Jail the buggers and take the 54million off them. If they hide it in houses for their spouses or family, take the houses.

THEY'RE THE FREAKING GOVERNMENT.

They dob over the common git quick enough.

The dialogue on page 2 is genius. I'm going to bookmark this and link it every time someone suggests that whenever private interests do well out of a botched privatisation, it's the fault of those greedy fatcats deceiving the poor naive ickle civil servants who don't really understand money and just wanted to do their best for the taxpayer. What nonsense. Follow the money. And in the case of government officials, follow the money, follow the power, follow the patronage and follow the photo-ops.

Incidentally, accusing a business of "profiteering" is like accusing a cat of "mouse-eating" or a human of "enjoying themselves too much".

"Turn around and look into the future - or at least the present, for goodness' sake - why don't you?"

They clearly *are* looking to the future - those lucrative directorships don't grow on trees. These theiving scumbags have done a better job of dismantling our country than Tory privatisation could have ever hoped to manage.

This kind of buy-out should be scrutinised by a cross-party committee before it takes place. Maybe a backbencher could demand that in exchange for voting yes to '42'.

@Frank Bough - a public offering is a nice idea but it would still cost more than just making the cuts. The cuts would have to happen anyway so anything else is just going to add cost.

Our democratic system focuses the party in power on retaining power and little else. Backroom deals and you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours scenarios are the order of the day. The system is broken but could be patched with more and more public scrutiny, now who'd vote for that?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_7445000/7445417.stm

@ 0750 - listen again available.

Poor old Jimmy McNaughty does his best, but lets 'Sir' John get away with endless repetitions of "we've been fantastically entrepreneurial by building robots in the US". I was shouting at the radio (sorry, it's my age): "ask him what proportion of turnover/profits this represents" - about 0.01%, I'll bet.

Where can I recommend Lewis for 'Campaigning Journalist of the Year'?

You are looking for the Paul Foot award:

http://www.private-eye.co.uk/sections.php?section_link=paul_foot

Although this is a comment piece, it's a good summary of the events.

@amanfromMars

The system and those within the system are not best placed to make the choice. Whoever the system is there to serve should be making the choice.

They are both little short of corporate vandals. Systematically over a number of years they ripped the heart out of British defence research for their own greed. Not only did they make a killing on the formation of QinetiQ but also the formation of Comax. In short they have undermined the research and support of our defence industry at the worst possible time. And in the process destroyed the life and careers of many hundreds of world class scientists, just to line their pockets.

Bet you didn't guess that I'm bitter about it.

"Such profiteering at the expense of the taxpayer is not something this Committee would expect from former public servants,"

Probably not. Most of it is done while theyre IN office, so it can be kept secret for 'security and privacy', ironic since thats the one of the things the population has lost under this government ...

I think they are also forgetting -

The house of lords

Quangos

Honorary board memberships of big companies

Paying babysitters to answer the phone once a month

Freebies from international jaunts

Money from books telling us how they f*cked us royally

MEPs stealing expenses

et al

"I do wonder sometimes, cold we sue Her Majesty's Opposition for not opposing? Aren't they obliged to do so on our behalf?"

Well, there's nothing to stop you trying. Me, I could see the case being dismissed on the grounds that HM Opposition is, by definition, not the Parliamentary majority. This makes it sort of difficult to actually STOP any Government decision - unless of course a fairly substantial number of Government MPs are prepared to defy the party line...

The current system of 'debate' is largely antiquated and irrelevant, intended as it was in wresting power from the Royalty and placing it more in the hands of 'the people'.

However, in this day and age the Royalty has been replaced by the currently dominant political party - which ever of the two it happens to be at the time.

And the method of election, based as it is in a virtually medieval system of 'popular' voting doesn't even represent the 'popular' vote accurately.

Change is required. However, there's a narrow line between the current line and flipping over into a 'taking shop' mode, where popular choice is more accurately reflected and nothing much ever gets done, though everything gets talked to death.

In an ideal world, a wired world, decisions could be actually made by popular vote by the population. However, given the governments track record at implementing any and all IT based projects that's simply not conceivable. After all, a direct voting system would have to be, secure, reliable and especially, not open to abuse or manipulation.

And those are three boxes that the government - any UK government is simply incapable of ticking.

So, come back Guido Fawkes - where are you when we really need you?

<waits for the heavy boot applied to the front door with interest>

Argh! No! I was only joking! Hey! Please don't jam that thing so hard against the back of my head....

<sound effect of Glock magazine of 9mm hollow points being fired into 'terrorist's' head>