£260M 'wasted' In Axing School Building Plans

[Nickolarge]

My link

I have been under the impression that the Tories are drawing up all these cuts 'on the back of an envelope' as they say.

I like the bit saying that the school cuts list is now in it's fifth version

They are announcing all this stuff far too quickly to have thought it through properly.

What's happened to the LibDem 'calming influence' in this so called coalition? They have already been pushed right out to the margins (where they belong IMO).

I never have and never will vote Conservative because I have always thought that it is no accident that the party name starts with con.

The LibDems are the first and most obvious victims of the latest in a long list of bogus and broken deals that always follow in the wake of a new Tory administration.

What worries me is that the Tories are a bit like a runaway train. If they get away with their initial plans they will go a stage further and then on again, always overshooting the mark. Yes, we can all agree that there are times, like now, when something needs to be done but the Tories will almost certainly damage the economy far more than remotely required if they carry on in their current mood.

[RufflesTheGuineaPig]

Dude, our government spends £1.33 for every £1 they collect in tax.

We need to cut spending by 25% JUST TO STOP GETTING DEEPER IN DEBT.

If we want to pay the debts back in the lifetime of a normal mortgage... 25 years, we need to cut spending by about 40%, and that ignoring the huge pension liabilities the government has and can't get rid of. If we extend debt repayment much past 20 years the extra interest means the payments wont really drop.

You really have no idea how bad things are going to have to get.

[exiges]

OK, so it's going to have cost £260m to cancel the buildings.. but they've cancelled £55 billion of school projects, so that's a relatively small "fine" to pay IMO.

So do we pay £260m or £55billion, that's a tough one..

As usual the BBC put a typical left wing spin on it and omit the fact.

Edited July 13, 2010 by exiges

[ralphmalph]

The title should be "260 million wasted by schools in having to follow the massively over beaurecratic procedure to apply for theBSF.".

Congratulations to the Tory;s to stop the waste, where private consultants were paid 1.8mill per year just to help the educationally challenged Local authorities and schools that could not fill in a form in English to apply without help.

FFS.

[okaycuckoo]

I don't get the title to this thread. Hope it wasn't written by the OP. Haha - written by the BBC!

"I paid off my mortgage, so I wasted all those early redemption fees!"

Edited July 13, 2010 by okaycuckoo

[libspero]

OK, so it's going to have cost £260m to cancel the buildings.. but they've cancelled £55 billion of school projects, so that's a relatively small "fine" to pay IMO.

So do we pay £260m or £55billion, that's a tough one..

As usual the BBC put a typical left wing spin on it and omit the fact.

Time to CAP their pay, or better yet, get the senior managers to re-apply for their jobs, cull 80% of them and get some staff in with experience of the real world.

[Nickolarge]

OK, so it's going to have cost £260m to cancel the buildings.. but they've cancelled £55 billion of school projects, so that's a relatively small "fine" to pay IMO.

So do we pay £260m or £55billion, that's a tough one..

As usual the BBC put a typical left wing spin on it and omit the fact.

If I asked you to pay me £2.60 for nothing or £550 for something that you needed which would you choose?

Before you say that it would depend on whether you had £550 think about all the areas where money is spent that will never benifit you in any way. Iraq and Afganistan will do for starters.

[Nickolarge]

Dude, our government spends £1.33 for every £1 they collect in tax.

We need to cut spending by 25% JUST TO STOP GETTING DEEPER IN DEBT.

If we want to pay the debts back in the lifetime of a normal mortgage... 25 years, we need to cut spending by about 40%, and that ignoring the huge pension liabilities the government has and can't get rid of. If we extend debt repayment much past 20 years the extra interest means the payments wont really drop.

You really have no idea how bad things are going to have to get.

Or they could take more tax

[foxy]

What a load of bo11ocks!

How is 100M 'lost' through bidding? Were the contractors guaranteed to win those jobs?

And I'd be intrigued to know where the 160M went because it sounds like (most of) it was wasted wether or not the projects went ahead?!

[Nickolarge]

I don't get the title to this thread. Hope it wasn't written by the OP. Haha - written by the BBC!

"I paid off my mortgage, so I wasted all those early redemption fees!"

If you paid off your mortgage early enough to suffer redemption fees then you did waste money.

Better planning would have saved you a fair sum

[exiges]

If I asked you to pay me £2.60 for nothing or £550 for something that you needed which would you choose?

If I had no money, actually if I owed lots of money like the government does, then I'd settle for £2.60 until I could afford the £550

They're cutting back on defence too you know. "Defence cuts will be ‘ruthless and without sentiment’, Liam Fox warns

Edited July 13, 2010 by exiges

[mightytharg]

A spokesman for the Department for Education said: "The fact that 67 councils have spent more than £160m simply preparing for entry into Building Schools for the Future, without a single brick being laid in any of these authorities, shows exactly why we had to bring an end to this scandalous waste of public money."

Says it all really, now we just need to reduce the redundancy payments and sack these council idiots.

Edited July 13, 2010 by mightytharg

[libspero]

If I asked you to pay me £2.60 for nothing or £550 for something that you needed which would you choose?

That's not quite the choice though is it.

If a school has a leaky roof or some mould on window sills it's not absolutely essential that we fix it this instant.. it just needs doing at some point.

Anything non-critical is simply being put on hold for a couple of years for your £2.60, rather than being fixed this instant for £550. If they need a couple of buckets in the sports hall collecting the drips for a while so be it.

[Hip to be bear]

If I asked you to pay me £2.60 for nothing or £550 for something that you needed which would you choose?

Before you say that it would depend on whether you had £550 think about all the areas where money is spent that will never benifit you in any way. Iraq and Afganistan will do for starters.

If you gave me the option of paying £2.60 to avoid paying the £550 that I didn't have as I was overdrawn to the tune of £9,000 and with other expenditure increasing my debt by £1500 per year, I would say that was £2.60 well spent. No it was Inevitable that I had to take that option!. THen I would get pissed off with myself for getting myself into so much debt........until I remembered that that was those C O C K S from New Labour who racked up the debt!!!!!

Nickolarge, your avatar is remarkably appropriate!

[miko]

Yes we have to have cuts.

The pile of sh-t that just got kicked out of number 10 left a financial disaster behind them. However the tories are starting to worrie me a bit .

Why when they have been in just a few months have there been two attemped attacks on pensions. What does happen in the long run with the pensions in this country remains to be seen . However they first talk about making people wait longer for their state pension , bringing forward the higher age to collect it.

Then they talk about changing the increases to private and company pensions and linking them to the lower inflation rate rpi instead of cpi.

The tories attacked pensions when they were last in by taxing the surpluses in company pensions , so the companies just took contribution holidays , now many of them have black holes in them. Then GB did his raid taxing the dividends and nicking billions, now another tory government and they are straight back into the pensions again.

Why do we always end up with the govenments wanting to fu-k the pensions.

[libspero]

Why when they have been in just a few months have there been two attemped attacks on pensions. What does happen in the long run with the pensions in this country remains to be seen . However they first talk about making people wait longer for their state pension , bringing forward the higher age to collect it.

Then they talk about changing the increases to private and company pensions and linking them to the lower inflation rate rpi instead of cpi.

I'm not sure that one wasn't a bit of a diversionary red herring. How many private pensions do you know that are inflation linked? It was made into a big story at the time, but I don't think it actually affects many people at all. Plus, if house prices drop or remain stagnant it could actually be better to be CPI linked rather than RPI linked anyway.

[okaycuckoo]

If you paid off your mortgage early enough to suffer redemption fees then you did waste money.

Better planning would have saved you a fair sum

Maybe you shouldn't have taken out that mortgage. Would have been good planning. But that doesn't occur to lefties, because it's always somebody else's money ... mostly belonging to Chinese workers, money they were never intended to see.

[Bob Loblaw]

I know someone who has been involved in their local BSF project (which has now been scrapped). Aside from attending conferences at huge expense they were offered 'fact finding trips' to Denmark and Australia. Denmark for ideas on interior design in schools and Australia for ideas on improving ICT. This was post election when it was becoming obvious that BSF was going to be scrapped. Why didnt the new Government ask all schools to pause their BSF programme post election until a decision had been made? This would have saved millions.

[Bloo Loo]

I know someone who has been involved in their local BSF project (which has now been scrapped). Aside from attending conferences at huge expense they were offered 'fact finding trips' to Denmark and Australia. Denmark for ideas on interior design in schools and Australia for ideas on improving ICT. This was post election when it was becoming obvious that BSF was going to be scrapped. Why didnt the new Government ask all schools to pause their BSF programme post election until a decision had been made? This would have saved millions.

ICT is a teaching subject...not a building project.

IT is a capital spend.

[Ponzi]

Ah yes the wonderful state education "system" where we have the lowest levels of literacy and numeracy in the developed world.

Foreign nationals speak better English than the English - the BBC love the glottal stop and the south east twang.

A system where teachers cannot be struck off and you cannot punish the badly behaved.

Should the state educate our kids?

I would encourage all schools to opt out of state control.

[Nickolarge]

I'm not sure that one wasn't a bit of a diversionary red herring. How many private pensions do you know that are inflation linked? It was made into a big story at the time, but I don't think it actually affects many people at all. Plus, if house prices drop or remain stagnant it could actually be better to be CPI linked rather than RPI linked anyway.

If you start discounting things on the basis that they might be red herrings or kite flying you are well on the way to being conned.

[Jack's Creation]

My link

I have been under the impression that the Tories are drawing up all these cuts 'on the back of an envelope' as they say.

I like the bit saying that the school cuts list is now in it's fifth version

They are announcing all this stuff far too quickly to have thought it through properly.

What's happened to the LibDem 'calming influence' in this so called coalition? They have already been pushed right out to the margins (where they belong IMO).

I never have and never will vote Conservative because I have always thought that it is no accident that the party name starts with con.

The LibDems are the first and most obvious victims of the latest in a long list of bogus and broken deals that always follow in the wake of a new Tory administration.

What worries me is that the Tories are a bit like a runaway train. If they get away with their initial plans they will go a stage further and then on again, always overshooting the mark. Yes, we can all agree that there are times, like now, when something needs to be done but the Tories will almost certainly damage the economy far more than remotely required if they carry on in their current mood.

Labour lost , Deal with it.

[miko]

I'm not sure that one wasn't a bit of a diversionary red herring. How many private pensions do you know that are inflation linked? It was made into a big story at the time, but I don't think it actually affects many people at all. Plus, if house prices drop or remain stagnant it could actually be better to be CPI linked rather than RPI linked anyway.

How many do i know that are inflation linked , well for a start my defered pension is and the pensions of everyone I worked with are. To be honest there are rules in all pensions about inflation linking . You don't know how many people it affects.

House prices are not in the basket of goods linked to CPI or RPI. Whether houses drop , increase or stay the same , most other cost's are going up. If it does not affect many which i would say it does actually why don't they leave it alone. They are meant to be sorting out the country's financial mess , not attacking pensions again.

[PopGun]

We all know the old power station needs to come down. Yet personally I'd prefer a well engineered and controlled detonation, rather then a sweeping carpet bombing of the whole area.

My fear is that history will repeat itself and the cuts will go too far, too quickly and be over zealous. They could also start by pulling out of Iraq/Afghanistan and setting fire to the enormous tiers of pointless laws conceived under Labour, that serve only to line litigator’s pockets.

[Traktion]

Or they could take more tax

No thanks! Enough taxpayer money has been pissed up against the wall already, over the last decade or so.