I recently applied for some part time work at a college not a million miles away from where I live. There was a formal advertisement in newspapers and elsewhere and even though I only learned about the job about 18 hours before the deadline for applications, meet the deadline I did. After about 10 days I received a reply to the extent that Unfortunately you were not succesful at this time. What on earth did they mean at this time? Now meaningless as that sentence was, I have latterly been trained to question such decisions so I called the man at the centre of this case to be told that even though the post had been advertised and so on, they had found someone in the meantime so my application had been in vain ... in other words, the whole process had been a sham. Whilst I do not intend to make more of a fuss than I am making here, I do find such cases distasteful as we are dealing with a publicly owned organisation together with a complete waste of resources that include my own time and effort. I listened to the man as he unveiled his side of the story and thanked him for his time. Let it be a lesson to us all: Britain's public services are operated in a questionable way at times and I remember the good old days when such things were unthinkable. The trade union would not have allowed this kind of thing to happen, let alone the rules of conduct of the College and the Local Authority that manages it. Thought I should tell you that! DW