Monday August 6

Blogs

10.00am, Better Government:  Soft A-Levels - research for the Office for National Statistics confirms that exam results are not a reliable guide to educational performance.

9.30am, Burning Our Money:  Taxpayers funding births abroad - recruiting and training doctors and nurses, rather than administrators and bureaucrats, would be a start to curing the sickness within our healthcare system.

9.00am, Burning Our Money:  Weekly Waste Round-Up 70 - £12 million of waste this week

Media Coverage

- NHS spending £1m a week on slimming pills for obese Britons

"Corin Taylor, Research Director for the TaxPayers' Alliance, said: "There is no incentive for the people receiving fat-fighting drugs to live a healthier lifestyle.

"People should take more responsibility for their own lives instead of expecting taxpayers to continue to foot the bill.

"It's ridiculous that we have a health care system that throws individual responsibility out of the window and allows costs to spiral out of control." - Daily Mail

- The council official paid for two years despite not working

"But Matthew Elliot, chief executive of the Taxpayers' Alliance, attacked the lengthy investigations.

"Two years is far too long to be suspended on full pay," he said.  He said it was part of a wider problem in Government bodies.  "This sort of situation is almost unheard of in the private sector because company directors have a duty to their shareholders to spend money wisely.  In the public sector, it's far too easy to raise council tax, so officials have less incentive to give good value for money." - Belfast Telegraph 

- Letter: Quick wins no solution to congestion

"It is the failure of politicians to meet public demand by building sufficient road space that is the root cause of this congestion problem, and the already high cost of driving - congestion aside - is the real context in which additional charges on motorists should be seen." - Birmingham Post

- What a Waste Waste

"A spokeswoman for the Taxpayers' Alliance, a pressure group which campaigns against wasting public funds, said: "Noone is denying that we should all do our bit for the environment.  But Walsall Council should not be spending £25,000 of taxpayers' money on extravagant entertainment days.  Council tax has doubled in a decade.  When people rightly ask where that money as gone, it is clear that a lot has been wasted on these kind of non-vital activities.

"Councils who have the money to blow £25,000 on a Green Day should not then be able to increase our council taxes by more than the rate of inflation each year." - Sunday Mercury

News Round-Up

Jeremy Clarkson - Reva G-Wiz DC:  Kiss your kness goodbye, green people

"Even if I were a committed environmentalist I would not buy this car. It is too small, too dangerous and I’m sorry but it runs on juice from a power station, hardly a flower in the big green scheme of things.

What’s more, a few luvvies in London are not going to make the slightest bit of difference, even if it’s correct that cars are buggering up the ice pack. We will not be saved by going backwards. We will be saved by someone using technology to go forwards. We will be saved, in other words, by science, maths and the lost British art of invention." - Times

The effect of the Olympics on house prices

"Tom Barras, 61, a steward at Weymouth Working Men's Club, said: "It is a fantastic opportunity to put Weymouth and Portland on the map. Another benefit is that we will get the relief road. Finally it looks like it is going to be built."

But the coming of the Olympics is not universally welcomed. Jeri Stone, 25, who works in the seafood hut on the beach, is being forced to move out of the area because soaring house prices means she cannot get on the property ladder. "I think the Olympics will bring a lot of tourism to the area," she said. "But I'm moving to Lincolnshire because I can't afford a house here." - Guardian

Comments

[tony jenkins]

hey you think that they will have the olympic down here in weymouth weve got allthe roads melting cos they used the wrong recipe for the tarmac whos going to pay for that little mess +the are busy digging up a road that they completly overhauled last year.I cant see how they can afford the olympics anyhow hows any one gonna get to the site any way as at the moment its taking 2hrs to travel the 3miles into Weymouth from the Ridgeway boundry ha !