Thursday
I'm grateful to an anonymous commentator on a The Register story for this, which deserves a wider audience.
Are there any other examples? Does anyone have an estimate of how much it cost?
No idea of the cost, Guy, but I did notice the embossed Royal Arms on the bottle, which suggests that:
(a) It cost a heck of a lot.
(b) Other gubmint departments are also wasting our money on such tripe.
(c) Hang on, are quangos allowed to use the Royal Arms?
Posted by the other rob at March 13, 2008 04:51 PM
What the fuck happened to bringing a cup in from home to use. I freakin' despair!
Posted by Dan at March 13, 2008 09:49 PM
Those aren't the Royal Arms. I don't know what they are, though. Don't even look particularly British to me. Possibly the logo of the bottler?
Posted by Sam Duncan at March 13, 2008 10:49 PM
No! This is actually a money saving bottle!!! Honestly!
As a bureaucrat in a quango (or non-departmental government body as we like to be called these days!) we use these. We hire out our rooms to businesses (and other quangos) when we're not using them. We supply water in refillable bottles - the facilities bods fill them up from the tap and refrigerate them. Voila, money saved compared to buying in bottles of Evian for our paying guests. If you're posh like ofcom (lovely offices on the river if I remember) then the people who supply the (empty) bottles will also lease you the pimped-up sodastream that converts London tap water into 'pure sparkling water'.
In our internal meetings we get pitchers of tap water as filled up by a secretary.
This is about the only thing we do that reduces the amount of money we waste.
Not that that played any part in the logic of deciding to do it - "it's more environmentally friendly!"
Posted by quangocrat at March 14, 2008 02:09 AM
Come again Quangocrat
We really would like to know more.
As to how we are ruled by the unseen
the unelected
And the unspeakable.
Posted by RAB at March 14, 2008 02:59 AM
Quangocrat wouldn't it be cheaper to buy the same type of bottles but without the logo?
Posted by Ben at March 14, 2008 03:16 AM
I've been to their offices when they were OfTel & shared the building with the Crown prosecution Service. Had they had such a bottle then, it would have went home in my briefcase as a trophy and raised on every occasion whenever they sought serious contributions from the Telecoms Sector.
Posted by Ian Grey at March 14, 2008 01:42 PM
You could take a look at this:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/file_on_4/7275073.stm
I listened to the podcast of the programme yesterday and my gob is still smacked now.
Posted by David Hadley at March 14, 2008 04:49 PM
