Friday 30 July 2010

The Government Money-go-round

To briefly summarise an article in The Yorkshire Post, the government plans to reduce spending on the maintenance of social housing; so Connaught, which had expected to earn a lot of money from these contracts got into financial difficulties; so two government controlled banks have extended the company additional finance to see it through.

Wouldn't the government have been better off spending money on something that has tangible benefits, rather than pumping money into a stricken enterprise?

5 comments:

AntiCitizenOne said...

What tangible benefit?

Bayard said...

No, because spending money on social housing is spending money on the wrong sort of people and helping stricken enterprises is spending money on the right sort of people.

Mark Wadsworth said...

AC1, new windows, central heating etc. Sure, councils overpay wildly, but at least they get something in return.

B, I hope you're being ironic.

Bayard said...

Well, if the people in government don't think that way, it sure as shit looks like they do.

Anonymous said...

Surely the sensible thing to do would be a "root and branch" bail out of Connaughts - the taxpayer could buy up all the shares and with the funds at their disposal Connaught could repay all the loans from those taxpayer owned banks and become first solvent and then swiftly "profitable" from all the taxpayer funded repairs to the social housing, and the shares would rocket in value at which point the taxpayer would sell them on the market, reap a handy windfall profit and everyone would be smiling.

Or maybe there is a better, more tangible "evidence of where the money actually went" solution like you suggest, but, well I just can't see it .. (it might be the blinkers, it just might be ...)