1. Deciding to send arms to Syrian "rebels".
Unless the aim is purely to get as much money out of them and to ensure that as many Arabs and other Islamists kill each other as possible, in which case we should be selling arms to Assad as well, maybe even deliver them some non-launchable nuclear bombs?
2. This whole "revolving door" thing
I suppose they can't stop him from going to work for an accountancy firm; the point is he was already behaving suspiciously while he still worked for HM Revenue & Customs. This move to Deloittes sort of confirms most of those suspicions.
3. Privatising the courts service.
Yes, you read that correctly:
Plans for £1 billion-a-year savings have been drawn up, including selling off the court service and control of the court buildings and taking 20,000 staff off the public payroll.
Private companies would then be free to charge larger fees from commercial litigants and attract investors. However, the position of judges or magistrates would not be affected.
To ensure the judiciary’s continuing independence, Justice Secretary Chris Grayling is considering a Royal Charter, similar to the proposed regulation of the Press.
4. Yet more throwing good money after bad:
Public money set to be used to cover shortfall in private-finance projects. Promised £3bn to invest in infrastructure and stimulate economy may all be used to plug gap in overhauled PFI scheme.
The creatures outside looked from Gordon Brown to George Osborne, and from Gordon Osborne to George Brown, and from Gorde Obrown to Georgon Osboom; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Surprised by the outcome
1 hour ago
12 comments:
"They have gone completely and utterly mad"
No
1. Public money into private purses
2. Ditto
3. Ditto
4. Ditto
Looks like business as usual to me.
With an added bonus for #3: more private money into other private purses.
B, Kj, actually the government has no money other than that taken out of lots and lots of private pockets, which it then channels into a smaller number of private pockets.
That's a bit like saying that you have no money, because all your income comes from other people's pockets. Once the government has extorted money from the public it is theirs to waste as they like. The level of taxation is governed, not by the level of expenditure, but by what the taxed will surrender without violent protest, so, given that disconnect, "public money" does belong to the government in a very real sense, i.e. that the original owners of it have no say in how it is expended, nor do they get any of it back if it is not expended.
B, fair points, as ever. In which case, I'd call it "the public's money" but not "public money".
Can I nominate Number 6 - Chris Grayling's [yes him again] plan to "outsource" offender rehabilitation in a terrific scheme under which "low risk" offenders will be rehabilitated/monitored on a payment by results basis (pbr) by the usual suspects - Serco, G4s, etc. etc. and high risk offenders by whatever remains of the probation service, and in a nice twist, in order to ensure public safety is not compromised the pba outsourcers will be able to "up" the status of "low risk offenders" to "high risk offenders" and er, hand them back to whatever remains of the probation service to look after should they decide "we can't rehabilitate [i.e we aren't going to make any money from trying to] this person".
See for example this piece by would be "outsourced providers" Working Links http://www.workinglinks.co.uk/all_about_us/thoughts_and_opinions/backing_the_rehabilitation.aspx
"And key to this transformation would be to keep important functions in the public sector, including the direct management of offenders who pose the highest risk of serious harm.
Working Links is strongly supportive of these aims, and is fully behind the introduction of an outsourced PBR model within community rehabilitation, so as to create operational and financial efficiencies while reducing reoffending." ..."We fully agree that the weighted assessment criteria should emphasise the quality of proposals rather than price alone. We would thus ask that potential providers be consulted in relation to proposed evaluation criteria."
"We agree that it is vital to build flexibility into the programme. Providers are likely to need to amend their delivery models to reflect continuous improvement. We advocate, therefore, that the MoJ consults with potential providers on the proposed sign off process being considered to ensure it is efficient and effective for both parties".
BE, while that is indeed a truly insane use of the public's money, firstly that would be number 5 not 6 and secondly I was trying to just cover "insane ideas they came up with this week". I think that TRH's idea was from several weeks ago.
If we extend the list to cover all insane ideas whenever annnounced, the post would run to millions of items.
MW - Mea Culpa - but I felt that I was justified in reminding everyone about it now that Chris has launched his "privatise the courts" plan - so arriving at the 3 card trick solution of "privatising/outsourcing" the courts and the custodial services (Prisons) and probation services - well the easier bits - the tough bits would be retained within the public services so the privatisers and outsourced service providers still have someewhere to dump their "failures" and keep the "park and skim" model for outsourcing on a payment by results system working, plus I had a flashback to my prediction of a few months back that any day now Chris will announce that he has signed a sponsorship deal for his department's HQ and it will henceforth be renamed, say "Capita House" ...
BE, true, that's a nice bundle, privatise courts, prisons and probation service. I suppose next thing he will announce he is privatising the police force.
Sending arms to Syria is a waste of time, and is actually quite likely to upset some of our allies such as Israel. The conflict now doesn't seem so much to be the oppressed trying to escape the chains of a totalitarian government so much as the age-old Sunni versus Shiite religious argument being fought all over again.
As that region has several countries that are either Shiite or Sunni dominated, a lack of ammunition is not something that either side in Syria will be suffering from; they will have very adequate supplies of guns, ammo and young morons to use the former flooding in. Given that the Syrian rebels seem to be a heavily factionalised rabble incapable of cooperating internally for more than a few hours at a stretch, with nonexistent battle command, lousy tactics and no strategic goals or defined victory condition, then the lack of the Syrian government to defeat them speaks volumes.
BOTH sides are incompetent idiots.
Sending them UK weaponry would be a complete waste; they don't need it, and cannot maintain it properly. Intervening militarily would similarly be stupid; there's thousands of utter knuckle-draggers there got themselves the religious war they always wanted; they won't give up a chance at martyrdom without a fight.
Best thing we can do is leave 'em to slug it out and in the mean time try to organise an arms embargo on everything that can either shoot down aircraft or attack shipping. That way, if we do need to go in and destroy something, they won't have the toys to prevent it.
Everything else, let it go into Syria but not come out again. Israel in particular would be pleased with that idea, as would most other local and regional powers, since weapons tend to get used indiscriminately.
Dan, that's an excellent, if somewhat cynical, summary.
So you'd agree that "do absolutely nothing" is the best option here?
I suspect the intention with 1 is to take out another holdout against "global governance". They've taken out Iraq and Libya already. Iran is probably next.
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