The National Audit Office (NAO) are tendering for a research company to find out exactly what it is they do.
It appears that staff at the NAO are becoming increasingly frustrated by not knowing what they do. Yes they work there from nine to five to fill in the time between pay cheques, but aside from that, most remain in the dark as to what it is they are expected to audit, bearing in mind how much money the government waste on various fruitless acquisitions and initiatives.
They do know, for example, that during the past year the director, Sir John Boring, together with his wife Imelda Marcos Boring, had run up a six-figure sum jetting around the world attending major conferences and shopping trips, while staying in the best accommodation.
Meanwhile, staff are now beginning to question why malfunctioning and unsuitable computer systems keep being installed in various government departments by the same inefficient and costly companies whose only consistency is the ability to foul up. This is especially so at a time when PC World have some great "buy one get one free" offers on Pentium 4's.
Also, they have discovered that government departments continue to employ consultants at vast expense to do jobs that could be carried out equally, if not in all probability far more efficiently and certainly much cheaper by qualified civil servants already in post.
The research aims to find out why departments continue to employ people off head-count at vast expense (with huge fees to recruitment con-sultants), when the simple answer is to directly employ the people they need, and at a far lower cost to the taxpayer.
When quizzed about this, the Prime Minister replied, with a terrible Les Dennis impression:
"I don't really know.
"Oh! Er! I'm terribly sorry. I will immediately go and employ a consultant on £1200 a day to find out. Pass me Crapita's phone number please."
