Two further examples of the way that government run and managed services (i.e., nationalised) squander vast amounts of taxpayers money due to gross inefficiencies and lack of oversight, both well illustrating the need for privatisation - unless you're ideologically opposed to it that is, and are quite happy for the government to go on wasting billions of pounds of your money each year for the sake of it.

1/ Defra squandering millions as Rural Payments Agency nears collapse

Taxpayers are to be landed with a £622 million bill for bungled payments made to farmers after reform of the Common Agriculture Policy four years ago, according to the National Audit Office.

The scale of chaos and administrative failures at the Rural Payments Agency, which distributes £1.6 billion a year to English farmers, and lack of oversight by ministers is outlined today in one of the most damning audits produced by the public spending watchdog.

It stops short of calling for heads to roll but raises serious questions over the future of the agency and the scrutiny of its operations by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).

In a highly critical assessment, the National Audit Office (NAO) accused the agency of showing “scant regard to protecting public money” and failing to provide value for money to taxpayers.

The full story at Defra squandering millions as Rural Payments Agency nears collapse - Times Online

2/ MoD ‘needs private management to stop £2bn annual waste and equipment delays’

More than £2 billion is being wasted by the Ministry of Defence every year on equipment programmes, an independent report disclosed yesterday.

Bernard Gray, former special adviser at the MoD and author of the scathing review of equipment-procurement methods, also accused the Armed Services of trying to outbid each other with increasingly sophisticated equipment projects that were unaffordable.

He called for private sector management to be drafted in to get to grips with the MoD’s cost overruns and programme delays.

Mr Gray’s report will anger frontline servicemen and their families, who complain that the Afghanistan campaign is being hampered by a shortage of equipment and cutbacks in the defence budget.

The full story at MoD needs private management to stop £2bn annual waste and equipment delays - Times Online