Laundry Files Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Laundry Files. Here they are! All 100 of them:

Gene police! You! Out of the pool, now!
Charles Stross (The Atrocity Archives (Laundry Files, #1))
Idiots emit bogons, causing machinery to malfunction in their presence. System administrators absorb bogons, letting machinery work again.
Charles Stross (The Atrocity Archives (Laundry Files, #1))
Like the famous mad philosopher said, when you stare into the void, the void stares also; but if you cast into the void, you get a type conversion error. (Which just goes to show Nietzsche wasn't a C++ programmer.)
Charles Stross (Overtime (Laundry Files, #3.5))
Unfortunately it's also true to say that good management is a bit like oxygen - it's invisible and you don't notice its presence until it's gone, and then you're sorry.
Charles Stross (The Fuller Memorandum (Laundry Files, #3))
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a sane employee in possession of his wits must be in want of a good manager.
Charles Stross (The Fuller Memorandum (Laundry Files, #3))
Nothing stands for content-free corporate bullshit quite like PowerPoint. And that's just scratching the surface...
Charles Stross (The Jennifer Morgue (Laundry Files, #2))
That was what we call in the trade an Unscheduled Reality Excursion, usually abbreviated to ‘Oh fuck.’ 
Charles Stross (The Atrocity Archives (Laundry Files, #1))
I wish I was still an atheist. Believing I was born into a harsh, uncaring cosmos – in which my existence was a random roll of the dice and I was destined to die and rot and then be gone forever – was infinitely more comforting than the truth. Because the truth is that my God is coming back. When he arrives I’ll be waiting for him with a shotgun. And I’m keeping the last shell for myself.
Charles Stross (The Fuller Memorandum (Laundry Files, #3))
Bob loses saving throw vs. shiny with a penalty of -5. Bob takes 2d8 damage to the credit card.
Charles Stross (The Fuller Memorandum (Laundry Files, #3))
The male ego is a curious thing. It’s about the size of a small continent but it’s extremely brittle.
Charles Stross (The Atrocity Archives (Laundry Files, #1))
The five stages of bureaucratic grieving are: denial, anger, committee meetings, scapegoating, and cover-up.
Charles Stross (The Rhesus Chart (Laundry Files, #5))
In memory of Terry Pratchett, who showed us all how it’s done
Charles Stross (The Nightmare Stacks (Laundry Files, #7))
Christmas: the one time of year when you can’t avoid the nuts in your family muesli.
Charles Stross (Overtime (Laundry Files, #3.5))
I was raised thinking that moral and ethical standards are universals that apply equally to everyone. And these values aren't easily compatible with the kind of religion that posits a Creator. To my way of thinking, an omnipotent being who sets up a universe in which thinking beings proliferate, grow old, and die (usually in agony, alone, and in fear) is a cosmic sadist.
Charles Stross (The Fuller Memorandum (Laundry Files, #3))
Let’s see.’ She fiddles with her terminal and the room card reader. ‘You’re in 403 and 404. Have a nice day.' I hand Persephone the Forbidden Room card and keep Room Not Found for myself. She looks at me oddly.
Charles Stross (The Apocalypse Codex (Laundry Files, #4))
What you or I would recognize as an alien invasion by tentacled horrors from beyond spacetime Angleton would see as a teachable moment.
Charles Stross (The Rhesus Chart (Laundry Files, #5))
I spent six hours becoming one with a shrubbery last night. There were three cloudbursts and a rain of small and very confused frogs
Charles Stross (The Atrocity Archives (Laundry Files, #1))
The Laundry field operations manual is notably short on advice for how to comport one’s self when being held prisoner aboard a mad billionaire necromancer’s yacht, other than the usual stern admonition to keep receipts for all expenses incurred in the line of duty.
Charles Stross (The Jennifer Morgue (Laundry Files, #2))
My computer terminal whistles at me: YOU HAVE MAIL. No shit, Sherlock, I always have mail. It's an existential thing: if I don't have mail it would mean that something is very wrong with the world
Charles Stross (The Atrocity Archives (Laundry Files, #1))
You win some, you lose some. And when you lose, you have to pull yourself together and go back for more. Otherwise, the other side wins by default.
Charles Stross (The Apocalypse Codex (Laundry Files, #4))
We are Bay Aryans from Berkeley: prepare to be reengineered in an attractive range of color schemes for your safety and comfort!
Charles Stross (On Her Majesty's Occult Service (Laundry Files, #1-2))
We use committees for all the ulterior purposes for which they might have been designed: diffusion of executive responsibility, plausible deniability, misdirection, providing the appearance of activity without the substance, and protecting the guilty.
Charles Stross (The Rhesus Chart (Laundry Files, #5))
Britain is relying on you, Bob, so try not to make your usual hash of things.
Charles Stross (The Jennifer Morgue (Laundry Files, #2))
I argued for a Kindle but they pointed out that if it could be associated with me, then the information bleed—Amazon logging every page turn and annotation—was a potential security hazard. Not to mention the darker esoteric potential of spending too much time staring at a device controlled by a secretive billionaire in Seattle. The void stares also, and so on.
Charles Stross (The Rhesus Chart (Laundry Files, #5))
They never tell you how heavy a corpse is in training school.
Charles Stross (The Atrocity Archives (Laundry Files, #1))
Fatal accidents never happen because of just one mistake. It takes a whole chain of stupids lining up just so to put a full stop at the end of an epitaph.
Charles Stross (The Fuller Memorandum (Laundry Files, #3))
programming is a job where Lovecraft meets tradecraft, all the time.
Charles Stross (The Atrocity Archives (Laundry Files, #1))
(Americans think we Brits drink tea because we’re polite and genteel or something, whereas we really drink it because it’s a stimulant and it’s hot enough to sterilize cholera bacteria.)
Charles Stross (Equoid (Laundry Files, #2.9))
There are two types of people in this world,” Pete volunteers helpfully, “those who think there are only two types of people in the world, and everybody else.
Charles Stross (The Apocalypse Codex (Laundry Files, #4))
I wasn’t expecting a stealth, supersonic, vertical take-off submarine fueled by the eerily whistling ghosts of necromantically murdered dolphins.
Charles Stross (The Annihilation Score (Laundry Files, #6))
but he understands she’s twenty now (how did that happen?)
Charles Stross (The Nightmare Stacks (Laundry Files, #7))
He stabs at the mouse mat with one finger and I wince, but instead of fat purple sparks and a hideous soul-sucking manifestation, it simply wakes up his Windows box. (Not that there’s much difference.)
Charles Stross (The Jennifer Morgue (Laundry Files, #2))
[...] Howard Phillips Lovecraft of Providence, Rhode Island, for cultivating a florid and overblown prose style that covered the entire spectrum from purple to ultraviolet and took sixteen volumes of interminable epistles to get to the point [...]
Charles Stross (Equoid (Laundry Files, #2.9))
Executions are a form of human sacrifice, after all,
Charles Stross (The Rhesus Chart (Laundry Files, #5))
For programming is a job where Lovecraft meets tradecraft, all the time.
Charles Stross (The Atrocity Archives (Laundry Files, #1))
Bureaucracies excel at performing tasks that must be done consistently whether the people assigned to them are brilliant performers or bumbling fools. You can’t always count on having Albert Einstein in the patent office, so you design its procedures to work even if you hire Mr. Bean by mistake.
Charles Stross (The Apocalypse Codex (Laundry Files, #4))
American cops are so heavily militarized these days that the only way I can tell the difference between them and the army is the color of their body armor—that, and the army is less trigger-happy.
Charles Stross (The Labyrinth Index (Laundry Files, #9))
Basically it’s a velociraptor with a fur coat and an outsize sense of entitlement. Right now it has convinced Pete that it is harmless, but I know better: just give them thumbs and in no time at all they’ll have us working in the tuna mines, delivering cans from now until eternity. (Hey, wait a minute, doesn’t this one have thumbs?)
Charles Stross (The Rhesus Chart (Laundry Files, #5))
His Infernal Majesty leans towards me confidingly. “You have imposter syndrome,” He says, “but paradoxically, that’s often a sign of competence. Only people who understand their work well enough to be intimidated by it can be terrified by their own ignorance. It’s the opposite of Dunning-Kruger syndrome, where the miserably incompetent think they’re on top of the job because they don’t understand it.
Charles Stross (The Labyrinth Index (Laundry Files, #9))
You wouldn’t believe the scope for mischief that the Beast of Redmond unintentionally builds into its Office software by letting it execute macros that have unlimited access to the hardware. I remember a particular post-prandial PowerPoint presentation where I was one of only two survivors (and the other wasn’t entirely human). However, this is the first time I’ve seen a Word document eat a man’s soul.
Charles Stross (Equoid (Laundry Files, #2.9))
Georgina darts forward, grabs my hand, and pumps it up and down while peering at my face as if she’s wondering why water isn’t gushing from my mouth.
Charles Stross (Equoid (Laundry Files, #2.9))
let slip the yapping chihuahuas of infowar
Charles Stross (The Jennifer Morgue (Laundry Files, #2))
I shove my reading matter back into my messenger bag (it’s a novel about a private magician for hire in Chicago—your taxpayer pounds at work) and go to stand in the doorway.
Charles Stross (The Fuller Memorandum (Laundry Files, #3))
silly me, I wasn’t expecting a stealth, supersonic, vertical take-off submarine fueled by the eerily whistling ghosts of necromantically murdered dolphins.
Charles Stross (The Annihilation Score (Laundry Files, #6))
We remain convinced that this is the best defensive posture to adopt in order to minimize casualties when the Great Old Ones return from beyond the stars to eat our brains.
Charles Stross (The Atrocity Archives (Laundry Files, #1))
As Terry Pratchett observed, inside every eighty-year-old man is an eight-year-old wondering what the hell just happened to him
Charles Stross (The Delirium Brief (Laundry Files, #8))
He monologued at me. With PowerPoint.★★ ★★He what? And you’re still sane? Obviously I underestimated you.★★
Charles Stross (The Jennifer Morgue (Laundry Files, #2))
Superman, Iron Man, Batman”—Flyaway Hair winces visibly—“you name it. Rich, powerful, white alpha males who dress up in gimp suits and beat up ethnically diverse lower-class criminals.
Charles Stross (The Annihilation Score (Laundry Files, #6))
Although now that I'm in middle management I'm supposed to call it "refactoring the strategic value proposition in real time with agile implementation,” or, if I’m being honest, “making it up as I go along.
Charles Stross (The Apocalypse Codex (Laundry Files, #4))
What entity aboard this ship exhibits all the personality traits of a cold-blooded killing machine, combined with the monstrous, overweening vanity and laziness of a convalescent war god lounging in their personal Valhalla while their minions prepare their armor? There's only one answer. The Persian tomcat sits underneath the alien horror, washing itself without concern.
Charles Stross (The Jennifer Morgue (Laundry Files, #2))
WE ALL MAKE MISTAKES. In our youth, if we survive them, they’re called learning experiences or teachable moments or some-such. And that which does not maim or kill us usually makes us stronger, albeit sometimes also sadder and more cynical.
Charles Stross (The Rhesus Chart (Laundry Files, #5))
I set the self-portrait timer on the camera to ten seconds, handed it to the zombie, and sent him into the grid and through the door to blow himself up. Then things got weird.
Charles Stross (The Rhesus Chart (Laundry Files, #5))
★★How boring, just another billionaire necromancer cruising the Caribbean in his thinly disguised guided missile destroyer, plotting total world domination.★★
Charles Stross (The Jennifer Morgue (Laundry Files, #2))
Like I said: the only god I believe in is coming back. And when he arrives, I’ll be waiting with a shotgun.
Charles Stross (The Fuller Memorandum (Laundry Files, #3))
Old Enochian running on neural wetware is not the fastest procedural language ever invented, and it’s semantics make AppleScript look like a thing of elegance and beauty
Charles Stross (The Nightmare Stacks (Laundry Files, #7))
loose lips don’t merely sink ships, they summon krakens with too many tentacles.
Charles Stross (The Nightmare Stacks (Laundry Files, #7))
There’s a very loud noise in my ear, not unlike a cat sneezing, if the cat is the size of the Great Sphinx of Giza and it’s just inhaled three tons of snuff.
Charles Stross (The Jennifer Morgue (Laundry Files, #2))
We’re going to need swords: lots of swords.
Charles Stross (The Nightmare Stacks (Laundry Files, #7))
If you’re a humble believer set on doing your deity’s will, then what are you doing spending the take on Lamborghinis and single malt?
Charles Stross (The Apocalypse Codex (Laundry Files, #4))
Gordon actually wore the company uniform as if he meant it, unlike Bill, who occupied his uniform like a hermit crab living in an abandoned Coke can.
Charles Stross (Dead Lies Dreaming (Laundry Files, #10; The New Management, #1))
They were brilliant, widely read, incisive, and effortlessly effective analysts and programmers. Which is another reason why, ultimately, so many people died.
Charles Stross (The Rhesus Chart (Laundry Files, #5))
We shouldn’t even be here, I think distantly as I raise my weapon and take aim, we’re management, not heroes.
Charles Stross (The Annihilation Score (Laundry Files, #6))
This has serveral consequences, starting with screwing over most cryptography algorithms--translation: all your bank account are belong to us--
Charles Stross (The Atrocity Archives (Laundry Files, #1))
There is good management and bad management: good management is like air—you don’t know it’s there until it’s gone away.
Charles Stross (The Apocalypse Codex (Laundry Files, #4))
There are things out there in the night where light cannot exist that make Cthulhu look like a Care Bear.
Charles Stross (The Labyrinth Index (Laundry Files, #9))
I try not to notice the exploded eyeballs or the ruptured tongue bursting through the blackened lips. This job is quite gross enough as it is without adding my own dry heaves to the mess.
Charles Stross (The Atrocity Archives (Laundry Files, #1))
I don’t mind going without clothes, but being without a microprocessor is truly stripping down. It’s like asking a sorcerer to surrender his magic wand, or a politician to forswear his lies.
Charles Stross (The Jennifer Morgue (Laundry Files, #2))
There's always some idiot who thinks that after the revolution they'll be the one sitting on top of the hill of corpses, dining on caviar served out of a bowl made of a chromed baby's skull.
Charles Stross (The Nightmare Stacks (Laundry Files, #7))
Apparently you’re only allowed to demolish Wolverhampton if you’re a property developer like Donald Trump. Crawling eldritch horrors don’t get planning permission unless they’re Trump’s hairpiece.
Charles Stross (The Delirium Brief (Laundry Files, #8))
Some people you just do not want to leave outside the tent pissing in, and in my early twenties, self-confident and naïve, I was about as safe to leave lying around unsupervised as half a ton of sweating gelignite.
Charles Stross (The Jennifer Morgue (Laundry Files, #2))
(A WOMBAT is a Waste Of Money, Brains, And Time: the non-IT equivalent of a PEBCAK. (A PEBCAK is a Problem that Exists Between Chair And Keyboard. (You get the picture: it’s parenthesized despair all the way down.)))
Charles Stross (The Rhesus Chart (Laundry Files, #5))
The Denizen of Number 10 is the avatar—the humanoid sock-puppet—of an ancient and undying intelligence who regards mere humanity much as we might regard a hive of bees. Our lives are of no individual concern to Him, but He likes honey.
Charles Stross (The Labyrinth Index (Laundry Files, #9))
There will be plenty of backup and support, but she’s still going to have to do heartbreaking things to people who probably don’t understand why the pale woman with the bone-white violin and blood dripping from her fingertips is coming for them.
Charles Stross (The Rhesus Chart (Laundry Files, #5))
AFTER WE DO THE WASHING-UP, I GET TO SPEND THE REST OF the evening reading FAQs on cat maintenance on the web. It takes about half an hour to come to the unwelcome realization that they’re almost as complex as home-brew gaming PCs, and have even more failure modes. (When your gaming PC malfunctions it doesn’t stealthily dump core in your shoes.)
Charles Stross (The Rhesus Chart (Laundry Files, #5))
But, as Andy pointed out, if being a smart-arse was an offence, the Laundry would not exist in the first place.
Charles Stross (The Atrocity Archives (Laundry Files, #1))
his beard is about thirty centimeters long, grizzled and salted and bifurcated. It has so much character that it’s probably being hunted by a posse of typographers.
Charles Stross (Equoid (Laundry Files, #2.9))
Reasons for cancellation order: 1. Baby-eating aquatic faerie equines do not exist.
Charles Stross (Equoid (Laundry Files, #2.9))
There is cold comfort to be drawn from the sure and certain knowledge that the correct way to deal with the problem you’re facing in your job involves napalm, if
Charles Stross (Equoid (Laundry Files, #2.9))
Nothing stands for content-free corporate bullshit quite like PowerPoint.
Charles Stross (The Jennifer Morgue (Laundry Files, #2))
Nobody taught me how to say no when a beautiful naked woman begs me to take my clothes off.
Charles Stross (The Jennifer Morgue (Laundry Files, #2))
And because my employers agree with me, and they’re the government, you’re outvoted.
Charles Stross (The Jennifer Morgue (Laundry Files, #2))
Some people can mess up anything, and computational demonology adds a new and unwelcome meaning to terms like “memory leak” and “debugger.
Charles Stross (The Jennifer Morgue (Laundry Files, #2))
(I’m a child of the wired generation, unlike some of the suits hereabouts who have their secretaries print everything out and dictate their replies for an audio-typist to send.)
Charles Stross (The Atrocity Archives (Laundry Files, #1))
Someday I’ll write a textbook about personality profiling through possessions; but for now let’s just say this example is screaming “megalomaniac!” at me.
Charles Stross (The Jennifer Morgue (Laundry Files, #2))
I notice that Andy is watching our exchange with the still, silent fascination of a fly on the wall that is canny enough to be aware of the existence of swatters.
Charles Stross (The Rhesus Chart (Laundry Files, #5))
There are good ways and bad ways to get my attention. Whacking on my ego with a crowbar will get my attention, sure, but it's not going to leave me well disposed to the messenger.
Charles Stross (The Atrocity Archives (Laundry Files, #1))
Twas the night before Christmas, the office was closed, The transom was shut, the staff home in repose; The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, But St. Nicholas won’t be coming because this is a Designated National Security Site within the meaning of Para 4.12 of Section 3 of the Official Secrets Act (Amended) and unauthorised intrusion on such a site is an arrestable offense ...
Charles Stross (Overtime (Laundry Files, #3.5))
I remember a particular post-prandial PowerPoint presentation where I was one of only two survivors (and the other wasn't entirely human). However this is the first time I've seen a Word document eat a man's soul.
Charles Stross (Equoid (Laundry Files, #2.9))
Because, you see, everything you know about the way this universe works is correct—except for the little problem that this isn’t the only universe we have to worry about. Information can leak between one universe and another. And in a vanishingly small number of the other universes there are things that listen, and talk back—see Al-Hazred, Nietzsche, Lovecraft, Poe, et cetera. The many-angled ones, as they say, live at the bottom of the Mandelbrot set, except when a suitable incantation in the platonic realm of mathematics—computerised or otherwise—draws them forth. (And you thought running that fractal screen-saver was good for your computer?)
Charles Stross (The Atrocity Archives (Laundry Files, #1))
Cat. No doubled vision: it’s a cat, singular. A solitary diurnal ambush hunter with good hearing and binocular vision and a predilection for biting the neck of its prey in half while disemboweling it with the scythe-like claws on its hind legs. Basically it’s a velociraptor with a fur coat and an outsize sense of entitlement. Right
Charles Stross (The Rhesus Chart (Laundry Files, #5))
There is cold comfort to be drawn from the sure and certain knowledge that the correct way to deal with the problem you’re facing in your job involves napalm, if you find yourself confronting a dragon and you aren’t even carrying a cigarette lighter.
Charles Stross (Equoid (Laundry Files, #2.9))
It’s not as if he’s had much of a chance until now, but somehow he has internalized the ur-cultural narrative: you grow up, go to university, get a job, meet Ms. Right, get married, settle down, have kids, grow old together . . . it’s like some sort of checklist. Or maybe a list of epic quests you’ve got to complete while level-grinding in a game you’re not allowed to quit, with no respawns and no cheat codes.
Charles Stross (The Nightmare Stacks (Laundry Files, #7))
Then the screen comes on, showing a familiar menu on a blue background and I stare at it, transfixed, like a yokel who’s never seen a television before. Because it’s not a TV. It’s a flat-screen PC running Windows XP Media Center Edition. They can’t be that dumb. It’s got to be a trap, I gibber to myself. Not even the clueless cannon-fodder-in-jumpsuits who staff any one of the movies on the shelf would be that dumb!
Charles Stross (The Jennifer Morgue (Laundry Files, #2))
(This is how the iron law of bureaucracy installs itself at the heart of an institution. Most of the activities of any bureaucracy are devoted not to the organization’s ostensible goals, but to ensuring that the organization survives: because if they aren’t, the bureaucracy has a life expectancy measured in days before some idiot decision maker decides that if it’s no use to them they can make political hay by destroying it. It’s no consolation that some time later someone will realize that an organization was needed to carry out the original organization’s task, so a replacement is created: you still lost your job and the task went undone. The only sure way forward is to build an agency that looks to its own survival before it looks to its mission statement. Just another example of evolution in action.)
Charles Stross (The Annihilation Score (Laundry Files, #6))
Darmstadt is one of those German towns that, having been landscaped by Allied heavy bombers, rezoned by the Red Army, and rebuilt by the Marshall Plan, demonstrates perfectly that (a) sometimes it’s better to lose a war than to win one, and (b) some of the worst crimes against humanity are committed by architecture students.
Charles Stross (The Jennifer Morgue (Laundry Files, #2))
He shakes his head. “I’m sorry, but the official Home Office superhero team is going to have to conform to public expectations of what a superhero team should look like, or it’s not really going to work terribly well. There’s room for one person of color, one female or LGBT, and one disability in a core team of four – if you push it beyond that ratio it’ll lose credibility with the crucial sixteen to twenty-four male target demographic, by deviating too far from their expectations. Remember, reasonable people who acquire superpowers are not our target. This is a propaganda operation aimed at the unreasonable ones: disturbed hero-worshiping nerd-bigots who, if they accidentally acquire superpowers, will go on a Macht Recht spree unless they’re held in check by firm guidance and a role model to channel them in less destructive directions.
Charles Stross (The Annihilation Score (Laundry Files, #6))
Horror fiction allows us to confront and sublimate our fears of an uncontrollable universe, but the threat verges on the overwhelming and may indeed carry the protagonists away. Spy fiction in contrast allows us to believe for a while that the little people can, by obtaining secret knowledge, acquire some leverage over the overwhelming threats that permeate their universe.
Charles Stross (The Atrocity Archives (Laundry Files, #1))
Fifteen minutes later I’m hunched over the steering wheel of a two-seater that looks like something you’d find in your corn flakes packet. The Smart is insanely cute and compact, does about seventy miles to a gallon, and is the ideal second car for nipping about town but I’m not nipping about town. I’m going flat out at maybe a hundred and fifty kilometers per hour on the autobahn while some joker is shooting at me from behind with a cannon that fires Porsches and Mercedes. Meanwhile, I’m stuck driving something that handles like a turbocharged baby buggy. I’ve got my fog lights on in a vain attempt to deter the other road users from turning me into a hood ornament, but the jet wash every time another executive panzer overtakes me keeps threatening to roll me right over onto my roof. And that’s before you factor in the deranged Serbian truck drivers driven mad with joy by exposure to a motorway that hasn’t been cluster-bombed and then resurfaced by the lowest bidder.
Charles Stross (The Jennifer Morgue (Laundry Files, #2))
There is a philosophy by which many people live their lives, and it is this: life is a shit sandwich, but the more bread you've got, the less shit you have to eat. These people are often selfish brats as kids, and they don't get better with age: think of the shifty-eyed smarmy asshole from the sixth form who grow up to be a merchant banker, or an estate agent, or one of the Conservative Party funny-handshake mine's a Rolex brigade. (This isn't to say that all estate agents, or merchant bankers, or conservatives are selfish, but that these are ways of life that provide opportunities of a certain disposition to enrich themselves at the expense of others. Bear with me.) There is another philosophy by which people live their lives, and it goes thus: You will do as I say or I will hurt you. . . . Let me draw you a Venn diagram with two circles on it, denoting sets of individuals. They overlap: the greedy ones and the authoritarian ones. Let's shade in the intersecting area in a different color and label it: dangerous. Greed isn't automatically dangerous on its won, and petty authoritarians aren't usually dangerous outside their immediate vicinity -- but when you combine the two, you get gangsters and dictators and hate-spewing preachers.
Charles Stross (The Fuller Memorandum (Laundry Files, #3))
corruption is defined in narrow terms to nail the poor deluded fool who slips a £20 note inside the cover of their passport before handing it to the Border Force officer who is checking travel documents with a CCTV camera looking over her shoulder. There’s nothing corrupt about the government minister who announces new and impossible performance targets for a hitherto just-about-coping agency that manages transport infrastructure, drives it into a smoking hole in the ground, and three years later retires and joins the board of the corporation that subsequently took over responsibility for maintaining all the bridges on behalf of the state—for a tidy annual fee, of course. After all, the minister is a demonstrable expert on the ownership and management of bridges, and there’s no provable link between their having set up the agency for failure and their subsequently being granted a nonexecutive directorship that gets them their share of the rental income from the privatized bridge, is there?
Charles Stross (The Delirium Brief (Laundry Files, #8))