"But a spokeswoman for the department said there were several sets of procedures within the department."

Yes -

There was one in the Directors safe.

The Confidential Documents office had one in its safe.

The Assistant Undersecretary had one in his safe.

As did the Undersecretary in his safe.

The Permanent Secretaries Political Adviser had one. She doesn't have a safe, but she doesn't work in the same building as they do (or the same city actually) so that doesn't matter.

The Security Office also had one, but they lost theirs. The Security Office are looking into the loss.

....surely the information that the procedures are restricted must also be covered by a security restriction.

"But, Minister, the manual was far too sensitive to be made available to everyone - just think of the embarassment if our manual on security procedures was leaked due to lax security procedures!"

Hehehe...

... the next general election will be performed by marking an "X" in a box beside the numbers 1-6. No reference will be made to which lizard... oops sorry, political party, each of the numbers 1-6 relate to until after the votes have been cast and counted. This move is intended to reduce the number of "spoiled" papers.

The upper levels of HMRC really are a bunch of numb nuts living in the dark ages. The public are not evil gods who demand that some token sacrifice of a poor office scapegoat will satifiy our desire to see someone punished for their terrible, incompetent sins.

I feel sorry for the poor sacrificial goat they picked on. I can just see them being led into the slaughter office...

HMRC toff: "Bob, you were the one who sent out those discs which were then lost."

Scapegoat: "But you ordered me to do it Sir!"

HMRC toff starts booming: "Ha, I care not. May you be slayed by the purest of P45's, stripped of pension rights by meerly days of remaining service and liberally oiled ready for penetration. Oh public of Britian. I offer you this fresh sacrificial scapegoat as payment for our terrible sins. Mahahahaha!"....

"From the language in the rest of the article I assume you mean *senior* civil servants? Even junior staff are still civil servants."

Not necessarily. Anyone junior enough to actually be doing something will almost certainly have been outsourced/privatised/whatever...

--

Jonathon

I don't think I've ever heard such a tale of muppetry in all my life. It beggars belief that these people actually exist and can be in positions of power over the rest of us.

Now I know why there isn't a law against being stupid, it's so they don't have to lock themselves up.

You missed one detail:

"HMRC toff, >> his face set in a firm 237-D (Righteous Indignation at a Subordinate's Attempt to Pass the Buck Upwards, tinged with Religious Ecstasy*)<< starts booming: "Ha, I care not. May you be slayed by the purest of P45's, stripped of pension rights by meerly days of remaining service and liberally oiled ready for penetration. Oh public of Britian. I offer you this fresh sacrificial scapegoat as payment for our terrible sins. Mahahahaha!"....

(* Thank you, Keith Laumer, wherever you are.)

Did anyone see "Question Time" the other night ?

Near the end of the programme, the case of "the lost CDs" was mentioned as an example of Government incompetence.

At which, a well-known expert on factual reporting - Mr Piers Morgan - proclaimed it was not "a Government problem", as it was "well known that it was the fault of two people in the post department..."

.

.

I'm not sure which is worse:

That the man could sit there and spout such drivel with a straight face...

Or that no-one in the studio was either willing or able to correct him...

.

.

,

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled"

Richard Feynman

Rogers' Commission Report into the Challenger Crash Appendix F - Personal Observations on Reliability of Shuttle (June 1986)

Not even the BOFH's The Boss could be *this* dim :-(

"...an imaginary pink giraffe called Cyril..."

I think you'll find that Cyril is the only competent one working there, but when this happened he was on holiday, so blantantly not his fault.

Surely you mean a sign saying "beware of the leopard" ?

That document comes normally as part of a full set from the CESG library, and is issued (as far as I recall) annually or when updates occur in any of the docs. It's quite comprehensive, but the fact that it is protectively marked is quite a pain because it imposes some storage requirements if you want to do it right.

Having said that, it's not super secret AFAIK and anyone who has signed the Official Secrets Acts (OSA) should IMHO be able to see at least that part, or maybe there's a way in which CESG can create an extract for junior servants to read. Maybe they have, I unsubscribed from it years ago so my knowledge may be a bit dated.

There is, however, a snag with this library which may explain why it's not that well read.

It's distributed ..

.. on CD :-).

Rember it is on an Oficial File so it is an Official Scecret.So therfore not to be divulged to any one that actualy needs to use it:p