Mar 29 2007
The government’s wasteline - Margaret Beckett, John Reid and Tessa Jowell swell it-Lets ask Mrs Beckett to cancel the EU fine
<p>Three Cabinet Ministers - three cases of incompetence - three bills for the taxpayer.</p>
<p>1.??Margaret Beckett presided over a complete mess when trying to pay farmers under the CAP. The farmers did not receive the money on time. The taxpayer has to pay for expensive computing and remedial work. The UK gets a large fine from the EU! Total cost - around ??500 million of wasteful expenditure.</p>
<p>2. John Reid cannot run the Home Office competently. Taxpayers have to pick up the bill for a major reorganisation, splitting the job so John Reid has a better chance of understanding the isssues and controlling the work. Cost - still to be revealed.??Doubtless we will be asked to pay for fitting out new offices, new stationery, consultancy exercises, and a great deal of effort wasted on internal matters rather than on running the services.</p>
<p>3. Tessa Jowell not only wastes a great deal of civil service effort on a Gambling scheme which Parliament rejects, but her department presides over an empty Dome at direct cost to the rest of us.</p>
<p>??</p>
<p>What should they do to make amends?</p>
<p>Better than sacking Margaret Beckett, she should be asked in her new job to work out a way to stop us having to pay a fine to the EU for her incompetence in a previous job. It is ridiculous that the UK taxpayer has to pay a fine to the EU because its government has made a mess of dishing out more taxpayers money under an EU scheme. She could do this by agreement, or legislate to disapply this imposition on the UK
If John Reid cannot do the whole job of Home Secretary he and the new Secretary State for Justice should at least pledge not to charge the taxpayer for an expensive reorganisation. They should have to use up all exisitng stationery, not allowed any new offices and not hire consultants.
Tessa Jowell should be required to find a profitable use for the Dome before she does anything else.
</p>
John Redwood has been the Member of Parliament for Wokingham since 1987. First attending Kent College, Canterbury, he graduated from Magdalen College...
JR: “Margaret Beckett presided over a complete mess when trying to pay farmers under the CAP.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article674208.ece
JR: “What should they do to make amends?”
Forfiet all pension entitlement accrued since entering parliament. An MPs pension entitlement is grossly over generous, anyway.
JR: “Tessa Jowell should be required to find a profitable use for the Dome before she does anything else.”
My partner keeps a damn beady eye on joint finances and certanly wouldn’t sign an agreement to a new mortgage, without giving me a good grilling!
If Tessa Jowell gives as much oversight to the public finances as she claims to give to her private finances, then she is dangerous in a post with the responsibilities of the Department of culture Media and Sport. Then of course we know she doesn’t. Her private finances are in tip top form, the revolting woman even dumped her husband to make sure of it. Meanwhile, the finances of the Olympic bid are turning into a veritable Olympian ‘black hole’. Original wildly underestimated bid
The really sad thing is, standards of administration and accountability have collapsed all over Whitehall, and it starts to get a bit
Stuart Fairney: “I can only presume the lack of experience in industry and commerce means many of the cabinet lack the basic core skills to do their jobs properly.”
I sympathise but disagree, it’s not even the MP’s or cabinet ministers. They are pretty much dispensable, after all the country was run competantly under Edward Heath, and he was the biggest waster of them all, spending more time floating around in Morning Cloud than Parliament. In actual fact, in a functioning democracy the whole lot can be changed tomorrow (which is one reason we do not need the post of deputy Prime minister), and the machine will carry on working, because the mechanism is slim and well oiled. What we have today, is a degenerate wreck. None of the levers is connected to any meaningful mechanism, I think the rot started under Margaret (God bless her) she brought in too many special advisers, then over time, successive governments have repeated and amplified the error, until this latest wretched bunch of scoundrels. The result is the civil service is in disarray, the structures that were in place to maintain order and dicipline are gone.
Then throw into the chaos the equal opportunities groupies and the equality of outcomes brigade and there is so much socpe for infighting, empire building and general bitching. The civil service is too big and too unfocused to be useful.
The wild card of course is Europe, the civil service does not know who it is really serving, the British government, or the Brussels government. I am not a religious fellow, but there are so many plumbs in the bible, in this case I commend Luke 16:13.
Twenty five years ago, we used to laugh at the Italians. There government was corrupt their administration was incompetent. Well, look at us now, I blame the EU.
John Redwood
You cannot talk about Labour incompetence at all when all you did during your time in power was make a complete mess along with your government. Crime Doubled, Economic Mess and with it Hurrendous School results. So I don’t think you can mock this lot, as least they try.
Reply: We did many things that worked well, then paid a heavy price for the mess of the ERM - recommended by Mr Brown as well as adopted by Mr Major.