The “What does the government spend our money on?” quiz results/discussion

fishumu

El_Gordo wrote: »

Fishumu
It wont jump. The headline figure that you have quoted would be the whole life cost of the system (the MOD works in whole life costs now, in fact has done for the last few years) and it comes out of the Defence budget. If Trident 2 comes into service, the £50B would be from the start of the programme ie about now to the day that the last element of the system is decommissioned ie some 40-50 years from now.

Actually a whitepaper released last year says that trident 2 would cost around £1.5 Bn per year, over its 30 years of service, and £15 to £20 Bn to install.

This raises the costs to £65Bn overall, which over any length of time is still money needed in other sectors!

I was trying to raise some awareness as to this abhorrent spend of taxpayers money on a system we don't need.

El_Gordo wrote: »

Children, schools and family 49 billion
Scotland 25 billion, Wales 13 billion and NI 9.5 billion
Home office, justice and law 19 billion
Work and pensions 7.5 billion
Defence 32 billion

If you voted for Defence in the poll you are well wide of the mark!

Those figures from table [strike]1.13/strike] 1.15 are the projected spend, and 07/08 are estimated too.

Still, defense is projected to reach 36Bn this year - if the military doesnt overspend again, like it does every year :T

I think many chose defense in lieu of the well known statistic that the US spends £15 Bn a week or something like that.

/pedant off

Zyyb

What's with the MP Bashing? Sure there are a few bad apples but the rest (currently 646) work away from their homes, doing 70+ hours a week trying their very best to serve the publics best interests.

And in response to the poll, it's quite clearly Social Protection, do people really think we spend that much on debt interest!? Shows how much the media can bias peoples opinions. I'm pretty certain it's about 30bn

Oh and to RTRBloke, we spend about 2bn (or 0.3%) per year on the EU, don't believe the UKIP/BNP Hype - and i say it's worth it.

philandstuff

chris_bea wrote: »

The failed IT "systems" & costs you hear of are the few that don't work, bad news is always good for readers/viewers. You don't tend to hear of the project that modernise a local authority, moving staff away from desks onto the frontline & actually working for the public rather than filling in bits of paper. Nor the project that allows government departments to communicate securely & easily to (for example) allow a police officer to send his case notes to the CPS for the court case & the prison service information on a prisoner's behavior to be passed onto a probation officer to allow them to make the best judgement on rehabilitation for the offender.
These projects save time, money & effort for the future of the departments involved, the costs of these are a large percentage of the overall spend on computer systems (failed contracts usually mean the government is re-imbursed for at least some of the costs).

I couldn't disagree more. First of all the NHS IT programme has a projected cost of around £13bn -- this one project will cost over 2% of the government's annual budget! It's already years behind its schedule, was ludicrously badly organised, and doesn't look like it will be recovering any time soon. Private Eye has had a series of reports into the organizational blunders and failures behind this fiasco. One of their particularly dumb ideas was to use different software providers in different regions of the country -- despite the fact that the whole point of software is it can be used anywhere and copied for free, they decided to reinvent the wheel many times over.

Second, the probation service IT programme you mentioned was not a shining example of an IT programme done well. This was mentioned in Private Eye too; though as I don't know much more about it, I won't say any more.

Thirdly, as a computing (though not IT) professional I know that large IT programmes are incredibly difficult to do well, and it's not actually particularly surprising that these programmes have done poorly. There is a large history behind IT failures, the London Ambulance Service programme in the 1980s being a particularly well-studied one due to its full and frank public inquiry afterwards. It is difficult to predict exactly what will be needed, and before the switch-on date, it is difficult to predict how much equipment will be needed to do it. It is very easy to suffer from "feature creep", where customers keep asking for new features before the software is finished, which often requires poor adaptations and bodge jobs on part of the software engineers who are desparately trying to hit a moving target.

Large software projects will continue to fail until the government employs people who understand these inherent problems.

Kerilinann

RTR_Bloke wrote: »

How the Government Spends Your Money

SECTION THREE - BIG PICTURE WASTE
Devolved Government
Local Government
Information Technology
Politicians
Donated Asset Reserve
The Public Sector
Royal Family
The European Union

Too true

Leakeman

Social Security, Health and Education seem to be fairly low on the list of priorities for many people using this website but then isn't that what they're conditioned to believe? It isn't their fault!

It's a bit like telling us that the crime rate is falling when the evidence suggests otherwise and the fact is that fewer crimes are reported to the police.

Same thing applies to Airport Security - what a contrived way to get us to spend money on the departure side and deprive us of adequate seating because as sure as hell taking nail varnish and bottled water off travellers wouldn't avert any security breach or terrorist act I could contemplate. Just accept that most of the time we're treated just like mushrooms - kept in the dark and fed on s**t.

BobbinAlong

As an underpaid mod civil servant I wish they did spend that much on defence - maybe we'd get a bit! If I could find a local job in my IT specialisation I'd jump ship - the lowest going rate in industry is 50% more than I earn!

(Land_of)_Maz

MSE_Lawrence wrote: »

Poll Started 22 July 2008.

The "What does the government spend our money on?" quiz.

Below are the main sections of the government's £618 billion (a thousand million) annual expenditure.

Which of these do you think the government currently spends the most money (£169bn) on?

A. Debt Interest
B. Defence (Armed forces)
C. Education
D. Health
E. Industry, agriculture, emloyment
F. Public Order & Safety (policing)
G. Social Protection (benefits, pensions)
H. Transport

Please Vote here or click 'post reply' to discuss below. Thanks

Where would i find the answer now i've voted? Without all the political hyperbole as above... Edit (Before i get shot down!): Only cause i'm politically fairly ignorant, and don't understand it. Not cause it's not valid.....

[Deleted User]

Here is the answer for those interested http://www.westbury.co.uk/content/taxcentre_taxcard/taxyield.html

(Land_of)_Maz

subsoniccoyote wrote: »

Here is the answer for those interested http://www.westbury.co.uk/content/taxcentre_taxcard/taxyield.html

thanks subsonic - i said health as no 1... so i was wrong, but didn't i say o didn't know what i was talking about!!!

Aaron

subsoniccoyote wrote: »

Here is the answer for those interested http://www.westbury.co.uk/content/taxcentre_taxcard/taxyield.html

"The expenditure is estimated to be spent" - estimated by whom and why will they have got it right? The heading names look a little biased, too.