ConDem – The Government That Just Keeps Giving (And Taking)

Reading Time: 2 minutes

In the week when MPs get an 11% pay rise and a brand spanking new pension scheme, (have I mentioned those before?) just so long as they stop claiming for tea and biscuits for the office, we get the disastrous (some may say criminally so) waste of millions/billions of pounds by Government.

I’ve mentioned before the odious Iain Duncan Smith’s Department for Work and Pensions and their ridiculous Universal Credit Scheme.  By anybody’s best estimate it is due to WASTE at least £34,000,000 and possibly anything up to £130,000,000 because the IT system won’t work. Back to the Drawing Board there then.

Phillip Hammond’s Ministry of Defence is set to waste £7.4 million because he tried to privatise (that P word again) their procurement system and all but one of the bidders withdrew. I wonder why that could be? Maybe there’s not so much profit in procurement as the private side thought.

This is on top of my old friend “Aircraft Carriers” that I’ve ranted about before.

The Government changed Labour’s plans to buy jump jets. But after delays and more costs emerged, Defence Secretary Philip Hammond announced a U-turn costing at least £74million, the National Audit Office has revealed.

Margaret Hodge said: “We were supposed to get two aircraft carriers, available from 2016 and 2018, at a cost of £3.65billion. We are now on course to spend £5.5billion and have no aircraft carrier capability for nearly a decade.

“Officials also made incredibly basic errors such as forgetting to include the costs of VAT and inflation.” Now that one’s an absolute classic. I do hope someone got sacked for that.

Hammond’s department was also responsible for a trifling £40,000 bill over the last two years for ringing the Speaking Clock. Speechless.

And then today we get the news that a totally disgraceful £55 BILLION is being wasted through Fraud and Unclaimed Taxes according to the Public Accounts Committee who described this figure as “worryingly high“. The Public Accounts Committee obviously employ masters of understatement amongst their staff.

Total government accounts drawn up by the Treasury show that in 2011-12 some £13.2 billion had to be written off due to fraud and error. Margaret Hodge (again) said: “Taxpayer losses due to fraud and error are worryingly high. It is staggering that, in one year, the public sector was defrauded of over £20 billion and the tax gap rose to £35 billion.”

But it’s OK, we are in times of Austerity. Your pay has been frozen, your pension eroded, but HMG can continue to waster staggering amounts of money and still qualify for an 11% pay rise. When’s the next election? Might just stand, seems like a good number to me.

But one serious question. What could you do with all that money if you added it up and used it for fixing the Police, NHS, Armed Forces. Someone, somewhere wouldn’t be losing their job, folks could have the right kit, we might have a usable aircraft carrier somewhere, hospital waiting times reduced, who knows what you could do with it all. A Bean Counter somewhere could tell us I’m sure.

Enjoyed the post? Share it?
0
0

13 thoughts on “ConDem – The Government That Just Keeps Giving (And Taking)”

  1. It won’t improve in 2015 either, none of them are committed to sensible spending policies and their political dogma drives them along time after time.

  2. It won’t improve in 2015 either, none of them are committed to sensible spending policies and their political dogma drives them along time after time.

  3. I would love to see comparative figures for the previous government Alan. I know of the £12 billion squandered on the NHS computer system for starters. But that’s the problem when ministers and public officials are not spending their own money, they don’t care about it or the consequences.

  4. I would love to see comparative figures for the previous government Alan. I know of the £12 billion squandered on the NHS computer system for starters. But that’s the problem when ministers and public officials are not spending their own money, they don’t care about it or the consequences.

    1. That’s exactly the point Bob, they squander money like water and at the same time subject everybody else to reduced living standards. I don’t care how much one earns, most ‘normal’ folk have had to make savings and adjustments. Unbelievable arrogance on a grand scale.

Comments are closed.

Scroll to Top
Verified by MonsterInsights