The public sector’s daftest prizes

All must have prizes

Paul Pugh, the £104,000-a-year chief executive of the Passport Office, was nominated for ‘leader of the year’ in the government’s Investors in People Awards, in spite of long delays in passport issues. Some more pointless public sector awards:
— UK Public Sector Communications Awards. Currently held by Derbyshire County Council, for telling the public it was going to snow. Not to be confused with the Public Sector Communications Excellence Awards.
— Government Opportunities Excellence in Public Procurement Awards, held by NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde for the £842 million South Glasgow Hospitals, which have yet to open.
— And the Eurovision of the public sector, the European Public Sector Awards, held by the Italian Department for Public Administration.

The family of nations

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The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham claims to be the world’s newest independent state. How many countries are there in the world?
— 193 if you go by UN members
— 195 recognised by the US
— 196 if you add Taiwan
— 204 according to the International Olympic Committee
— 209 according to Fifa
— 249 by international dialling codes

Insurance renewal

George Osborne wants to merge income tax with National Insurance contributions. In 2013/14 HMRC collected £155.6 billion in income tax and £107.7 billion in National Insurance – 69p in National Insurance for every pound in income tax. How has this changed over the past 15 years?

Tough calls

New rules will cap the cost of ‘roaming’ mobile phone charges in the EU. Some bills the rules would not have stopped:
— £1,046 run up by Robert Shadwick of South Yorkshire when he used an EE phone to ring a helpline — his call was recorded as lasting two days.
— £2,907 by Carissa Grice, 18, while using Facebook in Turkey on her Orange phone.