Government WEEE's advisory board on quango bonfire

The government is set to scrap four business quangos costing over £8.6m a year to run as part of the coalition’s death march to rein in public sector costs. Business Secretary Vince Cable confirmed this morning that the Strategic Advisory Board for Intellectual Property policy (SABIP), the Waste Electrical and Electronic …

[Anonymous Coward]

British Shipbuilders Corporation

I thought the last components of British Shipbuilders had been sold off long ago.

I can see why the legal entity might remain but surely it didn't actually employ anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

THEY EMPLOY at least 1 person, the CEO

and i bet the CEO have a higher pay than the PM.

[Michael 82]

A better idea is..

just leave the EU, it'll be better for the UK and a hell of a lot cheaper too!

[Tom 15]

Leaving the EU would be silly...

It costs us under £4Billion/year and makes us far more than that... the EU itself should start streamlining though!

[John Smith 19]

@Tom 15

However it would be good to have a year when the auditors of the EU Parliament actually *accept* the accounts.

That's another body that *needs* an expenses reform.

[Graham 25]

Redundant or just moved ?

I would be interested to discover whether in closing down these quango's whether the staff are joining the dole queue, or whether as I suspect, they just move elsewhere in the civil service. It should the the former, but I suspect its the latter and apart from some headed notepaper, no a lot will actually be saved.

[Notorious Biggles]

Yeah but...

Even if it is the former, you still save money having fewer websites. And fewer different headed notepapers to stock. And just less red tape.

[Adam Williamson 1]

Waiting

I keep waiting for this government to do something spectacularly dumb, and it just isn't happening. Come on! My Tory-bashing muscles are atrophying over here!

*taps foot impatiently*

[JaitcH]

Remarkable, a government ...

actually doing what it promised in the run up to the election.

Good going.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well going what it promised....

If you call that "we all need to do charitable work instead of paying people who know what they are doing" bollocks a promise I suppose they are,

I'm sure you will all be happy when you have to be

tugging the old forelock for the local squire( could be a banker or MP) to get a bit of charitable donation down at the poor house, for as we all know, this charity work will be done by the same people who do charity work now, the rich will just say "well I pay all these taxes why should I do anything" and the poor will be far too busy working for minimum wage to do any more work.

The man is a complete pillock, I've done a good deal of charitable work and the number of doers compared to the number of takers is very small, just what does this out of touch millionaire think will happen, those that usually sit back will have an epiphany and see the light, run around in the new Range Rover to do the meals on wheels, not without charging a £1 a mile they won't.

If there was a tosser icon I would have used it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not everything's charity

So you think that climate change managers for a council are well paid for knowing what they do. I'm sure you'll be happy that such important jobs are carried out by your council.

Closing down all these quangos does not necesarily mean that all their tasks are dropped. It can mean that the tasks are brought back into government. Also costs are shown under goverment budgets and not hidden behind a quango. If tasks are dropped, then they can easily be picked up by private industry if there is a need and private industry can pay for it rather than the tax payer. For example SITPRO, they give advice which an export company would provide. They also advise companies to use certain software and list the companies that provide the software. So basically the software companies are getting free advertising on SITPRO paid for by the taxpayer.

A good number of quangos can definately be dropped as not absolutly necessary except when times are good and even Labour acknowledge that we have been in a recession. Not even Labour would argue that goverment needs to spend money on luxury items.

[Hollerith 1]

I'm hoping NESTA will go

Such a complete waste of time and money. Gives 'quango' a bad name.

[Anonymous Coward]

@Hollerith 1...

...from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NESTA :-

"Funded by a £250 million endowment from the UK National Lottery, NESTA uses the interest from that endowment to fund and support its projects. It operates at no cost to the taxpayer..."

[JP19]

tax

Err, I think you will find the National Lottery is a tax on the arithmetically challenged.

[John Smith 19]

@JP19

Only if you're unaware of the odds, which are not exactly secret.

Note that unlike a *normal* tax it it possible to avoid paying it *entirely* in a legal way in the UK. Something not possible with say income tax (for the majority) or fuel duty (untaxed petrol in the UK is a real no no).

Lotteries have been described as a way to get predominantly working class people to fund predominantly middle class causes. No one holds a gun to anyone's head to buy them.

[lglethal]

Hollerith1 is right...

It does give Quango a bad name - its not using any government funds!

[Simon Redding]

Get your facts straight

You're off by about £8m p.a. - they admitted straight away this would just save £600k, and your article was out of date before it was published.

WAB is an industry-led technical forum which is currently putting together re-use protocols to stop electronic waste being shipped to African beaches under the guise of charitable donations. That's a very important thing, and scrapping it without thinking is pretty dumb.