We've paid the taxes - where has the money gone?

"For every extra £100 that Brown has spent since 1997, only £30 has been used to improve frontline public services. Thanks to the way he has run the Treasury, the rest has gone on cost-inflation, bureaucracy and waste." - George Osborne writing in The Sunday Times

Comments

[IRJMilne]

"cost-inflation, bureaucracy and waste"

Does "waste" include expenditure on the Olympic Games, the NHS IT system, and John Prescott?

[Mark Wadsworth]

as much as £30?

[ToMTom]

Bain & Company
McKinsey & Company
KPMG
Accenture
Pricewaterhouse Coopers
Capita
Balfour Beatty
Carillon
John Laing
Amec
IBM
Siemens
Fujitsu
BT

[Alex Forsyth]

>>Does "waste" include expenditure on the Olympic Games...<<

Olympic...schlolympic.

The cash-wasting commitment to the ludicrous Olympic Games is indeed one of the great scandals of this government.

Can anybody remind me how much opposition to this crazy megalomaniacal project was mounted by our own party leadership at the time?

[Denis Cooper]

I take it, TomTom, that you've listed some of the companies which have gained mightily through lucrative contracts for carrying out work which was previously carried out in-house by national and local government, including through PFI contracts - all of which started under the last Tory government. The difference being that the Labour party, not the Tories, have been getting the donations.

[TomTom]

OH yes Denis, but since Bain is in the "management-leasing" business I wonder just how many Consultants in these consultancies are employed full-time on HNS billings and how many NHS managers have been hired by them

[TomTom]

MTAS

Try this one for how the Department of Health spends money to create Chaos

http://nhsblogdoc.blogspot.com/

http://www.unemployeddoctor.co.uk/

[Jon White]

Whilst the £30 figure may be true, we as a party have done a pretty poor job of communicating the appalling way that Brown has handled the economy. People still perceive him as a success, despite the huge rises in taxation. We should be ashamed as a party at how we have let him get away with it. Sadly, it's not reality that counts, it's perception.

I don't think we are trusted on the economy yet. People still remember the day on which we lost our reputation for handling the economy better than Labour. (The day John Major destroyed our electoral hopes for a generation because he was too weak to stand up to the Europhiles). Despite the fact that the Labour spending and wastage has only been possible because of the golden economic legacy left to them by Ken Clark, people still see Gordon Brown as a 'safe pair of hands' on the economy.

Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.

[ToMTom]

People still perceive him as a success

only in the Media...and only there because he left Lawson's top tax rate at 40% since 1988.......and with NIC on incomes <£36.000 it is effectively a flat tax ......the Media boys are happy.......but the real voting public is not

[David Sergeant]

(The day John Major destroyed our electoral hopes for a generation because he was too weak to stand up to the Europhiles). Jon White

Isn't it about time that the Conservative party stopped it's internal bitching and pointed out that, of all the options open to Major and Lamont, getting the hell out of the whole thing was the most definite, and successful. (Refer to complaints that the other options were not used by all other EU finance ministers a bit later.)

Also, I wish Cameron and Co stopped being nice guys about the mess in the public service. Labour's top down approach obviously doen't work but the reason for doing it is not because they think their policies are for the benifit of people. Their "initiatives" are for the benifit of Labour politicians. They didn't give up the idea that politicians are to be the new leaders of the world when they, apparanrly, dropped Clause 4 and socialism. To Brown and Co any lie, any corruption, any tax spend, any policy, is justified to keep Labour politicians in government. Although it does help to have an oppposition that doesn't know what it's apposing and a media run by inadequate second raters.

[Alex Forsyth]

Also, I wish Cameron and Co stopped being nice guys about the mess in the public service..

You're well off message David. Has nobody whispered that magic mantra in your ear; "Say anything to win"?

I guess this naïveté marks you down as a Cameroon rather than a Camerloon...

...or is it the other way round?

[David Sergeant]

You what?

[Jon White]

"Isn't it about time that the Conservative party stopped it's internal bitching and pointed out that, of all the options open to Major and Lamont, getting the hell out of the whole thing was the most definite,"
David Sergeant;15.56

Of course it was. Had they done that immediately, the damage would have been minimal. Instead, Major vacillated and delayed, asking 'permission' from his bosses - Clark and Heseltine - before finally doing what he should have done straight away, by which time the damage had been done. Of course, the sensible thing would have been never to have joined the ERM in the first place. Now who was the Chancellor that took us in? Oh yes, the destroyer of the Tory party for a generation, our old friend John Major. Never has a more inadequate man been given such responsibility.

[David Sergeant]

"Oh yes, the destroyer of the Tory party for a generation, our old friend John Major." Jon White

The above is exactly my point. I don't think going in to the ERM was the problem, or the timing of coming out. The problem was that no attempt was made to fight the corner to justify what had taken place. I suspect the main vote loser was not what happened but that Tories didn't fight their corner but disolved into stuff like the above, even Jon White agrees coming out was " definite" politics but still goes on.

I rest my case.

[Denis Cooper]

"I don't think going in to the ERM was the problem" - oh yes it was! It both prolonged and deepened the recession, and coming out was a blessed relief.

[Thomas Charles Beresford]

I get more disillusioned by the day. Not a single politician on the front bench (any party) has the guts to tell it as it is; the Country is heading fast into a mountain debit that will take a generation to pay back. Gordon’s prudent 40-billon black hole is rising by the second. The EU has almost run out of stupid ideas to make our life more and more difficult. The IMF is getting concerned at Labours massive level of public spending. The tax take is at an all time high, is Dave Cameron-Green is on a different planet. Want to see pollution! Go to any country that ends in “stan” while he’s there go to India and any other Countries with a “in” in its title! There you can see real pollution. Green taxes just a load of PC garbage. We want the Country run for our benefit first? Not Europe and the rest of the World; green issues are well down my list of priories. Wake up, if you don’t, in 3 years time you will be looking for a new Green job Dave. I feel that I now live in Country run by a totalitarian dictatorship of Marxist freedom destroyers, unless you can tell me different DAVE

[Jerry]

Sorry to correct you Thomas Charles in an otherwise first class comment but, the EU will NEVER run out of stupid ideas to make our life more and more difficult! And we will apparently NEVER run out of bloody stupid Labour, Lib Dem and Conservative politicians who think that being in the EU is good for (them) us.

[ToMTom]

have been never to have joined the ERM in the first place. Now who was the Chancellor

This is so ridiculous. Lawson took the country into the ERM to get interest rates DOWN to 7.5%. Monetarism had failed using high-yield Gilts to mop up liquidity and the Dollar was sinking as Sterling soared above DM3,00 because Thatcher wanted the B o E to stop intervention.

With a weak Dollar and Sterling overvalued against the D-Mark a major Slump was on the way for Britain.

Lawson used the ERM to lock Britain into a fixed parity with the EuroZone but had no idea Germany would be reunified within 18 months with a Currency Union....

The fact is that without ERM entry Lawson could not get British interest rates down and restrain the currency pressures driving Sterling too high.

In fact Lawson chose the wrong vehicle - he should have reversed his 1988 Tax Cuts and introduced Monetary Base Control. Britain has still not implemented a proper Monetary Control system and has since Edward Heath in 1971 left the country to suffer property booms and busts driven by too much credit......Brown has done exactly this since 2001 and noone today comments on Britains exploding Money Supply which exceeds anywhere in the EuroZone.

The British are Credit Junkies who speculate on Property Assets

[David Sergeant]

Thank you Tom Tom. This is one of the most significant political issues since Maggie arrived. Huge importance for the Conservative party, the country and probably the world and we are finally getting to talk about it instead of just bitching. John Major said it was a political disaster, I say it was only a disaster to the extent that John Major, and the rest of the party, let it become one by not attempting to defend the decisions. I suspect that many Tory voters were put off by the lack of attempted defence of the party. Who would vote for a bunch of gutless creeps who can't be bothered to defend themselves and, by implication, reflect on their vote.