The reason why big government needs to be cut down to size was clearly demonstrated at this week’s meeting of the Islington audit committee. They just can’t handle taxpayer’s money with the respect it deserves. Observers were shocked to hear that £55,000 of taxpayer’s money was wasted by paying invoices to contractors twice or even three times. The vast sum of £5.4 million of council tax payments was “mislaid” and over £1 million had been sitting in a council bank account because they can’t make up their minds which department it belongs to!
An audit spokeswoman, however, said that “For a council that spends over £1 billion a year, £55,000 isn’t that much money”. Hmmm, that’s just the point, when big government gets used to handling millions or billions of our money, it really doesn’t care about wasting thousands. The problem has always been that if the money isn’t “yours”, you treat it far with less care.