I am baffled.

When I was civil servant I had to account scrupulously for the best part of 28 years for every penny of public money I spent and was responsible for. And I did. My record was spotless.

In fact, when I took up the post of Ambassador in Warsaw I did what no other Ambassador in living memory there had done. I walked round the building doing a full ‘surprise check’ on the accounts and account processes myself.

This rather stunned the staff at the time. But my peregrinations did reveal various anomalies.

For example, the Embassy workshop every month were given a small ‘float’ of money to buy basic supplies such as lightbulbs without further authorisation. I called on them and asked them to produce this money and their receipts. The totals did not balance by a penny or two.

I asked why not. It turned out that in some shops there was not always the exact change (ie coins) available for small amounts.

I asked what happened to balance the totals at the end of the month. "Oh, we top up any missing money from the Jar". And there on the window-sill was a large jar full of the Polish equivalent of farthings and groats, used for this very purpose.

I loftily decreed an immediate end to Jar Accounting, and brought in various other procedures to make sure that as far as possible everything was being done (a) honestly and (b) transparently.

Had I abused my entertainment or other expenses or other public funds at any point in my career I would have faced disciplinary action, even prison.

Various things are in play here: long pages of FCO rules and wider public accounting standards. Plus largely unwritten but vital norms of honour and personal responsibility.

But what happens to the credibility of government if the people at the top of a public process which devises such rules themselves do not respect reasonable principles of honour or responsibility or transparency?

This. 

Do they not grasp that they are not spending their own money, but ours?