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Also present at the CVCP party - much Schadenfreude over the fate of civil servants at the newly merged Department for Education and Employment, where there are now more senior civil servants than available jobs. Having spent the last decade assuring the sector of the virtues of competitive tendering and bidding, the inmates of Sanctuary Buildings are being subjected to the same process themselves.

Not easy when your previous experience of recruitment is confined to passing an examination and then getting posted, although some felt jokes about jobs going to the lowest tender were too near to the likely truth to be funny.