His son worked for the air-force in the intrusion into the Middle East, and the force put them onto a course to learn Farsi, the Iranian Persian language which normally takes people 4 years to learn proficiently. But because of the focus of the soldiers, everyone in the class condensed their learning into 2 years and the tutor was amazed and predicted everyone to pass with flying colours. (They were more fluent than some college students.)
If they passed, the force would have to pay them £20 more per day, so they raised the pass mark to 95% and everyone failed, despite everyone getting very close to that mark, and being fluent by this point. Most or all of the students left as a result.