'I'm afraid your time has been needlessly wasted, Commander Vimes.'

"Without a system to measure the program's benefits," he said, "this money and the opportunity to create jobs may be needlessly wasted."

We all know, or should by now, that the amount of money the MoD has needlessly wasted over the past few decades, the stifling bureaucracy, the lack of transparency, does not encourage sympathy with the department.

Thousands of lives have been wasted needlessly in Iraq, and the people who committed mass murder on 9/11 are stronger than ever.

Time has been needlessly wasted on declassifying monitored foreign broadcasts whose records were never secret in the first place.

'And it would seem that a whole week of work has been needlessly wasted.'