T
The Byre
- Original Poster
- #1
No political party has yet released a manifesto - but one thing they all agree upon is, they're all following the socioeconomic policies as outlined by Vivienne Nicholson back in 1961 when her husband Keith won a shed-load of money on the football-pools.
Asked by reporters what she planned to do with the money, she said, "I'm going to spend, spend, spend!" and she did! Nearly all the money was gone within five years and she died alone and poor in a care home.
Critics of Corbyn's Labour policies accuse him of wanting to be wasteful with taxpayers' money - but the other two main runners are making the same wild promises with tax revenues they haven't got!
"They think they've got a money tree, but the money tree is me!"
But then they've always acted like that - all of them!
Almost no one in the UK will benefit from the £20bn CrossRail project, almost no one will benefit from HS2 (£50bn? £100bn? More?) and we all know that absolutely nobody ever got any benefit from the great NHS IT project (£24bn) that had to be closed down completely!
Oh, but there's more! The MoD employs 60,000 civil servants. There are just 140,000 active service personnel - nearly half of which are in support roles. Remember that the military has units like The Royal Pay Corps, Military Police, The Royal Pioneer Corps, Infantry and Manning Records, WRAC, The Royal Catering Corps and so on and on and on. Add to all that, every unit has it's support company, Battalion Orderly Room, Intelligence Platoon, Transport Platoon, Quarter-Master's section, Signals Platoon, etc.
And then we have to add Trident and whatever species of madness is bought-in to replace it (estimated at £20bn in 2006, two-to-three times that today!)
So $60bn is spent every year, year in, year out - just to get about 80,000 active service personnel ready for action (what politicians like to call 'Boots on the ground'). That comes to about $750,000 for each and every active service soldier, airman and sailor. That's £375,000 per boot!
And that is more than gross inefficiency - that is madness!
And that madness is replicated and repeated across the UK. The poor old NHS has to make do with bare-bones funding for training, but wild (headline-grabbing) bursts of irrational generosity for equipment. That leads to absurd anomalies like having £1m MRI scanners installed across the UK, but in many cases no radiologists to use them.
In 'Yes Minister' there was an episode in which Hacker discovered a hospital with no patients but with a full support staff. After transmission, the writers (who made the whole thing up of course) were asked how did they know?
"Know what?" they asked.
"How did you guys find out about the two hospitals in the UK that are standing empty?"
Well, it ain't two no more - more like four! Why? No trained staff! Not enough doctors, not enough nurses and absolutely no specialists to man the places! You cannot run a hospital without specialists and consultant surgeons.
Westminster is wildly inefficient. It wastes money on prestige mad-cap schemes that benefit nobody and it wastes money on bureaucrats that do nothing.
As one colourful US congressman once put it "Getting rid of bureaucrats is like trying to shoo flies of off a sh*t-wagon!"
I was in London recently, I drove through the place. It is no wonder that the air is polluted to the high heavens - the traffic systems are complete and utter chaos. The traffic lights are not even coordinated so that one has a so-called 'green wave' and cars can shoot through without being held up with their engines running. Roads that should be one-way are not, so anyone needing to turn right has to just block all traffic until the road is clear. And old buses churn through the City, belching Diesel fumes!
Changing these things would be simple and cheap and would reduce pollution instantly - but instead, £20bn CrossRail is built!
Then there is the economic lunacy that was nuclear power - this was going to be so cheap that politicians claimed electricity would probably be free one day! The NDA (Nuclear Decommissioning Authority) estimated decommissioning costs at £64bn in 2014. In 2018, it put that figure at £234bn.
Politicians love to be seen doing things. And nothing says "I am a dynamic and forceful leader of the nation!" quite like commissioning some lunatic scheme that then fails to deliver any benefit whatsoever! But costs billions!
So whenever the three gaggles of economically illiterate and innumerate buffoons that have managed to claw their tawdry way to the top their own greasy poles, actually manage to produce some sort of economic programmes under the heading of a manifesto - a collection of half-baked, stupid ideas that will cost billions to be allowed to fail - get ready to spot the next manifestation of the economic philosophies of Viv Nicholson.
Asked by reporters what she planned to do with the money, she said, "I'm going to spend, spend, spend!" and she did! Nearly all the money was gone within five years and she died alone and poor in a care home.
Critics of Corbyn's Labour policies accuse him of wanting to be wasteful with taxpayers' money - but the other two main runners are making the same wild promises with tax revenues they haven't got!
"They think they've got a money tree, but the money tree is me!"
But then they've always acted like that - all of them!
Almost no one in the UK will benefit from the £20bn CrossRail project, almost no one will benefit from HS2 (£50bn? £100bn? More?) and we all know that absolutely nobody ever got any benefit from the great NHS IT project (£24bn) that had to be closed down completely!
Oh, but there's more! The MoD employs 60,000 civil servants. There are just 140,000 active service personnel - nearly half of which are in support roles. Remember that the military has units like The Royal Pay Corps, Military Police, The Royal Pioneer Corps, Infantry and Manning Records, WRAC, The Royal Catering Corps and so on and on and on. Add to all that, every unit has it's support company, Battalion Orderly Room, Intelligence Platoon, Transport Platoon, Quarter-Master's section, Signals Platoon, etc.
And then we have to add Trident and whatever species of madness is bought-in to replace it (estimated at £20bn in 2006, two-to-three times that today!)
So $60bn is spent every year, year in, year out - just to get about 80,000 active service personnel ready for action (what politicians like to call 'Boots on the ground'). That comes to about $750,000 for each and every active service soldier, airman and sailor. That's £375,000 per boot!
And that is more than gross inefficiency - that is madness!
And that madness is replicated and repeated across the UK. The poor old NHS has to make do with bare-bones funding for training, but wild (headline-grabbing) bursts of irrational generosity for equipment. That leads to absurd anomalies like having £1m MRI scanners installed across the UK, but in many cases no radiologists to use them.
In 'Yes Minister' there was an episode in which Hacker discovered a hospital with no patients but with a full support staff. After transmission, the writers (who made the whole thing up of course) were asked how did they know?
"Know what?" they asked.
"How did you guys find out about the two hospitals in the UK that are standing empty?"
Well, it ain't two no more - more like four! Why? No trained staff! Not enough doctors, not enough nurses and absolutely no specialists to man the places! You cannot run a hospital without specialists and consultant surgeons.
Westminster is wildly inefficient. It wastes money on prestige mad-cap schemes that benefit nobody and it wastes money on bureaucrats that do nothing.
As one colourful US congressman once put it "Getting rid of bureaucrats is like trying to shoo flies of off a sh*t-wagon!"
I was in London recently, I drove through the place. It is no wonder that the air is polluted to the high heavens - the traffic systems are complete and utter chaos. The traffic lights are not even coordinated so that one has a so-called 'green wave' and cars can shoot through without being held up with their engines running. Roads that should be one-way are not, so anyone needing to turn right has to just block all traffic until the road is clear. And old buses churn through the City, belching Diesel fumes!
Changing these things would be simple and cheap and would reduce pollution instantly - but instead, £20bn CrossRail is built!
Then there is the economic lunacy that was nuclear power - this was going to be so cheap that politicians claimed electricity would probably be free one day! The NDA (Nuclear Decommissioning Authority) estimated decommissioning costs at £64bn in 2014. In 2018, it put that figure at £234bn.
Politicians love to be seen doing things. And nothing says "I am a dynamic and forceful leader of the nation!" quite like commissioning some lunatic scheme that then fails to deliver any benefit whatsoever! But costs billions!
So whenever the three gaggles of economically illiterate and innumerate buffoons that have managed to claw their tawdry way to the top their own greasy poles, actually manage to produce some sort of economic programmes under the heading of a manifesto - a collection of half-baked, stupid ideas that will cost billions to be allowed to fail - get ready to spot the next manifestation of the economic philosophies of Viv Nicholson.
