Taxation without representation is theft

Francis Maude has managed to trim £5 billion of "fat" from Whitehall in efficiency savings.

A good start.

But when are we going to see a drastic reduction in the thousands of QUANGOs and fake charities?


What is the country's bill for QUANGOs, and why do we still have so many?

How much does the government give to 'charities' and is it desirable or even moral for a government to do so?

These bodies are not accountable to the public and should either be incorporated into the civil service or disbanded.  Too many of their CEOs live high off the taxpayer hog.

Taxation without representation feeds the black market - and rightly so: taxation without representation is theft.

It's welcome news that the civil service has shrunk by 43,000, but can't we do better than that? Wouldn't it be cheaper to pay out redundancy packages than to continue to pay inflated salaries and be liable for ever-increasing costs of final-salary pensions, bonuses and expenses of unnecessary bureaucrats?

Why do we even need a Ministry of Culture? Or of Sport? Or of Families?