Category Archives: Waste of Money

If not on the military, then what?

Posted on by
1

With regard to withholding military taxation such that it is spent on something else, a common challenge is “On what?”

On the Beeb news it says “Australia bushfires: Fundraiser reaches A$20m in 48 hours“.  The Australian government spends that much on their military every 8½ hours.

That story also says “Prime Minister Scott Morrison has called up 3,000 reserve troops to help“.  That is 3.7% of their armed forces.  15% of their reserves (i.e. civilians being called away from their day jobs) and 0% of their active personnel.

If 3.7% of the Australian military budget was permanently re-allocated to fire prevention (as opposed to ‘Oh shit, the whole country is on fire, maybe we ought to act now‘), it would provide AUS$765,000,000 annually.  Nearly 40 times what has been raised from charitable giving to help save the country.

Australia spends just over AUS$1,000 per capita on militarisation.  The fundraiser is equivalent to 20,000 people’s military expenditure, about 0.078% of the population.  Military expenditure is 1.9% of GDP and 5.1% of government spending.

Perhaps Australia should spend a bit less on battle tanks and a bit more on the land they drive around on.  The Leopard tanks they had from 1976 to 2007 were never used.  They currently have 59 M1A1 Abrams tanks; these have also never been used.  They would like to increase that to 90.  Each one costs about AUS$13m.  Just ⅔rds of a fund-raiser each.

I’ve fallen for it again

Posted on by
Reply

Every year in January, at some point, I remember I need to update the “Global military spending so far this year” calculator on the Conscience web site to reset it.  So I check the web site, see it is clearly more than a year’s expenditure, go into the code and realise I don’t need to change it.  It changes automatically.

Globally we have already spent nearly £17,000,000,000 on the military.

Countries who will have already spent more than £17,000,000,000 on their own so far this year, in decreasing spend order:

  • USA
  • China
  • Saudi Arabia
  • India
  • France
  • Russia
  • UK
  • Germany
  • Japan
  • Korea, South
  • Italy
  • Brazil
  • Australia

I’m sure you can think of your own reasons how some of those countries could be spending their money elsewhere.  Such as Australia, which is currently on fire.

Incidentally, last year Iran spent about £10,200,000,000 on their military, 2.7% of GDP, so only slightly more than NATO countries are expected to ‘contribute’.  (The term ‘contribute’ is used in the context of NATO as it is, presumably, some sort of charity.)

<Sigh>.  Starting another New Year appalled at the waste.

A History of Britain in Numbers

Posted on by
Reply

A History of Britain in Numbers, Episode 2 ‘State Makes War’: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b052j579

“For a great part of Britain’s history, was the principal link people had with the state to die for it and to be taxed for the expense?”

Andrew Dilnot, chair of the UK Statistics Authority, 2012-2017

This programme was about the ‘fiscal military state‘.

18th century state spending on defence and war debt: 6 to 7% of GDP.  On all other state expenditure: 2% of GDP.  Over ⅔rds of national income was spent on defence, about the same as in ancient Rome.

During the Napoleonic Wars, %age of GDP spent on warfare: about 30%.  On everything else, about 2%.

Spending on the military during the reign of Queen Victoria, when Britain sustained an empire, 2 to 3% (about £16,000,000 in 1850, equivalent to £1,500,000,00 today).  Currently is is still 2 to 3%, but GDP has increased to about 25 times as much as it was in 1850.

 

 

 

 

Poor government support for careers

Posted on by
Reply

Does the government provide poor careers support because civil servants have jobs for life and politicians have no work experience?

When I started my career change it was early 2012.  At that time the government careers service was NextStep.  That was changed to the National Careers Service.  So I created an account on there in April 2012 and used that instead.

Over time it became an excellent resource for hundreds of different jobs.  It had all sorts of facilities for self assessment.  I made a lot of use of it.  It came with a Lifelong Learning Account.  It allowed one to:

  • update and store your CV, skills health check, action plans, and course searches to help you as you progress through your learning and working life
  • access your qualification details from your Personal Learning Record and track what financial contributions have been made towards your learning
  • manage the information you have gathered to help you make the right choices
  • build a personal profile and receive information more tailored to your needs and situation

I made full use of the Skills Health Check Tools and Action Plans and uploaded CVs.

But it has all changed, presumably to fit into the gov.uk web sitre structure, which does not suit it at all.  There used to be loads of job market analysis for the roles but that has gone.

It now seems no more useful than the useless ‘careers advice’ we got at school: “What do you want to do?  Oh, we don’t have that on the list.  How about train driver, policeman, typist or nurse?  We have those.”  And the information and advice they provide on searching for jobs and filling in forms could be put on a couple of sides of A4.

So it seems the Lifelong Learning Account and National Careers Service have survived for less time than it has been taking me to change career.  I started my research before it opened, have done an undergrad degree and not yet completed my postgrad degree and the Account and Service have gone.

What a shame.  And waste of taxpayers’ money them constructing it all in the first place for it to be switched off again before people have finished with it.

Fortunately, the Lancaster University Careers Service is superb and has provided me with huge amounts of advice, information and support so I’m OK.  But that does not help the millions of people out there who must be coping with leaving education, being laid off,  wanting career change or just being unemployed and wanting to explore their options.

Global spending on…

Posted on by
Reply

Annual global cost of removing all extreme poverty in the world (link): US$ 243 billion.

Annual global spending on ice cream in 2017 (link) US$ 54 billion.

Annual global cost of oceanic marine parks (link): US$ 12-14 billion.

Annual global military spending (link): US$ 1,700 billion.

 

“We need to maintain defence spending to protect jobs”

Posted on by
Reply

“We need to maintain defence spending to protect jobs”

Protecting jobs does not seem to matter in any other sector.  Why should defence be different from other sectors such as health, social services or education?

The defence sector comprises private industry, other government spending is mostly public sector.  Why should private industry jobs be protected by the government when public sector jobs are being cut?

“We need to maintain defence spending to protect jobs”

It is illegal under European law to prop up a filing industry to make it competitive.  This has been applied a number of times, for example to stop the French government propping up French airlines.  Counter argument: Why is the defence industry being propped up with government money?

“We need to maintain defence spending to protect jobs”

The UK defence industry is hailed as a great success as it is our biggest exporter.  If it is so successful and bringing in so much money, Why does the defence industry need propping up?

“We need to maintain defence spending to protect jobs”

If the purpose of defence spending is to protect jobs, why not give them jobs in another useful sector, working in a constructive way, such as civil engineering, major environmental projects, improved land management, improved water management, pollution control or research?  Why should they continue to work in the arms industry and not something else?

“We need to maintain defence spending to protect jobs”

It’s not really jobs that matter to maintain votes, it is standard of living.   If the purpose of defence spending is to keep these people in a manner to which they are accustomed, pension them all off.  Sell off their places of work, stop buying raw materials, stop using energy making stuff for the sake of it and stop producing unnecessary products that will require careful storage and subsequent disposal.  Why not save money by paying those people to stay at home?

Claiming “we need to maintain defence spending to protect jobs” does not stand up.

What do you think?

“Let Us Begin”, John Denver

Posted on by
Reply

In June 1986 John Denver released the album One World which has the track Let Us Begin, an anti-war song, which had been released as a single.  On this day of that year, 30th July 1986, his record label, RCA, pulled the single.  RCA had been acquired by General Electric, a major arms manufacturer, and they did not like this song with its lyrics of feeding the war machine but not babies.  Thus the powerful, who get rich from making killing devices, get to silence the pacifists to protect their profits.

A video John produced to go with the song, with a short introduction from him, is here on YouTube.

The lyrics.

This is simply the best piece of work that I’ve done in my career.

John Denver, 10th December 1987

Source: www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=10947# amongst others.

“Trump urges NATO members to double military funding target”

Posted on by
Reply

BBC news story “Trump urges NATO members to double military funding target” – Link.

Currently, NATO members are required to give 2% of the entire country’s Gross Domestic Product to the arms industry, with the non-democratic body NATO dictating what they have to spend it on.  This is so NATO can defend Western Europe from a Soviet invasion by the Warsaw Pact.  That’s the Warsaw pact that was dissolved in 1991, some 27 years ago.

That means the arms industry is given, each year, the entire productivity of much of Europe and the USA and other countries for one week.  We don’t do this for education, health, homelessness or all manner of socially good things – just the means to kill people.

But now President Trump wants that doubled – doubled! – to 4%.  He says one 25th of all production in every sector of society should be given to the arms industry.

The Cold War ended over half my life ago.  Why are we still funding it at all?

Why should we cut health provision, housing, education, social welfare or anything else to pay for the tools and means to kill people?  It is insane.

Unless he’s a puppet of the arms industry.  Happy to take their money and doesn’t care what the cost will be to the world.

It was this kind of uplifting of military expenditure prior to the Great War that, arguably, helped lead to it occur.

 

Global military spending, 2016 to 2017

Posted on by
Reply

On the Conscience:Taxes for Peace not War home page is a counter showing the global military spending so far this year.  It comes from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s (SIPRI) figures.  We use those because they are not particularly controversial; they do not include lots of things a strict pacifist would like to see included.  As I start writing this, the number is based on their 2016 figures and is £509,860,928,935.

Yes, global spending on militarisation (essentially, preparing for killing people), is five hundred thousand million pounds.  A million pounds, spent, half a million times.

For comparison, nobody wants to spend the £11,000m to £23,000m it would take to cure the whole world’s 185m people with Hepatitis C.  But we have spent £509,000m on arms so far this year.

(Hepatitis C treatment is the most expensive medicine in the USA, link.  Details of the cost of curing it, link.)

Anyway, it is time for me to update the web site because military spending figures for 2017 have been released.  And it has gone up by about 1.1%, once inflation has been taken out.  As an absolute sum just the difference is about £47,287m.  Military spending in 2017 represented 2.2% of the global gross domestic product.

(For reference, feeding the world’s starving people would cost £23,000m, £132,000m or somewhere in between.)

So, I have updated the script and now the number, based on the new 2017 figures, is £524,852,595,454 so far this year.
£524,853,983,114
£524,854,467,457
£524,854,865,718
£524,855,841,115
£524,873,308,033…

 

No reduction in defence spending until at least June 2022

Posted on by
Reply

As part of Theresa May’s £1 billion deal to buy the support of the DUP so she can stay in power, defence spending will be at least maintained until the next general election.

Link: www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2017-40245514

So there’s not much point campaigning for any kind of reduction for the next four or five years.

Specifically: “On defence, the parties have said they will ensure they meet the NATO commitment of spending two per cent of GDP on the armed forces, as well as committing to the Armed Forces Covenant. They will also look at ways to support reserve forces in Northern Ireland.”  UK GDP is just over £2,000,000 million, 2% of that is about £40,000,000,000 or about £750,000,000 per week.

Note that it is 2% of the Gross Domestic Product which is the entire output of the economy, not 2% of the tax income, nor 2% of government expenditure.