Thursday 30 April 2009

Taxpayers paid £50,000 for Bloggers to attend G20.

From Hansard:
Mr. Hands: To ask the Secretary of State for International Development how much funding his Department provided to the G20 Voice programme; and for what purposes such funding was used.

Mr. Thomas: The total amount of funding provided by the Department for International Development for the G20 Voice programme was £49,700. This covered travel and subsistence costs for bloggers from the developing world; technical support and costs associated with the briefing day. Initial indications show that the programme reached a global audience of 14 million.
£50,000? Was it really necessary? I suppose it doesn't matter if it's not your money that you're spending.

5 comments:

Constantly Furious said...

bloggers from the developing worldWhat the f*ck?

Surely some sort of antonym, like Somalian Astronaut or Sierra Leonian Hedge Fund Manager?

Anonymous said...

Steve, remember that where money is concerned, and I paraphrase here,

If you spend your money on yourself, you want to get the best value for money;

If you spend your money on someone else, you want value for money;

If you spend someone else's money on yourself, you'll still want some value for money;

But, if you spend someone else's money on some one else, who gives a f**k?

This is the public spending paradox, and why we're in such a mess.

I know, 'cos I'm in the Public spending arena, for my sins, and it sucks !!

xplod said...

Sorry, my anon above was me!

Soddin' Google blog thingy doesn't recognise me !

Letters From A Tory said...

What a bloody waste. Labour just spend our money on trying to make people think they are a half-decent government, instead of concentrating on actually being a half-decent government

Anonymous said...

"Initial indications show that the programme reached a global audience of 14 million"

"Initial indications" - ZaNu Labour-speak for "wildly exaggerated and optimistic guess".
"global audience of 14 million" - or 0.002% of the world's population.
FOIs will later reveal the figure to be closer to 14000.......

"bloggers from the developing world" - what is that supposed to mean? Who came from "the developing world"? How many?

What about the UK bloggers? Who went? Are they considered to be from a "developing" nation (the only thing developing in Britain, at the moment, is a depression) or was more cash allocated for decadent nations?