How to waste billions of public money

Mike Stallard

1. I have been really upset by the article. The EU is almost entirely to blame for these unelected, unaccountable rubber stamps of the EU Commissioners.
2. You are totally right about the downturn. I suspect, however, it will lead to even more committees dedicated to "Addressing the Economic Crisis" with yet more dinners and important meetings in Dubai.
3. What really scares me is the fact that the North (strongly Labour) and the South (strongly Conservative) will come apart - warmly encouraged to do so by these idiotic Commissioners.
I haven;t been so worried about my little country for a long time. Where Scotland leads, sure enough, the North will follow.

Glenn

YAWN! its so easy to give bodies like the RDAs a kicking! And in this way, with such old old news and selectively putting a few thousands here and millions there. All your claims of impropriety do not add up to 2.3 billion in waste. Having worked in RDAs in England and Scotland - ok some of what they do is a waste, but a heck of a lot of what they do isn't. But you never mentioned the many tends of thousands of jobs secured by inward investment gains; nor the redevelopment of brownfield land. You haven't offered a convincing enough justification to close them down just yet. Its another 'bonfire of the quangos' statement. You need to spell out what you'd do differently and how - not hid behind weak slogans. You've just had a few pot shots at an easy target that isn't very good at defending itself. Nor have you offered a plausible alternative for addressing uneven economic performance in the regions, or amongst our localities.

steve

Hmm well from my time as a DTI minion, I can safely say that none of my work with any RDA resulted in anything useful or even measurable. They are completely made up entities with no grounding in how people see themselves. If you wander round Nottingham and ask people what their local identity is the replies you are likely to get are Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, and maybe even a few hardy eccentrics calling themselves Mercians, you will not find any who considers themselves an East Midlander. (OK to be fair I would exclude Yorkshire & London from this) Looking at the inward investment and brownfield development gains. One question I would ask is how much of this would have happened anyway, via the usual process of market forces? I would also ask the corollary question of how much good RDA led investment does - British industrial history is littered with the carcasses of induced regional development, were companies get persuaded to build a factory somewhere that is not market appropriate, only to b****r off the moment the grant aid stops. I would concede that RDA's must have done some good - surely not even the Public Sector can burn that much cash and have absolutely nothing to show for it, but I doubt that the finaluseful outputs come anywhere near the expenditure.

Peter Day

The real reason for RDAs is to move the UK from central to regional government answerable directly to Brussels (Divide & Conquer). The UK must leave the EU so that it can run its own affairs without the malevolent influence of the EU.

Delphine Gray-Fisk

Brilliant!! But will anyone take notice?

Molly Bennett

So...we the British public managed to get rid of SEERA, A useless, overpriced, unwanted ,and unelected body of officials,And yes We are aware that they now hide under the umbrella of SEEDA, and they think we have been appeased!, the coming year will prove otherwise of course when we all start to lobby our councilors and MPs about their shameful waste of what is after all OUR MONEY, when the Christmas festivities are over and the bills are rolling in the people will have to look very carefully at just who is dipping into their purse and of course the public wasting of money is first stop! I think the public in general have had enough of greedy politicians and their inflated salaries and pensions, it is now time for action and many voices.

DR

Can I just add that whatever issues there may be around RDAs, they were not created b the EU, they are not run by the EU, and other than a small amoutn of projects are not funded by the EU. People who are selling this as an "EU problem" are either totally missing the point or wildly paranoid.