This childish one, to be precise. RT @libcon: Article:: Labour spends (nearly) 25.2 TRILLION on quangos! http://bit.ly/eFIt

Article:: Labour spends (nearly) 25.2 TRILLION on quangos! http://bit.ly/eFIt

The phrase is “free rein” not “free reign” or even “free rain”. Otherwise, a moderately unexceptional rant, untarnished by any wit, 6/10.

It is outrageous that the government tells lies about the number of quangoes in this way.

I have just looked out my window and seen five more being set up as I type.

what’s wrong with free rain? I don’t want to pay for rain dammit. It’s political correctness gone mad!

They could have spent that money hanging people!

I can’t wait for “SillySally” to come on and tell all how well Labour are doing and that every penny is well spent.

OH!

And the Tories eat babies.

Yes….I know! . . . . shocking!

Tory trolls, blackshirts, blah, blah.

Will that do?

Tsk: how about everybody is lying?

The answer is, it depends what you call a quango.

From the government:

“There are, of course, other types of public bodies – Government Departments and Agencies, the NHS, police forces, schools, etc. But to suggest that these are NDPBs or “quangos” is wrong.”

Well, an NHS Trust has some of the attributes of a quango. Which is why the Economic Research Council counts an NHS Trust as a quango.

http://quangos.ercouncil.org/home/

Up to you which set you believe. The Government saying that only “Non Departmental Public Bodies” are quangos? Or ERC saying that (in their view) if it looks like a quango, walks like a quango….

Not taking sides here, just pointing out where the difference comes from.

I hope you have a day job,

A complete waste of web space

Haha this post should win some kind of fucking award!

Good to see Matt Munro back after his last tragic failure to realise a piss take post was, er, a piss take. Still smarting from the humiliation in that comment thread?

@ atropos: A boringly mediocre comment, devoid of wit or insight, 2/10.

A complete waste of web space

Matt – I know your comments are usually quite stupid and ill-informed, but I wouldn’t go that far to say that about you

Always amusing to hear the hypercritical Tories complaining about quangos after the huge rise in the very same quangos happened under the previous Tory govts from 1979. And these were stacked with dodgy Tory insiders and apparatchiks. One of their favourite tricks was to fill up health boards with nutty right wing ideologues and wives of Tory Mps .

Still , nice to know all this will stop when call me Dave the liar gets in.

Oh wait…………………….

I normally quite enjoy these. I thought the ones on Harman and immigration were brilliant for the precision with which they skewered Daily Mail attitudes. This one is a much blunter instrument. I’m afraid atropos and Matt Munro have some justification. Hope to see a return to form soon.

@ 11 You either have a long memory or a very empty life, possibly both.

@ 12 Sunny – One day, probably when you’re self-analysing in Starbucks, you’ll realise that you really aren’t interesting, unique or intelligent. Could be quite a long wait for someone with your level of self-obsession but you’ll get there eventually. I can see it now “I used to Guardian blogger of the year dontcha know”

@11

#Good to see Matt Munro back after his last tragic failure to realise a piss take post was, er, a piss take.#

Aren’t piss takes meant to be funny though? Piss-takes completely devoid of humour (you’re no Jonathan Swift sunshine)are just abuse, which is fair enough, but who are you abusing exactly? The taxpayers alliance?…again..far enough…but if ever they had a point, surely quangos are it. There’s a crisis of political authority, democracy and ambition around here and quangos are just a way of circumventing accountability while rewarding air-headed, vacuous gobshites who’ve bought the right hymn-book.

Sally has a point but NuLab has followed suit, shoving sinecures at all the relativist, identity-deluded tosspots who pontificate from on high about how we, especially the working class, should be thinking and acting. How else would a party devoid of values and ideas, other than free market idolatry, trying to look progressive and getting re-elected, govern? They haven’t an ounce of legitimacy or authority left. Better to subcontract the actual nuts and bolts of policy implementation to fellow travelling middle-class, liberal moralisers who couldn’t get work shovelling shit anywhere else.

How come these quango posts are advertised down the job centre btw?

Haha! This is excellent Jamie Sport. Ignore Monkeyfish and company. Their clearly all paid-up Taxevaders Alliance members with no sense of humour and a deep seated desire to cut away at every progressive government programme out there. Don’t worry boys, you’ll get your chance to spread misery and suffering amongst Britain’s most vulnerable once Cameron et all have spent their way into number 10. In the mean time keep winding them up Jamie!

Blimey, I hadn’t expected a quick swipe at the TPA’s use of dodgy figures about quangos to be received with such bitterness.

It’s almost worth it to see Matt Munro and monkeyfish, possibly the two most humourless, least perceptive commenters I’ve come across, telling me to be funnier. Sorry guys, I’ll try harder for you next time.

Oh! And keep on using words like ‘NuLab’ and ’sinecures’ to make sure people take you seriously!

Great article.
I love the quote generator bit

There aren’t 994 NDPB’s, there are 790.

Phew!

But Matt and others needn’t worry – with Clegg talking of “savage” cuts, and Brown in full retreat, the debate is now firmly on Tory/TPA territory and it’s difficult to see what will shift it.

cjcjc,

“debate firmly on Tory/TPA territory”?
I don’t think so!
you may want to have a look at this morning’s proposals from Clegg and Cable about taxing homes values over £1m, as well as cutting annual exemption for capital gains from £10,000.
This would fund raising the basic starting-point for income tax to earnings of £10,000 a year, “removing four million workers from tax altogether”.

See what Cameron thinks of that?

How excellent.

“taxing homes values over £1m, ”

Given the regional variations in house prices this means yet more taxes for Londoners and sweet FA (or nearly so) from the North.

I just applied to be a Disabled Lesbian Sikh intercultural coordinator; I have the cutting from the ‘Guardian’ in front of me!

If there’s a crackdown on quangoes and similar idiocies will this job – and others like it – disappear?

The whole original idea of quangoes was to recruit – for a stipend – literate and intelligent people rather than having to listen to the opinions of Alderman Joe Farthwaite from the Amalagamated Arsewipers’ Union.

@21 – and the “savage” cuts?

fwiw I have always said that I would be happy to pay more tax if it raised the threshold to 12k, so I rather like the sound of that kind of idea too…cut spending and allow the poor to keep more of their own money, excellent combo

But you have to face the fact that all parties now accept that cuts will have to take place.

I just fucking LOVE how badly people take these satire posts by Jamie, the comments alone are worth the entrance fee as the twats fight each other tooth and nail to be the most myopic and ignorant.

w00t

Gosh, aren’t the righties po-faced and humourless?

@cjcjc

“There aren’t 994 NDPB’s, there are 790. Phew!”

Yes. Wouldn’t it be better if the Government combined all of these into 1 super-quango? It would reduce the number of quangos by 789.

Most of these quangos are advisory boards and tribunals that cost little. If you only look at those that actually spend any money (i.e. do executive functions), there are only 198 quangos.

And then what would you cut? Looking at the big spending quangos in the Cabinet Office Public Bodies list, we can scrap the Learning and Skills Council to save £12 billion (why fund further education – just what is the point of A-levels anyway?). Scrapping the Higher Education Funding Council would save a further £7.5 billion (again – why do we need to educate our citizens – waste of time). Scrapping the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority would save £1.6 billion (just leave the radioactive waste be – it won’t do anyone any harm if we just left it there). Stop training teachers by abolishing the Training and Development Agency for schools would save £750 million (why on earth do we train teachers? What a waste of money).

I’ve already found you £22 billion of the £34 billion “wasted” by quangos with only those 4 examples. And just look at those pointless tasks – we have no need for any of this. Let’s hope Cameron abolishes them when PM right?

Cry as you might, the gound has shifted and the cuts (”savage” or otherwise) are coming. Even under Brown they are coming.

@cjcjc

Why so coy about which quangos you see as a waste of money and ripe for cutting, and how much money this could save? And what about the “super-quango” idea – surely a fantastic value-for-money idea given the number of quangos seems to hold so much significance for you and others?

But then again, gee, those numbers sure look big don’t they – I don’t have enough fingers and toes to even begin to understand big numbers like these.

#It’s almost worth it to see Matt Munro and monkeyfish, possibly the two most humourless, least perceptive commenters I’ve come across, telling me to be funnier. Sorry guys, I’ll try harder for you next time.#

Just how much of my stuff have you come across you funny funny man? What do I normally post about…go on smart arse give me another example of my humourlessness or lack of perception.Thing is matey, trying to get cheap laughs from overblown Daily Mail hyperbole and pumped up claims from organisations like the Taxpayers’ Alliance is so fuckin lame, passé, lazy and fundamentally derivative that the one or two chuckles that were ever to be had were wrung out decades ago. I know it’s what passes for humour on a site like this, but that’s a kinda smug liberal hangup.

Try taking it on stage…throw in a bit of ‘isn’t George Bush thick’ or ‘look the BNP are trying joined up writing’…you’ll get the appreciative knowing and sympathetic laughs from the kneejerk bourgeois who never grew out of their student politics and try to retain a progressive edge while paying off the mortgage and stacking up the pension entitlements but that’s your lot. Do try harder Mr Sport…this stuff is pitiful. You genuinely are not remotely funny. I’ve read funnier stuff in the friggin Guardian.

#Oh! And keep on using words like ‘NuLab’ and ’sinecures’ to make sure people take you seriously!#

And you keep using reign for rein and we’ll know to do the complete opposite. In fact…why not actually post the ‘real’ figures…are there any? Or maybe give us an insight in the benefits of all these quangos. I’m sure there are benefits to huge amounts of money being spent by unelected, unaccountable appointees of the present government…just run through them again. Maybe convince us that the quangocrats are just regular people, appointed for their skills and experience without any kind of NuLabour agenda who are just trying to help out the working class? Any chance of that Sporty?

Nope…thought not…maybe it’s best you just keep to undergraduate stabs at satire about “The Mail bends the fact” or “rightwingers put a a rightwing slant on things”…very perceptive…very original. And soooo funny.

#27

“Gosh, aren’t the righties po-faced and humourless?”

Cast iron logic. Anyone objecting to a regime of liberal fellow-travellers running unaccountable layers of government for a party wedded to market logic MUST be right wing yeah? Anyone looking out for the working class interest would be BNP of course? The smug self-satisfied conceit of the useful idiot brigade…if you don’t support us you’re of the right…dream on.

Oh and humourless? It’s humourless to find a cack-handed attempt at satire lacking in wit is it? Oh sorry.

#I just fucking LOVE how badly people take these satire posts by Jamie, the comments alone are worth the entrance fee as the twats fight each other tooth and nail to be the most myopic and ignorant.

w00t#

“satire posts”? What’s that…something you use to hang up a piece of satire to dry? Do you mean ’satirical posts’? If so…which other skilled and subtle satirists do you admire? Mr Blobby? Ant and Dec? Benny Hill? FFS.

Mind you, I’m forgetting…you’re the one who helpfully points out any racist post with a helpful “racist scum” comment underneath in case we aren’t paying attention or don’t understand. Do you want to provide the world with subtitles for anyone lacking your analytical skills? I bet you were one of those kids who used to sit with his face glued to the car window gleefully announcing “DOG…CAT….CAR….TRACTOR….SHEEP….SHEEP….COW….SHEEP…”

Most of them get past that stage…

w00t

Hi monkeyfish you massive cunt.

Your verbose comment I think just about proved the point reagarding:

a) humourlessness

b) horrible sense of self-importance mixed with pedentry

c) a lack of intelligence

But glad you did it because without it we wouldn’t have had confirmation of your ignorance.

Cheers for that.

Ooooh did it touch a nerve?

What is it you like to say around here…’evidence’?

Oh…forgot… you’re so self-evidently right on such matters that when you opine we all just bow down in appreciation, grateful to be in the presence of such a tolerant and insightful polymath.

#Your verbose comment I think just about proved the point reagarding:

a) humourlessness

b) horrible sense of self-importance mixed with pedentry

c) a lack of intelligence

But glad you did it because without it we wouldn’t have had confirmation of your ignorance.#

Gosh…so scathing…and…satirical.

a)”humourlessness”..what…you didn’t find it funny? I thought when you didn’t find things funny….it meant you were humourless…that’s what you implied above…or are you just ‘po-faced’?

b) horrible sense of self-importance mixed with pedentry…..I’m assuming the misspelling of pedantry was a deliberate piece of irony…truly ingenious…you muppet.

c)a lack of intelligence…oh come on…this is too easy

“CAT….CAR…..LAMPOST……ANGRY LITTLE MUPPET WITH NO SELF-CONTROL….”

“wOOt”

“Cast iron logic.”

Hey, I only pointed out that the righties on this thread are humourless. Which is true.

It’s you who’s made a bit of a logical error in assuming I meant humourless = rightie.

PS: Do you speak like you write?

#Do you speak like you write?#

No. Are you suggesting I should…that to do otherwise is somehow dishonest? Do you even think most people do write like they speak? How d’you think Shakespeare announced he was nipping out for a piss?

#Hey, I only pointed out that the righties on this thread are humourless. Which is true.#

I don’t find that. Maybe you have a critical shutdown when you come across an opinion you don’t agree with. That’s not an especially tolerant or liberal trait btw. I find the views of some rightwingers on here abhorrent but I still find humour in the ways they express themselves…the two are entirely separable.

Some people on here seem to lack the ability to make the distinction and have implied the piece was funny, purely it seems, because it reinforced an old cliché (true none the less) about partisan groups making exaggerated claims. True, but hardly original or insightful while, simultaneously, not remotely funny…not intentionally anyway.

#It’s you who’s made a bit of a logical error in assuming I meant humourless = rightie#

Well in that case let me congratulate you on not jumping to a conclusion which virtually every other poster on here leaps upon with uncontrolled glee. I salute your independence of mind while despairing over the logical faculties of the majority of self-righteous ‘radicals’ around here….or…if you prefer…

“fair enough…makes a nice change”

“No.”

That’s a pity. I could find work for a Rick-from-The-Young-Ones impersonator.

Just got in to see monkeyfish’s various rants. Wow – what a hateful little man. Quite enjoying watching what a gigantic twat he’s making of himself though, do carry on!

Just how much of my stuff have you come across you funny funny man? What do I normally post about?

No idea, and I really couldn’t care less. I imagine it’s total shit though. But why would anyone need to read your awesome ’stuff’ when they can tell all they need to from this thread?

Thxbai.

monkeyfish – are you still coming here to troll every day? Yes we know you’re supposedly some old school leftie who hates ‘liberals’ and wishes… something (in fact I have no idea what political spectrum you’re coming from). But if you can be banned from CIF then you can be banned from here too. So stick to the comments policy please, I’m getting tired of reading your drivel everyday.

Sunny

I’m not on every day…not even close….and if it’s against your policy to criticise nonsense then just how do you justify the moniker Liberal Conspiracy…oh I get it…anything attacking liberals gets wiped

Sunny – In that case why not implement the comments policy consistently (no abuse or sacrcasm it says) not only when your mates are geiing a hard time or someone says something you don’t like – otherwise it looks a bit like censorship.

monkeyfish – I’m not here to justify anything to you. It’s a discussion blog/magazine. If you can’t discuss with some form of decorum then you’re not welcome and will be deleted.

MM – In that case why not implement the comments policy consistently (no abuse or sacrcasm it says)

Well, you’re among the most sarcastic here, so it’s pottle calling the kettle black. Nevertheless, you’re right in saying it’s not necessarily implemented consistently. I do allow abuse at rightwingers, which I perhaps shouldn’t. But abuse at the right-generally is allowed. Ad hominem attacks I won’t be tolerating so easily.

oh I get it…anything attacking liberals gets wiped

That’s priceless…yep, everyone can see how *anything* politely criticising liberals gets wiped from here, right? I mean, just look at this thread! You’ve been consistently censored on here haven’t you monkeyfish?

Eejit.

I’m with Jamie, watching monkeycunt thrash about in the waters of anger and despair whilst pretending to not be bothered about thrashing around in the aforementioned waters of anger and despair is funny as hell.

Although hopefully he will eventually drown in all that bullshit.

And when Twat Munro is on your side, you knows you is in big trouble…