In her much-anticipated Spring Statement, Britain’s greatest ever female Chancellor has announced a £3.25 billion transformation fund to bring down the costs of running government. We’ve seen from the US in the activities of Elon Musk’s Department for Government Efficiency (DOGE) how to cut government spending. Already the US has scrapped USAID saving billions, it looks like all DIE (Diversity, Inclusion and Equality) employees in the US Government are being fired and a few days ago Donald Trump signed an executive order to close down the Department for Education. But what about the British approach to getting value for money for British taxpayers by making our public services more efficient?
I’ll just give one example of why we are unlikely to see any real savings in the British public sector. Apparently we have an Office for Value for Money (OVfM) in Britain. The OVfM was set up in Rachel Reeves’s ‘bankrupting Britain’ October 2024 budget and “provides advice to the Chancellor of the Exchequer and Chief Secretary to the Treasury to ensure that value for money is at the heart of Government’s spending decisions“.
The brilliant Rolls-Royce-brained civil servants at the OVfM have noticed that the Government is spending a fortune of our money on procuring short-term accommodation for homeless Brits and for all the doctors, engineers and scientists pouring across the Channel in small boats each day in spite of Mr Starmer promising to “smash the evil people-smuggling gangs”. So the OVfM has set up a “VfM (Value for Money) Study on procuring short-term residential accommodations”.
Here’s the problem explained in the terms of reference for the groundbreaking Value for Money study:
The unit cost of short-term residential accommodation increased significantly in recent years. The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) reported in 2024 that per asylum seeker costs had increased by 141% from £17,000 in 2019-20 to £41,000 in 2023-24. Private sector suppliers of short-term residential accommodation have made record profits in recent years, leading to accusations of profiteering. There is also evidence that some forms of short-term residential accommodation have a detrimental impact on children and families.
If I were involved in this work, I would start by informing all providers of short-term accommodation that, due to the country’s financial difficulties, the Government expects all providers of short-term accommodation to cut their prices by say 25% and that any who fail to do so would be removed as providers. Of course, there would be howling and screaming and many providers would claim this would bankrupt them and would insist that what the Government was demanding was quite impossible. But as we head into recession, hotel owners are unlikely to find many customers quite as generous and reliable as the UK Government. In addition, pour encourager les autres, I would launch police investigations into a couple of those suppliers suspected of profiteering. Suddenly, on seeing the police investigations, what the providers previously claimed was impossible would become possible and the 25% price reductions would magically materialise.
I was involved in a slightly similar situation many years ago. A major car manufacturer demanded all parts suppliers cut their prices by a few percent and threatened that the car manufacturer would send in a team from our consultancy to ‘help’ any supplier who refused. At first, of course, we got the howls and screams of pain from the parts suppliers that the car manufacturer’s demands were impossible and would bankrupt them, leave them homeless with their children starving and so on and so forth. I actually led the analysis team which was sent into the first parts supplier to claim that it was impossible for him to cut prices. The last thing any parts supplier wanted was us consultants poking around in their businesses and financials. Seeing our team descend on one parts supplier, a miracle seemed to happen as suddenly the other suppliers managed to deliver the price cuts the car manufacturer wanted thus avoiding a visit from us consultants.
But this is not how our OVfM will operate. Instead the OVfM explains:
The Chief Secretary to the Treasury will oversee the study at a ministerial level, supported by the Deputy Prime Minister and the Home Secretary. …
A senior official group, with representatives from relevant departments, will oversee policy development and the recommendations to ministers. This study will be resourced by officials from the Office for Value for Money, the Home Office, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, the Ministry of Defence, the Ministry of Justice and HM Treasury, with input from the Cabinet Office and the Government Commercial Function. …
The study will be informed by engagement with local authorities, the Local Government Association, the Centre for Homelessness Impact and other relevant experts.
As for how long the Value for Money study will take, we’re told:
The study will inform decisions at the upcoming Spending Review, and progress to the following timetable:
- June: publication of the study’s outputs in the Spending Review
- February-March: policy development
- April: update to the ministerial oversight group
- May: Spending Review negotiations
- The OVfM will consider the outputs of this study as it develops options for system reform.
I would humbly suggest that this British Value for Money study doesn’t quite show the same urgency and proclivity to action that we see from Elon Musk’s DOGE.
Moreover, I rather suspect that this supposed Value for Money study led by the OVfM will be such a multi-departmental bureaucratic mess that it will achieve the square root of zero. In fact, I further suspect that our 500,000 civil servants are mostly so lazy and useless that they will have to call in eye-wateringly expensive management consultants to show them how to do the study and to hold their hands during the study. Furthermore, I imagine the study will include several ‘offsites’ at expensive hotels with excellent restaurants to encourage the participants to do blue-sky, out-of-the-box thinking, facilitated, of course, by specialised ‘blue-sky-thinking’ management consultants.
Then we must remember, that this first phase till June 2025 is just to develop some ideas on how to cut the cost of short-term accommodation. If these ideas are approved by the relevant Government Ministers, the OVfM will then have to start planning how to implement their genius cost-cutting ideas. That should take at least another few months, again probably assisted by £100,000-plus a week management consultants. And finally the whole thing will drift into 2026, other priorities will take over and little to nothing will ever be achieved. So, in the end, the OVfM study to get value for money procuring short-term accommodation will probably cost us much more than it ever saves if it ever saves anything at all.
But you may well disagree. You may believe that the dynamic and motivated civil servants at the Office for Value for Money are about to achieve the kind of economic miracles this country has seldom seen, make massive savings and make the British Government so streamlined and efficient that it will be the envy of the world, just like our ‘envy of the world’ NHS with its seven million-plus waiting lists and its tendency to overuse Midazolam on the troublesome and expensive-to-treat elderly and frail in order to shorten those waiting lists.
David Craig is the author of There is No Climate Crisis, available as an e-book or paperback from Amazon.
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So objective biological truth is important when it comes to ethnic identification but not sexual identification? How was she “outed”? Perhaps one of her siblings got results from DNA testing and said, “Hey, wait a minute, sis.” Never underestimate the power of sibling rivalry!
I identify as a beneficiary of a trust with billions of investments but I haven’t had any money yet.
How come?
You forgot to answer the e-mails from Nigeria.
Haha, love this ( including video with James Corbett, 24mins ) and I especially love Bob’s cartoon. I’m digging the fact I’m not alone in clocking those dreadful sausage fingers! He’s really not popular at all is he? I know that even anti-monarchists when the Queen was alive wouldn’t have treat her in this fashion, the shouts and pelting with eggs. The monarchy basically died with her as far as I’m concerned. Hopefully it’s not a case of ”long live the King”. I’ve had more than enough of him already.
”I wonder how many of the naïve, moronic NPCs in “Normieland” have any clue about the truth as they clap or bang their pans or whatever dumb-arse act of servitude they’ve been programmed to do today?
Oh year, swearing out loud, or something? I think even I can manage that!
If you haven’t worked it out yet, all these things are connected – COVID, “climate change”, CBDCs… The smart ones are well-prepared for what comes next.
So, rather than “Meet King Charles”, meet King Sausage Fingers I instead – the inbred, pedo-loving, WEF puppet who is really Britain’s next Head of State.”
https://metatron.substack.com/p/not-my-king
I have to say I was disappointed by this offering from Joel Smalley. I know what he means and have been aware of all Charlie’s New- age twittery over the decades. I know Charles is a bit of a pillock but somehow cannot quite sign up to the nastiness implied in the Corbett report and Bob’s cartoon.
Maybe it’s the obstinate church-goer in me but this was just horrible and I want nothing to do with it. It pains me to write this because I’m as big an objector to the current madness as anyone here (and I have the worn shoe leather and ruined fingernails from posting leaflets to prove it).
There has to be a way to win our case without descending to this level.
Yes Jane, it seems the monarchy is quite the contentious subject. I was always very pro when the Queen was alive ( admittedly I was very ignorant about the history of the royal family tbh ) but with Charles we have a completely different kettle of fish and he is not a likeable chap, due to all that we know about him both historically and his visions for the future. In fact, I’ve disliked him since his marriage to Diana went down the pan and all the facts that were subsequently revealed around that particular subject.
However, with my above post I am taking a leaf out of the resident Jeremy Clarkson Fanclub’s book, and if they can defend him for wishing Meghan whatserface would walk down the street naked and have poo chucked at her then I shall defend the hideous portrait of Charles by Bob, in all of its beautiful originality and attention to detail.
I don’t see Bob’s cartoon as nasty.
It harks back to many 18th/19th century cartoons of previous Monarchs who thoroughly deserved to be lampooned.
I’m just slightly surprised Bob left out any reference to Charles’ WEF/Net Zero obsession.
Why does it matter? She identified as one. If people have a problem with that, it tells us more about them and their extremist prejudices than anything. I myself identify as a black veteran astronaut of 178 Apollo missions.
Sometimes I feel like identifying as a Tourettes sufferer just to see what it takes to get banned…
Firkin hell Mogs.
And I don’t know if anyone’s seen this video yet of a soldier at Cardiff castle collapsing today, but it definitely isn’t ”fainting”, not that I’ve ever witnessed anyway. Usually people regain consciousness as soon as they hit the deck but this guy stays completely out for the count, as you can see by his lack of movement or tension in his body as they drag him away. And no I’m not suggesting the you-know-what did it, but I would like to hear some follow up on how this guy’s doing. Any updates would be appreciated. They didn’t even check his breathing.
https://theglobalherald.com/news/soldier-faints-during-coronation-ceremony-at-cardiff-castle/
I don’t know what caused this soldier to collapse but I do know from personal experience that when a person faints, they don’t necessarily regain consciousness when they hit the ground, they can be unconscious for a few minutes after they faint.
What if she had said she identifies as Mohawk?
EDIT can’t get out of the habit of commenting before reading the comments
I identify as no one but myself
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I’m struggling to understand the difference between identifying as something you clearly aren’t, and being a delusional fantasist.
Still ….. we have learned something: apparently it’s OK for someone who is clearly male to announce they’re really a woman. But it’s not OK for someone who may (or may not) have a few Native American genes to decide that they have that ancestry.
So I guess any idea that I (who looks female, white with freckles and red hair) can identify as a black man wouldn’t be acceptable. But I could identify as a man?
Is that right?
Fortunately, I’m not a delusional fantasist.
Did you here about the bloke who identified as a pair of curtains.. the shrink told him to pull his-self together..