Wednesday 23 January 2008

Quangocracy - am I mad or are they?

My "pointless, meddling, expensive and generally sickening quango of the day" award goes to ... The National Obesity Forum. If you have time, try clicking around the site to disover list after list of other quangoes with whom they "work in partnership".

Bastards.

5 comments:

Penny Pincher said...

I forgot to mention when I called in yesterday that I've taken your tip and dropped bread from my diet. I can't say I feel any increase in energy (in fact i'm cream crackered)but weight has started to fallaway ......

Mark Wadsworth said...

LT, maybe I've got a gluten allergy and you don't? Please don't go hungry on my account! Funnily enough one of my colleagues gave up bread at lunchtime and feels much the better for it.

Anonymous said...

Yes, it's quangaloid, but it is set up as a small charity. The accounts for this one
1109600
are available from the Charities Commission website.

Obviously you would be better at reading this than I am, but it appears that in 2006 the office staff cost about £18.5k and what they did was to dole out money for exhibitions etc and handle £12k in expenses for visiting conferences. Wonder if any of them are in Hawaii?

The governance funds are also interesting - the accountants got 13.5k, the lawyers and auditors combined got a measely £4k, and the trustees spent £10 grand on having meetings. Then there was almost £10k spent on vague 'consultancy'. The bits and bobs came to almost 60k.

The income was substantially from Sanofi Aventis and Abbott Laboratories to the combined value of 160k. Nothing to stop companies putting their money in to charities, even if they happen to be a bunch of toffee-nosed do-gooders.

Sanofi Aventis is developing obesity-management drugs. (It looks like an anti-munchies potion). I take the view that either one puts up with conventional thermodynamics or one drops dead; it is a matter of personal choice. I don't really see why the taxpayer should foot the bill for suspending the laws of physics, although if you want to buy your own I don't see why not.

Ditto Abbott Laboratories

Abbott say that obesity is a complex health matter affected by environment and genetics, which is awfully handy for people selling anti-obesity drugs.

Clunking Fist said...

I had a problem with bread, but it turned out to be yeast/molds/fungis that was at issue. So no bread, beer, wine, mushrooms, blue cheese.
I wuz tired and had dandruff, blurry vision. At first I thought it was my one-handed exercising, but thankfully not.

It seems to have sorted itsself these days. But now I'm fat. So no bread, beer, wine, mushrooms, blue cheese...

Mark Wadsworth said...

WOAR, thanks, so basically this is just advertising of the most pernicious sort?