Foreign Office Fiasco

[Drusilla1S]

If you are worried where your taxes go, just read this and despair. What can you say?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/5201748.stm

[Loosehead]

It just illustrates what we already know, the public sector are kin useless!

[jake-the-peg]

Yeah I'm sure it would never have happened if a private sector firm like Arthur Anderson had been auditing them!

Whatever happened to Arthur Anderson?

[Drusilla1S]

I don't see this as an issue of left v right or state v private, jake. It's incompetence, pure and simple and we are paying for it!

[vehelpfulguy]

600,000 pounds is peanuts to what has been lost through fraud with the Governments tax credits scheme.

Estimates are about 540 MILLION pounds.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/5168452.st m

It annoys me how the government throws away the money they collect in tax from hard working people.

[Loosehead]

and of course VHG that is also peanuts as to what is wasted on the NHS each day! Not to mention the 600,000 new "non jobs" invented since new labour come to power.

[jake-the-peg]

Well that's my point Drusilla.

Despite what Loosehead would have you think incompetance and corruption are not solely found in the public sector!

You think 540 Million is a lot? Enron cost people Billions in fraud and Arthur Anderson were stuffing the papers in shredders when the police came round.

BCCI cost $1.2 billion, Allied Irish banks US subsiduary was defrauded of �529 million.

Infact fraud costs the UK �16 billion a year.

So don't give me all that public sector fraud stuff because the private sector dwarfs it!

[matt66]

Surely in this day and age it cannot be difficult to follow the money trail and see who was the recipient/owner of those premium rate numbers. You think they will do it....not a chance...who knows it may have been an inside job.

[Drusilla1S]

My apologies jake. i think I misinterpreted your point and got a little defensive. Sorry.