The men from the ministry.

Clever men are not necessarily intelligent. Listening to one of the Parliamentary Committees one is astounded to hear one of the leading people in the Civil Service clearly not understanding basic common sense. That when a student applies for a grant which has a sliding monitory value and has to be assessed, that the "person assessing should not the same person as the person who receives the benefit from the value of that assessment".

The size of the grant depends, in monitory terms, on the assessment and the "dome headed man" who heads up the service could not see the link.
The route into the civil service is usually from the private school, often with a wink and a nod from Pater to a friend in the Service. Once in, it's a job for life with a substantial pension age 55 which perhaps explains how leisurely this particular Civil Servant approached his job.


Public money is being wasted on a lavish scale but since it's not coming out of a private pocket, other than it is in the sense that each taxpayer is a private individual, rather the pain is spread and like a pain killer the focus of the pain is dispersed.
For many of these Civil Servants their ability lies in the use language to defuse issues rather than to think and plan the area for which they are responsible. It's a game of words and pithy comment, with a shiny car, an impressive office and a remuneration package the man or women in the street would die for.