You know the bit where Bob goes to his meeting with a bunch of people from other government departments, and everyone has to introduce themselves and say where they work and what they hope to get from the meeting and all that jazz? Well anyway, within the part of the UK Civil Service that I have the rather ambiguous privilege to work for (which, as per our Code of Conduct, will have to remain nameless)this particular procedure has the rather gloriously apposite nickname (for the purposes of The Laundry anyway); we call it "The Creeping Death".
I am aware that those of us toiling in at least one of the other agencies refer to it this way. I'd hazard a guess that it's a pretty common parlance amongst we minor functionaries. So yeah, make of that what you will. I guess when you give a bunch of people some thankless and (figuratively, at least - I hope) soul-destroying jobs, they work out some pretty strange ways of amusing themselves.
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