The importance of a comfy chair cannot be stressed enough - particularly by Britain's Ministry of Defence, now that it's come to light that, in the midst of enormous cuts to military funding, they've ordered 3,150 civil servants the most comfortable chair money can buy - at a cost of about $2,500 apiece.

Around the same time British troops were being sent off to Iraq with a lack of proper equipment, the MoD was ordering nearly a million bucks worth of chair. The expense is particularly preposterous now that it's being made public that Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon is preparing to shave 1.5-billion pounds from the Army's budget.

The MoD argues that the chairs were a necessary cost in bringing the office up to "acceptable modern standards" and would ultimately lead to a more efficient work staff. Perhaps a good idea, considering part of the budget cuts were spurred by the ministry's civil servants' flawed calculations in prior years.

» Scott Saxon