This government is keen on cutting expenditure, especially where they see waste. Luckily I can help them.
There is a large area of waste within the Government itself. It is called the Government. There are currently more than 100 MPs who are part of David Cameron’s Government, which makes up almost one third of the Conservative and Lib Dem MPs.
Do we need them all? Certainly not, in my opinion.
First we could get rid of the Energy Secretary and his team.
Energy prices keep rising and Chris Huhne admits he can do nothing about it. It is all our fault for not shopping around.
I did shop around once and it was a nightmare. But if Mr Huhne cannot do anything constructive, other than say how dreadful it is, we could get rid of the post and his three ministers, saving a few hundred thousand pounds. Mr Huhne won’t be too discomfited, as he made a fortune in the city before entering politics.
Then there’s Work and Pensions.
As very soon there will no work and no pensions, surely it is time to make Iain Duncan Smith redundant. He has five MPs in his department, which should again provide a considerable saving.
Next we have the whips. For those that do not know, these are the MPs who force other MPs in their own party to vote according to party policy. There are 27 of them in the Government, 17 in the Commons and ten in the Lords which is more than most towns have police officers on a Saturday night. Is it so hard to get their own MPs to vote for their own policies? And it seems that, after the vote on an EU referendum, they are not very effective anyway.
Incidentally, in the Lords they are not called Whips but Lords or Baronesses in Waiting. This is probably because they do not have to force them to vote so much as get them out of the lavatories in time for the vote.
Then we have the Conservative chairman, Baroness Warsi. I have nothing against her or her job but should the party chairman be in the Government? It smacks of oldfashioned communism.
Andrew Mitchell is the Secretary of State for International Development and I cannot think for the life of me why we need such a role. Make a list of who deserves aid and send it to the Bank of England. How long can that take? Incidentally one of his two ministers is Alan Duncan, who said last year that MPs would be forced to live on rations after the expenses scandal. Someone who obviously understands the meaning of poverty.
Finally there is the Cabinet Office. It must be a big office because it has a minister, Francis Maude (son of Angus Maude) and three assistants, Nick Hurd (son of Douglas Hurd), Mark Harper and Oliver Letwin. In fact it might be big but poor Oliver still has to do his paperwork in the nearby park.
Luckily the park has plenty of bins for him to file the papers once read.
And, of course, for every minister, there is a shadow minister, so the saving would be quite handy.
If we looked at the departments themselves, it could be very handy indeed.
Should this very sound advice be acted on, I would like a percentage of the savings for my effort. Call it a lobby fee.
THIS week saw a vote in the House of Commons on whether we the people should be allowed a referendum on the EU.
We would be asked should we stay, should we go, or should we stay if the circumstances were changed. MPs of all three major parties were instructed to vote against such a referendum. I fail to understand why, first it could not have been a free vote, and second why they are all so scared of a referendum. I am pro the EU but believe we should all be allowed our say. It’s another example of the great divide between those elected and those who elect them. And that nothing has improved, despite promises, from any of the parties.
