Mar 06 2007
The government’s Waste line
A recent correspondent said I should set up a Squandermeter to remind people just how much of our money this government wastes.
I replied that I would from time to time issue bulletins of the government’s bulging wasteline to remind people just how badly their cash is being spent by this administration.
??Some recent corkers include:
Over ??300 million paying fines to the EU for failing to pay farmers on time!
Up to ??20 billion on a national identity computer base and ID cards.
Livingstone’s huge spend on new signs, cameras and advetising to expand the Congestion Charging scheme
The large overrun on the Deputy Prime Minister’s budget
The continuing high spend on the centralised NHS computer system
John Redwood has been the Member of Parliament for Wokingham since 1987. First attending Kent College, Canterbury, he graduated from Magdalen College...
You should also highlight the general way in which the Government does business and negotiates contracts. Have you ever heard of a private company that does business with the Government ever having to pay for project overruns - no, it’s always the tax payer that picks up the bill. As the owner of a B2B company, I can say that whenever one of our projects is misquoted and overruns, it is us as the supplier that has to pick up the bill.
Add to this the scandalous way in which departments have to invent ways to spend every last penny of their budget for fear of having their budget reduced, and you have a system of running the public finances which has no incentive to cut waste.
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I notice tax credits (not the fraud and waste but the policy itself) is a no-go area for any senior Tory to talk about. Millions of people, all dependent on Gordon Brown’s brainchild to maintain their standard of living now, costing enough money (based on my rough calculations from what data I can find) to extend the 10% tax bracket by around
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