Any knight need need armour, equipment, gadgets, a horse but most of all a brave bunch of soldiers. They also need armour, gadgets and all the rest to follow. This inevitably leads to something called "the budget process" which is something that can grind down the heart and mind of any honorable man and leave him sobbing in the street outside the local pub. The budget process as such is devised by cunning conjurers who dedicate their evil lives to making things miserable for those who want to step in to the sunlight and be regarded as a leader of men.
So there I was in my *chambre secret (*french for secret room) squinting at the glowing documents of horror. Lines, boxes, fields, numbers, instructions, exeptions - it all made a blurr in front of my eyes. Hastily I stood up and looked around the room in a deperate attempt for inspiration. A hidden dragon, a slithering snake, a cunning murderer, anything that could distract me from these documents of terror but there was nothing to ease my mind. My fist was grasping the sword but as my mind settled down so did my grip and instead my mind began to drift.
Perhaps this Budget thing was not so bad after all, I mean it is actually the key to more gadgets and equipment. It may even be the way for funding more soldiers. I sat down and started to look through the numbers. With such complexity it was clear that even the makers of this horror document could not grasp the complexity. I set about to place numbers in all kinds of boxes, filling in things I had no idea what it was and some that I did.
Many hours later I started to see strange patterns in the documents - changing one number made another jump, adding some text here made other things change there. Oh, the mystery of things. Now I finally had so many numbers that there just had to be more or less impossible for anyone to understand. This was perfect!
I called the courrier and send him of with God's speed and the devil in his hind sight to make sure that he would not stray. The word came a few days later that the numbers were not accepted - they were too high so I had to cut back a bit. This was the same message all knights got so now I was rolling. Take out a bit here, move some there, nip and tuck and here we are. Voila - a new budget was sent and so it went on for the next few days until un invisible deadline put a halt to all further changes - this was now it!
Looking at the complete fabulations of my creation I realised that I had managed to find money and resources in all kind of interresting options. At the end there was a big nice number so now I could start to move about some money from this pile over to that pile and so on. What a splendid opportunity to play trick or treat with the budget. There was always some money to be found and they could always be spent on something else and with enough confusion nobody would bother you as long as the final result was met.
They may complain if you exceed the budget but reach all other targets
however
they will KILL YOU if you stay within budget but fail to deliver !!!
With this in mind I smiled as I blew out the oil lamp on my desk and let the fresh air of the night fill my nostrils as I stood in the open window. The horses were idly munching away on their evening feed and a lonely owl was heard in the distant. This was going to be a grand year.
// AFH
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