John McGuinness knows whereof he speaks as a TD and - crucially - a former government minister. No one in such a privileged insider's position has ever produced a narrative and analysis of public-service waste such as this. McGuinness and Nunn chronicle a catalogue of old Spanish practices, artificial demarcations and scandalous waste of human and material resources. There are public servants with literally nothing to do, playing Solitaire on their computers with the full knowledge and consent of their superiors, counting the days to their gold-plated pensions. McGuinness recalls the persistent attempts by his senior civil servants to spy on him and to circumscribe his independence as a minister, in case he might actually do something. The system, he argues, is rigged against initiative and reform, thus the title of the book.
