Customer Reviews

The Bumper Book of Government Waste: Brown's Squandered Billions

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In this useful book, Matthew Elliott and Lee Rotherham, both leading campaigners against the EU Constitution, give many examples of misapplied government spending. We are paying £28.3 billion in debt interest on money loaned to the government. Britain gives Northern Ireland, part of another country, £9 billion every year.

£2.7 billion has gone on Ministry of Defence budget overruns; its new offices cost £2.3 billion. Its 33 PFI projects are worth £26.964 billion in contracts, yet the capital assets that these contracts cover are worth just £5.452 billion. Under the Department for Work and Pensions' estates PFI contract, Britain's biggest ever property transaction, the taxpayer will give a land consortium £11.5 billion over the next ten years on assets worth only £455 million.

Much of the extra health and education spending goes straight through and out the other side into the pockets of private firms, the NHS's £30 billion failed IT project for example.

Quangos cost us £123 billion a year. The National Audit Office estimates that hiring consultants costs £3 billion a year. For its Olympics advice, accountancy firm KPMG charged the government £1 million then did not even produce the usual unnecessary report.

Our net contribution to the EU budget is £6 billion a year. Administering EU laws and regulations costs £6.3 billion a year. The EU gives its officials a MasterCard for business trips, telling them, "This card is totally free and may also be used for private purposes." The Bank of England gave the European Central Bank £56 million for the eurozone's reserves. £1.2 billion a year goes to the EU's nine puppet Regional Development Agencies, with their 3,000 staff and their CEOs paid £178K each.

The authors are right to expose public sector waste, but it would be nice if they also exposed the fraud and corruption in the private sector. After all, who did the government sign all these wretched PFIs with?