Where'd my money go? Oh there it is

According to the National Audit Office - and, fuck, if they don't know, who does?

"..major projects worth around £200 billion are at risk of not achieving value for money due to significant weaknesses in the expertise of government departments."

Which is a somewhat restrained way of saying that the Government departments are fucking everything up, and happily pissing billions of our money up the wall, down the plughole and all over our appalled faces, while doing so.

For fuck's sake.

So, who are the culprits? Where is this ineptitude and profligacy to be found? Well, according to the Telegraph :

"The Ministry of Defence, Department for Transport, and Department for Children, Schools and Families [came in] for particular criticism by the National Audit Office"

Dear God. So, not the minor ones then? The large departments, the ones that deal with the big, important parts of our lives are officially incapable of organising a piss-up in a brewery, are they? Even if George Best and Keith Floyd were ennobled and made into piss-up Czars? Oh fuck.

Does that mean that other departments are bit less fucking incontinent with our money? No. Oh no. According to the Telegraph,

"The watchdog said that there could be even greater risks associated with many more projects where the skills shortages were not being assessed systematically."

Which is a careful, polite way of saying, "and we can't even find out - because no-one even knows - what other major fuck ups are going on".

Well hoo-fucking-ray.

And are these woeful bastards doing anything about their total lack of competence?

"..some departments were trying to fill their "skills gaps" by using temporary staff and consultants, leading to over-reliance and a loss of knowledge when these contractors moved on"

Brilliant. Just fucking brilliant. So even more money gets thrown at Accenture, McKinsey and all the other providers of clean-shaven suit monkeys, so that they can train their graduate entrants and then walk away from the smouldering wreckage with their pockets bulging.

Edward Leigh, the chairman of the Commons Public Accounts Committee which oversees the work of the NAO, thinks that the government needed to get its fucking act together, and right quick at that. Only he said it slightly more politely:

"Time and again our committee has seen evidence of the public sector losing out when it deals with the private sector, simply because public authorities do not have enough staff with the commercial skills or experience they need.

"Given the current tough economic situation and the increasing involvement of the private sector in delivering public services, government must get the right people with commercial know-how in the right places quickly."

In other words, the slack-jawed, simple-minded jobsworths that sit in all the freshly minted non-jobs that have been created in the public sector are being bent over and rogered senseless by the people who actually have the brains and the drive to have found a job - a job that wasn't invented in 2006 to reduce the dole queues - in the private sector. Well, what a surprise. Who'd have thought?

The Office of Government Commerce said action - well of course, 'action' - was being taken to address the skills shortages in Whitehall.

"We look forward to continue working with departments to further maximise the effectiveness and impact of the initiatives we have established to plug shortfalls identified in capability and skills."

For fuck's sake. What in the flaming fuck does that mean? "We'll try to do better, honest"?

Don't bother. Just fucking give up, would you?

Tidy your desks, jot a resignation note, then step out of an upstairs fucking window. Thanks.

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