Perusal of my referral stats reminds me that i haven't really blogged this series of Judge John Deed calm down, girls...
To be honest, I don't think it has been as good as previous series. Still, it's better than most telly, and Martin Shaw is unceasing eye-candy.
Perhaps part of my problem is that I have found the main storyline somewhat incredible. The one about the triple billing of defence contracts. A major defence contract that has gone over budget would definitely be examined by the National Audit Office - it really would not require allegations of bribery passed on by a High Court judge to spark an investigation.
The Public Accounts Committee section was wholly unconvincing. The chair of the PAC is by convention a senior - generally ex-Treasury minister - member of the Opposition party, not a lightweight maverick. The PAC simply would not have a hearing into such a case without investigations already having been carried out by the NAO, who would have provided a detailed brief for the chair and guidelines on questioning. And such a hearing, especially with the unconventional appearance of a minister (it's usually Permanent Secretaries that give evidence - that's why they're called Accounting Officers...), would not have been so sparsely attended by Press and public.
I am not suggesting that triple billing has never occurred, but I also know that such things can generally be identified by a trainee auditor or audit technician using relatively unsophisticated software, and such a test would have been run as part of routine financial audit. It may well be that the defence contractor triple-invoiced so sophisticatedly that such a test would have failed to pick it up. It is therefore unlikely that it would have been necessary to bribe the minister signing it off, who would have lacked the skills to identify irregularities without a briefing from the Finance Director. The FD would therefore also have to have been bribed, and, anyay, it is inappropriate for an FD to have hands-on detailed knowledge of individual transactions which would have been handled by a relatively junior accounts clerk. Therefore, you are talking widespread collusion or an utter waste of a bribe to the minister in question. I would have thought it better not to even mention it to the minister - bribery works so much better at contract awarding stage, whereas creative accounting is more important at invoicing stage.
I would also have thought - but perhaps I am betraying my naivety - that it would be foolish for a defence contractor to resort to bullyboy tactics, including murder and attempted murder. Defence contracts are so lucrative, one might as well play by the rules. It is unlikely that any company with a whiff of this sort of dodgy behaviour would get such contracts. But maybe I'm wrong.
