Doofus Of The Day #369

Today's award goes to the British Broadcasting Corporation.

The BBC is spending hundreds of thousands of pounds on moving staff out of state-of-the-art studios only nine months after they moved in.

The broadcast staff are being relocated to specially built temporary offices after it was discovered that no safety checks had been carried out at their new base in a recently refurbished wing of the Corporation’s flagship headquarters in Central London.

The tests should have been done on fire alarms, lifts and lighting at Broadcasting House – the iconic building in Regent Street – as part of an £830 million [just over US $1.26 billion] renovation.

But now hundreds of employees will have to operate out of makeshift studios in Bush House – where the BBC World Service is based – when Broadcasting House closes for several weeks while the tests are completed.

. . .

The renovation – which has gone £20 million [US $30.4 million] over its original budget of £813 million [US $1.24 billion] and is running at least two years late – is being investigated by the Government’s spending watchdog, the National Audit Office, amid growing concern about how the Corporation spends money on its vast property portfolio.

A BBC spokesman said: ‘On completion of a project, all systems . . .  must undergo essential testing to ensure they meet health and safety regulations.’

Disgruntled workers say the corporation could have saved licence fee payers’ money by ensuring the checks were completed before they were allowed to move in.

There's more at the link.

Sounds just like a State-run bureaucracy, doesn't it? Spend the taxpayers' money hand over fist. If we run short, we'll just take some more of their hard-earned cash to cover our mistakes! I'm sure the license-fee-paying British public are overjoyed to see how their money is being spent wasted . . .





Peter