Auditor-general finds boondoggles are rife in law commissioner's office

[Paphos Life]

Maladministration is pervasive within the office of the law commissioner, with hundreds of thousands of euros being squandered on boondoggles, the auditor-general has found.
“Taking into account all the above, and in particular the extravagant amounts wasted on various contracts for the provision of services with non-transparent processes, it is our opinion that there is an evident picture of mismanagement at the office,” concludes a special report by the audit office.
The report, released on Thursday, focuses on the office’s farming out of contracts to private lawyers who worked on drafting several federal laws for the unified state emerging after a settlement of the Cyprus problem.

Read the article and chat about it below...

[Dominic]

boondoggle
noun
1.
an unnecessary, wasteful, or fraudulent project.
"he characterized the defense program as an unworkable boondoggle"

[exodus]

boondoggle
noun
1.
an unnecessary, wasteful, or fraudulent project.
"he characterized the defense program as an unworkable boondoggle"

2 .
a Cypriot way of ripping off the taxpayers.
Amos.

[ApusApus]

Learnt a new word!


Shane

[Dominic]

boondoggle
noun
1.
an unnecessary, wasteful, or fraudulent project.
"he characterized the defense program as an unworkable boondoggle"

2 .
a Cypriot way of ripping off the taxpayers.
Amos.

It's hardly exclusive to Cypriots. Besides, given how many expats seem to shirk at the idea of paying taxes here, I don't think expats are in much of a position to comment on that front.

[Dominic]

Learnt a new word!


Shane

Me too. To be honest, that's the only reason I thought the story newsworthy.

[exodus]

a Cypriot way of ripping off the taxpayers. Amos.

Show me a country in the world where this doesn't happen. Have you heard about the UK's recently launched aircraft carrier? Because of cock-ups, oversights and project mismanagement, there are no aircraft available to land on the carrier for three whole years! That's what I grossly negligent/wasteful. And then there's the hundreds of millions spent on NHS and government departments that never seem to perform as envisaged.

I was with a customer last week who told me that for much of his life he worked for the UK's MoD in the Middle East. He recounted a story of how the UK military paid - via. a number of intermediaries - a couple of million quid for a computerised system that was freely available for £70,000. If that isn't a boondoggle, I don't know what is!

On reflection just delete the word "Cypriot".
Amos.

[Dominic]

Boondoggling is a fairly broad term though. There is a big difference between unnecessary and fraudulent. Roads get repaired unnecessarily to use up budgets.While that sort of boondoggle is fairly common throughout the business world, fraudulent boondoggles are a different matter entirely, are they not?

It is a fun word to type. I have to admit. Does that qualify this post as a boondoggle?

[kingfisher]

“The Oxford Dictionary of American Political Slang” defines a “boondoggle” as “an extravagant and useless project,” but behind the funny-sounding name is actual history. During the late 1920s and early 1930s, Boy Scouts at summer camps spent their days not only swimming and playing games but participating in the latest scouting craze in which boys braided and knotted colorful strands of plastic and leather to fashion lanyards, neckerchief slides and bracelets. According to the March 1930 issue of Scouting magazine, Eagle Scout Robert Link of Rochester, New York, coined the term for this new handicraft—“boondoggling.”
While scouts continued to craft “boondoggles” during the Great Depression, few Americans had heard of them until they suddenly became front-page news on April 4, 1935, when the New York Times reported that investigating city aldermen had discovered that the federal Works Progress Administration (WPA) had spent more than $3 million on training for unemployed white-collar workers that included instruction in ballet dancing, shadow puppetry and making boondoggles. Hundreds of unemployed teachers, who were paid $87 a month by the WPA, received two hours of boondoggling instruction as part of their training to establish recreational programs that showed children in poorer neighborhoods how to transform old cigar boxes, tin cans and other discarded materials into useful gadgets and ornamental crafts. “These projects are not carried on in Fifth Avenue,” insisted WPA official Grace Goselin, “but in sections of the city where the children who are benefiting would otherwise be in the streets.”
Republican critics of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal pounced on the frivolous-sounding boondoggling activities as indicative of what they saw as the WPA’s wasteful spending, which included everything from operating a circus to eurhythmic dancing instruction. “It is a pretty good word,” Roosevelt admitted in a January 1936 speech before adding, “If we can boondoggle our way out of the Depression, that word is going to be enshrined in the hearts of Americans for many years to come.” The word indeed became part of the American political lexicon, but not in the way Roosevelt had hoped. Ironically, an activity that was part of an effort to encourage children to reuse waste materials has become synonymous with waste itself.

[Dominic]

“The Oxford Dictionary of American Political Slang” defines a “boondoggle” as “an extravagant and useless project,” but behind the funny-sounding name is actual history. During the late 1920s and early 1930s, Boy Scouts at summer camps spent their days not only swimming and playing games but participating in the latest scouting craze in which boys braided and knotted colorful strands of plastic and leather to fashion lanyards, neckerchief slides and bracelets. According to the March 1930 issue of Scouting magazine, Eagle Scout Robert Link of Rochester, New York, coined the term for this new handicraft—“boondoggling.”
While scouts continued to craft “boondoggles” during the Great Depression, few Americans had heard of them until they suddenly became front-page news on April 4, 1935, when the New York Times reported that investigating city aldermen had discovered that the federal Works Progress Administration (WPA) had spent more than $3 million on training for unemployed white-collar workers that included instruction in ballet dancing, shadow puppetry and making boondoggles. Hundreds of unemployed teachers, who were paid $87 a month by the WPA, received two hours of boondoggling instruction as part of their training to establish recreational programs that showed children in poorer neighborhoods how to transform old cigar boxes, tin cans and other discarded materials into useful gadgets and ornamental crafts. “These projects are not carried on in Fifth Avenue,” insisted WPA official Grace Goselin, “but in sections of the city where the children who are benefiting would otherwise be in the streets.”
Republican critics of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal pounced on the frivolous-sounding boondoggling activities as indicative of what they saw as the WPA’s wasteful spending, which included everything from operating a circus to eurhythmic dancing instruction. “It is a pretty good word,” Roosevelt admitted in a January 1936 speech before adding, “If we can boondoggle our way out of the Depression, that word is going to be enshrined in the hearts of Americans for many years to come.” The word indeed became part of the American political lexicon, but not in the way Roosevelt had hoped. Ironically, an activity that was part of an effort to encourage children to reuse waste materials has become synonymous with waste itself.

Now they know how King Cnut felt. His very laudable aim to show that he was not omnipotent completely back-fired on him. These days people thing he was the Idiot King trying to stop the tide, when in fact he was merely trying to demonstrate that he couldn't. An early victim of bad spin.

Thank you for that post Kingfisher. Most interesting read.