Having read the Sunday Times the other day (failing on the crossword, but most of my words fitted), came across this years must read book, beats The Da Vinci Code hands down.
The Bumper Book of Government Waste (Whatever party yo may support don't matter they're just as bad as each other).
The scandal of the squandered billions: From the Dome to Lord Irvine's wallpaper by Matthew Elliot and Lee Rotherham.
Some extracts:-
- In 1997, the Government plundered £2 billion per week from its people. In 2004-05, the figure was £4.8 billion.
- The Arts Council spent £77,000 sending a team of artists to the North Pole to make a snowman.
- The Department for Health spent more than £225,000 teaching grannies how to wear slippers.
- Quangos cost over £22 billion per year.
- Local government pension schemes are in deficit to the tune of £27 billion. The taxpayer will fund the difference.
- 459 books were withdrawn from the EU's Luxembourg library last year. The cost to taxpayers was £2,138 per book.
- Ken Livingstone's office now costs £13.9 million to run. His staff includes 58 media and marketing personnel!
- Between 2000 and 2005, one in every two new jobs created was in the public sector, many of them administrative.
- Nottinghamshire tourism bosses spent £120,000 of taxpayers' money rebranding the county with a big 'N'.
Stories also include:-
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.
Or take the Ministry of Defence's £200 payout to the owner of an African grey parrot that was so alarmed by a low-flying jet that it fell off its perch and broke both legs. This was a mere bagatelle beside the £30,900 awarded to an 80-year-old woman who was blown off her feet by a Chinook helicopter. (Her slippers were not a factor in the case.)
As the biggest employer in Europe, and third only to Indian railways and the Chinese army, we have the National Health Service.
£9.00 MRP.
Dipps
