"Today is day 241," Ezekwesili counters, speaking slowly in an attempt to contain her obvious anger, "and the girls are still not back.
The idea was that you moved your tiny counters around the board not only by dice and chance cards, but also by instructions emanating from the husky-voiced Darth Vader on a simultaneously running video tape that you began to play at the start of the game.
Pen pushers, bean counters, faceless bureaucrats, stuffed shirts, spreadsheet monkeys, grey suits … are all terms that I have heard applied to the national health service's finance staff.
Yet there it is, the sad carpet of an unrenovated Centrelink, the banks of check-in counters that inspire a special feeling of dread (what if I am not checked in 45 minutes beforehand? What if my luggage is 50 grams overweight?
In the latter part of his career he worked in regulatory affairs, summarising drug trials for government reports on drugs including alpha blockers, prescribed for high blood pressure, and cimetidine, which counters stomach acid.
In the larger context, the post-2003 Sunninsurgentsts in Iraq – the "resistance", in Hampstead patois – were responsible for all the deaths they caused among fellow Iraqis, more deaths than the coalition, I assume, though the counters are usually silent on that point.
Lynas counters that he's unable to defend himself from charges he's exaggerated his role due the illegality of the acts he and his associates were complicit in.
I am one of the "bean counters" and until recently it was largely a case of sticks and stones for me.
"If he listens only to bean-counters and cheerleaders only concerned with abuse of the system, he will fail".
The 2010 Mirrlees Review of British taxation argued that bean-counters could compare the price of similar buildings in different locations, for instance.
But for all the heated debate over the changes, any improvement is likely to be modest.America's bean-counters were effectively self-regulating until 2002.
