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New Labour plans to set up a police investigation into all operations by the British army which resulted in the deaths of Irish terrorists. The investigation will involve hundreds of police officers, it will run for at least 10 years and it is expected to cost more than the pointless (unless you're a lawyer) Bloody Sunday inquiry, which cost at least £150 million. Oh, yes; and any Irish terrorists still on the run won't be hauled into court for their crimes, they'll be awarded what amounts to a free pardon. (Sounds of wailing & gnashing of teeth from the lawyers!)
This is further proof, if any more is needed, that New Labour has a deep and abiding hatred for the British armed forces.
New Labour has blown £10 million on putting 7 paras on trial for murder & brutality in Iraq. The judge threw the case out after finding that the 'witnesses' were lying to claim compensation and expenses, that there had never been a proper post mortem on the allegedly murdered man, and the MPs doing the investigation had never ever been close to the body because the deceased's relatives had told conflicting stories about where the body was buried.
The only conclusion to be drawn from the fiasco is that the whole thing was just a political vendetta and a politically correct show trial, which has Lord Goldsmith's greasy fingerprints all over it.
More than £250,000 went on a failed attempt to deport 49 bogus asylum seekers to Angola. The Immigration Service failed to ensure that the flight had clearance to land in Angola and it had to be cancelled at the last minute.
£500,000 on calls made from a satellite phone, which some dozy Foreign Office sod lost in Iraq and failed to report missing.
Due to vast over-estimates of the numbers of asylum seekers coming to Britain and their accommodation requirements, and the government's failure to react to the true figures – £50 million was blown in 2004 on renting houses which were never occupied.
£3 billion is wasted by the benefit system every year – half due to blunders by officers, half due to fraud.
£50,000 of taxpayers' dosh on an armoured limo, plus driver, intended for Cherie Blair's private use.
New Labour has blown £1 million on getting private consultants to ask the public what they want from GPs – things we already know the answer to, according to the Patients' Association. The minister responsible is Health Secretary Praticia Hewitt, who announced immediate access to a breast cancer drug in October 2005, knowing that there was no extra cash in the budget to meet its £110 million annual cost, and that the drug would not be approved for NHS use before the end of 2006.
Home Sec. Charles Clarke is setting up a £5 million faith fund so that imams and Islamic scholars can tour Britain, integrate Moslems and produce a more integrated Britain. The scholars will also be trying to show young people 'the true meaning of Islam' – which is all fine and good, but hardly something that should be done at the taxpayer's expense.
Not many people know this, but in 2003, New Labour launched a £4 million campaign to recruit younger people and more black and Asian people as magistrates following a reduction of the minimum age for magistrates from 27 to 18. There is now a 20-year-old bloke working as a magistrate in Crawley, West Sussex.
Tony Blair obviously thinks he'll get better service from teenagers than the dotty old judges who keep upsetting him by delivering perverse rulings and taking advantage of human rights laws, which he imported from Europe, to set the dodgy free.
If Council Taxpayers in Newcastle are wondering why their bills are so high, they include £400,000 per year for looking after failed asylum seekers with special needs. There are 95 ill or disabled, failed asylum seekers in the area. The government has withdrawn all financial support and the citizens of Newcastle are having to pay to house them until the government decides to deport them or forget about them and let them disappear. [Thanks to V.M. for this bunch]
Under New Labour, billions of pounds have been shifted out of the wealth-creating private sector and into the wealth-consuming public sector. The Office of National Statistics has released figures (September 2005) showing that productivity in the public sector has suffered 'negative growth' (i.e. it has been going down and down) for the last four years.
The increase in the amount of wealth produced by each member of the working population rose by just 0.5% in the first half of 2005, which means that if the ONS recorded another negative figure for the public sector, then the private sector is doing all the work and barely able to make the books balance.
It has been New Labour's consistent policy to throw resources at the private sector without requiring the reforms necessary to make it efficient. At the same time, the wealth-creating sectors of the economy have been taxed and stealth taxed, and tied up in pointless red tape. All of which shows that Messrs. Blair and Brown are making one hell of a mess and they don't have a clue about running a healthy economy.
In Blair's Cool Britannia, 20% of people in employment work in the public sector. The figure is 40% in the North East of England and 35% in Labour strongholds in the North of England, Scotland and Wales, and these areas attract the majority of government spending.
Private sector wages are rising at 3.8% per year in 2005. The rate is 4.6% in the public sector.
New Labour is now blowing £2.8 billion pounds per year on private consultants, who are supplied mainly by firms which are receiving payback for supporting the Labour Party and firms run by friends of Blair, Mandelson and all the other or firms which employ the friends. The policy is all part of New Labour's campaign of erosion of the civil service, which seeks to convert parts of the civil service from an independent status to wings of the Labour Party, and to replace other parts with people who have to follow the Labour Party line if they want to be paid.
Examples: Lord Birt, cronies leaving govt. to form their own firms, which are then hired at vast expense.
£900 million on anti-truancy campaigns but bunking-off is at an all-time high.
£422 million on the Aimhigher programme, which was supposed to encourage children from 'poorer homes' to go to university but didn't.
Britain's hospital trusts have accumulated a total budget deficit of £160,000,000 thanks to New Labour's policy of messing the health service about, setting targets which Downing Street spin-doctors believe will make the government look good and failing to direct new spending to places where it will do any good. This sum will have to come out of taxpayers' pockets via one stealth tax or another.
£5,000,000,000 wasted on Iraq since 2003.
£4,000 on an investigation by 4 senior coppers after Anne Robinson said she doesn't like the Welsh on TV. The coppers belonged to the North Wales police service, which has the world's worst record for catching burglars – and no wonder!
£3.1 billion on the Sure Start scheme for pre-school kids, which was supposed to 'transform the lives of poor people' and turn poor parents into model citizens and their children into eager-to-learn little proto-citizens. In fact, a survey of the scheme has shown that it has produced no improvement in development, language or behaviour in the last 4 years, and it exists mainly to provide jobs for bureaucrats.
£1 million over the last 2 years on failed attempts to close down grammar schools because envious Socialists want them closed down to remove the comparison with state schools.
£90 million has been diverted from the budget for schools and tackling crime to the prime minister's 'Respect Tax Force', which is under the leadership of his personal assistant with special responsibility for bad language and 'decking' people.
£51,658.32 for the Bliar family's 24-day holiday in Barbados. The taxpayer was to have been presented with a bill for the full amount after Mr. Bliar made it an official trip by crashing the local VJ-Day celebration. But as a gesture of goodwill, he has graciously chosen to pay the odd 32 pence out of his own pocket.
An extra £570 million was promised for cancer services by the 2003 financial year. The extra money comprised:
• 1. £192 million on cancer drugs (30%)
• 2. £113 million on new equipment (18%)
• 3. £230 million on 'other services', i.e. more bureaucrats rather than front-line staff (36%)
• 4. £103 million on staff training, modernizing of services and palliative care [mainly more bureaucracy] (16%)
The government was deliberately vague on where the money spent on categories 3 and 4 actually went, which suggests that there is embarrassment potential in the detail. What is clear is that only half of the new money went on services of direct benefit to cancer patients.
£400,000 per year on PR firms which monitor the news media to check on the effectiveness, or otherwise, of New Labour's spin doctors in the NHS, the Department of Transport and other government departments.
News items are rated positive, neutral or negative as far as supporting the Labour party goes, rather than accurate or inaccurate.
Strictly speaking, this is a To Come item, but Scotland's 32 local authorities have net pensions deficits of £5.11 billion. The only options for covering the black hole are 1. rises in Council Tax in Scotland, and 2. a subsidy from English taxpayers, which is the usual cure for a Scottish problem under New Labour.
The amount spent on this project is top secret but the results speak for themselves. Take the case of Jean Menezes, the Brazilian illegal migrant with a forged visa. The Met Commissioner, Sir Ian Blair, said his shooting at Stockwell Tube station was 'directly linked' to terrorist operation. It wasn't. The police said Menezes emerged from a property under surveillance by anti-terrorist police, than he looked like one of their suspects and he was wearing bulky clothing which could have concealed a bomb. None of this was true. They had no idea which flat in an apartment building he had come from, he looked nothing like the suspect and he was wearing a light, denim jacket.
Menezes was said to have vaulted the ticket barrier at Stockwell station and run away from police. In fact, the police squad was ordered not to let him enter the Tube system (but they did), Menezes used a travel card to go through the barrier and he walked, not ran to a train. And he was actually sitting on the train when the police squad grabbed him and shot him. And finally, the police didn't identify themselves and tell him to surrender, as they claimed they had done.
Alastair would have been proud to be the author of this deluge of disinformation!
Tom Delay, CEO of the Carbon Trust quango, has copped for a £50,000 bonus (36% of his annual salary) for failing to reduce Britain's carbon dioxide emissions for the third year running.
The estimated administration costs for this job have just gone up by £70 million to £180 million. Further, going from the experience of revaluation in Wales, C-Tax customers in England can expect their bills to rise by at least 7 times inflation in the first year with massive rises to come in the second year as transitional relief is phased out.
The NHS will waste £22 million this year because NICE hasn't got round to approving for use in England and Wales, a home chemotherapy drug for treating bowel cancer which is currently available in Scotland. NICE is also refusing to approve a drug which delays the onset of Alzheimer's disease and making the NHS squander untold millions on hospital treatment which should not have been necessary.
Tens of thousands of pounds on freebie 'fact-finding' holiday jaunts for 70 MPs plus assorted spouses, family members and pals.
£44 million per year is going in compensation to prisoners in Scottish gaols who have to 'slop out'. PLUS £100,000 PER MONTH to the lawyers taking slopping out cases to court. The Scottish Executive, which is controlled by the Labour party, ignored warnings that this would be a consequence of adopting the EU's human rights convention. New Labour chose to cut £13 million out of the budget for installing plumbing in prisons and abandon a Tory target of 1999 for ending the need to slop out.
£500K PER DAY on putting cosmetic coppers with sub-machine guns on the streets of London.
£300K on benefits for the July 21st bombers.
£500 million has been spent on 6 years' basic training for over 2,000 new doctors who, having been awarded their degree, are unable to find a job. They need a one-year hospital training post as part of their qualification process but the NHS can't provide them.
The list also includes nurses who can't get jobs because hospitals have run out of money and can't afford to hire them. Not to mention 1,500 physiotherapists who can't get jobs – which is putting a sacred New Labour target for providing access to physiotherapy in jeopardy!
Over £300 per year of taxpayers' money goes on fake tan, hair dye and other products used to pretty up the prime minister before he does his media appearances.
The Home Office, Charles Clark prop., is blowing £750,000 on a scheme to teach asylum seekers how to claim benefits. Each of the estimated 300 lucky clients will receive one-to-one tuition.
New Labour has presided over the destruction of 900,000 jobs in the wealth-creating sector and created a million jobs in the public sector, most of them at the level of 'Diversity Monitor' – non-jobs which are there only to hand taxpayers' money to Labour's clients to ensure their loyalty. Mr. Blair & Co. are also responsible for public sector wages reaching £2 per hour more than those in the wealth-creating sector, and giving the public sector luxury pension schemes while failing to grasp the nettle of making public sector workers retire at 65 like people in the wealth-creating sector.
£50 million has gone to McKinsey, the management consultants, since Tony Blair made their employee Lord Birt his 'blue skies thinker'.
Tax Credits £1.9 billion was wasted on this scheme in 2003/04 and the figure will be even higher in 2004/05. The scheme was intended to give low-paid people tax rebates to encourage them off benefits. It has become a shambles of out of date information, maladministration, overpayment and demands for instant repayment of thousands of pounds. This is all down to that alleged financial genius Gordon Brown, whose entirely undeserved reputation is now in tatters.
In fact, the scheme is such a shambles that Steve Webb, the Liberal MP for Northavon, is enjoying the benefit of a successful plea of poverty even though he can claim the half-million or so pounds per year which an MP gets via salary, expenses, pension contributions and other benefits.
Disability Living Allowance Overpayments were £730,000,000 in 2003/04.
The Countryside Agency, a New Labour quango, wasted £360,000 on a 'study' which found that countryside pursuits are aimed too much at white, middle-class, middle-aged people and that ethnic minorities, city dwellers and the disabled are not 'comfortable' when visiting the countryside.
MPs of all political colours, including Labour (!!!), have condemned this waste of taxpayers' money on 'a pointless exercise in inappropriate political correctness'.
A panel from the Design Council, the Foreign Office, the Cabinet Office and the Department of Culture paid out £30K of taxpayers' money for a logo which was supposed to represent "leadership, teamwork and efficiency". Their agency came up with swans; lots of them; some static and some animated; to go on beermats, screen-savers, all sorts of things. That's the logo on the left, below:
 
Unfortunately, it bore a striking resemblance to a Bruges Group logo (that's it above, right). And the next thing the Foreign Office knew, former chancellor Lord Lamont was threatening them with legal action unless they had a very good explanation for the similarity. The FO resorted to bluster, but this is what the British government's EU presidency logo looks like now:
When university top-up fees are introduced, New Labour will hand over £3,000 of taxpayers' cash per student. British students will have to start to repay the debt when their earnings reach £15,000 per annum. There is no plan to do the same with students from mainland Europe, who will be competing with British students for places at our universities.
The Students Loan Company is saying that it will be able to collect these debts as the European Union will offer its full co-operation. Experts expect the SLC to have the same level of success as the New Labour's invention the Child Support Agency, which is notorious for making a bog of things and under threat of being closed down as its inefficiency is a severe embarrassment to the government.
What is it about New Labour which drives them to hand British taxpayers' cash to any passing foreigner? [Thanks to V.M.]
What was it?
A scheme to help divorcing parents negotiate access to their children. Couples were offered classes to tell them why they needed to negotiate the termination of the relationship and settle access issues. They were also offered the services of a mediator for their negotiations.
Comment
Margaret Hodge, Children's Minister at the time, said the scheme would: 'divert many families from lengthy, costly and damaging disputes that experience shows will leave many unhappy with the outcome.'
Details
It was a 9-month scheme. Target: 1,000 couples were expected to use it, of whom 47 started the classes and 23 used a mediator.
Cost:
£190,628 = £8,000 per couple.
Background
A £9 million terminal was built at Inverness airport using £5.5 million from private investors and £3 million from the European Union. The publicly owned Highlands and Islands Airports Ltd. agreed to pay its investors £3 for every passenger arrival or departure for 25 years.
Details
Passenger numbers were 337,000 in 1998, 700,000 in 2004 and they are expected to reach one million by 2010.
Cost:
£8.5 million were paid during the first 6 years of the contract and the government then decided to pay a further £25 million to buy out the contract. The investors received £36 million for a £9 million outlay after 6 years.
Comment
Inverness ecomomist Tony Mackay said the PFI deal was 'ludicrous'. He added: "It was a very silly agreement to make. I have no objection in principle to PFI arrangements, but this one and the Skye bridge have been so badly managed that they just cost a fortune. With hindsight it has proved to be a rip off and the executive should never have agreed to it."
Extra Information
The taxpayer coughed up £27 million plus VAT to buy out the Skye bridge PFI deal in 2004.
 
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Every criminal gang has its private police file containing lists of things to mention when the criminals are eventually brought to book. Here are some recent highlights from New Labour's 'rap sheet'.
