Folly of the DayHe Spent More Than $250,000 Over Budget Doing Up His Own Council House, Then Wrote His Own Financial Records for the Auditor. The Council Paid Him $100,000 to Leave.
The instructive detail is not the overspend but the invoices: a man senior enough to be audited had understood that the record of what happened is a document, and that documents can be written. Six hundred and fifty people live on the Chathams, and a tenth of every dollar they paid in rates last year went to buying the silence of the man who redecorated at their expense — which is what an institution does when the cheapest available course is to pay the problem to get on a plane.
Source: NZ Herald / RNZ / New Zealand Taxpayers' Union
The WireTold to Clear a Backlog of 147 Freedom of Information Requests, the Council Proposed a Three-Year Timetable, Then Appealed the Order as Excessively Punitive. It Lost.
A public body asked to answer questions about itself found the request excessive, and hired lawyers to say so in front of a judge — which took less time than answering the questions would have, and cost considerably more.
Source: Local Government Lawyer
The WireHe Filed Vague Right to Information Applications About the High Court's Own Internal Workings Until the High Court Charged Him ₹6.70 Lakh for the Privilege.
Transparency law exists so that the citizen may ask the state what it is doing; it does not exist so that one man may make a career of asking, and there is a particular species of self-regard that mistakes the second for the first and bills the public for the difference.
Source: LiveLaw
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The Developer Promised $6 Million of Lighting, Kiosks and Public Seating Around Its Landmark Tower. The City Kept No Record of Whether Any of It Was Ever Built.
The tower is a masterpiece of the twisting form and the civic amenities were the price of putting it there; a city that will negotiate for six million dollars of public benefit and then decline to look up and see whether the benches exist has understood the negotiation as the achievement, which is the characteristic error of everybody who has ever signed something in front of a camera.
Source: CBC News
The WireEight Million Dollars of Aid Supplies Were Ruined After Somebody Moved Them Out of the Climate-Controlled Storage They Were In.
There is no ideology in a thermostat. Someone with authority over a warehouse decided that the expensive room was optional, and eight million dollars of goods agreed to disagree.
Source: U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations
The WireA Worker Fell Through an Unprotected Roof Light Onto Concrete. The Company Had Not Fitted Scaffolding, Guard Rails, a Crash Deck or a Harness — Which Is to Say, Any of Them.
The regulations list four ways of stopping a man falling through a hole, on the reasonable assumption that a builder confronted with four options might select one of them.
Source: HSE Media Centre
The WireThe Ratepayers Own Twenty-Five Million Dollars of Art. Keeping It Costs Them the Equivalent of Seventy Households' Rates a Year, and the Mayor Would Now Like to Know What It Is For.
An institution that buys art is buying a reflection of itself it can hang somewhere, and the giveaway is that nobody ever proposes selling any: the collection was never an asset to be managed, it was evidence of the kind of council this is.
Source: New Zealand Taxpayers' Union
Black-Robed EgomaniaThe Disciplinary Panel Recommended a Reprimand. The Lord Chancellor and the Lady Chief Justice Read the Same File and Removed Him From Office.
A judge spends his working life assessing whether a man understands what he has done, and it was on precisely that question that this one failed: he could see the conduct and not the power, which is the one asymmetry the robe exists to make visible and the last thing its wearer ever notices.
Source: Law Society Gazette / Judicial Conduct Investigations Office
The Siren LedgerShe Said She Was Twenty-Three, Called Herself Bella, and Knew a Great Deal About Cryptocurrency. He Was Retired. He Sent Her Everything.
Every element of the proposition was implausible on its own, and he was asked to accept all of them at once: the age, the interest, the expertise, and the coincidence that the only person on earth who could make him rich had found him first.
Source: WAFF 48 News
LazyTownThey Hired 185 Extra Staff to Clear a Backlog. The Backlog Went Away. Nobody Thought to Check.
The entire remedy was one person, once a year, comparing two numbers; instead it took a whistleblower, because reading your own headcount is work and nobody's job description contains the word 'notice'.
Source: Government Executive
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