Squandered

It’s at times like this dear reader, that I tempt you to dip not only into previous articles written here, but also to visit such web sites as the Tax Payers Alliance, or read ‘The Bumper Book of Government Waste 2008’, Brown's Squandered Billions, by Matthew Elliott, & Lee Rotherham.

Depressingly, the figure has been identified as a staggering £101 billion of government misspending - all paid for by you, the taxpayer.

It's such an enormous figure it is difficult to comprehend.

What could be done with £101 billion?

Well, for a start, the government could cut the tax burden of every household by over £4,000 a year.

Here are just a few examples of where all of that money has gone:

- £280,000 on a conference addressed by Blair and Brown on value for money in the public services.

- £400 million on 'cost control' for the Olympic Games.

- £3 million by tax inspectors at HM Revenue and Customs on flights, including £2.1 million on flights to Scotland.

- Over £16 million on the creation and upkeep of VIP lounges in Heathrow and Gatwick despite the fact they are not government-owned.

- £100,000 on assessing whether £400,000 reportedly spent on modern art for seven hospitals was money well spent.

So it’s hardly any surprise when our banks don't have a tight grip on our finances, when they have this type of example to follow. Is it any wonder we’re in trouble?

Over the past year, newspaper headlines have cried out, 'Admit it Gordon, you are not up to the job,’ as we all knew the defining characteristics of a Brown administration.

'He went out of his way to avoid a leadership challenge.

He wouldn’t call a snap general election because he was frightened he might lose.

He wouldn’t hold a vote on the Euro treaty, despite Labour's promise, because he knew he'd lose. He trampled British democracy into the dirt with his outrageous refusal to honour his promise to hold a referendum on the European constitution.
And, yes, he was too cowardly even to attend the formal signing ceremony. He even had the effrontery to suggest the Irish should vote twice on something the British people were refused the opportunity to vote on even once.



As for his self-proclaimed record as Chancellor, he left his successor with such a poisoned chalice that he was forced to borrow £2.7 billion just to escape from the 10p tax fiasco, which was only brought about because of a clumsy attempt to score a cheap political point.

So what’s the best our Prime Minister can come up with?

In the middle of the worst economic crisis in our lifetimes our Prime Minister came up with an initiative that riveted the nation’s attention.

He kissed the wife.

Gordon Brown, the lame leader of the New Labour needed his wife to introduce him at their Party Conference.
The nation’s attention became focused on the Browns’ mouth-to-mouth action, whilst surrounded by doom and gloom, and the economy on its way to hell in a handcart, the banking crisis continued.
Now of course, some will say, ‘what’s it got to do with me’? It’s only affecting those fat cats, who deserve all they get.

So let me just remind you, that under comrade Brown’s watch, Britain's prosperous regions of London, the South East and the East of England are subsidizing public spending in the rest of the UK by almost £40billion a year.

That equates to almost one pound in six paid in tax in London and the South East is spent elsewhere in Britain.

Every taxpayer in London and the South East region hands over an average of at least £2,000 more to the taxman a year than they receive in the value of the public services provided.

This huge transfer of money from London and the South East to other regions is swollen by billions of pounds in tax from financial industries in the City.

Now there are concerns over the City's role in helping the South East to pay for spending elsewhere grows as the credit crisis hits financial firms' profits and threatens to force the Chancellor to borrow billions of pounds extra for public services when the Treasury is already deep in the red.

So the government has only one option left open, which is massive and deep public spending cuts, with councils in the South East bearing the brunt of that burden.

So what does that mean for Medway? We who already have had millions ‘stolen’ from us. You dear reader, and residents of these towns, already know the answer.