Where do they hide the budgets?

In the foothills-of-apocalypse position we now occupy, this may seem a prosaic concern: but where do they hide the budgets?   Well, this was always conceived of as basically a business blog, so we can't take responsibility for solving Ukraine, Gaza, Taiwan, small boats, climate change etc.  

Here are a couple of examples.  Firstly, the mighty Afghan refugee cockup.  What do they reckon - £7 billion and counting?  How come no canny forensic budget-bore spotted that one on the HMG books?  Clever old Sir Humphrey, eh?

Second, and you'll permit me my local interests here - I give you Drax plc.  Outwardly just a regular UK listed company going about its chosen mission of incinerating the forests of the world using UK subsidies on the pretence this is helping to solve the aforesaid climate change.   But behind the scenes it has to fight legal action after legal action: that's what happens when you are aggressively living a lie which you've determined to brazen out at all costs.  The other day I happened on some evidence that they are spending tens of millions annually in legal fees for litigation, amounts dwarfing what they spend on their annual statutory audit plus associated consultancy.  The latter, you will find laid out in detail in the Annual Report and Accounts: the former you will not.  The ordinary shareholder would never know.

Finally, and this one won't be even remotely surprising, I've had some correspondence that invites me to believe there is a fairly substantial renaissance getting underway of our nuclear deterrent.  Yes, there are indeed project line-items in the MoD budget for some of this.  But I'm being told it's a fraction of the true total.  Still, this probably goes back at least as far as the two Harolds, Macmillan and Wilson ...  (Maybe those two aircraft carriers didn't cost quite as much as we'd thought?)

Somebody signs off on all this stuff, supposedly with great solemnity and a straight face, with liabilities theoretically involved.  Where's an honest accountant to be found?  On the job market, I suppose. 

ND