Mark Wallace of the Taxpayers Alliance monitors a lot of Town Hall waste - but has a particular sense of outrage at councils that turn a blind eye to fraud.
Working at the TPA, I see a lot of remarkable examples of ways in which taxpayers’ money can be poured down the drain. Despite the amazing variety – from the police officers’ top trumps to the council staff who got travel expenses for time spent in their office lift - they never cease to amaze me.
Indeed, I’ve always been careful to make sure I don’t get blasé about it, or allow the feeling that such waste is inevitable to creep up on me. Sadly, while my sense of outrage is still heartily intact, in some councils it seems they have turned not being bothered about protecting taxpayers’ money into an art form.
It is reprehensible to squander taxes on barmy or self-indulgent schemes, but you can at least at a stretch imagine the mindset which leads someone to think that it’s a good idea to give drunk people free flip flops or to spend £2 million on a giant concrete head. The people who do so are wrong, but I can follow their (flawed) thinking, just about.
What I simply cannot even begin to understand, though, is councillors and council officials who tolerate the outright theft of taxpayers’ money.
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