We're taking a bit of a breather while the world rearranges its underpants. Meanwhile, the other blog is here.

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Yer brother's just killed yer kestrel; go and warm up the bees!

How budgets work:

Q: Michael has £5,000 in his furniture budget. He has secured a quarter of a million pounds in grant funding from a quango for to provide a new collection of learning and literacy resources including books and handouts for to support the books. The funding is dependent on his spending £1,000 on furniture for to house and display the new materials in a useful and attractive way, with the necessary bit of branding to acknowledge the source of the funding. What is the nett benefit to the local authority, the library service and the public?

A: None. The Finance Section refuses to let Michael spend his £1,000 from the furniture budget on this furniture as it is not essential expenditure.

Sidenote: The council has just spent £945 launching its new Literacy Strategy.

4 comments:

Gadjo Dilo said...

Can't he just pile all the books in heaps on the floor, like they do with the cans of baked beans in Aldi?

Pat said...

Shooting oneself in the foot seems to be the norm.

Kevin Musgrove said...

Gadjo: you've seen our reference library, haven't you?

Pat: public service is the triumph of guile over accountancy

Anonymous said...

Accounting, now that you mention it, is merely "lying with numbers." Budgets aren't worth the toilet tissue they're written on.