You could not make it up. Even though these events happened two or three years ago, I would like to refresh readers' memories of some of the funding mistakes that have been made, for example, the government decision to scale down the NHS University "At Arms Length" or whatever it was called. Staffing is to be cut back to 300 from about 1500 and the budget is to be scaled back by £500m by 2007/8.
I am so appalled at this failed project, which must be along the same lines as the disasterous computerisation projects within the same organisation (I wont mention too much, public liability you know!!)
How can the government spend this money when it is cutting £100million from widening participation in the higher education budget.
Apparently to add insult to injury, the Director of the NHS University was reassigned to a widening participation project.
In another slightly older piece of bad news I have read, the e-University was cancelled; that also cost the taxpayer another £50 million. Is it not amazing that these little pieces of public expenditure information keep on cropping up. At this rate, our little bit of something worth £100m will be dwarfed by these mega spending blunders.
I stick to what I said some weeks ago on these pages; it is time for the Public Accounts Committee to have a look at all these projects, or bring forward the spending review on part-time students, widening participation and lifelong learning, so that we can really see what is going on. I suspect that joined up government is not happening and that public spending is getting out of control; the wrong public spending is happening and the right public spending is being kicked into the long grass.
I have edited this post so that it reflects that what I have said are not current news items but nonetheless are relevant to what is going on in the current situation.
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