The crazy Merseyside world of state-funded EVERYTHING!
OF COURSE the North West Development Agency should be scrapped - but we don't need lessons in efficiency and cost savings from the Liberal-Democrat leader of Liverpool City Council, Warren Bradley.
That the entire country is suffocating under a thick smog of publicly-funded bureaucracy - which at the managerial end is obscenely overpaid - has been obvious to anyone with any intelligence for many years.
But Cllr Wearing Badly, and his pathetic little political party, want the NWDA and the other regional development agencies abolished so that £2.3bn saved annually can be redistributed to... you've guessed it ... councils.
Oh, please! As if we don't have enough meddling and spurious initiatives already from Liverpool City Council - and its equally unpopular cousin across the water, Wirral Council.
Wirral Council, currently engaged on butchering its local libraries and its (already derisory) cultural services, is known locally as the "Death Star" - because everything it touches withers and dies.
Steven Broomhead, chief executive of the NWDA (who, amusingly, looks like the archetypal Fat Cat actor from Central Casting!), has so far mainly kept his powder dry in the political scrap under way for continued public funding - which at last is being scrutinised because of the economic downturn.
In Merseyside, the economic downturn is hardly noticeable so far - because we've been "down" for as long as most people can remember in terms of real, i.e. privately run, business activity.
I mean, come on! Have you checked out the rush-hour traffic in Merseyside? There is no rush hour! Because so few people are working.
And those who do "work" are in soft jobs for publicly-funded organisations - mainly on flexitime. Plus, they get more holidays and generally take more time off sick and "with stress" than those employed in the private sector.
Now, it's true that plenty of people have had business meetings in Merseyside in recent years - but comparatively few genuine businessmen or women were involved in those.
Instead, it's been the Fat Cats of the NWDA and the overblown local councils, plus the Smoking Ban Nazis, and the increasingly arrogant National Health Service pen-pushers, who have been living high on the hog, busy doing very little but having meetings with themselves.
Also regulars at state-funded meetings have been the superannuated representatives from our endlessly logo-launching, sloganising, spy camera-obsessed Merseyside Police and Merseytravel, plus the Daleks from the Nanny-Knows-Best social housing organisations and all their "partner organisations".
They've all had their noses in the taxpayers' trough - while the real local economy has withered away to next to nothing.
So, yes, by all means take an axe the NWDA and its sister organisations.
But while we are at it, why not cleave through the whole, ghastly, mediocre, bloated world of state-funded EVERYTHING!
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Steve Regan - Steve Regan is a writer who also runs the Bards of New Brighton poetry and music club, which meets at the Magazine pub, New Brighton, on the second Monday of every month. starting at 8pm. Free admission
Shocking though this may be. I agree. There needs to be huge cuts in public spending of all kinds and a massive reduction in the interference of the state in how we run our lives.
The Government makes life difficult for small businesses. Charging too much tax on small profits, and introducing extreme Health and Safety Policies and Employment Rights. I appreciate a lot of it comes from Europe, however common sense seems to have flown out of the window.
On middle management and government bodies I will keep it short. Money is, or in my day was, being wasted on peripherals - a lot stemming from diversity policy box ticking. Decisions, if made, were not implemented and followed through. The Government being too busy with its high flying think tanks and focus groups churning out yet another initiative: ''because the last one failed.'' The managers career-stepped elsewhere leaving someone new to 'clear up'.