TS enjoyed an extremely pleasant lunch with senior honchos at IT systems supplier Oracle last week. It was interesting to hear how much progress has been made on the company’s payroll system products, in particular.

Everything appeared to be in order until, on returning to TS Towers, it was discovered that the National Audit Office had qualified the accounts of the health service’s helpline NHS Direct with a comment that it had failed to keep proper records of its payroll costs.

Of course, it later occurred to us that the software for the aforementioned payroll system was provided by none other than our dining partner Oracle.