The government talks a lot about ‘investing’ in hospitals and schools. That is why we have to pay extra taxes. We all know that New Labour’s experiment with spending has been a flop, with the improvements to services tiny compared with the increased spending.
One problem is that the cash we think is going to be spent on operations and classrooms gets diverted. Sometimes this is because of excessive bureaucratic layers, like Local Education Authorities. But sometimes it is rather more blatantly wasted.
Like with government attempts to encourage ‘e-society’.
The private sector worldwide has done a really good job at providing opportunities for e-society. Just look at AOL Instant Messenger, webcams, blogs, web site forums, Friendster and Orkut.
But the fact that e-society is so abundantly provided by the private sector has not stopped the UK government thinking it should get involved. Back in the autumn, I got an e-mail from James Crabtree of VoxPolitix asking if I would blog about a new project called MySociety.org, run by his friend Tom Steinberg, a former No. 10 adviser. I have met Crabtree a couple of times and like him, so I thought I should do my bit. I tried for an hour or so to write a blog about this new project, but I just could not. The project was utter crap. And I just could not write anything nice about it with a clear conscience.
Well, that project which I thought was ‘utter crap’ is now being funded by the government. It has just been awarded £250,000 as “part of something called the e-innovations fund, a pot of government cash set aside to stimulate useful and innovative new online projects”.
Alex Singleton wrote:
The way I read this, he only asked you to blog about it. He didn’t ask you to say anything nice about it. Wouldn’t this post fulfill your obligation? :-p
This just reminded me this joke of a project our government did a while ago. They run a website gov.cz that’s supposed like, you know, serve the citizens with shitloads of useless information. Guess what, they forgot to renew their domain. Without the media having reported it immediately, maybe they would have never noticed.
Re: Tomas Kohl……
What a right proper bunch of charlies HMG is !!
JFM: HMG? Whilst true, Tomas is referring to the Czech government.
£250,000 to fund a crap project that the private sector is already doing superbly? I don’t live in Britain, but why does no one in Britain call the government on things like this? Why does no one find out who is in charge, who authorised the expenditure and send the information to all the media (via email, of course). No one in Britain seems to shine a spotlight on these tiny parasites who burrow their way under the skin of society and then start doing harm. Funded by the taxpayers they’re working against, of course. How much of this £250,000 is going on Tom Steinberg, for example? How much is he being paid for his useless and pointless “job”?
Regarding ” Why does no one find out who is in charge, who authorised the expenditure and send the information to all the media “, I wouldn’t have thought that this would be an easy matter. Surely it will be the responsibility of some committee, and who voted for the motion will not be recorded?
Only when something becomes (by miracle or random chance) a success will politicians come forward and grab the glory.
Remember RULE 1
I succeed; we fail….
Demonstrating that the ISPs are the ones who will obliterate spamming and there is not one inch of cyberspace available for regulation by governments, The Telegraph report that AOL is raffling a $47,000 silver Porsche seized from a spammer.
I hadn’t realised, but apparently several American ISPs are aggressively suing spammers and seizing their goods when they claim no ability to pay. I knew the Americans were tracking them down, but I thought they were just banning them. But no. Seizing property bought will ill-gotten gains amid maximum publicity.
Browsing the mySociety site, I came across this gem – an idea for a web site called WorldHelp under the heading, “Environmental“:
“Essentially, people would earn points in the system based on the amount of help they provide. These points could then be used to acquire the services of others and so on.”
This reminds me of something else people exchange that can be used to acquire the services of others and so on…
Wow! As a former research fellow at the Institute of Economic Affairs, I consider that to have made it into the sights of libertarian critics must some kind of end of an era in my life.
If you are really upset by the way that we’ve been funded, might I suggest you complain about it to your MP, or MEP, using WriteToThem.com? It will let you contact any of your elected representatives so that you can tell them how unhappy you are with grotesque use of public money.
We built WriteToThem, of course. For about the same sum of money (about £35,000) that the govt often gives single IT companies just to cover the cost of tendering for bids. The bids being made by those efficient private sector companies you were just praising. Which would rather have?
Wow! As a former research fellow at the Institute of Economic Affairs, I consider that to have made it into the sights of libertarian critics must some kind of end of an era in my life.
If you are really upset by the way that we’ve been funded, might I suggest you complain about it to your MP, or MEP, using WriteToThem.com? It will let you contact any of your elected representatives so that you can tell them how unhappy you are with grotesque use of public money.
We built WriteToThem, of course. For about the same sum of money (about £35,000) that the govt often gives single IT companies just to cover the cost of tendering for bids. The bids being made by those efficient private sector companies you were just praising. Which would rather have?