GETTYThe Tory welfare cuts to my granny's Dial-A-Ride service has taken away any chance of a social life I speak to her every day but, as I live a hundred miles away and still have to work for a living, I can rarely take her shopping, to the doctor or her social club. She uses Portsmouth City Council's Dial-a-Ride service as a lifeline to get out of the house and make a social life for herself.
The Conservative-controlled council has just announced that the service is to close despite being vital to a thousand or so Portsmouth disabled people who now face being imprisoned at home. Dial-a-Ride users pay a flat-rate £4 per return journey anywhere within the city, but it receives a subsidy of £117,000 a year. The council says it can't afford it in an age of "austerity".
It's an odd kind of austerity because, after four years in office, the Chancellor is still in the red to the tune of £100 billion a year. Like Mr Micawber, George Osborne's policy is "waiting for something to turn up" but his toes are more likely to turn up before over-spending is brought under control.
I have great sympathy with local councils trying to economise where they can but, somehow, it's always front-line services which seem to get the chop rather than the back office or any number of dubious schemes on which taxpayers' money is poured down the drain.
In the same week I heard about Portsmouth's proposed saving of £117,000 a year at the expense of the elderly and disabled, David Cameron was grand-standing in Berlin, dishing out £650,000,000 of our money to Third World countries for schemes aiming to combat global warming. Pardon me, Dave but my mum is less concerned about global warming in Africa than keeping herself warm in Britain this winter.
Whilst life-line services are being slashed in Britain, our overseas aid budget soared by 28 per cent last year to a colossal £12 billion a year. If this were all spent on curing disease and relieving suffering, there would be little complaint. But that iWhat other front-line services are going to be cut for vulnerable people like my mother, to fund vanity projects designed to rebrand Cameron's Tory Party as touchy-feely and caring-sharing just like his nut-cutlet-eating, sandal-wearing Coalition partners, the LibDems?
It beggars belief that, in a single speech in Berlin, Cameron blew five thousand times as much as the paltry £117,000 to be saved by axing her Dial-a-Ride.
That is only the tip of the iceberg. Whilst life-line services are being slashed in Britain, our overseas aid budget soared by 28 per cent last year to a colossal £12 billion a year. If this were all spent on curing disease and relieving suffering, there would be little complaint. But that isn't so.
Countries like Nigeria, Somalia, Ethiopia and Tanzania are endemically corrupt. There is no real audit to tell us how effectively our millions are spent - or in whose pocket they end up. In July, an Ethiopian farmer received thousands of pounds of British taxpayers' money to sue the British Government, on grounds that the £1.3 billion in aid Britain has given Ethiopia since 2009 had sustained a corrupt, authoritarian regime bent on expelling people like him from their own land.
But this sort of thing is nothing new. Every week, in every part of Government, we discover more examples of the warped priorities of the Westminster political class. Take the NHS, which currently faces a £30billion deficit. A few days ago, it was announced that the NHS could be saddled with an extra £12 billion bill to fund gastric bands for up to two million people in a bid to tackle the country's out-of- control obesity crisis. These operations cost up to £6,000 each.Jenni Murray, presenter of Radio 4's Woman's Hour declared recently she would be happy to have this operation on the NHS if her private health insurance wouldn't cover it. In addition to being well-upholstered, she is also well-heeled and could easily afford to pay for it herself but seems to regard it as a human right to get it done on the NHS at our expense.
Meanwhile, there are more desperate conditions deprived of NHS funding. Why should they be rationed to alleviate health problems caused by foolish life-style choices? And what is wrong with the cost-free solution? A little self-discipline, eating and drinking sensibly plus regular exercise?
The Nobel-prize-winning economist, Milton Friedman analysed the four ways of spending money: (1) spend your own money on yourself, (2) spend your own money on somebody else, (3) spend somebody else's money on yourself and (4) spend somebody else's money on somebody else.
In the first three cases, we have a personal incentive to ensure money is wisely spent. But, number (4) is how Governments spend our money. They don't really care, which is why so many priorities seem warped - cutting vital services at home to fund expensive vanity projects abroad.
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