GrumbleSmiles

7 The Last Laugh Looney Party is nearing the end of its examination of Government spending and is almost drowning under the waffle of paperwork produced to justify so much expenditure.   £Billions could be saved already, but the three biggest spenders are still to come.
The first is the Department of Education, Skills and Employment, with a wacking great budget of £ 107 billion.    It provides education for 4.7 million primary school children and 3.3 million secondary pupils.    This is achieved with 452,000 teachers.   That works out at 1 teacher for every 16 pupils, which seems considerably different to my school days.
There are also 1.6 million students in further education and 214,000 more in apprenticeships.

The Annual Report is full of acronyms :- NDPB, ESFA, STA, TRA, OCC, CITB, ECITB, FITB, FATE, OFS, SWE, SCC, STRB, SMC and probably several more letters after their name.      So you had best get a GCSE in acronyms before reading the report.    Goodness knows how the politicians are supposed to get a grip on this mammoth department, which probably explains why they change Secretaries of State so frequently.   Gavin Hinds, Michael Gove and Gavin Williamson just in the last three years.

The Annual Report is as boring as all the others, so no “A stars“ for the teacher.

Carefully buried amongst all this guff is a note about the Student Loans Authority which sold off some of its loan portfolio and lost a billion pounds in the process.   I suppose they just didn’t want to make a fuss about it.    What’s a £billion between friends ?

At the end of all this I looked at the U.K. PISA tables.     Nothing to do with leaning towers.    PISA is the OECD programme of international student assessment, which compares educational attainment in different countries.    In reading the UK ranks 13th below China, Singapore, Poland and a host of others,;  similarly we are 18th in maths and 14th in science.   Not exactly top of the class.

The LLLP  script for Bodj’s latest broadcast  on the future of education :-     The  DfESE should try harder, pay more attention in school and stop messing about with all the acronyms !

“As a result of Coronapop I have had to close all the schools  and pay the teachers for doing nothing.   The good news is that we have given all the pupils record results this year in spite of them not going to school.      So in the years ahead if we carry on this way we will rise up the PISA league tables faster than Liverpool Football Club.

In the meantime the DfESE  should write a hundred lines “ We won’t lose a billion pounds ever again and we are very,  very sorry”.

FORECAST SAVING         £ 50 BILLION

  As Coronapop sweeps through the country culling the weakest, so to does the Last Laugh Looney Party weave its path through Central Government Departments weeding out inefficiency and ineffectiveness. Just  ten more areas to examine, but potentially £ billions to be saved.    Civil servants are scurrying for cover.   They are socially isolating, which comes naturally to them, they don’t like public scrutiny.

So now its the turn of  …… the Ministry of Housing … which was for a while the Environment Department ….. but at least for now is the DCLG …. the Department for Communities and Local Government.   The schizophrenia in the name is reflected in the fact that there have been  ten housing ministers in the last ten years.    The latest is Robert Genryk, who got into a bit of trouble Recently for going to one of his several homes during the lockdown.    Then having ridden out that storm,  he found himself back in the headlines for chatting to a housing developer who just happened to need planning approval for a contested housing scheme in London.
The fact is that housing has never been much of a priority for Tory Governments even though they huff and puff about it a lot.    The reality is they are tied up in their own Green Belt.   There is a desperate shortage of housing, but that boosts existing house values, so there is little incentive to increase the supply of new homes.

The 1724 civil servants at the DCLG, whose declared aim is to “improve access to affordable and high quality housing”,  have achieved very little.   In 2018/19 they had a target of 300,000 new homes, but completed just 220,000, of which only 47,000 were affordable.
They did claim credit for the “£675 million High Street Fund” and you can clearly see how well that has done by all the empty shops.     So they then doubled down on that investment with the “£1.6 billion Stronger Towns Fund”.    Another great idea that came to nothing.    No wonder the Ministers keep moving on.

The LLLP script for Bodj next broadcast is :-

“ I am tightening my Green Belt, so there is no room for more houses, just trees and wild flowers.   That means we won’t need any more housing Ministers, which is just as well because most of the Cabinet have already had a go.     I am hoping that after Coronapop there will be quite a few spare homes made available, which won’t cost the Government anything, which is a World Class Achievement.”

FORECAST SAVING.      £ 36 Billion

The Department for Transport is a small section of the civil service which only directly spends about £ 450 million every year.   But, behind this they are also responsible for £ 24.8 Billion on trains and boats and planes and cars and helicopters and bicycles …. and probably skate boards and surfboards and scooters and roller skates and anything else that moves that they can tax or regulate !

Like all the other Government Annual Reports theirs is full of self-congratulation and incomprehensible gobbledygook.   You wouldn’t think that our roads are congested, or that our trains are over priced and frequently late.   Nor would imagine that DfD projects take years to complete.   The extra runway at Heathrow has been under discussion for the last fifty years and it is still not started.   Budgets and timescales overrun by years and £billions.     Yet the 2018/19 Annual Report claims that “we inject pace and urgency into everything we do”.     They have to be joking !

Coronapop has done them a great favour by pointing the way forward.   Just lockdown everything.    This year they will be able to report the best performance ever.      No train delays;  no road congestion;  hardly any flights;  virtually no road accidents and almost zero carbon emissions.

So in the years ahead, if we don’t let any body into the country we won’t need customs officers.    Since most people will be working from home, most of our cars will be of the roads and we might as well forget about the DVLA and MOT’s.    We may need a few trains but, we definitely won’t need HS2.    With hardly any flights we can plant trees on Heathrow as a new Greening  Britain project.

           FORECAST SAVING    £24.8  BILLION.

 So far the Last Laugh Looney Party investigation into Government spending has only just got started .    Nonetheless we have already revealed a great deal of bluster, self-justification and inefficiency and potentially achieved  some spectacular savings.     We began by looking at some of the smaller departments, although nothing is small in Government spending terms, they only think in £billions and utilise thousands of staff and bloated management structures.
The diagram below illustrates the galaxy of central Government departments and the size of their annual budget in 2018/19.

PROPOSED SAVINGS SO FAR :-

• Overseas Aid.        DFiD.                13.4  Billion
• Defence.                  MoD.               175.   Billion
• Education.             DoE.                  107.  Billion
• Food Supply.         DEFRA.              2.1 Billion
• Business.               BEIS.                    7.5 Billion
• Culture.                 DCMS.                 7.2. Billion
• Justice.                  MoJ.                     9.2  Billion
• Tax.                        HMRC.             500.   Billion

That’s about £800 Billion potential saving so far from just  8 Departments !   Plus a  load of civil servants;  a forest of paper;  a fleet of jumbo jets of foreign travel and a windbag of hot air.

You can suggest these things if you are the LAST LAUGH  LOONEY PARTY, because nobody ever thinks you are serious.

             BUT WHAT IF ONE DAY YOU GOT ELECTED 🤡

 The Last Laugh Looney Party is still looking at Government expenditure and has now turned it attention to the HMRC.     Cloaked in Her Majesty’s name, but more commonly called “the Taxman”.
Once you start to work these guys follow around for the rest of your life, like a Mafia protection racket extorting your hard earned money off you.  They want a percentage of every thing you earn and everything you buy.  They will even turn up at your funeral to see what is left to take off you.

Their 2018/19 Annual Report proudly declares that they collected or extorted £ 627.9 BILLION  from their “customers”.   They have an army of enforcers that total 58,700 with powers to imprison you if you don’t cough up.   Unless your name is Amazon or Phillip Green, in which you don’t pay.

They explain clearly what they do in 24 volumes of tax manuals.   That is why they had 42 million phone calls from people wanting to understand why almost half their income was going back to the Government in taxes.       You just need to pay an accountant to translate it all for you and then if you get a  rebate it will probably pay the accountants fees.

The LLLP has a radical solution provided their recommended reforms of other Government expenditure are implemented.   With less spending and less civil servants we won’t need so much tax to be collected.

LLLP TAX PRINCIPLES :-

• Everybody pays some tax towards common good like health, education and security.  ( not including the BBC )
• Taxation must be simple to understand and difficult to avioid.
• Don’t tax people only to give it back later, except for state pension.
• Focus tax on sales, so the more you buy the more you pay.
• Tax on income is a disincentive to growth.

LLLP TAX PROPOSALS :-

• 10% income tax and no National Insurance upto £100,000.
• 20% sales tax on anything that moves.
• 50 % inheritance tax on over £1 million.   Spend it before you go!
• No more.
  
• Prison for people who don’t pay.   Especially Amazon and Phillip Green and their accountants.

This will mean there will be a lot less revenue for the Government to spend on our behalf, so they will have to slim down their ambitions significantly.   On the positive side people will have a lot more of their own money to spend as they wish.

Nor will we need 58,700 tax collectors or a zillion tax dodging accountants, they can all go to South America to plant trees!

ESTIMATED SAVING   £500,000,000,000 and an Amazon forest.

 The Last Laugh Looney Party will now move on to examine the private club for lawyers, otherwise known as the Ministry of Justice.

OPENING ARGUMENT:-

• Justice takes too long to deliver.
• Legal aid is a gravy train for lawyers.
• Reduced sentences are justice denied.
• Too many prisoners reoffend.
• Just doing time for a crime is not enough redress.
• Proceeds of crime and substantial damages for victims should be fully repaid before release.

SOME FACTS :-

• The MoJ costs £ 8.1 billion annually.
• There are 25,000 people in prison.
• 10,000 Offenders are  on probation serving community sentences.
• There are 22,000 prison officers.
• 3456 probation officers.
• 6543 staff at MoJ.
• a zillion lawyers making a mint.

LLLP script for Bodj TV broadcast :-

“I am going to be the next great prison reformer.   Prisoners must pay for their crimes.   Literally !      £5,000 for shoplifting;  £10,000 for each burglary ;  £100,000 for GBH ;   £1,000,000 for murder ;  etc.     On top of this they must pay for their hotel stay in our luxurious prisons …… and compensate their victims.
They will be paid minimum wage when serving their time, but they will be expected to work at all the jobs nobody else wants to do :- sorting our waste; recycling our nuclear waste somehow; untieing knots in string; tieing knots in string;  cleaning graffiti off walls ( except for Banksy ).    When they have finished their term, they will then have to do a years voluntary service to pay their debt to society.”

“ A year or two of this and I expect there to be a lot less crime.   Then we will be able to do without most of the lawyers”

FORECAST SAVING :    £ 9.2 billion.

This is yet another Government Department the Last Laugh Looney Party has been asked to look into by Prime Minister Bodj.
The Department of  Digital, Culture, Media and Sport just sounds like a jolly for politicians.     They get tickets for football matches,  Concerts, film premiers, they even get to go in the Royal box at Wimbolden.    Strange how they are all avid sports fans ?
They get the best seats at cultural events.   TV appearances are not always fun because they often get asked question they can’t answer 😀

They also get to go on lots of free trips abroad to promote British culture in Abu Dhabi, Australia, Italy and Jamaica and other sunny places.     They also had to go to Japan, Australia and other far off places.    If fact they spent £ 24 million on travel and subsistence in the year.     Still it is only money !

This  mind map type illustration is taken from their 2018/19 Annual Report

It sums up in one picture just how confused the DCMS really is !   If you can’t read it don’t worry it doesn’t help you understand what they do with our money or the freebies.

The LLLP recommendation to Bodj is “ Shut them down immediately before they create any more mayhem !     Make National Museums and galleries charge entry fees with concessions  for children and  the elderly.    Make the BBC  pay it’s way in full, even if that means shutting down BBC3 and BBC4 and halving Gary Linaker’s salary.       Do you agree? ”

Forecast result

Disagree                  —— 27%

Agree                        ——-65%

Couldn’t care less    —— 8%

FORECAST SAVING.   £ 7.2 billion 

This Last Laugh Looney Party is still on its relentless search to find out what Central Government Departments are upto with our money.

Our attention has turned to the mysteriously named “BEIS”.    It doesn’t even call itself a Department.     Headed up by Alok Sharma it sounds like the next James Bond movie.   It seems to be a hotch-potch of odds and ends that don’t fit in to other areas or maybe nobody wants to handle.   It is a hastily put together grouping that only cost a mere £ 7.5 billion. 
As well as its Secretary of State, it has five Government Ministers, who are supported by a Permanent Secretary,  who is assisted by 7 Director Generals, who in turn have 40 Directors and a total of 3,776 staff.   So they must be doing very, very important work on our behalf.      Strange that we don’t hear much about them, I guess it must be hush hush !

At the last count they had taken on more staff probably to cope with leaving the European Union— they now have 4,420 staff.   Although it is a lot more than that, because they are full time equivalents (FTE’s) , meaning there are a lot of part-time staff who are grouped together as FTE’s to make the numbers look smaller.     But it it even more deceitful than that, because on top of the 4,420 staff there are another 14,260 in ALB,s ( arms length bodies) like the Met Office.

Their title stands for “ Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy ”.     That is probably why they are keeping their heads down, because we are not doing too well on that front :-

• Business’s have been locked down due to Coronapop and many will find it hard to reopen ever again.
• Energy costs have risen and our coal mines have all been shut down, our North Sea oil is running out and our Nuclear Power stations are past their sell by dates.    Let’s hope the wind blows and the sun shines a lot in the years ahead.
• Industrial Strategy is not really needed when you don’t have much industry left.

Here is the LLLP script for tonight’s Boris broadcast :-

“The BEIS has worked tirelessly for the last few years closing down industry, increasing energy costs and locking down businesses.    I am very proud of what they have achieved,  but maybe before they do any more damage, we should ask your opinion.    Do you agree they are doing a good job?     If you vote YES , they will keep at it, closing things down.       In the event of a NO vote, we won’t be able to make them redundant, because it will cost a fortune, so we will put them on a treadmill to generate some energy 🤡”

FORECAST RESULT

YES, KEEP THEM                                         0%

NO, PUT THEM ON THE WHEEL       100%

FORECAST SAVING         £ 7.5 billion.

From now on I will speed up the investigation, before it bores the pants off me 🤡

The ruthless slimming down of Government Departments as recommended by the Last Laugh Looney Party continues at a pace.
Today it is the turn of  the Department of Agriculture,  Fisheries and Food.    In fact that is what it used to be called, when it did what it said on the tin and concentrated on supplying the country with all its food, but now it has had a make-over and is called “ The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs”.

Changing their name is where they started to go wrong.   They must have brought in an expensive management consultant who has got them all confused.    Their mission now is :-   “To restore and enhance the environment for the next generation, and leave it in a better state than we found it”.

                 Whatever happened to the fish and food?

Some estimates say that as much as 80% of our food is imported.   Farming is barely profitable any more and farmers are told to diversify into beekeeping and growing wild flowers.   We are dependent on foreign labour to harvest our fruit and veg.    Our fishing industry has been almost totally destroyed and fish stocks are lower then they have ever been.

It took 3,500 civil servants beavering away at DEFRA in London to do this.   Pursuing their new vision of “purer air, cleaner water, making the land greener, and food more sustainable “.

You couldn’t make this up, but it is all in their Annual Report.    Along with their 25 year annual plan, in which they tell us that in their fight against plastic waste, they will eliminate plastic straws, cotton buds and plastic stirrers.  Thank God for that !

Shame about the floods and the water shortages that they are also responsible for.

The LLLP’s recommended script for a broadcast by Bodj :-

“ We have decided to move all the DEFRA  staff to live in yurts in a field in a flood plain in Yorkshire, where they can learn to live off the land.   They will no longer be paid, but they can keep the TV rights to a weekly Country File broadcast on how well they are getting on.”

FORECAST SAVING   =  £ 2.1 billion.