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David Craig

How New Labour are wasting over one trillion pounds of our money.

Over the last ten years, New Labour has boosted public spending by around a trillion pounds – that’s £1,000,000,000,000 of our taxes – over £50,000 for every household in Britain. But what have we got for our money? Effective and responsive public services that are the envy of the world? Or the creation of a vast, self-serving bureaucracy that has presided over the greatest waste of money in British history?

With so much money, a tsunami of extra cash, being thrown at public services – health, education, policing, defence, social services and public administration – there have been some successes. Nevertheless, the results of the Government’s tidal wave of extra spending have been worse than pitiful.

In department after department, it is the same sorry story – a triple whammy of incompetence, cover-up and cuts that have all but decimated public services, while those responsible have lavished money and honours on themselves.

David Craig exposes the sometimes tragic, sometimes comic story of how New Labour’s years of mismanagement have led to a bureaucratization of Britain that has squandered almost unimaginable amounts of taxpayers’ money, caused irreparable damage to all our lives and rewarded the man responsible with the keys to Number 10.

Sales points

By 2009, each person working in the private sector will be paying more each month into the pension of a civil servant than they will into their own pension.,To pay for this catastrophe, Gordon Brown has vastly increased taxes, committed us to 30 years of ruinous debt and ring-fenced most of our pension savings.,The attempted reforms of public services have also led to a massive power shift from democratic institutions to a new �lite of �untouchable� bureaucrats, as Britain has moved from being a democracy to a bureaucracy.,Plundering the Public Sector has sold over 10,000 copies in the UK.,Richard Brooks is a Private Eye journalist with excellent media contacts

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Readers' comments

Barrie Skelcher

Tue 8th Jul 2008

A great book, ought to be compulsory reading for all Labour politicians. However I would draw Davids attention to one area of wasted money he did not include, that concerning "nuclear decommissioning"

Barrie Skelcher. Ex AEA & CEGB. One time Head of Health Physics at Sizewell and later Sizewell B Technical Information Officer.

Richard Crowe

Thu 22nd May 2008

A brilliant book which should be required reading for everyone who has any kind of stake in the country. I have been reccomending it to anyone who will listen . . . The book itself is like a dynamite charge under all the lies and spin and evasions we have endured under successive governments.

Stephen Lamley

Wed 21st May 2008

Absolutely riveting; I read it virtually at a sitting. Congratulations on such a trenchant and well-observed critique.

I particularly appreciated the dismantling of the NAO. I know from my own experience how they can persecute outside organisations they suspect of not using public money exactly according to the rules. I had no idea how supine they were when it came to the really big bucks.

You also give the lie to the idea (prevalent in the public media) that there is such a thing as 'Government money'. Of course there isn't. It is our money.

Your remedies seem sound to me. What about actually leaving the ghastly EU?

Keep up the good work.

Constable
Paperback
B format, 320 pp
Published 7^th Apr 2008
ISBN: 9781845298326
Markets: World English Language
RRP £8.99

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Reviews

"...David Craig's chilling audit of government spending for the last 10 years...a genuinely important book. It is no exaggeration to say that if the right people read it, take it seriously, and take appropriate action, this book could not only save the taxpayer billions, it could save lives....This is a terrifying book, but a brilliant and necessary one. Please read it."

Dominic Sandbrook, Daily Telegraph

"A gripping and important book, one that is impossible to read without becoming angry."
New Statesman

"David Craig�s chilling audit of government spending for the last 10 days � a book much more readable and entertaining than it sounds...a genuinely important book. It is no exaggeration to say that if the right people read it, take it seriously, and take appropriate action, this book could not only save the taxpayer billions, it could save lives....This is a terrifying book, but a brilliant and necessary one. Please read it."
The Daily Telegraph

"Read it I beg you!"
Business Money