Pish. I've just logged on to the office system to check my emails. And I'm now informed that the IT equipment I ordered can't be charged to the project because the office manager didn't put the right code on the requisition.
Welcome to the world of local government.
What's the deal?
Because this project* is being paid for by the EU (or maybe because it's been drawn up by some anally-retentive bean-counter with an unhealthy obsession with Star Trek), my funding is allocated in quarterly tranches. This is the first quarter, and the target is ridiculously high. Nonetheless, I have to meet it, lest I be branded a workshy, lily-livered, whey-faced, do-nothing dullard.
The set-up costs were meant to come from that first quarter, and I had hoped that the meagre IT request I'd made would go a little way towards meeting that target. Needless to say, any monies not spent in one quarter cannot be carried forward to the next.
Ho hum.
* The project is, officially, a heritage project. Am I alone in absolutely bloody hating the word heritage? To paraphrase Goering, when I hear the word heritage, I reach for my Browning.
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Ah yes - that wonderful word 'requisition', thankfully I don't have any truck with such matters these days, but the convolutions of trying to spend money and spend it wisely, on time and in triplicate I recall only too well. Then there was something called 'viring' but I'm trying not to think too hard about that.
ReplyDeleteAgree about 'heritage' also - wonder though what else it should be called? I don't like 'the historic environment' much either. Well I like 'the historic environment' but not that phrase. I think EH is actually a little red faced about its name too, and 'historic environment' became the substitute for 'heritage' in much of its discourse. Poor old Historic Scotland gets called, natch, Hysteric Scotland. CADW doesn't exaclty light bonfires either.
CADW means "keep", which can refer to the principal tower of a castle, or to not throwing things away. As a play on words it's not too bad.
ReplyDeleteBut yes, "Heritage" has lots of negative connotations. The French, of course, have "patrimoine", but "patrimony" doesn't sound right (bit poncey) in English, and the Germans have something with lots of consonants in it ("kulturdenkmalschutz blah di blah", I think)
Indeed and the phrase 'petit patrimoine' means something which isn't easily translated into English, which is a pity as it means something which we don't have a handy shorthand to describe. 'Vernacular' doesn't quite fit the bill.
ReplyDeleteNew pic! Dog on a hot slate roof?
ReplyDelete