From "News in Brief", The Times, July 12:
Idle civil servants
Civil servants have been sitting in offices for months with no proper work to do, a government official said. David Bell, Permanent Secretary at the new Department for Children, Schools and Families, said he arrived at the department 18 months ago to find that 180 staff had "unallocated positions": projects they had worked on had ended but they had not been assigned new ones.
Couldn't find any more on this story. But it's enough. How many organisations that aren't funded by taxpayers would have thought that the way to respond to staff reaching the end of their projects and not having new ones to work on would be to pay them to do nothing for months?
UPDATE: More information in the Evening Standard report (hat-tip to the Taxpayers' Alliance).