Friday, February 19, 2010

Quango-tastic expenses


Strathclyde Partnership for Troughing


Here in west central Scotland we have a transport quango called Strathclyde Partnership for Transport, (SPT), which uses tax payers money to subsidise cheap travel for the masses. It covers the old Strathclyde Regional Council empire and has went through various guises during the years.

It is currently embroiled in an expenses scandal.

Like all quangos, pissing tax payer's money up the wall seems to be one of it's strengths.

It's chairman, Alistair Watson, resigned earlier this week due to 'health grounds' and yesterday the chief executive Ron Culley quit also due to 'health reasons'.

Mr Culley, 60, has been at the centre of a controversy over trips by 11 directors and executives costing £117,573 over the last three years to destinations including China, India, Italy and the United States as well as in the UK. Of that, the foreign trips’ share was around £50,000.


Being a public servant must be a good life.

Meanwhile, the position of Councillor Davie McLachlan as South Lanarkshire’s representative on the SPT is being considered by his local Labour group in the next few days after it was revealed he had claimed £17,544 for travelling 35,650 miles as its vice-chairman.


Yes, it certainly does look like a good life.

Fear not however...

The three largest councils within the SPT area have got together to sort out the crisis and will use their combined voting weight to usher in a new chairman. All the councils are Labour led.

Problem solved then...

2 comments:

stressymumsy said...

That's the whole point of quangoes, to give you friends and family loads of money.

It's not an unfortunate by-product of the quango system, its an integral feature.

Anonymous said...

The money-merry-go-round continues!

I wonder how many people REALLY work for the State. I had the figure 1 in 4 a while back but everyday another batch-of-nobodies I never heard of comes out and demands "public this" or "public that"

Just glad rope can be reused otherwise we would have a shortage if we do have a day of reckoning.