Monday, 7 September 2009

The wasted money is sickening

Right, another rant I'm afraid, this one courtesy of no-one in particular, just general incompetence and the government's love affair with wasting money at a staggering level. First let me ask a question. If you were to suggest spending money improving school buildings for economical and aesthetic reasons. What would you do and how much would it cost? I would probably spend up to about a million quid getting a national team together putting together some computer models and working out some industry standard costings for things like double-glazing and room re-fits etc and then let councils use these to work out whether certain work is value for money or not.
Now, what would the government permit? Look here. They would tell councils to look into it and assume they will spend about 3% of the money on 'consultants' which they have done to the tune of £170M. Now, I don't mind big numbers to achieve big things. Investment and all that is good for long-term situations but honestly £170M? You pay people who know how to charge large sums for knowledge that to be honest exists outside of this exclusive club of thieves. To be honest, you could pay a local experienced builder even some quantity surveyors some money or better still, provide a contract job for someone in the industry which will cost, let's say £100,000 each county council and which will not add up to anything like the money spent. But oh no, because we are the government and we can promise ludicrous amounts of money to be magic'd up from nowhere we don't care about value-for-money. God help the next government have to deal with all the debt we have accrued from the happy-go-spending Labour party.

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