I would imagine that many people imagined what sort of response that George Osborne’s would get when he heralded his great idea of asking the general public for their great ideas for making big savings on government spending. I would guess that the image was of something that provided an outlet for the beady-eyed ranter that usually populates the comment sections of the Daily Mail and for those who send contributions into the Viz top tips column (Not that I'm slagging the Viz Top Tips column given that I used one of the suggestions for a post only a week or so ago)
To be honest I had no wish to look at the spending challenge website but it seems that some of the suggestions are quite funny (and very silly too!). Thanks to Freemania for drawing my attention:
One suggestion concerns fluid intake among civil servants:
Millions of pounds are wasted each year by civil servants unnecessarily going to the toilet because they drunk too much fluid. if each civil servant is drinking 1000 ml too much then the bladder is only 250 ml so that's 4 times a day too many times going to the toilet. each toilet trip takes an average of 5 minutes including hand-washing and drying plus walking to and from the desk makes it 20 minutes per public sector employee of which there are 6 million so that's 120 million minutes or 2 million hours per day with each worker earning 15 pounds an hour average that's 30 million pounds a day or 11 billion pounds per year that could be saved.
How the idea could be implemented
ban tea cups over 150 ml and have fluid monitors to fine anyone who drinks too much £10 per 100 ml each day out of their pay.
Another suggestion will save millions by slashing translation costs
To save money on translating government documents and services into many different languages they should all be provided in just one language, Latin. It's logical.
How the idea could be implemented
1) Copy the document or thing that needs to be translated.
2) Go to google translate (hope that it has Latin)
3) Paste
Alternatively;
1) When the Pope visits give him some translation work, make him pay for his holiday.
2) Get Ann Widdecombe to do something useful for once.
Not quite up to the standard of Swift’s A Modest Proposal but not bad either! Unfortunately most of the other comments DO seem to be the outpourings of gimlet-eyed lunatics...
5 comments:
Pity this obscures the reforms which really do have to be made to get us back from the brink of madness Labour had us hurtling toward.
I like the latin idea! Banning tea though is so totally unBritish!
And this is the solution? Pah!
Treasonable Liz!
The whole thing was just a gimmick to woo the public into thinking that they had and input to the process. The government will do what they want anyway regardless of what is said.
Not that I am a cynic or anything!
Not cynical at all Cherie!
Post a Comment