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The Minister of Unfitness for Purpose has been helping the public with its perspective again. "The threat in this country is very high indeed," he gibbered calmly. "It is at the second highest level", the highest level being even higher than very high indeed. "And that means that it is highly likely that there'll be a terrorist attempt", which has also been the case for the past several months. However, now that we are officially in the run-up to Christmas, the Minister of Unfitness for Purpose thinks it's about time we were reminded once again, just in case we were thinking of not panicking any more. "We know that the number of conspiracies of a major type are in the tens - 30 or round about that," he said, although he did not give details of any plots. They can count them, but they can't control them. While not a completely satisfactory situation, this is still better than the Ministry can manage when keeping track of its own staff: the National Audit Office has found that personnel records are "difficult to locate and some could not be found at all". The Ministry of National Alertness also "does not have adequate controls to reconcile the payroll and personnel records to determine exact staff numbers" and has "failed to manage its cash properly, which resulted in its being overdrawn by a quarter of a billion pounds". A spokesbeing for the Ministry of Muslim Control called this state of affairs a "significant step forward". Meanwhile, the Minister himself, who apparently has not been asked to state publicly his satisfaction with his department's progress, warned once more that the artist formerly known as the war on terror would go on for "longer than a generation". This is partly a matter of tradition: "the struggle against republican terrorism in Ireland and in the mainland ... lasted 30 years" and no-one has indicated to the Minister that the twin menaces of radical Islam and the famous Something None Of Us Are Thinking About At The Moment are going to be resolved any faster. Even British efficiency has its limits.