Careful readers will spot the difference in my version of an old saw. My two injunctions are provoked by an article in this week's 'Speccie'. Normally I would find it nigh on impossible to say a good word concerning the il-Lib-non-Dem party but on this occasion I must echo Leo McKinstry's praise for Norman Baker MP, one of their true worthies, who used the Freedom of Information Act to prize out the fact, amongst others, that a certain fat, useless and hideously expensive cove by the name of James Braithwaite, the chairman of SEEDA (wait for it, all will be revealed), charged the Great British Public (GBP), or, me, as I fondly prefer to think of it, the princely sum of £51, 489 for taxis and executive cars.
So what is SEEDA, I hear you cry with but a single, quavering voice? Uncle David will tell you. It is a bit of Prescott poo with, appropriately enough, Brown's finger prints all over it. It stands for South East England Development Agency, and last year it cost the GBP (or me, etc.) £195m, an increase from the previous year of £14m. The number of employees also rose from 342 to 370. As McKinstry puts it in his article, it is "[T]he brainchild of John Prescott (if that is not a contradiction in terms)". It has 10 overseas offices including some lucky chancer in Stuttgart who charged £89k for 10 months of part-time work! (I'm thinking of opening an office here in Dorset.) Always up 'the sharp end', provided it is situated some where smart, the Agency sent 13 members of staff to the French Riviera in order that they might attend a property trade fair.
In case my Marxist, Geordie-tyke friend, or anyone else from the regions, is reading this and sniggering to themselves whilst muttering that those rich, southern poofters deserve it, then let me be the first to tell you that there are 7 other such bureaucratic gin-palaces covering the whole country. Still, if you feel an urgent desire to appreciate the invaluable work these selfless Stakhanovites do on our behalf, or if you are simply not sleeping too well, you can try reading some of their papers as listed by McKinstry:
"The minutes of the last Seeda Board meeting on 25 October cover such items as ‘the Culture and Sport Toolkit for Local Area Agreements’, the ‘Slough Skills Strategy Summit’, sponsorship of the ‘European Business and Innovation Centres Network Annual Congress’ and support for the ‘South East Women’s Ambassadors Network and Women’s Enterprise Advocates programme’. Inevitably, the state’s obsession with political correctness rears its head, with Seeda setting up ‘a cross-agency group of Diversity Champions’, forming a ‘Diversity and Equality Managers’ Group’, organising a ‘Diversity Means Business’ project and pushing through a ‘Social Inclusion Partnership South East Black and Minority Ethnic Action Group’. "
Somewhere down below I wrote some doubting, but nice, words concerning 'Dave' Cameron when I reported his speech to the CBI in which he promised to cut back the jungle of Quango-land. An undertaking to immediately sack all these utterly useless and expensive bureaucrats will be the litmus test which will tell us whether or not he is serious.
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