Are you sure that's not an enormous old penny? Coins keep getting smaller and smaller.
No taxation without representation. The British Tatty Council inflicts it's own statutory tax on farmers who want to grow potatoes. These people are appointed. The farmers don't get to pick them.
Quangos will never be removed or destroyed. The same argument against them is equally applicable to the EU. MPs willingly handed over vast gobs of authority to unelected mandarins in Blighty and Brussels alike. It is not permanent though. A change of mind in Westminster and those powers could be repatriated in a jiffy.(The current wheeze is just that - Parliament is still sovereign, it's just that it has chosen to abrogate so much of it's responsibilities for a quiet life/to curry favour/to avoid responsibility.)
I don't think the debate about quangoes can be resolved by debating quangoes.
Quangoes exist because government takes on functions it feels it can't handle itself.
The real question is not about how government does what it does, it is about what government does.
Abolishing the Tomayto - Tomarto - Potayto - Potarto Quango is a pointless exercise if government is still going to do the things and spend the money currently done and spent by that Quango. Get rid of the current personnel and someone will still do what it does, it will just be additional civil servants hired for the purpose. They might well be a bit cheaper than the existing Quango, but that is just trimming at the edges.
The question is whether government, directly or indirectly, should be doing these things and spending this money at all.
The same applies to all quangoes with spending power.
The real issue is something far more important and extensive than trying to find less expensive ways for the government to do what it does. In every field we should be questioning the very involvement of government.
Unless there is a radical change to the scope of government activities it will be impossible to reduce spending to an affordable level whilst still maintaining the services people really want and rely upon.
Cameron has a lot of friends in need of sinecures..he cannot get rid of quangoes
Is there really going to be money for the arts after all this? If I had to rebalance the books, I'd start by stopping all spending in low priority areas.
Although it's nice to have arts facilities, they are far less important than core government services. Cut the NHS and people die. Cut schools and you stop people reaching their potential, harming them for their whole lives. Cut the arts and you deny people an evening at the theatre (but only if they don't want to pay the full cost). There is no comparison.
The TPA have got the scary numbers, but the Bank of England was robbed of power that it should have rightly kept.
If it was a truly powerful, independent body then everyone would be a bit happier - it's only because Gordon Brown made it impotent that we ended up in this mess.
right now, the length and breadth of the land, quango bosses will be introducing souped-up redundancy packages that will make MPs look positively frugal.
And we laughed at Gordon for publicising the gold sell-off in advance.
Please. All take one minute to do a political test:
http://www.theadvocates.org/quiz...uizp/
index.html
I would not be surprised if most readers here would find themselves in agreement with a new category of political thinking that is unfortunately barely known in this country and not represented by the major parties.
Commenting by HaloScan
