We advise by presence, challenge through prolonged eye contact, and intervene where the evidence moves independently across the floor.
Recent experience has confirmed the value of coordinated action. A mouse crossing an organisational boundary does not become somebody else’s mouse merely because responsibility for the skirting board is disputed. Nor does an empty bowl cease to be empty because the dashboard remains green.
The Cabinet Mousing Secretariat will therefore take the following practical steps:
- establish a cross-government forum for sharing rodent intelligence, operational learning, and places of dependable afternoon sunlight;
- issue common guidance on secure treat storage, evidential sniffing, and the proportionate escalation of an empty-bowl incident;
- pilot short placements between departments, allowing specialist mousers to build capability without being permanently relocated into the Treasury; and
- develop assurance arrangements for automated laser pointers, subject to confirmation that the red dot exists, is reachable, and represents value for money.
It has also been observed that a recent communication of general circulation bore no pawprint. The Office neither confirms nor denies feline involvement in correspondence distributed above the appropriate protective marking. Absence of a pawprint should not be taken as absence of scrutiny. Some assets are simply too valuable to identify in open circulation.
Please exercise care with material found at the bottom of Red Boxes. [Limit reached]](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:rksvwvgrequjtwspnrl5wvkq/bafkreideyjomigj25pisnww75bciojsqzcy7mrhd2jpf47whn77n3c2q6i)
