New Labour = Waste

** So you work hard all month, get paid and then notice that you have had a large chunk taken out in tax. Ever wonder what happens to it? Do you think that it gos to the police, the army and the NHS, well some of it does but a lot gets wasted. Thanks to the tax payers alliance - link on sidebar, and numerous online papers.

Before I get to what its wasted I will reprint a quote that ol cyclops Gordon Brown should take on board: Winston Churchill - "For a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle."

Some estimates have said that upto and maybe more than £80 billion is wasted a year. Here are some classic gems that you will all be pleased to know your tax money is being spent on:

• Some £225,000 was spent on a scheme to advise people not to wear ill-fitting slippers.
• Some £40,000 was spent on coming up with a 46-word definition relating to patients' experience of the national health service. That works out at roughly at £1,000 a word.
• The Home Office has employed 142 consultants at a cost of £74 million.
• My favourite example is the £10,000 being spent by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister on examining whether fire engines should remain red."

Source: Hansard, 17 January 2006, Column 230WH

If the RAF’s top brass were taken aback when Senior Aircraftwoman Stephanie Hulme announced her desire to retrain as a pole dancer, their handlebar moustaches hardly betrayed a quiver. She was flown from her base in Northern Ireland and put up in a London hotel so she could learn the sinuous arts of stripping on a £2,100 course.

“It hadn’t occurred to me that they might pay, but I just filled in the paperwork and sent it in. I was very surprised when it was approved,” said Hulme, now successfully re-employed as an exotic dancer in a Mayfair club where she earns up to £2,000 a night.

link here: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2092-1974691,00.html

The Home Office is not short of novel ways of spending its £13.6 billion expenditure limit, even leaving aside the £74m spent in 2004 hiring 142 consultants at an average of half a million each. A prime example is a recent project to interview up to 300 convicted drug dealers and traffickers to draw up a model of their business practices.

More than £100m was wasted to keep 25,000 homes empty for asylum seekers between 2002 and 2005; a drop in the number of applicants left thousands of homes empty but a contract glitch obliged the Home Office to continue paying the rent. In a similar debacle, the government scrapped an asylum centre in Bicester, Oxfordshire, that cost taxpayers £18m.

n much the same spirit, Kingston prison in Portsmouth has hired a pagan priest to give spiritual guidance to three inmates who converted to the religion while serving life sentences. To deny them such solace (costing the taxpayer £11.56 an hour plus expenses) could infringe their human rights, said John Robinson, the prison governor.

In the apoplexy stakes, the Home Office performs splendidly. There was the £500,000 overtime paid to six Essex policemen to come in on their days off to man speed cameras. A £67,000 salary was offered by Greater Manchester police for a “diversity director” to discourage discrimination. And two Sussex policemen were sent off on a six-week trip costing £5,000 to study gay community relations in San Francisco

Getting back to ol cyclops Brown it appears that his department spends £350,000 a year looking at how its shown in the media....keeping an eye on things at the office!

And when you think that they could not get any stranger, the next time the liar Blair or one of his brown nosed mp's tells you they are cutting back on waste remind them of this. They now have to hire people in order to make cutbacks....new labour finding new ways to waste our tax money.

Lastly on this bit, here is a sad tale of waste for people living in the Vale of Glamorgan, when the Government announced the building of a new super hangar, within the confines of RAF St. Athan. Its purpose was to centralise all aircraft maintenance for the RAF’s Tornado and Harrier fighter aircraft. The influx of specialist maintenance engineers, along with extra RAF personnel must have been a godsend to the beleaguered local economy.

How would one have voted in last year’s General Election, after this bountiful gift of the state? A pity, then that the New Labour regime, coupled with the archaic methods of the Ministry of Defence have seen this prosperous dream shattered.

The government today announced, that after just over 1 year, and £100 million of taxpayer’s money has been wasted, the facility is to close with the loss of 500 jobs.

** Brilliant article by Melanie Phillips on the concept of BBC newspeak: ww.melaniephillips.com
**Another brilliant on the ball cartoon from Drybones - link on sidebar - and I have just been reading about the latest attack on civilians by the Islamonazis on innocent people in Israel although to their sick view of the world there is no such thing as an innocent. My heart go's out to all the people there.

Oh yes lets not forget that New Labour regime quote: "Er, well it would be worse if the Conservatives were in power, and we are still cleaning up their mess. No hang on we have been in 3 terms, well I am sure they must be to blame. Still we will have a cabinet reshuffle and soon the new Chancellor Ruth Kelly will sort it all out!"

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