Jeffrey Zeldman posted about a personal experience of when budgets are spent just to ensure the same budget is delivered the next year:

The client—the marketing side of a product development group—had a budget of $60,000 to spend. So they spent it, even though the R&D side of the product development group had not been able to deliver the product.

It’s a theme that comes to mind pretty often - whether it’s in the case of the M4 Motorway (runs past Reading on it’s way from London to South Wales) which always seems to have some sort of roadworks going on to erect another set of new informational signs (that usually inform you that there is a delay due to roadworks… endless loop, that) or the fact that new buildings were constantly appearing all over campus at Loughborough while I was there because - and this is just conjecture that was commonly believed around the place - the huge revenue from the sports side of things couldn’t solely be put back in to the sports concerns.

Seems like there are a hundred million places excess money could be going that would make massive differences to people’s lives. But then things just don’t work that way, do they?