Government waste
Discussion
Interesting...Labour are claiming that Conservative claims they could reduce tax by £4 billion by tackling Government waste don't add up, yet on the very same day we get this :-
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4185195.stm
£3 billion of benefits spending a YEAR lost to fraud and error, and that's just by the DWP. The mind boggles how much cash other departments are hemorrhaging. How on earth can that amount of loss be tolerated? Why aren't heads rolling? Makes me fume.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4185195.stm
£3 billion of benefits spending a YEAR lost to fraud and error, and that's just by the DWP. The mind boggles how much cash other departments are hemorrhaging. How on earth can that amount of loss be tolerated? Why aren't heads rolling? Makes me fume.
puggit said:
Government should be privatised 
Remember, loads of people work in local government because they wouldn't be able to hold down a job in the real world.
[stands back and watches the flames]
It's better to pay them to do something, than have to pay them benefits to do nothing.
One reason why we pay so much in taxes is the constant upkeep of benefit claimants.
they'll put up taxes to pay for a huge committee to investigate the waste, by going on all expenses paid trips to other countries, to discover more inventive ways of raising taxes further, so they can spend more on committies, jollies and generally buggering up the country. Bliars speach at the Airbus launch made me choke, Extolling the virtues of the (remains) british aerospace industry, he should have been annoyed at the former Labour governments inability to completely destroy it, despite thier worse efforts. He wouldn't have had to be so pleased with the Assembly of the wings then.
IMO you should only be able to work in government if you have worked in the real world and decided (with popular support) that things need doing in your field. Career Politicians are dangerous people - severely opinionated idealists who will persecute you if you don't entirely agree with their personal utopia they intend to force upon everyone.
Politics should exist to keep the country advancing at a natural pace, and to keep things that don't need changing for the sake of it just ticking over smoothly, rather than on 'governing ideologies'. The phrase 'common sense' has been associated with the Right. Right-wing is an ideology, and ideologies are the antithesis of common sense, so anyone who brands this neutrality as a bias is doing serious damage to the way this country thinks politically.
Politics should exist to keep the country advancing at a natural pace, and to keep things that don't need changing for the sake of it just ticking over smoothly, rather than on 'governing ideologies'. The phrase 'common sense' has been associated with the Right. Right-wing is an ideology, and ideologies are the antithesis of common sense, so anyone who brands this neutrality as a bias is doing serious damage to the way this country thinks politically.
v8thunder said:
Career Politicians are dangerous people - severely opinionated idealists who will persecute you if you don't entirely agree with their personal utopia they intend to force upon everyone.
Completely agree. I know a few such people at uni and they're rather scary with the lack of knowledge of the real world. Either they've got sufficient parental financial support that they've no concept of working or they've got their heads in cloud cookoo land.
Funnily enough, just got the following rant from an old friend who's a journalist at the BBC:
Rupert Murdoch is the only reason the BBC's worth keeping based on the shocking waste of fee payers money I've witnessed in my time here. It's truly unbelievable. I've worked at shitty local papers where standards have been much higher. Too many people getting far too much money for churning out absolute rubbish I'd be embarassed to call a story.
Away from the Beeb, my best stories get me loads of praise and street cred but pay a pittance. Yet here you sit in front of a desk copying and pasting wire stories and pick up silly money. It's why I've been here so long and why everyone moans about the place but doesn't leave. The whole thing's perverse.
Gilligan's not the only reason the changes have been made, but it's that debacle that made the place defenceless to what the government wanted to do. They felt they had to bow and scrape rather than fight. The fact is though there is a lot wrong. The place doesn't deliver value for money and there are far, far too many people working here. It's just that those on short-term contracts and the like are booted out while the inept people making the decisions that are killing individual departments are safe. That's capitalism I suppose. The Gilligan affair was just the biggest example of what I come across every day here. There are mini Gilligans all the time - single source stories that aren't trustworthy.
Rupert Murdoch is the only reason the BBC's worth keeping based on the shocking waste of fee payers money I've witnessed in my time here. It's truly unbelievable. I've worked at shitty local papers where standards have been much higher. Too many people getting far too much money for churning out absolute rubbish I'd be embarassed to call a story.
Away from the Beeb, my best stories get me loads of praise and street cred but pay a pittance. Yet here you sit in front of a desk copying and pasting wire stories and pick up silly money. It's why I've been here so long and why everyone moans about the place but doesn't leave. The whole thing's perverse.
Gilligan's not the only reason the changes have been made, but it's that debacle that made the place defenceless to what the government wanted to do. They felt they had to bow and scrape rather than fight. The fact is though there is a lot wrong. The place doesn't deliver value for money and there are far, far too many people working here. It's just that those on short-term contracts and the like are booted out while the inept people making the decisions that are killing individual departments are safe. That's capitalism I suppose. The Gilligan affair was just the biggest example of what I come across every day here. There are mini Gilligans all the time - single source stories that aren't trustworthy.
If you have a few spare hours and want to see real government waste, then try looking at some of the things the National audit office has found. Especially worrying is a lot of the defence programs which run spectacularly late and over budget and all financed by us muggins.
www.nao.org.uk
www.nao.org.uk
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