Let's Give Comrade Miller And His Band Of Clowns A Pass Because......

.....they are not as bad as some other government bodies; ie: the Germans!

Think Our Governments Waste Money? Wait Till You Read This

Friday November 23, 2007

CityNews.ca Staff

They buy a theatre for $1 million, while raising your taxes.

They ponder putting a levy on bottled water, even though there's no way to implement it.

And they probe two councillors for not spending any taxpayer money on their office supplies.

You may think there are some spending problems at Toronto City Hall. But what an ombudsman found in Germany may make you feel a little better about the workings of our government. The officials employed to trace where taxpayer money goes have found an almost unbelievable amount of waste you may find laughable. But it's likely those who voted for the politicians in that county won't. The report says the German government wasted a staggering Cdn$2 billion last year.

Where did all that cash go? Check out some of these examples: (all amounts converted to Canadian dollars)

-The country's national railroad system received $277 million for a stretch of track it never built.

-The army spent $1.4 million to buy special brushes made with the inner ear hair of South American cattle so they could clean a specially-made dirty projection screen. But the brushes didn't work, and it still costs $2.1 million a year to maintain the system. It now sits unused in a $23 million emergency simulation centre.

-The government employs twice as many people as it needs for the vitally important task of looking after police uniforms.

-Shades of MFP! Their patent office doled out $11 million over three years to rent computers that should have cost millions less.

-And the army spent a fortune designing new seats for old personnel transporters that had already been deemed so unsafe, they can't be put back on the roads. The same defenders also spent millions maintaining an underground surveillance bunker that doesn't serve any military purpose whatsoever.

So the next time you think about waste at Toronto City Hall or on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, you can take some small comfort in the knowledge that our big spenders aren't quite as bad as their big spenders. At least not yet.