National Buildings/Funnels for money

[Mr Sleep]

It's like 5 blokes (probably civil servants) are sitting around in their plush office building thinking:

Okay we have a spare 98 million what should we waste it on this year?

Oh I know, a new building for us to sit around and have this same conversation next year, assuming we can get it built in time, cause you know how crap we are at following through with our plans.

Still it's a good excuse to use tax payers money, I mean what do they want it for, food and living, hell we have a building to make, that surely comes before them. We could have these conversations in a garden shed but that just wouldn't be the decedant way would it?

Any examples in your area of pointless outlaying for buildings or monuments that serve no purpose what so ever. My little rant was directed at the national assembly building being built in Wales for no obvious reason since they already have a perfectly serviceable one.

[Tamerlane]

One great example of wasted money from Down Under is our insistence on having three governing bodies, which are Federal, State and Local.

We have this ridiculously huge council building (three storeys tall, bell tower plus art gallery all just recently built) that surely just wastes ratepayers money at the expense of upgrading local hospitals, schools and other aspects, which are IMO more important in our area.

We all know that politicians are not worthy of their high salaries but giving local suburbian council members a huge building to carry out tasks that the state members should be doing is a waste of money in my books. Here is the building that I well and truly despise, civil servants won't even let me use the vacant car parks...

Another thing is that our local council wants to get trams into our area. I assumed that state government would have control over this, but apparently the local council is free to spend ratepayer’s money on whatever they please. We already are have a rail line coming through our region in 2005 to link us up with that urban sprawl called Perth as well as an incredibly effective public bus system. Why we would even need a tram system is beyond me

Whoa, sorry about the rant

Basically, no one wastes taxpayers money more effectively then our local government

[Mr Sleep]

Quote:

Originally posted by Tamerlane Basically, no one wastes taxpayers money more effectively then our local government

I think the English might give you a run for your money on that one. 750 million on the new Wembly Stadium and it isn't even built yet. To place a bid for the Olympics which we surely wouldn't get anway was going to be many more millions and for what, nothing, that's what. Just the bid costing millions that our flagging health service could use or maybe help trains come in on time....

Looks like this is going to be a rant thread

[Tamerlane]

You forgot to mention the whole Millenium Dome debacle, whatever happened to it?

Yeah the English government is close to us, but thats just the local government, I have yet to rant on about the state and federal ones. I won't today however

[Mr Sleep]

Quote:

Originally posted by Tamerlane You forgot to mention the whole Millenium Dome debacle, whatever happened to it?

Oh of course yes, that was a disaster of gigantic proportions, I mean they made it out of a fibre that could only last 25 years at most before degrading.

Of course none of that mattered because they closed it down pretty quickly anyway. I swear someone was smoking some serious doobies the day they came up with all that.

It was like, let's prove to the world we're at the fore front. In the end all we proved was how pathetic we are...sad.

[frogus]

The Millenium Dome is currently in Hell, being used as a giant soup bowl to go with their long spoons.

[VoodooDali]

My favorite story of bureaucratic waste is this:

When I was working at a public mental hospital in Texas, somehow the administration discovered that funds had been allocated to put gravel on all the concrete roads on the campus. Also keep in mind that we had a chronic, severe staff shortage due to the fact that Texas has the lowest mental health budget in the US, just behind that of Louisiana.

The funds could not be used for any purpose other than putting gravel down.

The hospital didn't need it, but they felt they had to spend it, so they put gravel down on all the roads.

Within one week of this, staff were complaining that the paint on their cars was getting damaged by gravel hitting it, staff and patients had an increase in allergies from all the gravel dust, and patients could no longer go for walks on the grounds due to a lot of falls and injuries.

Three weeks later, the hospital spent $30,000 to have the gravel taken off the roads.