Public profligacy: an address reveals so much about the Blair-Brown project

If you want to know why Britain is the last major economy to crawl ever so slightly out of recession (and don’t hold your breath), just stroll down London’s Piccadilly past some of the most expensive real estate on earth.

There you will find the palatial offices of The Qualifications and Curriculum Agency.

These jokers are, they risibly claim, “at the heart of England’s education system. Our job will be to develop the curriculum, improve and deliver assessments, and review and reform qualifications.”

Fat chance. They hired an Australian boss at between £175,000 and £180,000 who flew back and forth at our expense – £153,900 for his home and air fares to Australia plus a £203,000 pension. He then hired an American firm on a £156 million five year contract who proceeded to screw things up right royally.

So incompetent are these people at everything except wasting public money (like the government as a whole) that in the last few days over 3,000 people joined an online group “The AQA unit 4 biology exam (25/1/2010) was a disgrace!” within 24 hours.

The question is, why the hell do these utterly useless bodies, which we managed without for centuries, need posh offices? In fact even this bunch of incompetents are going to move to somewhere more sensible. But they are only one of 1,162 such bodies that cost us £64 billion, around £2,550 per household per annum. What could you do with an extra £50 a week?

If we want to climb out of recession it requires no great thought, no “strategies”, no “initiatives” and, please, no more bloody “vows” – just a determined drive to get rid of these parasites. I see little sign of that from Cameron with his silly prison ship schemes (bring back transportation!) Somebody I know tells me the Tories are all “off with the fairies”. Wouldn’t surprise me in the least.

A good start would be to make sure that public employees have the same pension rights and the same salary increases (or decreases) as the rest of us.

Now, the next thing to keep an eye on is this: the Bliar, the Toad and the man of Straw have all been proven to have made or backed falsehoods that took this country illegally into war. Will the supine, corrupt bunch of trough-hounds who currently pollute the northern end of the Palace of Westminster punish them?

Not a hope in hell.