That was as far as I got with it, too. There’s a reference in Hansard as well that claims a ridiculously low figure (guess the party affiliation of the speaker), but that’s it as far as UK law is concerned.

I wonder why no one is really doing any digging on this?

The statistic comes from Germany, where they did a comprehensive survey of all laws passed since 1998. He assumes that it will be roughly similar for Britain, but challenges ministers to produce their own figures if they disagree.

Coin and Print our own money FREE instead of Borrowing it, no Govt Debt (currently over £1Trillion, what’s the Interest on that I wonder )

All the complexity in taxation costs us Billions more, Eliminate Taxation on anything but Purchases, that way, only vendors need keep records, tax receipts and fill in Tax forms.

I have argued with others over the origin of this; I would love to find a definitive source (Hansard / EU minutes etc) that actually goes through the facts rather than just repeating this “statistic”.

Therefore to change the culture
- Start with MPs expenses. The general principle is that MPs are elected representatives, there to serve the public. It is legitimate for the taxpayer to meet those costs to enable an MP to carry out these duties, but not to enrich that individual whilst in public office.
- With Education – create a voucher system and make all schools autonomous. Allow for diversified examinations and syllabuses.
- With Health Care. Introduce vouchers to encourage various types of healthcare provider. Etc.
- All activities (and regulations) to be assessed for costs as well as benefits.

The next administration must start to dismantled the dependency culture that has steadily increased over the last 12 years. Yes we should have a safety net but one aimed at turning people round, back into useful roles in society – depending on circumstances some may be paid and some may be ‘voluntary’ – but no one should simply be paid to site at home. Self respect comes from having something to do every day not vegitating in front of the TV with a packet of cigarettes and the latest special offer from the off licence.

“Efficiency” is all about doing what you do now but doing it at lower cost; there is obviously scope for this in the public sector.

On the other hand such measures as scrapping the ID card fiasco and scrapping regional government are not efficiency savings, they are about reducing the functions of the State.

Substantial inroads into government debt can only be made by reducing the number of things government does, not by tinkering with the way it does them.

So here goes

Both Business and The Country have costs which have to be met.
Business use raw materials which is a necessary cost.
We could say the raw materials of the Country are its Citizens another neccessary cost.
Business has overheads which are a variable cost
Citizens Benefits/Pensions are a variable cost to the Country.
Business has income from sales.
The Country has Taxpayers and Business Tax for income.
Business aims to work efficiently to make a profit to reinvest.
The Country should aim to balance the books and use a surplus to enhance their citizens way of life (better police, Nhs, eductation etc) or to reduce/balance the costs to those who contribute.
Business try to run as lean a management team as possible to reduce overheads.
The Country should do the same, and not have over complicated systems which are more expensive to run than neccessary.

On occassion you do get a reduction in the number of citizens with either war or illness, perhaps even the odd government toxic leak from a research laboratory, but this usually effects those who are productive, and so it does not help.

We could also get out of balance by having too many citizens arriving (perhaps uncontrolled) increasing the population at large (raw material cost), especially if they do not work (produce tax) as well.

Clearly this is very simplistic and I would agree that the solution is rather more complicated than above, but think the basis is not far away.

But let’s not stop there, that’s far too timid. Let’s TRULY peg all existing public sector pensions to RPI. In other words, use the RPI average over the year, and if it is negative (“deflation”) then CUT pensions by that amount.

The current public sector fantasy world of index-linked, unfunded pensions must be completely overhauled. Savers are hurting. Pensioners are hurting. Private sector employees are hurting. It’s time for civil servants to accept their fair share of the pain.

I think term limits, open primaries and more independents would help too but that’s the subject of a separate rant….

A simple cost-cutting measure that will save both the government money (£9bn a year at last estimates) and the public money (for starters, the CAP adds around £400 a year to the average families food bill).

We don’t want to be in the EU anymore (55% of Britains want to leave it – BBC Poll) and I’m fairly sure the EU would be much happier without our eurosceptic MEPs ruining the Brussels consensus.

And the best bit, we get to make 100% of our own laws, rather than the 15% we currently do.