3933 days ago
he Environment Agency is in the headlines again. This time not for its obvious ineptitude in dealing with floods but for its obvious skill in pissing away cash on matters that have nothing whatsoever to do with its stated remit.
The list of shameful waste is a long one. £639 on mugs stating “Some people are gay, get over it” for its staff, £30,000 sponsoring the Birmingham gay pride march, £13,631 hiring meeting rooms at Fulham, Aston Villa and Sheffield United all of which are located within a few miles of where the Agency has its own offices; £3,600 sponsoring a speech and reception at the Royal Society of Arts (a speech given by EA Chairman Lord Smith); £1,056 on pin badges for 500 staff working on an Olympics event; £1,134 was spent on a plush dinner at Hotel Du Vin in Bristol for board members of the Environment Agency and Natural England to discuss ‘joint working and collaboration, etc, etc, etc.
As ever the issue here is that those spending the money (quango bosses) have a very different agenda from those providing the cash (the grateful taxpayer). I support gay pride marches and also a football club but if I want to give my money that is my call. The EA is giving other people’s money away.
I am sure that if one goes through the fine detail of how other Government agencies spend taxpayer’s cash one will see similar tales of how cash is used to sponsor pet projects outside the core remit and also to give senior staff a jolly good time. The State and State funded bodies’ ALWAYS
4273 days ago
It is not just the British Government that pisses away cash. All Governments do it. If you are spending other folks (i.e. taxpayers) dosh you do not count the pennies as if it was your own dosh. That is why the State is always inherently wasteful. However much cash it is given it will never be enough. In this vein I bring you a little gem from the USA.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded $1.5 million to study biological and social factors for why “three-quarters” of lesbians are obese and why gay males are not, calling it an issue of “high public-health significance." Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Mass., has received two grants administered by NIH’s Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) to study the relationship between sexual orientation and obesity.
I offer one explanation. Gay men have many more sexual encounters each year than gay women and many of these tend to be transitory – thus looking good is more important to them. That is a statement of fact. But do I really care? Whatever the reason what is the NIH going to do with the data? Round up the fat lesbians and send them off to health farms? Stick gay men on a diet of full fat ice cream?
The reality is that whatever results this survey comes up with there is sod all that the Government can do to alter the fact that there are more fat lesbians than gay men. It is thus an utterly pointless waste of taxpayer’s cash. No-one spending their own cash would come up with a survey where the answer is not worth knowing and where there is nothing that can be done even when the answer is known. Only Governments could possibly contemplate engaging in such folly.
And Obama reckons that he is doing all that he can do to tackle the ruinous US deficit?
4380 days ago
Every day some bleating lefty from local Government is quoted on how the wicked Tories are savaging front line services by cutting their budget. Well a) they are not and b) the way the same folks find ways to piss away the cash they do have is just amazing. Today’s two faced deluded lefty of the day is Councillor Chris Roberts, the long serving leader of Greenwich Council in London. Labour ‘natch.
What Comrade Roberts says:
4386 days ago
The Daily Mail has its knickers in a twist about how £230 million of taxpayers cash is being pissed away by DfiD on an education programme in Nigeria. The Mail is wrong. What needs to be asked is why we are giving cash at all to the world’s 8th largest exporter of crude oil.
But to humour the Mail it is perhaps noting the report of The Independent Commission on Aid Impact. The UK has poured £102million into education in ten of Nigeria’s 36 states during the last seven years, and is due to spend a further £126million by 2019. But the report found that a third of the eligible children – an estimated 3.7million – were still not in school, while those that were received little by way of education.
4461 days ago
If one listens to the BBC or reads the Guardian the wicked Tories are slashing public spending. These means real cuts to front-line services which means the poorest and weakest folks in society really suffering. Ahem…it is just not true.
The facts are that Government spending is increasing in real terms (and per head of population in real terms) year on year and will continue to do so throughout this Parliament. And since tax receipts are patently not going up as fast (indeed I suspect at all) that means that the UK Government deficit and UK national debt will continue to increase. At one stroke the wicked Tories both enrage the lefties but actually do nothing to sort out the economic mess we are in.
