Commissioner's responisbility in an age of competition

What prompted this blog?
In common with many others, I don't make enormous profits from management consulting, and rely on a fairly good stream of consulting to pay the costs. Of course once a week has passed without consulting, it can never be recovered.
We've had two interviews for work postponed.
In one case this severely restricts the intense work needed before Christmas from 4 weeks to 2 weeks, which will cause real problems with getting a high quality of work delivered (of course we can do it, but we'll need to put more resource in which compromises people's family time) - reason given: "key people are on holiday" (shouldn't they have checked this before setting the timetable?)
In the other the commissioner changed their mind over a key spreadsheet and we had a frantic few days transferring all of the information from the old submission format to the new and cross-checking for errors.
Sometimes it feels as though the commissioners on a salary (and often on a government-funded salary not tied in any way to outputs) lose touch with reality. All I'm asking is that you act as good stewards of public money, and plan your holidays around your duties not the other way around?