75ZT Community

The bumper book of government waste, its a free download and good read !

http://www.taxpayersalliance.com/home/2 ... ld-uk.html

Here are a few gems:

• Arts Council: Gave a £95,000 grant to artists in Brighton for “Skip”, a rubbish dumpster outlined with yellow lights
• Crawley Council: Spent £5,070 on 12,200 hot drinks from vending machines for council employees, when the equivalent number of tea bags would have cost just £200
• Department for International Development: Spent £21.2 million on a road maintenance project in Bangladesh, later pulled due to “fiduciary irregularities” after it emerged that less than 10% had actually been spent on roads
• Durham Council: Funded a £12,000 clothing allowance to allow councillors to wear “Geordie Armani”
• Hull Council: Spent £40,000 on a concert in honour of the councillor who is Lord Mayor this year
• Ministry of Defence: Paid £22 for light bulbs that are normally 65p
• Prison Service: Paid £720,000 to professional actors for role playing that is aimed at helping inmates become employed
• Scottish Government: Signed a £1.4 million 4-year contract for taxis for civil servants in Edinburgh – despite staff being told to use buses
• Stoke-on-Trent Council: Spent £330,000 to pay for redundancy packages and subsequently rehiring 25 members of staff

and there are lots more in the book !

Just downloaded it. It just makes me think, no actually confirmed, that a lot of people in government/councils are just money wasting *********** <Insert what-ever expletive you wish> !

Government initiatives can cost lots of money. A few years back they said to the Dept for Skills and Innovation 'we are going to set up a large number of training establishments so go out and lease buildings'. So off they went and then the Government decided 'no we will not do that'. So now the Dept was paying the rent on a large number of buildings that it would not use. So they tried sub-letting at a time when the crash had just occurred, so if they could sub-let they had to offer subsidised rents.