"The Ministry was advised to "change the culture amongst its own staff and the industry from one of a 'conspiracy of optimism' to one of greater realism"...... QuITe obviously that Advice omits the Leap of Application and Drive which both being One and the Same would Engender.

I would be very surprised if IT wasn't already covered by the MOD, for the MOD to Prevent ITs Abuse........ for Quality Assurance with AI Kite Mark ....... for that Old, Go to Work on a Egg, Magic Satisfaction. ........ and NEUKlearer Leadership.

A Bold Claim to Fund Government Bond Territorial Advantage. ...... 42 Refill the Coffers.

Comprendez, Darling.

I couldn't spot where the report referred to "Fiddles." If you mean the transferring of funding from one project to another, then that sounds like normal budget management.

Makes for a nicely hysterical headline though I suppose.

Someone please tell the MOD that wasting money is really bad, when that money isn't theres to waste.

Tell you what, Treasury first.

Where the hell do they think the money to fight two wars comes from, thin air?

Jobs for the boys = same thing structured differently.

Maybe we have our own area 51 which the MOD are covering costs for. That would be the reason why amanfrommars is the first to pounce on this - his random dribblings on to the screen are to confuse everyone and ultimately stop the truth getting out - the MOD is paying for his house.

"Theirs", ffs...

Does ET ever return home, or is ET stuck on earth from now on?

Is ET allowed to fone redhedblupants ?

FYI: Any IP in question was melted by the heat of the sun.

"his random dribblings on to the screen are to confuse everyone and ultimately stop the truth getting out - " ... By Christopher Rogers Posted Tuesday 22nd July 2008 13:40 GMT

Typically, as you might expect , is the Corollary Taxing Enterprise and Thought .... Keeping the Truth In. It is Illogical and Deliberately Divisive to Deny Truth ITs AIRing.... and thus would suggest that your Reasoning is Confused thus rendering random dribblings also suspect to Confused Reasoning, although the image to accompany random dribbling in endearing.

As for anything else, well that would be in Wild Speculation and QuITe UnBelievable

[I suppose I could always check, though in normal times, they would normally have issued some Notice.

Ah well, I suppose that's Virtual Dynamism for you. ..... for Astute and Seamless Power Control Transfers

...was I the only one to read that headline wrong? I was expecting an amusing story about a Gov department's violin quartet being given the chop because they had spent all their money on jet fighters, or something.

Oh well....

Paris Hilton angle?

The quango I work for has perfected the artform of spinning average performance, or more often incompetence. Statistics are so easily manipulated when you control what is measured.

Anon, for obvious reasons, and Jobs, cos he knows how to wield the Reality Distortion Field pretty good to...

That quango better watch their step. Sometimes learned judges don't see eye to eye with that kind of fiddling.

Indeed, back in the mid-1960s, the state of New York had a law requiring closure of beaches where the *average* coliform count was over X.

The city of Rochester, on Lake Ontario, into which they pumped the effluent from their overloaded sewage treatment facility, got creative and took a geometric average: 1 coliform today, 10^6 coliforms tomorrow, average 1000 coliforms.

Challenged by an early anti-pollution group in court, the judge held that "average" meant "arithmetic average", hence the correct figure was 500,000, hence the beaches must be closed.

It was the closing of the Lake Ontario beaches that forced the city's hand and led to the long-overdue updating of their sewage treatment system.

As the city of Rochester, so an unnamed UK quango, we can hope.