Another MoD blunder

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Thursday, May 14, 2009

Another MoD blunder

We pay about £100 million more than we need to, get it five years after we need it and end up with something that is substandard, dangerous to drive and costs more to operate than it should. Welcome to the world of MoD procurement, over on Defence of the Realm.

But hey! The MPs – who should have been keeping an eye on such things, but haven't - are going to pay back some of their expenses - worth about £100,000. So that's alright then. Did I mention that we would be better off if they simply took the money and did their jobs?

COMMENT THREAD

Politics as usual?

As one would expect Libertas has been making much of the embarrassment that is afflicting our legislators, real and pretend ones. Should Libertas.eu be elected to the Toy European Parliament, they tell us solemnly, they will publish all their expenses on their website, thus ensuring complete transparency. This is part of their "Stamp out Sleaze" campaign that they launched yesterday to little public interest, the latter being entirely focused on details of MPs' spending.

Well, that is very nice, though I can imagine various ingenious ways of making sure that transparent expenses do not mean quite what they say. But there is another problem: Libertas.eu also boasts of the many existing euro- and national politicians they have acquired en route to putting up 550 candidates across Europe. Or as the Former British Soldier, Robin Matthews is supposed to have stated in today's press release:

Six months ago, Libertas didn't exist. Today it is fielding many times more candidates than any other party in Europe.

Since no other party in Europe is quite as much in favour of European integration as Libertas.eu is, that means very little. But what of those politicians who have allegedly joined them?

For instance, every press release tells us proudly in the Notes for Editors that "in Latvia we have a former Prime Minister as the lead candidate". Quite true, the lead candidate for the single region of Latvia, Guntars Krasts, was briefly the Prime Minister from August 1997 to November 1998 (well, maybe not that briefly by Latvian standards) but since 2004 he has been a member of the Toy Parliament. Try as I might, I can find no evidence that he has declared his expenses in detail in the last five years. Perhaps I am looking at the wrong sites.

Another rant on EUReferendum2.