How Much More Labour Waste?

Another day another Labour vanity project bites the dust. This time it was a computer system for the NHS which was supposed to cost us £6.2 billion but has now cost us £12.7 billion, is still not finished and would cost us a further £8 billion or so to complete. Sticking with the NHS we also learn that PFIs used to finance hospital building have been so badly negotiated that something like 60 hospitals will have to close if the terms on which they were built are not varied. Needless to say the PFIs involved were all negotiated under Labour. It is staggering the incompetence of the Cool Britannia brigade. So incompetent that the Millennium Stadium had very little in it (that was worthwhile and certainly nothing in it which would tell anyone anything about us) although that might have been the point - minimalist is cool after all. By contrast the new posters to be handed out to world business leaders with a Great Britain theme are truly cool (although one could do without the 'Green Is GREAT Britain' one). Just the kind of thing to put up on one's wall which at a mere £510,000 to produce is hopefully well worthwhile but I'll leave it to you to be the judge of that. I imagine the posters are to be handed out for the first time today by Cameron in New York where he has made his big foreign policy speech to the UN. Cameron has been busy elsewhere today as he and others have sent a letter to Sarkozy as President of the G20 meeting in Cannes this November saying they will support his plea to help find the path to growth and stating that decisive action is needed to support growth, confidence and credibility. One of the actions they demand be made is the resolution of the eurozone crisis. It is a fortunate coincidence that the day on which this letter is published Peter Oborne has trailed a pamphlet that he and Frances Weaver have written and which will be for sale tomorrow setting out the disgraceful part played by certain politicians, businessmen, the CBI and the BBC in trying to force us into the euro. Here is a flavour of what the pamphlet, called the Guilty Men, says.