The cost of a life

So how much are you worth, really? At this, my bank manager will laugh and point to my overdraft, credit cards, unsecured loans, mortgage and say "nothing". Which shows how little he knows. Put it another way, how much is it worth to save your life? From your perspective, presumably it is worth spending billions to save your life. But somewhere in the bowels of Whitehall, the paper pushers and adjusting their eye shades and figuring out how much they really want to spend saving you. For instance:

• How much should we spend on new drugs and operations to save you (and for how long will it save you?)
• How much should we spend on road safety to cut a few more fatalities each year? How much should we spend on railways to achieve the same result?
  How much should we spend on regulations to prevent nasty stuff getting into the air and the water to save how many lives?
• Should you pay as much to save the life of a young person (who might recover fully and be a productive member of society) as you would to extend the life of a 90 year old by one year?
• How much more should society pay to keep the count alive versus, say, a hooligan, social worker or Tony Blair?

The truth is, there is no bottomless pit of money for all these worthy things, however much our politicians may want to promise to us. Inevitably, this leads to the scene where a valiant mum goes on TV to say that she has been sentenced to death by the government which will not pay for the latest and greatest cancer treatment: does the mum have a right to blank cheque from society? Will you pay the cheque, in person?

Some answers, please:

• The American EPA reckons that a life is worth $6.3 million. In other words, if a regulation saves 100 lives and costs less than $630 million to implement, they should implement it.
• Fitting ATP (Advanced Train Protection) will cost £20 million per life saved - but should be worth it since it might also protect the career interests of a government minister as well.
• Road safety improvements vary from £0.1 million (local authority spending) to £1.1 million (national guidelines) per life saved.

WFTV in Florida reported on May 31 that the Jackson family tried to hire a hitman for $100 to kill four family members: $25 a pop. A life worth less than a half decent meal out.

So now we move onto quiz for the day. Rank the following in order of value. Much would you pay (as a taxpayer, you will pay for the limitless generosity of government) to save each one of the following and for how long?

Wayne Rooney's metartasal
Cherie "Pyramid Power" Blair
Count Kostov
Darren, who is doing 18 months for GBH.
Arthur, who fought in the last war and is now on his last legs in a nursing home.

The cost of a bath

Mention the word "spa" in the Kostov household and the Countess will get very excited and the Count will hide all the plastic he can find. But even the Countess would struggle to spend £43 million on a spa treatment. The Government could spend £43 million sneezing. Spending £43 million on treating the Bath Spa to a revamp is a doddle for anyone in the public sector.

The Count humoured himself by reading a report from September 200o which said that the Bath Spa should be fully revamped inside two years at a cost to the local taxpayer of a mere £3 million. Ha ha ha. The total cost was meant to be about £13 million: the rest came from the lottery commission (which does an even better job at extorting money from the poor than the Kostovs ever managed from our peasants) and from some suckers in private business who wanted to clean their dirty money.

Six years later, the project has taken three times as long and has cost three times as much as the original estimate. The Spa is still not open. And the local taxpayer is shouldering 100% of the cost increase: their share has rocketed from £3 million to £30 million. There are the normal excuses: they did not realise that there might be some archealogical remains to be preserved (duh...in a Roman spa???); there were some rare frogs (the frog liberation front is all that stands between England's green and pleasant land and the rampant concrete mixer front of developers). And of course, no one is to blame. Everyone points the finger at someone else.

Yesterday the Count wrote the immutable law of government efficiency:

(Prestige project plus) government = expensive waste of money.

The Count consoles himself that the shooting season will re-open soon. Not that there should ever be on off-season for shooting bureaucrats and the good and the great who like to spend other people's money, presumably to stop us wasting our own hard earned money on pointless projects where we are unable to control the costs......

The curse of the count strikes again

Two weeks ago the count reported that the cost of the NHS IT system would not be the original £2 billion, but closer to £30 billion. At which the Count's numerous critics started to enquire a) what was I putting in my tea? and b) could they have some as well? Surely not even the imbeciles that spend our money in government could spend 15 times the original estimate? If you think that, you have not been paying attention and have not heard of the Scottish Parliament.

Yesterday Lord Warner made a little announcement on progress of the NHS IT work. Lord Warner? Who is he? An iron rule of government is that when there is bad news you get a nonentity to announce it: step forward Lord Warner. If there is good news, like spending £1 million on a pet project, the Prime Minister, Chancellor and all the big wigs will leak it, pre-anounce it, announce it and then finally tell Parliament. Bad news, like a missing £20 billion or so (that's 20,000 pet projects) gets put out by whatever fall guy they can lay their hands on.

Fall Guy Warner casually announced that the project would not cost £6.2 billion (that's already three times the original estimate) but nearer £20 billion. They will get to the Count's £30 billion estimate in time.

£20 billion?!?!? That is £650 for every hard working household in the country. If the Count came knocking on your door to ask for £650 to buy a new laptop, even the Count would not expect the heartiest of welcomes. But since it is the government and the taxman everyone coughs up for the NHS to get its new laptop.

The cost has risen ten fold since the original estimates. Imagine going into a pub and asking for a pint of beer which you have seen advertised at £2. The barman then asks for £20 on the basis that he was unable to foresee all the costs involved in delivering the pint to you. This is not a mis-estimate. This is theft of the highest order. Even when the Kostovs are exploiting the peasants back home, at least we only double the price of essentials like bread and we get called all sorts of names for it. Increasing the price ten fold? The last time we tried that was around 1916: half the family got shot by revolutionaries and we had communism for the next 75 years. Shooting half the government would be a good start in this case.

At this stage the Count will now unveil another iron rule of government:

Prestige project plus government = expensive waste of money

Think Edinburgh Parliament, Millennium Dome, British Library, Diana Memorial. Did anyone mention the Lonodn Olympics? Be afraid, be very afraid.

Of course, there is one small amendment to the iron law of government profligacy: "Prestige project" is an unecessary term in the equation. Try instead:

Government = expensive waste of money.