They say there's no such thing. I had my doubts but have just discovered proof positive that there IS such a thing - quite literally - as a free lunch.
Leaving my Zimbabwe theme aside for now (but inevitably there will be some correlation), the story is told by a Telegraph columnist, Sam Leith (when I have mastered LINKS I will insert the ref) who took the trouble to follow up a great scam:
10 officials of the Department of Trade and Industry were found by Ernst and Young's accounting firm to have drunk an unbelievable quantity of booze - hard tack, wine, beer, Irish coffee, sparkling water, coffee etc - at last year's Christmas party. They had hired expensive sports cars to get to meetings, flown business class across the world, visited Barbados "by way of investigating British export prospects". Leith says he laughed like a hyena to read that the investigation was never completed, "...it started to look like their inquiry would end up costing more than the wasted money into which they were inquiring"
Leith could find no words to tell us what this means. Obviously it means that there is such a thing as a free lunch, especially if you spend enough of other people's money to make sure its free.
Now here comes the Zimbabwe bit:
Mugabe's government has deliberately flattened the economy by means which are now well known. Those kleptomaniacs don't care. I had it from the horse's mouth a few years ago; a friend who later became a Minister of Finance told me that it is policy in a cash strapped underdeveloped country to buy the luxuries (like those above) with money from the national treasury because the donor countries/agencies will fork out for the necessities that keep the economy ticking over. Somebody might like to do his Ph.D thesis on the subject.
Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell
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