Customer Reviews
Good points but please don't quote the Dail Mail! - By: Andy M, 15 Aug 2008 
As a long time NHS employee, first as a nurse then latterly as a manager, I've seen first hand how billions have been pumped into health, the ranks of bureaucrats have swelled enormously & efficiency & quality have nose dived. As far as the NHS goes, everythingin this book is spot on & I suspect that if you picked teachers, soldiers & policemen at random they would agree that the same has happenedin their field. The only issue I would raise however isin how the book is referenced. I'm not sure you can get away with quoting newspaper articlesin a book which, while clearly aimed at the general public, is also very specific about facts & figures & is sold as a genuine critique of government mismanagement. The most frequently quoted source is that publication well known for its accuracy & balance, The Daily Mail. Sorry, this just isn't on! There may indeed be substance to the points raisedin the newspaper articles referencedin the book but I'd be a lot happier if the original source were used. I'm as harsh a critic of the performance of this government as the next man but I'd take The Daily Mail's views with a huge pinch of salt & using them as a source significantly detracts from the credibility of the arguments I'm afraid. No one would seriously quote The Sun or Star to support their arguments & I'm afraid the Mail isin the same bracket for me.
Read and vote - By: Mr. R. Lewin, 03 Aug 2008 
You must read this book before you votein the next General Election. You'll read how it's rich bureaucrats that have done best under Labour, not the poor. You'll read how taxes have shot up to be investedin incompetently run & non-delivering public services. You'll read how ineptly this country has been run since 1997, & the scale of waste, bad decisions & dishonesty.
Craig's tone is not ranty. He gives a good deal of evidence for all the statements he makes, he doesn't slide into personal attacks or wilful bias. He delivers one of the best & most well researched books of its kindin recent years. Particularly powerful are his use of quotes from the likes of Blair & Brown, as they promise one thing & then a few years later deliver the complete opposite.
Easy to read & eminently digestible, Squandered will have you weary with fury & determined to put a stop to the Labour lunacy.
Squandered - By: Write Stuff, 01 Aug 2008 
David Craig assembles data that, when assessed across the total New Labour period, points not just to outrageous incompetence, but to structural problemsin how the country is run that suggest that the UK government simply cannot deliver its leadership role. The book is an indictment of New Labour but it also shows how the Tories & the civil service contributed to what is now an economyin free fall.
David Craig's figures speak for themselves. The message is clear. more & more of our money is being taken from us to create a class of inexperienced, incompetent & unaccountable parasites who are not only doing nothing to advance the cause of the people but who have become ulcers, draining life from the economy & constraining the creativity of the British people. When looked at over time, as 'Squandered' does, & free from wildly unjustified claims of 'prudence', we see details of:
- lazy promotion of pseudo growth by the active encouragement of low wage immigration on a scale never experienced before
- cutsin spending on equipment for the soldiersin the field at a time when the government pursues a deeply flawed policy of invasion (that was opposed by the mass of the UK populace
- growthin administrators & 'management' farin excess of the growthin numbers of nurses, police, soldiers & teachers
- profligate government borrowing at a time when the economy was buoyant to be paid back when the business cycle is reversed
- Public Private Finance 'Initiatives' that have increased the costs of the services being provided & which have been so badly managed that the tax payer will be carrying an unpredented economic burden for decades to come
- pension policies that mean 99% of civil servants have essentially unfunded, inflation-proof, final salary based pensions, while 72% of the private work force have nothing that compares to this - yet who have ot foot the bill out of future taxes (not out of pension funds that are earning interest)
- above all, our money has been spent & our futures putin hock without achieving any compensatory benefits: failing, dirty hospitals, new & refurbished schools whose new designs are condemned as 'mediocre' by the National Audit Commitee; falling education standards & higher rates of illiteracy; more serious crimes & increaing numbers of prisoners despite large sums spent on policing
- sale of over half the nation's gold stock when the gold market was at rock bottom, handledin such an absurd way that the price was driven even lower before the gold was even sold - putting billionsin the hands of a Chinese Government wise enough to buy when price was low
- creation of quangos lined with unqualified party faithful who are now also on inflation-proof final salary linked pensions & who have absolutely no accountability to the people or the government
- pumping of money needlessly into a corrupt, unaccountable & self-serving EU whose accounts have been rejected by auditors for 11 years
- increasing the number of MPs while 50 - 60% of law making is now done from Brussels
- foolhardy promotion of poorly specified, intrinsically unworkable software projects such as ID cards & natioanl databases, whose costs escalate while their benefits either recede or disappear
- billions spent irresponsibly on consultants who added little value & on projects whose budgets are invariably out of control, from NHS computers to Olympic villages.
David Craig's book covers all the major government departments. It shows that the incompetence is not isolated - it is endemic. Despite the terrifying message of 'Squandered', Mr Craig offers some constructive proposals to prevent the current situation leading to a major collapse of the economy. He himself, though, appears to have little confidence that either our elected or our unelected masters will be capable of carrying them out.
New Labour inherited a healthy economy, freed from the disastrous Exchange Rate Mechanism (which Labour had advocated as strongly as the Tories) at a time when world markets were growing rapidly. Inflation for the 5 years before & after the arrival of new Labour was about the same. But where did the resulting wealth go? Sucked into taxation & unproductive house price rises, into abortive government spending & the creation of 600,000 new jobs for civil servants. The result - inflation & recession. Where are the genuine productive new jobs that New Labour claimed to have been created? They are with low wage immigrants while the numbers of the nation's euphemistically named 'economically inactive' has doubled.
My interpretation of Mr Craig's book is that the UK's system of government has failed us & will continue to do so unless there are major changes, not justin faces butin the selection process that resutlsin such incompetence.
Despite all the verbiage, 'New Labour' turned out to be 'Old Labour' disguisedin spin. MR Craig's figures show how Labour has repeated its old pattern of taxing success & spending on failure. It has pandered to a financial industry thta does not investin Britain & discouraged investmentin British technologies that can reduce the costs of living & improve out living standards. It has spent billions instead on abortive projects that have brought us close to cultural & economic breakdown.
In the absence of a competent opposition,in the face of New Labour's in-fighting following the failures of Phoney Bliar & Gawdhelpyou Brown, & with a media industry that has exchanged investigative journalism for celebrity baiting, 'Squandered' is the wake-up call we have been lacking. It's a bitter read, but thank you, David Craig for pulling it altogether & pointing us (and maybe our unbeloved Leaders) towards a different future.
You'll suddenly want to withold your taxes - By: Eagle Fly Free, 26 Jul 2008 There's a quote from a review printed on the book itself along the lines of "It's impossible to read this without becoming angry" & that pretty much sums it up. Most of us are all too aware of how governments of all stripes waste vast sums of our hard earned money, but to have such a catalogue of incompetence set out before youin such stark terms really will make you want to devise a way - any way - of keeping more of your money out of the hands of a self-enriching political 'elite'.
It's not really addressedin this book, but if we moved to a new monetary system - one which didn't allow privately owned central banks to create money out of thin air & lend it out at interest - the ability of the government to plunge us all so deeply into debt would be severly curtailed.
The negative reviews of this book basically accuse it of being polemic & biased at that. However, although many of the references cited are indeed to newspaper articles, there's nothing to stop the interested reader checking the facts for themselves. What 'Sqandered' does do is set outin a short, eminently readable format, the dire state our public finances are reallyin & the colossal waste that continues to undermine them.
Enjoyable Enough, with Reservations - By: Colin Jervis, 17 Jul 2008 I read this book on a train journey as it is fairly short. At times I felt overpowered by the profusion of figures, & I think here caution is called for.
After having workedin the field of healthcare IT for about 20 years, I like to think I know something about it. In his previous book "Plundering the Public Sector" Mr. Craig made at least one large arithmetical error favouring his general argument about the NHS National Programme for IT (NPfIT).
What's more, William Faulkner said "kill your darlings" referring to being ruthlessin revising drafts, but Mr. Craig seems to have been unable to do that & still perpetuates the inaccuracy from his previous book that NPfIT was "sexily renamed" Connecting for Health. It wasn't.
Nonetheless, though this book doesn't present many reasoned options, it does give food for thought & is enjoyable enough.
