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Blogs by Gregory K Sams
MP’s expenses - what a diversion!!! 11/5/2009 2:12:28 AM
Looking at the minor impact of MP's expenses in comparison to their wantonly wasteful use of our tax monies. Whilst I hate the thought of the swine of Westminster spending our money on moats, dog biscuits and second home expenses it’s really all a load of fuss about not very much indeed. The money involved is trivial (see below). Do we really think they are going to do a better job of managing our country with the time they do not spend figuring out how to best milk the system?
There are 645 MPs in Wasteminster. Let us say that each and every one of them milked the system for £100,000 of extras – every year. That comes to a total of £64.5 Million pounds. Ok.
Every month or so we hear of disastrous government schemes going wrong, and colossal waste on established programmes. Let’s overlook the cost of the war in Afghanistan or the inefficient NHS. Let’s focus just now on one tiny matter so insignificant it is unlikely to even make the papers, yet costs far more than MP’s picking our pockets.
You might think that farmers should not need subsidies to stay in business, but they are now hooked upon them. For the sake of this argument let us even overlook the £3 billion every year paid in agricultural subsidies (equal to £4.5 Million per MP). Let us look just at the cost of managing these subsidy payments.
I quote from the 15 October Soil Association daily News update.
“A new report from the National Audit Office says Defra and the Rural Payments Agency have shown 'scant regard' to protecting public money. Since 2005, the scheme has seen 304 million pounds spent on additional staff and 280 million pounds in EU fines for late payments. It also relies on an IT system which has cost a total of 350 million pounds. A further 43 million pounds of overpayments to farmers are likely to go unrecovered.”
Out of this total admin cost of £977 million, £323 million represents EU fines for late payment, and overpayments which will not be recovered. So EVERY YEAR, in this small backwater of government, £81 Million pounds are wasted due to gross inefficiency, equal to £125,000 p.a. per 645 MP’s.
Government IS waste – of OUR money. Don’t get lost in the details and think that plugging a hole in the trough at the pigpen is going to make any difference. My other book deals with this: Uncommon Sense – the State is Out of Date. It is all online and free to read.
