Waste

 

Why is it, with this government, that every decision is made after the event? Is there no one in government who can think ahead?
Cameron was in York today to congratulate the emergency workers and volunteers who have been working solidly around the clock since Christmas Day. These people do not do this work for thanks, Mr Prime Minister, they do it because they have a conscience coupled with a sense of community and moral duty. You, on the other hand, feel you have to be there because you arrogantly believe it is your job to be seen to care. Newsflash! Too late matey, you should have shown how much you cared by not skimping on flood defences during your last government and this one.
If you had any sense of community or, even, a grip on national feelings, you would realise that people are sick of you borrowing money to send abroad for the benefit of despots while the people of your own country cannot even rely on you to spend the required amount to keep them safe from floodwater.
“Unprecedented” has become the biggest by-word for incompetence by this government. Excuse after excuse drips from the lips of Whitehall mandarins as to why people are being ferried by boat along streets festooned with partially submerged cars and vans, through filthy water bloated with the detritus of a Christmas lost!

Osborne has saved somewhere in excess of £230 million by cutting funding previously allocated to the Environment Agency for flood defences. It is estimated that it will cost in excess of £2 billion (I would suggest, a very low estimate) to beef up the flood defences in the North and pay for flood damage caused so far. I wonder if this figure includes compensation to those people who cannot get insurance for their properties because of their close proximity to a river or because their property has been built on a flood-plain?
The paucity of thought and sheer waste of public money by this government just beggars belief. For example, HS2 has cost the taxpayer in excess of £1 billion so far and that without even 1 metre of track being laid. The Chief Executive of HS2, Simon Kirby, works out of offices in the prestigious Canary Wharf development in London and is being paid the obscene amount of £750,000 per year.
In 2011 it was forecast that when construction starts in 2017 it will cost £47 million per kilometre of track, I think you can safely double that now if previous government schemes are anything to go by. This money would have been much better spent on existing rail infrastructure and rolling stock. Even the chairman of HS1 (which has proved to be the worlds most expensive existing railway) believes that a normal railway could do the job better and cheaper.
It is also worth noting that HS1 has not delivered any economic gain to the South East. The Institute of Economic Affairs says that the employment rate has dropped by 5% in that area since the line was completed.

£50 billion for HS2, £12 billion per year paid to the useless EU, £11.4 billion per year in Foreign Aid. This is only a rough estimate of taxpayers money that this government is frittering away whilst condemning the average person to swinging austerity cuts.
Over £73 billion of hard working taxpayers money which could be used, should have been used, on this country’s infrastructure. Rivers could be dredged, water courses could be cut to divert flood water to reservoirs which might go some way to stop the usual summer water shortages throughout the South. Roads could be built / repaired, the NHS could be financially better off. The Armed Forces could be better equipped and more troops recruited.
The things that this money could be sensibly used for are infinite. As I said earlier though, no one in this government or previous governments has the will to forward think any longer than the term of the present government.

I keep ranting on about UKIP but they are the only Party who have come up with any sensible solution to transport problems, revitalising the fishing industry, Foreign Aid, infrastructure, the Armed Forces, etc, etc.
“We need to rethink”. says Cameron, talking about the governments response to flood defence. Mr Cameron, the whole country needs to rethink and ask why LibLabConDem are voted for at every bye election and General Election? Unless we have a radical change of government or, unless the present government has a radical rethink about the direction it wants to take this country and its people, we are all in very dire straits indeed.