TAXPAYERS MONEY

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Ministers spent £50,000 of taxpayers money advising fathers on how to play with their children, and came up with - "take them to a playground." A 'Dad Pack' paid for by the Department for Education also provides fathers with a stream of obvious advice on how to ensure the safety of babies and young children. When giving a bath, you should test that the water is not too hot, according to the Dad Pack.

Its information cards instruct that it is harmful to shake a baby and that if you take your child in the car, it is best to buy a child seat. And for fathers worried about whether their family will be worse off if they die, the Dad Pack advises: "Consider life insurance." The Dad Pack appears to fall into a Blairite tradition of spending large sums of money explaining the obvious to politically-targeted audiences.

The practice reached a peak of pointlessness when former Minister for Women Baroness Jay spent £100,000 on organising an exhibition in Islington encouraging women to look for jobs. It suggested they might try the JobCentre or look in the vacancies columns of the newspapers. (Source: Daily Mail, Jun/06)

Tony Blair has spent £127,314 of taxpayers' cash tarting up his Downing Street home. The money has been spent on carpets, curtains, lamps and tablecloths over the last five years. A Downing Street spokeswoman defended the spending spree, saying, "Number 10 is a listed building and we have a duty of care to look after it. The work was carried out in accordance with recommendations from English Heritage and rules on health and safety." (Source: Sunday Mirror, Apr/06)

According to The Bumper Book of Government Waste, a £225,000 scheme advising the elderly on how to wear slippers is among an array of examples of "wasteful and useless" Government spending costing billions of pounds a year. The aim of the initiative was to persuade the over-55s not to wear ill-fitting slippers in case they tripped downstairs. The book, produced by the Taxpayers' Alliance, has collected hundreds of examples of state profligacy from the media, departmental announcements and Government statements.

They include £40,000 spent by the NHS on a 46-word "Patient Experience Definition" that required two £8,000 workshops, a £4,000 public meeting, two £1,600 meetings with children and three £600 in-depth interviews with mental patients. Among the aspirations established by the exercise were that patients wished to be treated "with honesty, respect and dignity". In 2004 the Home Office spent £74 million hiring 142 consultants and £2 million on security at a G8 meeting in Derbyshire last year, where police outnumbered demonstrators by 10 to one.

Matthew Elliott, the chief executive of the Taxpayers' Alliance, said the Government wasted up to £80 billion a year when unfunded pensions, defence procurement overruns and computer glitches were included. "That is more than the annual turnover of many east European countries, or £4,000 per family in Britain," he said. (Source: Daily Telegraph, Jan/06)

A spy-in-the-sky system to track sex offenders is a disastrous failure. Clouds, trees and buildings have all stopped police being able to follow convicted paedophiles and wife beaters. Former Home Secretary David Blunkett launched the £3million satellite system in 2004 saying it would revolutionise how sex offenders are monitored after being released from jail. But new Home Secretary Charles Clarke ordered a media blackout on reports into the scheme after trials in Manchester proved a disaster. A senior Home Office source said, "This was meant to be prison without bars. It turned out to be no prison at all as sex offenders were allowed to walk around freely and police had no idea where they were."

But instead of scrapping the scheme, Ministers ordered a media blackout on the reports. The document said, "We have not sought to publicise the pilot scheme since its launch in September 2004 due to the risks of negative media coverage of the poor results to date. There are risks to attracting media attention. The pilots are not yet delivering the volume of offenders expected. Media attention may highlight some of the difficulties with the technology and raise questions about the cost and low throughput of offenders." The Home Office source said, "There are many people within the prison and police service who regard it as a waste of time and money. It has been a disaster." (Source: Daily Mirror)

Freed Lotto rapist Iorworth Hoare costs taxpayers £1,000 a week, to buy him treats such as booze, fags and aftershave. He refuses to give a penny towards the cost of his secret life on probation, despite his £7million fortune raking in £7,000 a week interest. Instead, the state picks up virtually the entire bill to keep him in smoked salmon, wine, Haagen-Dazs ice cream, takeaway curries, pizzas and Chinese meals and up to four DVDs a day. That is on top of the £10,000 a week it costs to hide the serial sex attacker in various safe houses. The rapist, released after a combined total of 30 years behind bars, is holed up in private rented accommodation.

The Home Office decided not to house him in a bail hostel for fear fellow inmates would target him. The Home Office also has a secret Bristol bolthole on standby in case his whereabouts are discovered. Hoare is watched around the clock by four probation staff, two on day duty, two at night. They cannot stop him leaving the safe house but there is an agreement that he keeps a low profile and is escorted when possible. However, he complained that their constant presence stopped him meeting women and leading a normal social life. He is said to have argued that his human rights were being breached.(Source: Daily Mirror)

MPs spent nearly £500,000 to protect themselves from the rain as they walk through the House of Commons. A steel and glass cover will protect ministers and MPs as they walk from the cafeteria and bar on the Commons terrace to New Palace Yard. Officials defended the cover, saying, "MPs and staff can walk from the Norman Shaw buildings at the North of the site to the south end of the House of Lords without getting caught in the rain." That's an explanation? (Source: The Independent)