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The Annual Waste of Money at Tax Year End Time in the UK


It's a curious tradition in the UK, that when it comes to that time of year just before April Fool's Day and the end of the financial year, there is a sudden rash of roadworks and other civic engineering projects, but not for any useful purpose. No, indeed, these expensive adjustments to the highways and other public property are not for the benefit of the community nor to improve the infrastructure, they are in order to spend the budget that has been allocated. "Use it or lose it!" is the motto. If the authorities don't spend the allotted budget, then next year they forfeit it. So, the money has to be spent, even if it is wasted on total folly.

As a result, it is all too common to see the same patches of tarmac dug up and resurfaced, and rearrangements of pavings performed, classed as "improvements", and then reversed at a later time. It is this squandering of money which has been extracted from the taxpayer, that is one of the reasons why the tax is so high in the UK.

Admittedly, with the UK being a high tax country, you do expect money to be spent on public services and on improving the roads and other infrastructure, but it is bizarre that public money MUST be spent, for no better reason than to say it has been spent, in order to get more money to spend next year.

This problem of money squandering at the time of the tax year end is not associated with any particular political party, as it has been going on for donkeys years. It is simply bad management, and something which no political party in power at any time has seen fit to do anything about. The bad management is not simply within the local council, as they are compelled to waste the money because of the way the funding model is set up in the first place. So, is the bad management a result of bad planning in national government? However you look at it, this is a problem which could be solved by applying some good sense to the situation. It's a good thing companies aren't run as badly as that, or they'd go broke.

People are not daft, and they can see it happening, year after year, but there's not a lot they can do about it, after all it's not a true democracy

The squandering of money on unnecessary roadworks is only a minor part of the tax money wastage in the UK. There's a far worse wastage: fighting futile foreign wars which are for political purposes to toadie to the US Government rather than being anything to do with defending the country.

I have now left the UK. I have emigrated as a tax exile!