Posted on 09/14/2009 12:33:31 AM PDT by bruinbirdman
Ideas that were once fringe are taking centre stage as the Tories plan radical action to tackle Britain’s dire public finances and transform government
In Westminster and town halls across the country, revolution is brewing. It threatens riots, possibly on the streets, certainly in cyberspace. Riots of protest, perhaps, and definitely a riot of information.
For a glimpse of the tumult coming your way, call up the website of the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead (RBWM). In a few mouse clicks you can find details of every supplier paid more than £500 of taxpayers’ money by the council.
From April to June this year, for example, it coughed up £460,425 to a firm handling ground maintenance and landscape construction, £15,745 to Legoland, the theme park, and £1,500 to an Islamic trust.
Good value or waste of money? For the first time taxpayers who foot the bill can see the detail, demand answers and decide for themselves.
“At the last budget meeting the council leader wanted to make it as open as we could how we are spending money,” said Peter Brown, chief accountant of RBWM, which is Conservative-led. “So we started to do that. Now we’re looking at extending it further to include payments — allowances and expenses — made to individual councillors.”
The council is even working towards publishing individual invoices from its suppliers in the belief that voters deserve to know exactly what they are paying for. Transparency, they hope, will foster competition and efficiency.
Others are also experimenting. In Barnet, north London, the Tory local authority wants to provide public services on a “no frills” basis, after the manner of a budget airline. Dubbed “easyCouncil”, it will deliver a basic service to everyone with the choice of paying extra for faster, more comprehensive options.
In Yorkshire,
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
Imagine the uproar if Mr. Transparency’s spending just out of the White house checkbook was made public like this.
I’ll believe it when I see it. Until the Tories return to Thatcherism, they’ll be nothing but a pale imitation of Labour (and more than economics, they’d better do something fast about the Mohammadan trash ruining the UK).
I thought David Cameron said the only issue that mattered was global warming.
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