When most of us go shopping we work out what we want and can afford. We then seek to minimise the cost and maximise the value we get for our money by shopping around.
When government spends our hard earned taxes, it sets out to increase the amount it spends, debating how much extra as a good thing in itself. It usually then wastes a lot and pays too much for things. This is particularly true of defence.
The government says it wants to spend an extra £6billion or 0.2% of GDP on defence in a couple of years time. The PM then says that really means spending an extra £13billion when you take inflation into account.
They can't tell us what they will spend it on as they are still working that out. These are not serious shoppers passionate to get us value for money.
Disability benefits claims now cost Britain 20 per cent more than the country's entire defence budgetMINISTRY OF DEFENCEAt the same time the government complains it does not have enough money to spend. That should be no surprise. There is at least £90billion of questionable and wasteful spending that the government could easily halve.
It squanders money on loss making public sector bodies, recruits far too many non front line staff, gives people inflation busting pay awards for delivering less service and multiplies managers to do things that do not serve the public better.
In the nine months to last December the Bank of England sent a bill to taxpayers for a totally unacceptable £30billion of losses on bond trading.
The official forecast says the Bank will lose £240billion between end 2022 and the final disposal of its bonds. The Bank should be told taxpayers cannot afford such a huge bill.
If they stopped selling bonds in the market and held them until they are repaid they would save a lot of pain.
If they followed the European Central Bank and commercial banks and charged a higher interest rate for loans than they offer to banks depositing money with them that would also rein in more of the grotesque losses.
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The Civil Service has swelled but also got less productive over the last five years
PAPublic sector productivity was down 8.4% on 2019. That's an additional £40billion bill to deliver the same services as five years ago. Inflation adds billions more on top. There has never before been such a collapse.
The public sector has over recruited managers, regulators, and non productive staff. It has lost a grip on getting many services provided at realistic cost.
It should be possible to remove these heavy losses quite quickly. Begin with a recruitment freeze. Require better performance from highly paid senior managers.
Net zero subsidies and carbon capture and storage spending runs out at £10billion or more. The costs of benefits to people who could with help and support get a job are running at another £10billion or so. Giving the Chagos islands away with a big dowry is a disgrace.
A tough private sector Chief Executive would be rooting out excesses like these, or they would be losing their job. Senior public sector managers get bonuses as productivity implodes.
Chief Executives of HS2 and the Post Office have often be paid bonuses as their organisations run up big losses or cost overruns.
Many of us agree we need better defences. It should start with improved detection and destruction of incoming drones and missiles and include more planes and an ability to put both carriers to sea with the necessary support ships.
To do this and have the tax cuts we need to restore lost growth government needs to become a sensible shopper spending our money more wisely.
Today they are overtaxing business and mugging pensioners to pay for mismanagement of a spendthrift public sector.
