Here you go, more ideas to save money...
1. Too many politicians:
A. Look at one parliament for the whole of Britain - devolution is costing money. Party Political 'whipping' is the issue here where your local MP is not allowed to support their local issues if it falls out of line with the party political ideals - this to me has always meant that a Scottish MP couldn't bring local issues to Westminster and why we are in the mess with all the devolution. The savings could be huge if we slimmed down the amount of parliaments.
B. Look at how many councils we have - councils within councils within councils - stick to one County Council. If you look at HS2, the locals in Aylesbury Vale missed out on an intermediate station because the FIVE local councils couldn't agree - that's Bucks County Council, Aylesbury Vale District Council, Chilterns District Council, Milton Keynes District Council and Wycombe District Council - how many Councils do you need to run a small county? More savings there me thinks!
2. More waste in the MOD. To run a Vigilant or Tutor costs at least £400 per hour - to do it at the local flying clubs it costs about £100. Why? Also, the outrageous Dii contract. Why do I need an OFFICIAL SENSITIVE system when I could pop down to PC World, buy a nice computer for 1/4 of the coat, run encryption software across us all and save lots of money. Plus when it goes wrong, I pop into PC World to buy another. I agree we need our own managed and secure system for SECRET and above, but for OFFICIAL-SENSITIVE and below do we really need such an expensive system? Hell, why not give us all iPads and then we could work from home on 3G! Lot's more savings to be made.
3. Out of work people - bring them in to work for their dole money. If they haven't got an interview that day over the 5 day week, get them weeding, picking up litter and painting. No one should get free money unless they are in education, sick, infirm or disabled and unable to work. Whilst this might not save money it would dramatically improve the state of our Nation.
4. Schools. My daughter goes to a Private School, I don't get CEA and my wife and I pay for it (we haven't had a foriegn holiday in 5 years and both our cars are over 3 years old). The recent 'politics of envy' calls against private education makes me cross. If I compare the facilities at her school compared to the State Schools, then I see stark differences - her school didn't (until bery recently) have astro-turf pitches (and we had to raise our own funds for them), no heated pool, no school network for the children and overall has less than the tac-payer's provided Academy in the same town. So why does the private school get better results? The parents have inculcated the importance of learning in their children, the teachers know that they have to achieve to keep their jobs or the school will fall and the importance of learning over gimmicks like heated pools, astro-turf and fancy school networks which waste taxpayer's money if the State Schools continue to under achieve.
5. Rather than pay child allowance in money, pay it in vouchers that have to be spent on the children through companies selling clothes, food and educational items. I would be really surprised if 100% is spent on the children. If it isn't spent on children then take it away or it gets spent on Sky TV, booze, fags and even worse drugs!
6. Charge p!ssed up people who turn up to A&E with non life threatening injury. Stop all cosmetic surgery on the NHS - the money should be only be there to preserve life, extend life and treat chronic conditions. Also, ask for ID before treating - no ID equals no treatment, to stop 'health tourism'.
7. Improve safety on the roads and reduce the number of A&E admissions by insisting on an eye test and education program every 10 years on renewal of the photo-card driving licence. This would employ more people, raise more revenue and reduce road casualties - a good deal all around!
There are so many more. The waste in this country is scandalous. These ideas could help rebalance the books and then we might get better GROWTH, which is the other side of the equation. Along with GROWTH comes an increase in tax receipts and then we might be in business and back in SURPLUS.
We could do so much better in the MoD. It is underpinned by in-house fighting, nepotism and outdated thinking (partly due to Shrivenham Poly majoring on Clauswitz and Sun Tzu!). We should be able to the same we do today with substantially less - procurement, infrastructure, IT and preserving front-line activity should be our key efforts. Why do we have full-time Regulars doing training, HR/Admin, PEd when full-time Reserves would do (and can be mobilised if we really need to take them with us in Ops). Do we really need dedicated FP Field Sqns, when the brown jobs could do this function within 80% of what we get (the loss of Rapier/SHORAD should have spelt the end of the Regt in my opinion, sadly, when we had to lose our core output of combat aircraft to pay for the Regt capability). Go hard and fast on the 3 main forces - if it floats it belongs to the Royal Navy, if it is land based it is Army, and if it flies it is Royal Air Force. If we did this we would see an economy of effort, IMHO. I know putting the Royal Marines or RAF Regt in the Army, or the Fleet Air Arm and Army Air Corps in the RAF, woukd be unpopular but from a purely non-nepotistic point of view it makes sense. Some of our key personnel are reaching the irreducible minima that we feared and clubbing capabilities under one of the 3 arms makes sense to me? I do not propose a Joint Force as we have seen this fail so many times before when other contries have tried it.
LJ
