A Silver Lining

It may soon be time to reform (or, in Oldspeak, abolish, break up, privatise or otherwise castrate) the National Audit Office. Not only is the NAO implicated, thanks to the justice-efficientising method of guilt by association, in the Great Database Cockup, but it is about to criticise the Government severely over the sale to a foreign private equity company of a chunk of the country's defence capability. The Treasury, which at the time was in the safe, responsible hands of a certain Gordon Brown, failed even to get a fair price; the assets were "snapped up ... at an eighth of their value". The deal was approved by Lord Moonie, possibly the most aptly-named New Labour minister in the entire history of the cult. Lord Gilbert, a former minister of procurement, complained of "the damage done to the special relationship between Britain and the US" because "the work exchanging British and US research work is the glue that binds it together", or was until the chimp and the Vicar discovered a more personal kind of stickiness. There were also "questions about intelligence sharing because of US defence secrets being passed to a private company", not to mention the fact that "both US research workers and British research workers funded from the public purse would resent the fruits of their work going to enrich individuals in a private company". It appears that, when it comes to the crunch, research workers in the defence industry are not so much more public-spirited than workers in mere public transport or the NHS. Still, on the positive side, two senior civil servants were empowered to become multi-millionaires as a result.