IF THIS IS GEORGE'S DEFICIT REDUCTION PLAN, NO WONDER THE IMF ARE LOOKING FOR PLAN B

This week the National Audit Office said the UK Border Agency had laid off 1,000 more staff than intended and was having to hire extra people and increase overtime to meet its workload.

WHAT?


How exactly do you sack 1,000 people more than you meant to? 


I mean especially after the  the MoD did the same thing and had to beg them to come back after paying them redundancy money, you'd think the edict would have gone out to sack with care.


Who on Earth... (or maybe they are not on Earth)... is running the UK Government?


Mr Bean? 


No! Silly me! 


He would never make this much of a mess of it.


Don't ask the silly old bat pictured above. She clearly has no idea.


Deficit reduction. IMF view.

MoD ACCOUNTANTS NEED TO SMARTEN UP

Each year, coming up to April time, our place, like most others is buzzing with auditors looking over the company’s financial accounts. Every penny must be accounted for, whether it has come from government or EU, whether from Lottery Funds or from contracts with the private sector or government. Not a penny piece can be unaccounted. It’s a lot of work to make sure that the auditors can find every single receipt and it’s much to our part-time accountant’s credit that the auditors can sign off the accounts every year.

So it was with some dismay that I read today in the Independent that the Ministry of Defence's accounts were today "qualified" by the Whitehall spending watchdog after it was unable to account properly for more than £6 billion of equipment.

So, “qualified” means that they could account for all (like we can) except for £6b .... Oh well, that’s alright then. What’s £6b between friends?

But the worrying thing is it is the fourth year in succession that the National Audit Office (NAO) has “qualified” the MoD's accounts. According to the NAO despite efforts by the MoD to tackle the issue, there remain "systemic and deep-rooted" problems with its asset management system.

It seems that the problems are worse than had been thought. In trying to track down missing equipment the team has uncovered fresh difficulties. The MoD, it seems, cannot account for the whereabouts of £5.5b of spares and other stocks; £752m of military equipment including firearms and £184m worth of Bowman radios (around 6,000). How on earth do you lose 6000 radios?

Where are all these things? Have they been stolen? Have they been sold? By or to whom? With around 90,000 Civil Servants you would have thought that a tracking system could have been installed in the MoD.

It’s high time Liam Fox found out why his accounts can’t be properly signed off. Signing the accounts off with qualifications is not good enough. it doesn't concentrate the minds of the management in quite the same way as an outright refusal, which is what would happen to a private sector company.