George Adam
Inverness-shire
I have to say that I suffer from a lack of patience when I listen to Her Majesty’s loyal opposition; they carp on as to why this has not been done, and demand instant action for all sorts of claims.
Naturally one essential tool in their toolbox is the one called “selective amnesia”, since virtually all the items concerned were things that should have been done when the Illiberal Labourites were in power.
George Adam
Inverness-shire
I have to say that I suffer from a lack of patience when I listen to Her Majesty’s loyal opposition; they carp on as to why this has not been done, and demand instant action for all sorts of claims.
Naturally one essential tool in their toolbox is the one called “selective amnesia”, since virtually all the items concerned were things that should have been done when the Illiberal Labourites were in power.
It is not as if these amnesiacs were not given the money; as was pointed put in a statement earlier this year, the coalition handed an awful lot of money back to HM Treasury because they did not spend the money allocated.
I wonder why this was the case?
We are all familiar with the “Use it or lose it” philosophy, but still, how on earth did they manage to hand back the following sums:
- 2002-03 £394 million
- 2003-04 £623 million
- 2004-05 £382 million
- 2005-06 £139 million
- 2006-07 £135 million
To put it in simple terms, in their last 5 years in office they handed back £1.673 billion to the UK Treasury. An awful lot of money, some of which could have been spent on crumbling schools, smaller class sizes, slopping out at prisons, to name but a few.
How coincidental that the election of an SNP Government led to the tightest budget settlement since the Parliament was re-established, and an even bigger squeeze coming with the credit crunch; did the Illiberal Labourites have instructions from London on spending – they had them for everything else?
Or is it the case that because they did not spend the budget the Treasury thought that they had more than enough, but it was Scotland that bore the brunt and not the politicians.