Frankness compels me to admit that the other two nominees (required by the regulations to make up the prescribed number of 3) may possibly have been the special couple known as the Treasury Idiots, who could never pass anything, & were sent again & again to give a walk-over to any Ministers protege able to reach the standard of minimum qualifications. At any rate, they could barely read or write, & so I found myself entitled to a desk in Downing St"
H Preston Thomas: The Work & Play of a Government Inspector
My mother sometimes liked to boast that a boy at her school came second in the National Competition for Civil Service Clerical Officers open to those who had gained their School Certificate in 5 subjects including maths & English
I do not know when this competition stopped being a topic of national interest, but the results of the competition forthe higher grade of assistant principle (open to graduates holding a first or second class honours degree) were still being announced in the newspapers into the 1960s. The winner was often dubbed ‘the cleverest young man in England.’ Peter Jay, later Ambassador to America, may well have been the last to earn this soubriquet, as press attention moved elsewhere
The First Division Association is the trades union for the higher reaches of the civil service. Many are shocked by the snobby supercilious elitism of the name until they hear that it just stems from the old division of the civil service into First & Second Division Clerks.
There has been no attempt to rename it the Premier Division
