Gordon Brown will announce today that the government is to spend an extra £1bn to lift 200,000 children out of poverty as he uses his final budget to help put Labour back on track to meet its target for alleviating deprivation among the young.
http://business.guardian.co.uk/budget2007/story/0,,2038983,00.html
Have Tony Blair and Gordon Brown been reading Picking Losers? Probably not. But there are hints that someone is mentioning the P word over at the Department of Health. But don't get too excited, all is not what it seems.
Has there been a government better at "charging for old rope" than this current one. As I understand, our taxes go, in large parts, to the funding of all things NHS - including their car parks. However, our money that went to towards building these car parks and maintaining them was only taken from us on the premise that we wouldn't actually use them, it transpires. If we actually want to use these car parks, paid for by us, then the NHS is going to make us pay more. Lots more. What better why to make a quick buck than to charge us twice for the same thing?
Gordon Brown has exhibited a "Stalinist ruthlessness" in government, belittling his cabinet colleagues whom the Treasury treats with "more or less complete contempt", according to the man who was Britain's top civil servant until two years ago.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/db4b60b8-d65c-11db-99b7-000b5df10621.html
The prospect that the National Health Service might provide only core services, with patients forced to pay for any other treatment or meet it from private insurance, was raised by the government yesterday.
So what can we expect from Wednesday's budget, apart from Gordon Brown boring us all to tears? Well, the buzz word at the moment is green and it's an expensive word at that. It seems the biggest losers on Wednesday will be the evil folk that are deliberately going around doing their best to destroy planet earth - yes, I'm talking about you Mr Car Driver. Mr Brown does not care that you have not got a viable alternative to get to work unless you live in London - in fact the less viable the better. For if these green taxes actually worked the Treasury would be out of pocket, the car industry would collapse and cost of running over crowded trains would bankrupt the country.
Don't forget to vote in the "what is Boris anyway?" poll.
Sharp as always, Wat Tyler at Burning Our Money has posted today about the Waste Resources Action Programme or WRAP (how clever - I wonder what came first, the name or the acronym... mmm, I wonder?). Now, as you will have probably guessed already WRAP is a Quango, but what makes them particularly special is they are challenging the British Potato Council for the most pointless use of public money. Indeed, the Quango that gave us National Chip Week is now being challenged by the Quango that gives us its research in to household food waste. Yes it does happen, folks - we throw away 6.7m tonnes of food every year. Incredible. What are we thinking throwing away all that perfectly good food? Well half of it is not perfectly good food, it's waste. Potato peelings, teabags, bones, that sort of thing. Why did they include old bones in this total, the overpaid bunch of clueless goons (see Wat's picture). That 6.7m tonnes statistic is probably the most pointless, meaningless stat of the year so far. And it costs us £80m a year to receive these nuggets of information. Great find Wat - if it wasn't true I'd probably be laughing even more.
So it was finally announced yesterday how much the Olympics is really going to cost us (at least until it is re-calculated in a year or so when they realise they still haven't got it right). After conning the British public and the rest of the world by promising to deliver the Olympics on a budget of £3bn, we're now told its going to be £9bn. I could go on about whether we should have bid in the first place but I think the real issue here is how it has risen so much. Is this another case of the government financial advisers' complete incompetence when it comes to valuing the cost of a project or was it a calculated piece of misinformation to try and get the public onside when the bidding process was in full swing? I fear it is a little of both.
With the budget coming up next week, it is that time of year where Gordon Brown lays it on thick that this country has never had it so good and that we have seen ten consecutive years of growth and he has been the longest serving chancellor in history and then he says something else, but I'm always asleep by this point. You would have thought that all this meant that we have more money in our pockets than ever before. Of course, things are not always what they seem.
The Centre for Policy Studies think tank has reported that we are virtually no better off than we were six years ago. In fact, in real terms, households have an extra £9 disposable income in our pockets. This is a growth rate of just 0.35 per cent a year - I bet Gordon doesn't bore us with that statistic next Wednesday. Tax lawyer Charlie Elphicke, who led the study, uses the example of Ronald Reagan when he asked the question in the 1980 US Presidential debates - "are you better off now than you were four years ago?" As Elphicke points out "For the average voter, the answer to Ronald Reagan's question is likely to be a resounding no." The report also concludes that the lowest income households in Britain are paying a higher share of tax - and receiving a lower share of benefits - than they were in 1996/7. The Treasury have countered the report with claims that disposable income has increased since 1997. For a government that came to power promising that income tax will not rise only for it raise just about every other tax possible and create a few more on top of that, it is hard to believe a word they say.
Who are these people in Government who simply can not make a decent estimate? It seems every single Government major investment project runs vastly over budget. Where on Earth do they find them - it's not like it's one department or the odd project, but every single department and every single project. If this was the private sector these goons would have been sacked years ago. The latest piece of Government over spend has been revealed by the National Audit Office to be from the Department for Transport's road schemes - 200 of them! You'd have thought after the first 50 or so they might be able to spot a trend and start making better estimates.
NHS shocker: "Reorganisation of NHS services for patients needing medical attention outside normal working hours was shambolic and ran hugely over budget." This is according to a cross-party committee report on one of the government's key health reforms. That headline could be shortened to describe the NHS really - "NHS shambolic and ran hugely over budget." The NHS had been getting off quite lightly from me this week given the focus on the environment, but true to form not a week goes by without some ridiculous tale of waste and poor performance comes out.
The current government has taken the nanny state to new levels in the UK and now it is taking the term quite literally. Its latest piece of interfering is with the development of our young children - after all nanny knows best. The Guardian reports that every nursery, child minder and reception class in Britain will have to monitor children's progress towards a set of 69 government-set "early learning goals", recording them against more than 500 development milestones as they go. 500 milestones!?
And so to the Government and their use of the environment as a way of screwing over the taxpayer. In an attempt to out-green Green Dave, the government has gone in a radically different direction. Instead of aiming to cut emissions by at least 60% by 2050, they are going to cut them by 60% by 2050. See the difference? And instead of reviewing the progress yearly as Cameron has suggested, they will review every five years. The Government claims that the five-year model is a more intelligent and flexible policy. Which may well be technically true, but it's not really saying much, is it? They have attacked the Tories for placing so much emphasis on aviation, yet their own policy review document published in January warns of the critical importance of cutting aviation emissions.
Can someone please inject some common sense in to the Environment debate? It is really starting to get out of hand and I fear will bankrupt us all! It seems that the major parties can justify doing anything just by linking it to the doomsday apocalypse that is climate change. It is more effective at getting policies accepted by the electorate than the cold war or the war on terror ever was. And it is David Cameron who is really leading the field at the moment.
After promising that his brilliant new idea to tax the frequent (and not so frequent) flier would be offset by tax breaks elsewhere, we now know what he meant. It means that he is going to tax the hell of us and then use the money to interfere with our lives. The Independent reports "Money that a Conservative government would raise from taxing air travel will be used on schemes such as tax breaks for married couples, David Cameron has promised." It goes on "His aim is to offer a double whammy to encourage people to behave in ways that the Tory leader thinks are good for society." In a BBC interview yesterday he incredibably called it "taxing the bad and rewarding the good". Who does he think he is? Is he some sort of modern day twisted Robin Hood? Since when was he crowned the moral judge of what is right and what is wrong? I do not not need this buffoon guiding me through the moral maze. I just hope for his sake that one day something isn't revealed to show him up not to be the righteous, moralistic, perfect man that he likes to portray - but I think that day will come and we all know what it's going to be. If Dave has indulged in activities of an shady nature in the past, then that is his business as far as I'm concerned, but I won't be defending him if he thinks that he has some sort of right to interfere and comment on my private life.
What is it with David Cameron? He is obsessed with taxation and the environment. Or is it he is obsessed with taxation and excuses for raising taxes whilst sounding like a kind and caring new Tory? Forget the comparisons with Tony Blair, Cameron is the new Gordon Brown (though slightly less dour) - or at least his old pal George Osborne is. The latest value (not policy) is to issue passengers with a 'green miles' allowance and forced to pay more if they took extra flights.
One of the most ill conceived and un-needed policies from the current government is coming back to haunt all of us. The revised 1970 equal pay legislation is just beginning to show its impact - and guess what, women aren't getting pay rises and those on higher salaries are being forced in to getting pay cuts (even higher paid women).
It's as if there are no problems left in this country and our MPs can now start to squabble over the petty and inconsequential. Watch out, the PC brigade are taking over and their leader is Jack Straw. The man being touted as our next Chancellor has decided to come out with this: "Male pronouns are used on their own in contexts where a reference to women and men is intended, and...words such as 'chairman' are used for offices capable of being held by either gender. Many believe that this practice tends to reinforce historic gender stereotypes, and presents an obstacle to clearer understanding for those unfamiliar with the convention." Many believe, do they Jack? I imagine even more couldn't give a monkeys. Meg Munn, minister for women, has taken the ill-founded assumptions one step further "It really is outdated to have language which refers to 'he' when it means women as well. Most people would see this as a normal, sensible way forward." Most people? Sensible way forward?
The Tax Payers' Alliance has exposed one of the reasons why our council taxes are rising well above inflation every year - to pay big bosses. The number of local authority staff earning more than £100,000 jumped from 429 in 2005 to 578 last year, an increase of 35 per cent. Peter Gilroy, the chief executive of Kent, had the highest salary at £229,999.
It comes as little surprise that the public sector tendering process is not only costing the tax payer money but putting off contractors even applying for contracts in the first place making the process less competitive and poor value for money. This has become a particular problem with private finance procurements. The NOA has criticised the PFI tendering process saying that that NHS trusts and authorities are spending 75 per cent more than expected on external consultants and that many contracts are uncompetitive and involve only one bidder.
The hypocrisy of this government over the green debate continues. Whilst we are being taxed from the skies, off the roads and out of business the government is actually increasing its CO2 outputs. The Sustainable Development Commission (SDC) criticises ministers and senior civil servants for failing to set the right example. The report analyses the performance of 21 government departments and agencies against targets on all aspects of green behaviour. It says: "No department can make a reasonable claim to have met the requirements of all the targets assessed." The report found that most departments are using energy less efficiently compared to previous years and that, on average, they generate more waste. Most were way off track to meet the target of reducing carbon emissions by 12.5% on 2000 levels by 2010.