Yesterday’s column looked at featherbedding in the Washington bureaucracy. Lots of overpaid middle managers and more boxes on the federal flowchart.
Basically, the real-world version of this satirical meme.
Today, let’s look at mindless incompetence by a foreign government.
Or perhaps deliberate incompetence would be a better term. That’s because bureaucrats in the United Kingdom have decided that the government can’t discriminate against companies that are incompetent.
I’m not joking. This tweet tells you everything you need to know.
I don’t know anything about the guy who issued the tweet, but he has a snapshot of a story from the Financial Times, and it deals with a very real scandal.
Basically, the British government contracted with a Fujitsu subsidiary for some software for post offices. But that software had terrible glitches that resulted in hundreds of local postmasters being falsely accused and convicted of financial malfeasance. If you want more information, you can read the horrific details on Wikipedia.
I could write an entire column about that scandal. It would be perfect for my series about “Great Moments in Foreign Government.”
But I’m instead including it in my “Everything You Need to know” series because I’m flabbergasted that the British government decided that it can’t give contracts to companies based on competence and performance.
That says a lot – and explains a lot – about why government does so many dumb things.
And it makes me wonder if we have a similar approach for the “beltway bandits” that get contracts from the US government?
P.S. What’s worse, the British government deciding it must do business with incompetent contractors, or the AOC plan to give handouts for people “unwilling to work“?
