Audit Commission
 

The Coalition Government is to abolish the Audit Commission, the watchdog for waste and inefficiency in government.

It raises the question as to who advised them to do this, as surely the best placed organisation to do so would be.....the Audit Commission themselves.

But turkeys rarely vote for Christmas. do they!

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Were they operative during the Blair/Brown administaration? Did they acheive anything during that period when no doubt they were receiving substantial salaries/expenses

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The Audit Commission has not been abolished.. the name may change but the commission is to be replaced with a new private company which will be subsidised by the government for the next 4 years.
And so bye bye the Audit Commission..but a good day to cover the bad news that the defence budget will be cut by a massive 30%..now am I the only one that thinks if the last Government had even hinted at defence cuts there would be hell to pay in the press, and on this forum?...those that like to make excuses for this government can maybe explian why there should be cuts in defence.. will your argument be that Labour spent to much on defence?..prey tell.

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There's a big difference in spending money and spending it wisely, Labour have never been backward when it comes to spending money they haven't got, take the private initiative funding for hospitals, the expense has now spiraled out of all proportions an overspend of around £65 billion and still rising. The country has, after 13 years of profligate spend by Labour, to start spending money wisely not throwing it about like confetti, unfortunately it appears that Mancie is the only one not to realise that, maybe when he sobers up the truth might just come and bite him on the bum

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John I think it will be a cold day in hell when that event happens.

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Cold Margaret, it'll have frozen over;)

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Same old rubbish and really quite sad...to make cuts of 30% on defence could well mean more than just a "bite on the bum" in the future for this country. :(

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Would agree with Mancie. The present government sre contemplating a 20% cut in army helicopters. Now, it doesn't seem five minutes ago since the Tories in opposition were complaining about our troops not having enough helicopters. What makes it even more scandalous is that Cameron has ring-fenced the overseas aid budget, so countries like India and Pakistan which can afford to blow money on nuclear weapons are receiving cash hand outs from us. Go figure. :rolleyes:

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Why oh why do we as a nation need to dole out money that we can ill afford??? Sorry but it is just so ridiculous to send x-amount of aid when we are struggling to keep afloat. Means nought who is in power, this country can't afford to lend/bail out anybody else!!!

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Well a 30% cut in Defence spending would have been banner headlines on every newspaper Tabloid or Broad Sheet and would have been lead story on news channels on the BBC ITV Sky CNN etc. yet I watched the BBC news yesterday morning from 6am to 9am and not one word, I know people who like an odd tipple or two sometimes see pink elephants crawling up the bed, seems your pink elephants are Tory Cuts Mancie;)

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Well seems I got the figures wrong....it's a 20% cut.. it's not so long ago the Tories were complaining about lack of resources for our troops... the lying scumbags!

BBC News - Liam Fox unveils plans for 'leaner' Ministry of Defence

Re: Audit Commission
 

BBC News - Liam Fox unveils plans for 'leaner' Ministry of Defence

Jaysay I found this news item published just a couple of days ago.

I am amazed to learn that there are just 100,000 in the serving forces, but 85,000 civil servants.

When people mention slashing the defence budget, I think it needs to be looked at closely and with an analytical eye to determine where the cuts are going to be.

I do not know enough about the nuts and bolts of this item to feel confident to comment.......other than perhaps ask, why would a party in power put the nation at risk?

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Mancie, it appears that you have also looked at the same article, does it not say in the opening paragraph that they are looking to make the services 'Leaner' but they are looking to achieve this by reducing the number of civil servants and high ranking officers?

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I have looked at this article again, and can see nothing which details any loss of resources to the fighting troops.
When in power, the Labour government did not have a very good track record on providing our troops with adequate resources, resources which were safe and suitable for the job in hand.
And while you put the cuts at 20%, the article actually states that the cuts to the budget are to be between 10 and 20%.

Now I am not saying that I agree with any of this...but it does nothing for your argument to sensationalise the headlines by exaggeration.

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I really wonder just how the Coalition government have really had time to assess the finances before announcing all these cuts. I just think it is a perfect excuse for them to force their ideology of private business and finance, with little or no state support, on the British people.

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Yes I saw this on Friday...I can't understand why was not splashed all over the Tory press ;).
This smacks of the same old rubbish about creating a "leaner" but better service.

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Mancie, we have been over this so many times.......we cannot have what cannot be paid for.

I suppose if the government slapped a 'War Tax' on everything to fund the services you would be bleating about that too.

If you want something...then it has to be paid for....end of.

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I take it you "approve" of these cuts Margaret?... I'm not totally stupid.. I know we can't have everything, but if we make massive cuts in our defence.. we could end up with nothing.. not now but in say 20yrs... i think this is a bad policy for the future.. very bad.

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You obviously have not read my post number 14.
And nowhere did I call you 'stupid'......you will find that through all my posts I try not to insult people.

The theatre of war has changed dramatically over the decades.......there are far more people not dressed in uniforms trying to kill and maim us.

I do not know what the answer is, or the way forward.....I am also pretty sure that the people who are announcing the cuts in spending will take advice from people who are not politically linked to their organisation....people who have the knowledge to make the savings in a sensible and just way.

Perhaps if the previous incumbents had not been so flash with the cash then we would not be having this conversation....but I don't reckon you will wear that one.

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you have not insulted me..that's my department.. it's more like the constant excuses made for this government, along with the lectures on how we must destroy any future for this country because of big bad Gordon Brown.
You are pretty sure that these cuts are made with "sound advice" from experts?... who are these people?.. certainly not the people that actually defend this country.. I've yet to hear of any General or forces Commander recommending cuts!

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I remember the Audit Commission coming to Hyndburn. They were put up in the Dunkenhalgh and given champagne and fine food.

My own experiences of their two visits was of total incompetence. In giving the Council an excellent rating they did not look at anything that needed looking at but enjoyed guided tours to parts of Hyndburn the Council wanted them to see.

On this visit they failed to interview the opposition which is appalling, too busy living the high life at the tax payers expense. The Audit Commission in my view should have started with the opposition.

ON a second occasion they came here over the Coach House where months later the Council finally admitted several errors (though not all). Only months previous, the Audit Commission looked into the complaints and could find no wrong.

From these two personal experiences I have to say Eric Pickles is right. The Audit Commission set up in 1986 by Maggie, was ostensibly to monitor Labour Councils but has become ineffective.

Hopefully Hyndburn Council will be embarrassed by the Audit Commission's 'excellence' marque they have put on everything and remove them.

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Nowhere have I made excuses for this government....remember I didn't vote for any of them(as you are fond of reminding me).
I could not choose a party that I felt was up to the job......the party that are in power are there because the general population felt that the Labour party had let them down.

I haven't, as far as I am aware, lectured anyone either.......the only thing I have done is recognised that it is going to take some very stringent measures to get this country back on an even fiscal course.

As for the Experts.....well surely Mancie you do not think that the government ministers make the decisions as to exactly what cuts will go ahead......they haven't got the expertise to do that. They rely on professionally qualified and impartial advisors.....this does not of course mean the Generals or the Forces Cammanders because they are not impartial are they?

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Graham is right on this. The Audit Commission is bang on useless, whose activity has simply been to visit each council in the land and then tick alot of boxes, taking no account of local circumstances and all at great expense to the tax payer.

It is not to be confused with the National Audit Office, which is the armed bean-counting wing of Parliament and as such reports directly to them and not to the government. As such, it displays a combination of neutrality and imagination in rooting out public waste and stupidity. As far as I now understand, the role of the audit commission is now to be transferred to the NAO and not to any private organisation.

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Tealeaf, I bet that bit of news will have some Councils quaking in their boots.

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Are you real?.. seems you would take the advice on defence from some set up commision rather than the real experts, I mean those that actually defend this country?

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I certainly do not recall the audit commission picking up on this:

Councils pay for prostitutes for the disabled - Telegraph

Personally, I find this very sad; is this yet another British industry in decline? Why do we have to send our people out to Holland for this? Aren't our girls good enough?

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It seems we all have read the same article, This government has stated that there will be no cuts to front line services for our troops, the cuts will come in the glut of useless civil servants clogging the system wasting billions of pounds every year, incidentally most of which were introduced by your buddies over the last thirteen years, we can do without pen pushers we can't do without our front-line troops. When the country is in financial meltdown do to 13 years of total incompetence, and money being in very short supply, when you have 100,000 front line troops and 85,000 civil servants its not hard for even you to realise that there has to be cuts and civil some servants will have to go, and as you keep saying Blame Gordon Brown

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While they might seem to be the real experts Mancie, do you think that they are not biased. I think that when a government takes advice, it has to be seen to be from some impartial source.

Because a soldier defends this country does not mean that he knows where best to apply defence cuts, any more than a GP can run the NHS, it would be asking them something neither is trained to do.......would you ask the barber if he thought you needed a haircut????

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and Mancie, the last government committed to spending 37 billion pounds on the forces without giving any thought to where the money was coming from.

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The spin coming out of the Coalition about 'Labour this' and 'Labour that' is just the shotgun start to the next election.

Already Michael 'Grovelling' Gove has had to apologise to the House of Commons for saying BSF was unfunded after Treasury officials confirmed it was. The facts did not stop him making such arrogant, ill-founded claims in the preceding days in a an attempt to cosy up to the message of lambasting Labour's unfunded promises.

Liam Fox is doing the same, as all his colleagues are and it is bare faced cheek from him when he said we were not spending enough on defence in the run up.

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Think it would be interesting if someone could do a review/tally of how many Council employees the "old' UDC's" had who now make up Hyndburn, and compare it with present day numbers .....I'm sure the numbers are available somewhere, but think it would require a request under the freedom of information laws to get the HBC to release such information ,unless one of the Local Councillors were to request the numbers in an HBC meeting ........ Ken Moss .. over to you

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Thank you, Steeljack. And in other news.....

It's actually probably quite comparable to the number of collective staff we have now, although the old UDCs had a lot of unpaid people around the table. Although people do look back fondly on those pre-1974 days, financially speaking they would probably have had to change drastically in the intervening years. I've still not heard a convincing argument for abolishing them, though.

However, speaking personally there are only a few cuts I would make within HBC itself as the machinery itself does seem to be quite efficient for the most part. One particular department could be excised at a stroke and its role subsumed by other departments but that will never happen under a Britcliffe administration as it was his idea in the first place. The only thing truly wrong at the moment is the man pulling all the strings.

Give a monkey control of his environment and he will fill the world with bananas, with little regard to what anyone else wants.

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Graham, you know just as well as anyone that while Liam Fox was in opposition he could say what he wanted......he didn't have the power to do anything.....and all politicians do the same thing while in opposition.
Now he is in the place to do something let us see what happens.

I have no party allegiance, but even you must admit, that the last government made a total MCU of things.

When a party is in opposition it promises the earth if you elect them.....without considering how this is to be funded.(Perhaps they themselves have no idea as to how it will be funded)
When yo do elect them you don't get the earth, you get fertilizer(and I'm being polite here).

I don't care which party are elected as long as they have the will, the intellect, and the cojones to get us out of the mess we are in.

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My watchword on the doorstep was that anyone who comes a-knocking cannot promise you anything because they don't have the power to do so. Nationally, it's a bit of a different ball game although you're heavily reliant on what the party in Westminster decides to do.

The Conservatives have made a lot of promises in the run up to the election, the biggest lies probably being the referendums on electoral reform and on the EU, neither of which will now happen.

Mind you, give them credit for thinking big. The best argument for voting Tory that the local party could come up with was a leaflet showing their candidates hugging a grit bin. We had a good laugh about that, partly because it was Tory council and county council that failed to prepare for last winter but mainly because Britcliffe tried to make out that it was Labour's fault.

Ever the politician, even his own mistakes are the fault of the opposition.

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Think they call it politics Ken, mind you your new at this game, in time you'll learn:D

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I'm vaguely aware of how it works, John....

However, the performance in the council chamber was rather a scrabbling one by Britcliffe and a desperate attempt to shift blame onto anyone but himself. There are three things you can guarantee in any answer from Peter:

1) Blame was the previous administration

2) 13 years of Labour rule have ruined the borough

3) It's all Graham Jones' fault

If we had the Hansard volumes in Hyndburn you could just copy and paste that after every answer at Question Time, particularly point 3.

Peter just can't stop talking about Graham. I think he misses him terribly.

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Think your spot on there Margaret, savings don't mean cuts, it mans make the establishment leaner and meaner with little disruption to main aims of which ever department is in question. To explain it in terms Mancie can understand lets say we have a guy who buys 20 bottles Carlsberg Special Brew every day. Now our guy is a bit lazy, but very initiatively driven, saw before the wife goes out to work he gets her to open all the bottles and place them on the cold shelf next to his chair, unfortunately ever night he only ever drinks 16 and the other 4 are thrown away. This goes on for weeks until the wife says why don't you just buy 16 bottles and we'll save a fortune, by cutting out 20% waste:D The guy still gets wasted every night, but it cost 20% less to do it. ;)

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Its a different animal SJ and can't really be compared really, here would probably be around 120 councillors (I don't know for sure what other councils consisted of Ossy had 15 councillors in 5 wards) but of course councillors did the work out of the goodness of their heart without pay in those days. Even so I think overall to have say 6 different refuge collection services within a small area that is now Hyndburn would be utter stupidity today and that goes for a lot of other things too, I know lots of people would like to return to the old UDC set up but this day and age it would uneconomical and would overall cost a hell of a sight more