You couldn't make this up...

In the first case Nick Herbert should realise that these kind of micro decisions are taken by managers and not Minsiters. In fact there'd be no reason for a Minister to even be aware of it, yet alone have to sanction it. In the fullness of time the Audit Commission will also have to assess it, so unlike the private sector who splash out money willy nilly, there will be some comeback. Before they were taken into public ownership for instance, RBS paid William Hague £35,000 last year for two after dinner speaches.

Now I'm no fan of this team building type of silly corporate personal aspiration away day bonding type sessions, or what ever the buzz word is, but I think it's also worth reflecting that it's the private sector that provides these courses, and ultimately they are the ones being propped up by this kind of thing. It kind of annoys me that so many of those who advocate deregulated free market liberalism are so quick to jump on the public sector with a misplaced sense of superiority (perhaps people would care to reflect on which sector has got us into this current mess and had to be bailed out to the tune of £1.3 trillion - which is about 35% of UK GDP). The private sector continually bleat about what they see as differential treatment without realising the huge benefits they draw from the award of public contracts (most of which come with an excellent covenant). People can't have it both ways. You either accept that the public sector is there to bail out private sector failure directly through the tax payer, or indirectly through the award of contracts, or you simply let the private sector perish which it will do if left to free market forces.

In any event, £500,000 isn't that much (a couple of years worth of claims for an MP's second home allowance, or a golden handshake for a retired banker). In our morally bankrupt society its about what a top Premiership footballer earns in a month, or a so called celebrity for being stupid. Now I too very much doubt that we'll get anything back for it by way of value, but at least we might get a smidgen, which can't always be said of some public sector decisions where the money might just as well have been set fire to. You might be more angry for instance by the £1Bn (a figure infinately higher than a mere half a million - try and imagine the scale we're talking about here), that's effectively been sequestrated by Icelandic banks (but then Iceland is a NATO member and a democracy, so no chance of US trade embargo for the next 50 years then). If you want to get vexed further, try the £12Bn wasted on a 2.5% VAT rate cut, and that's before we come back to £1.3Tn to prop up private sector banks.
 
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Honestly, Warbler, sometimes your generalisations are truly gobsmacking.."unlike the private sector who splash out money willy nilly". Do you have any idea of just how inaccurate that statement is? The 'Private Sector' isn't all about companies of 1000+ employees, you know. There are hundreds of thousands of one-man to small/medium sized companies who are struggling to make ends meet (we're one of them, so I know) out there who would like to take a swing at you for that comment :mad:

Whether it's a government or a private organisation, in the main the ethos of the organisation is promulgated from the top down. Bad decison makers tend to generate the same all the way down the chain of command because most organisations are led by example so, even though the Minister in question may not have known about this particular expenditure, you can bet your bottom dollar that the decison was made because of his general business ethos. And we're talking the vegetarian Benn here, so no surprises there.

There is a history of mis-management, poor decision making, incorrect accounting and plain lack of effort within DEFRA and the RPA that's as long as your arm and this is just one more example of it. This isn't a question of bailing anyone out. A pathetic budget of £20 million over the next five years has been allocated to try and resolve the problem of bTB and this is just one example of where the budget is going? Unacceptable.

Just because some company has been formed for promoting 'rythym' team-building crap does not mean that is should succeed by other organisations - public or private - supporting it at excessively inflated prices.. However, there is less excuse for a Public body supporting such crap with tax payer's money than there is a private company, who at least can be called to account by its shareholders, should they be arsed to do so.

And yes, I have passed this to my MP with the appropriate comments attached for him to try and get off his arse to do something about it. Some hope although I do believe he does try and make an effort as he has a significant agricultural vote to keep on side in this constituency.
 
You'll probably find that somewhere buried in some corporate business plan there's some 'target' about staff development and training needs that needs a box ticking in terms of number of employees who receive personal development opportunities or training days etc. The culture of target setting and a myriad of meaningless league tables were only introduced with a rabid zeal under John Major incidentally, but new labour's done nothing to arrest them either. One of the cheapest, least time consuming and easiest ways of doing this is to try and do it en masse. You've got soemthing like 230 odd working days in a year, and 1700 employees to get through, even I can work out that you can't do it without resorting to outside help or otherwise bogging your own staff down on a never ending treadmill of appraisals, evaluations and training actions. Tailoring 1700 separate courses to the individual needs of the employee would cost a damn sight more than £294 per head. I'm sure you'll find that the genesis of this has its roots in some performance management training target, but then people (we're led to believe - I'm not so sure myself) want to see such disciplines extended to the public sector

Now you might argue that bongo drumming isn't necessarily that relevant, and I'm not minded to give you an argument to the contrary, but ti makes easy copy for the journalist to focus on. I'd be surprised if the whole day was spent on tom toms though. My experience of such ordeals is that they are indeed tortourous and normally laced with no shortage of corporate propoganda, which seems to be their primary purpose
 
Mabey theey got it from Gorge Bush did he not play music to south Amercan drug warlords Barry Manhole-cover,

Badgers are most likly into Goff or Darkness
 
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