Thursday, Sep 23, 2010
The most significant rolling back of bureaucracy and the state for decades
The Telegraph: Quango cuts: 177 bodies to be scrapped under coalition plans
The list discloses for the first time the extent of David Cameron’s plans for the “bonfire of the quangos”, designed to save the taxpayer billions of pounds. Thousands of jobs will go as part of the reforms.
Posted by devo @ 10:37 PM (1264 views) Add Comment
21 Comments
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1. tyrellcorporation said...
HALLELUJAH! If this goes ahead as planned, the UK is starting to finally taking small, tentative steps back to reality. I for one am over the moon about this announcement - WELL DONE CAMERON!
2. Crunchy said...
I will postpone cheer untill more details emerge. Not all quangos are a waste of money.
Perhaps the BOE will go! ;)
3. general congreve said...
HOUSE PRICE CRASH!!!
4. Ubear said...
About freaking time! I hope the rest are scrapped too; this quango gravy train needs to derailed and the rails wrecked big time.
5. brickormortis said...
A great example of the folly of the UK economy. Creating nothing jobs for people so they can spend their money in shops and on cars and most importantly houses and create the illusion of a growing economy. The problem is/was that these were and are nothing jobs. They have been created to keep down unemployment and disseminate borrowed money into the economy which the government now need to pay back. How? Well they scrap the jobs that they didn't need in the first place.
These quangos make me realise how decadent we have been - or at least those in office have been. Dressing up our economy with these jobs and its all fake. The lot of it. House prices can not survive this kind of culling and it will knock on to retail sales and mortgage defaults etc. This means one thing for sure - lower interest rates for longer. The BoE and government are well and truly stuck in a corner. I can' t see rates rising anytime before 2012. Sterling might just be fooooked some more.
6. Sarah said...
I picked one of these quangos at random - 'Strategic Advisory Board for Intellectual Property' - it consists of six board members who spend 25 days a year on the job, plus four ex-officio board members. The total annual combined wage bill is £82500 and with travel and subsistence expenses their expenditure for 2008/2009 was £134,858.54 Getting rid of it isn't bring down the housing market. Every time a knucklehead attacks a quango, the Royal Bank of Scotland Group p/sses itself.
7. sibley's b'stard child said...
Cue for indignant squealing...
8. uncle tom said...
The regional development agencies - all eight of them - are on the list - Nice..
Pity the Health and Safety Executive is not on the list - it has become the most bloated, spineless and self-serving of bodies..
..while we need some sort of safety watchdog, the HSE is beyond reform IMO.
9. greenmind said...
National Housing and Planning Advice Unit (NHPAU): Hasta la vista baby, you wont be missed.
10. Cypher007 said...
soon to be replaced by 177 new quango's. get real people its jobs for the boy's, always has been.
11. mark said...
yet wales spends 20 million on a new assembly office in Llandudno
12. mark wadsworth said...
Of course all the responsibilites and budgets and probably staff of these quangoes will just be handed over to the EU's quangoes.
13. mark said...
I no longer believe the UK can actually cut anything, they just shuffle people and paper and make it look like we have cuts, rubbish, utter rubbish
14. uncle tom said...
Mark & Mark,
DC has for years expressed his deep dislike of quangoes, and now he's PM he has the chance to wield the axe; so I reckon this is for real.
If you look at the list, very little (if anything) is likely to be hived off to Brussels.
15. mark wadsworth said...
UT, as ever, I hope you are right but fear you are wrong. As a matter of fact and observation, the Lib-Cons have ceded more powers to Brussels in four months than Labour did in the last four years.
16. greenmind said...
I know someone who worked for a Regional Assembly. He isnt in Brussels now, hes unemployed.
17. mark said...
I see a boss from scotlands tourism has been paid £240,000 to leave
18. Natashas Dad said...
I was offered a job at one of these quangos in 2008 at a ridiculously high salary. I opted to take a job in the private sector on a lower salary as I believed it was only a matter of time before someone realised what poor value for money was being gained from the quango.
I notice the CEO of the quango has just moved to another Government job- at least he is going to be alright- maybe he used to be a banker.
I am very glad I made that decision given the lack of available jobs now
19. orcusmaximus said...
@mark wadsworth - "he Lib-Cons have ceded more powers to Brussels in four months than Labour did in the last four years."
The Con-Dems will have to give up an awful lot to match Labour giving up our rebate, our veto, and our borders (to unrestrained immigration from new EU countries)...
20. Crunchy said...
14. orcusmaximus
Well said.
21. drewster said...
Don't be fooled by the numbers!
Just 15 quangos account for 80% of the costs. For example most of the ones that have "committee" in the name are just infrequent meetings of experts to inform government. These have tiny budgets.
I half-agree with Mark Wadsworth. The real cuts are in programmes, not the quangos. Some work will be handed down to local authorities; but they might not get much funding for it.
There's a lot of smoke-and-mirrors. Some quangos will be rejigged and rebranded as "executive agencies" rather than quangos - that makes it look like the Tories are living up to their promise.
The only way we can tell if they've made real cuts is by looking at overall expenditure. Those figures won't be available until long after the cuts do happen.
From a HPC point of view, the staff at any organisation on the list won't be making any big purchases between now and the spending review in four weeks' time. Overall consumer confidence is tumbling. I predict September and (especially) October's housing transaction levels will be tiny.