alt_rachel | Private message to Bill Weasley

First, do you know when Corax is going to be done with those files? (You don't have to ask him! I'm just wondering if you have any thoughts on what he wants them for. Whether it would help if I asked him nicely if I could have them, or if I'll get them faster if I leave him alone.)

Second, this is sort of a random question but I really know absolutely nothing about animal husbandry and I know your family keeps goats. Do you know offhand whether goats are more or less expensive than other animals, in terms of the food they eat, the supplies they need, and the veterinary healing they typically require? I mean, if you compared a herd of goats to a herd of cows, which would you expect to be more costly in the long term?

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From:

alt_bill

Answer the first: no idea what he wants them for or how long he intends to keep them. Note: he was irked that they weren't alphabatised. They WERE alphabatised when I put them in his in-box. I suspect you didn't bother with that detail when you put them back. I have not mentioned to him that you had first crack at them. He was quite adamant that he wanted to see them before you did. Let's leave him in his happy certainty that you deferred to him to see them first. A happy Corax Mulciber is (usually) a marginally less dangerous Corax Mulciber.

Come to think of it, if you were to ask him for them, that would underscore the impression that you haven't seen them yet. He was in an ~~uncharacteristically~~ cheerful mood this afternoon, because apparently his brother is now making a rapid recovery. So it might be an ideal time to make your request.

Answer the second: Oh, cows would definitely be more expensive. They require more fodder, their pregnancies last longer, and they are much more particular about what they will eat. Goats will eat practically anything (which my Mum has been known to observe mournfully whenever one gets a hold of her sleeve if she's not paying close attention and manages to chew a hole in it).

(And I can't help wondering why you're asking me this.)

From:

alt_rachel

Of course I put the file back in its proper spot! His clerk might have gone rummaging, though.

In any case, that's a good thought. I'll ask for them tomorrow, to reinforce the idea that he's had access to them and I haven't, and plan on a few more days that no doubt he'll hold on to them out of sheer spite whether he actually needs them or not.

In the meantime I can keep going through these financial records. The odd thing is that every camp I've looked at so far has exactly the same veterinary care and supply budget, which seems odd, as they have different sorts of animals (Saltash had cows -- well, might still have cows behind the ward. Taunton Deane, on the other hand, has a flock of sheep and it's a much smaller flock but the same budget. Stroud has goats, and again, same budget. I should check Epping; it's enormous, and I think they've got multiple animal husbandry operations going, so surely their budget will be higher.) It just makes me wonder where they're pulling numbers from. Food budgets are pegged to the size of the camp. Staff budgets are set based on the number of wizards employed there. If it were graft, I'd expect to see one camp that was markedly higher. Probably someone set the figure at some point and no one's altered it since. (I mean, the camp with the goats isn't going to say, 'oh, goats will eat anything! we don't need this much money!')

From:

alt_rachel

But really, I'd have thought that a budget for animal husbandry expenses would be pegged to the head count of the precise animal -- like, if you've got a flock of sheep, one would expect to see a certain number of galleons per head per year to cover food and everything else. (They're all cared for by muggles, of course, and adding muggle labour to the expense calculation would be unnecessarily complex, but I'd think this number would include the food, any veterinary healing, and I suppose the shears if you're raising sheep for wool and ... I don't know. Bags for the wool. Bottles for the milk if you're keeping dairy cows. I guess part of what's frustrating is that this is absurdly far outside my area of expertise, but I can't think of any reason that, say, 500 cows would cost the same as 200 sheep, or however many it was.)

From:

alt_bill

Huh. That does seem odd.

Although...

From:

alt_bill

I don't suppose you'd let me look over those figures by any chance? I'd be curious to see which camps are involved. Or are the figures the same for all the ones you've checked?

From:

alt_rachel

I did pull Epping, and the figure was higher for Epping, at least. I haven't looked at the other really large camps yet.

You can look at them if you want. I'm still at the office if you want to come over now (and Corax is long gone).

From:

alt_bill

I'm recalling something my father briefly mentioned in passing several years ago.

If I'm correct, the ostensible reason for the line item in the budget may not be the real one.

From:

alt_rachel

Oh really. Do tell.

From:

alt_bill

Humour me first, and satisfy my curiosity. What made you choose to go into Malfeasance Elimination Unit, Auror Lamont? Or more specifically, what sort of Malfeasance are you burning to eliminate?

Budgets can be very...elastic creations, don't you think? Are you open to the idea of fostering such creativity, as long as Malfeasance is indeed truly being eliminated? Even if it's not perhaps the exact, specific type you'll find in the MLE code book?

From:

alt_bill

This is, of course, an entirely hypothetical question.

From:

alt_rachel

Oh, you have no idea what sort of hypothetical oddities you'll find in an average departmental budget. It's corruption I'm looking for, but on many occasions I've wandered down some enticing hole in the numbers only to find someone who was getting entirely legitimate expenses reimbursed under entirely the wrong budget.

Are you talking about the sort of scenario where there was extra money in one budget, so they pulled money out of it for something that should have gone in another column? Like when someone needs an assistant but there's no money left in the staffing budget so the assistant gets hired and the salary gets charged to the bit set aside for office supplies on the grounds that an 'assistant' is a type of 'supply' and everyone's just extra careful with their quills until the next fiscal year?

Everyone does that and it's really only a problem from my perspective because it wastes so much of my time when it LOOKS like the sort of thing I'm looking for (which is corruption, mostly -- bribery, people charging for unused veterinary supplies and pocketing the extra, that sort of thing.)

I'm confident your father wasn't pocketing the money because if he were, you'd never have mentioned it to me (surely!) Or if he was, you don't suspect him of it. So what's being charged to veterinary expenses at nearly every (possibly every) muggle camp in the Protectorate?

From:

alt_bill

No, this was done, I swear, for the good of the Protectorate. For the good of the animals.

Here's a hint: go back and look at when that line item started showing up in camp budgets. I believe it was about five years back.

Then go back to the previous year before that and check the Muggle maternal death rate. Due to complications related to, er, dropping calves.

Compare it to the maternal death rate this year.

See the difference? It's entirely due thanks to the excellence and reliability of those 'animal husbandry services.' But those services wouldn't have made it into the budget at all if they had been called what they really were.

I daresay that for that very reason, Corax Mulciber will cut them immediately if you say something about it.

I sincerely hope that you don't.

From:

alt_bill

It's clear, by the way, that you never met my father. If you had, you'd realise ~~what an in~~ the utter absurdity of suggesting that he ever did anything at the Ministry merely to enrich himself.

From:

alt_rachel

Don't be absurd, Bill. I learned a long time ago not to assume that someone couldn't possibly be embezzling simply because they seemed honest and forthright and sincere. Liars and cheats wouldn't get far if they couldn't convince the people around them they were honest.

So. Healers for muggle mothers. Fascinating. I guess the thing I'm really curious about is how this got slipped past the Camp Administrators? I'm sure that bloke who was selling muggle girls to be hunted and marking their deaths down as 'in camp' wouldn't have hired healers for muggles.

From:

alt_bill

I don't remember all the details, but I think much of it went to midwife training, and simple kits to give to the mothers. So the information and materials were dispensed among the women themselves, you see. Even if they didn't have a healer--or a veterinarian--available at the birth, they would have the know how to keep the area sterile, and to cut the cord with something that wouldn't spread disease. Better outcomes, you see.

The program has saved lives, more workers for the Protectorate, you see. Very convenient, for very little extra cost.

Are you going to raise a stink about it? If you do, I'm sure Corax Mulciber would probably be happy to hex the line item off the spread sheets.

From:

alt_rachel

I don't report to Corax, and this isn't the sort of thing I'm trying to stamp out.

But someone must have bought the kits, arranged the training, and distributed them in the camps. Was it your father?

From:

alt_bill

He knew about it. After the fact. But he kept it quiet.

As to who did the implementation, I don't have any idea. Someone in Muggle Domestication, I suppose. Dad was only the Liaison to that Department, so HE didn't have any oversight into their budgets.