Raedwald is at it again, clinically dissecting in fine style the utter stupidity of Labour's plans to create nine regional fire control centres. Scrapped last year at a cost of nearly £500 million, as he points out, the waste represents a year's payments from 50,000 taxpayers - the working cohort of an entire English county.
Yet not a single Labour ex-minister, not a single Labour MP, not a single Teflon Mandarin, is to stand in the dock to face charges of malfeasance and maladministration or misconduct in public office. The looters and despoilers get away scot-free.
If we roll over and let them, they will continue with their looting. Even now, the empty centres are still costing us. As one local newspaper reports, a Taunton school with sub-standard facilities could be rebuilt with money haemorrhaging from the nearby empty regional fire control centre.
Just for this one centre, the government is paying £102,373 rent monthly for the idle facility. The final total could hit £30million, equivalent to £500 per person in Taunton, while tens of millions of pounds set-up costs have been written off, the paper says.
And that is why we protest – why we must protest. It is not just a question that our taxes are too high. It is not just a question that so much of our hard-earned money is wasted. It is also that those who waste it so often go unpunished and, more often than not, are rewarded by further highly-paid employment at our expense.
With politicians no longer doing their jobs, it is down to us. And we can no longer afford the luxury of this waste. In fact, we never could – but were never asked. It really is time to make our displeasure felt.
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