I apologise for the lack of posts in recent days due in equal measure to domestic duties, a lack of inspiration and - the ladies of the Women's Institute. I will, perhaps, explain that final, cryptic remark a little later. In the meantime, 'SoD' has volunteered a post on the subject of spuds. At the end you will not know whether to laugh or weep!
Remember the Times article in 2006 that first brought our attention to the £180bn per annum extorted from our wallets to fund the quangos? :-
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article626687.ece
Today, apart from observing that £180bn a year is a little bit more than HMG’s net borrowing requirement forecast for 2009/10 of £175bn- meaning that by liquidating the quangos we could return the public finances to surplus in one executive action - I wondered if the quango voted “most useless quango of the year” by the excellent blog site Burning Our Money, namely the British Potato Council, had, at the very least, been singled out from the other 910 to 2566 (how many depends on who you believe – see Times article) by HMG for liquidation as a token of contrition given the credit crunch, recession, spiralling debt, ‘n’ all that?
Not spuddy likely, of course!
You’ll remember the British Potato Council has an annual budget of £6m of our money and 56 employees performing such useless acts as hiring a dance troupe called the “Chippie Dales” to visit schools indoctrinating the nation’s kids into the benefits of crisps and chips. Meanwhile, another quango – the Food Standards Agency - spends £143m of our money countering the crisps and chips propaganda by hectoring the nation’s children on the dangers of cholesterol.
Well here we are, a couple of years down the line, and not only is the British Potato Council looking pretty chipper, but it seems as though it’s actually increased its budget by 30% and, via a simple accounting trick, managed to avoid attracting attention to the fact.
If you look at page 36 of the British Potato Council’s “accounts” you’ll see their total income for 2008 is £6m. Eh? That’s down from the 2007 figure of £6.153m on the same page, isn’t it? Nope! Not when you look at the heading of the 2008 column and realise that the BPC shortened its accounting year for 2008 to 9 months thereby making the annualised figure £8m – up nearly £2m, or 30%!
Please let it end. Soon.
Son of Duff
(That's enough 'chip' jokes, Dad, er, sorry, I mean Ed!)
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