Last week Guido revealed how at least 35 British public sector representatives jollied in sunny Cape Town on a massive taxpayer funded booze-up – while their sector was supposedly on strike over pensions. Looks like Prof Linda Bauld of Sterling University, chief adviser to Cancer Research on alcohol, obesity and tobacco had a great time at the World Conference on Tobacco and Health. She has warned Brits about how alcohol causes cancer. Anyway, there she is above centre at a Cape winery.

One prof even went on safari:

Today’s postcard from #SouthAfrica: a slightly heart stopping encounter with an elephant. Glad it decided to turn around & amble off! pic.twitter.com/4TPN1DDukI

— Marita Hefler (@m_hef) 13 March 2018

Nice work if you can get it – bought and paid for by you…

Britain’s bloated public sector could save £4 billion-a-year over the next 15 years by replacing 250,000 human civil servants with more efficient robots, according to a study by the wonks at Reform. Chat bots and other web AI could all but wipe out administrative roles, while drones and robots will take over policing and medicine. This would streamline the sector to its essential human core: the 20% of strategy-setting top minds. Reform said the changes would mean:

“The NHS, for example, can focus on the highest risk patients, reducing unnecessary hospital admissions. UK police and other emergency services are already using data to predict areas of greatest risk from burglary and fire.”

Robots – in the form of AI driven software agents – also have the advantage of not going on strike and making fewer mistakes than humans in critical processes. Today’s study is the latest in a slew of similar reports: Oxford University predicted 850,000 jobs could go to robots. The data-driven, automated public sector would wipe out the government’s budget deficit…