Civil servants spend £25m on credit cards

Documents seen by the Daily Telegraph show £40m has been spent since 2008

If as the Telegraph headline asserts a fair proportion of it went on luxury hotels, fine dining and golf trips then there’s something rotten in the State of Westminster (to paraphrase the Bard).

  Not another expenses fiasco? How many more of these copper bottomed, gold plated schemes are we bankrolling in Parliament and Westminster and in the name of what? It’s a subject I have touched on from time to time in various comments and blogs, where I have drawn on the experiences of a lifetime on the road at a company’s convenience.
 
  Mostly in the early days it was a case of whose money is it. Like lending the wife a few quid to bale out the housekeepin’ budget which she repays on payday and borrows a few days later. In a way the issue of a credit card enhances efficiency, so long as clear and concise rules are applied .

  Valuable services rendered to a grateful nation? Seems like the US mantra of anything goes so long as you don’t get caught, has caught on in SW1.
 
  Back in the late sixties the company I worked for issued Air Travel and Avis Credit Cards to facilitate mobility in the event of emergency. But they were scrutinised by a Dunnicliff. No vestige of impropriety escaped his eagle eye and it looks for all the world like both Parliament and the Civil Service have urgent need of a Dunnicliff.

  Presumably there is a department or at the very least an officer and staff charged with authorising expense claims. Strikes me Dave ‘n’ Gid should turn over scrutiny of expenses to a Telegraph Team OR THE Taxpayer’s Alliance.  It's pretty certain that either of these organisations have more people looking at this kind of carry-on (which seems to have got out of hand) than Government itself.

  Time we got this thing sorted for if not it could rumble on forever, distracting us from the real business in hand. Making Britain GREAT again.

Watch this space I’ll be back

Tom.