Peter Hill

AS the Budget approaches we know that whatever spin the Chancellor puts on it, we will end up handing more of our money to the State. We also know that much of it will be wasted and not only on foreign aid. The NHS, for instance, always the first to complain about lack of funds, throws away millions by overpaying for supplies.

Some hospitals are paying £16.47 for packs of rubber gloves that can be bought for just 35p, according to a new report. Another trust paid £21.76 for a box of 100 plasters for which a more careful trust paid £1.68. More than £13 is spent on bedpans which can be bought for £6.74, £90 on stethoscopes that could be found for £26.74 and £16.99 for bedding available elsewhere for £4.16.

You just know that this lazy attitude to public money is repeated in every area of national and local administration and services. Numerous investigations have pointed out that the state’s buying power is so huge that it could make money-saving deals across the board if only there were a central purchasing policy.

Yesterday it was revealed that the Ministry of Defence has spent £381million upgrading its old fleet of Warrior tanks. The work is a year behind schedule, incurring extra costs, and anyway most of the tanks are likely to be scrapped. These aren’t just meaningless figures – that’s £381million, straight out of our pockets.

Government waste is so endemic that a department should be set up to fight it, with powers to sack the worst offenders. Get angry. Challenge your MP to do something about this scandal. q LET me be absolutely clear, I am not the Grinch of Christmas. I like the sleepy opening of presents on the day, the dinner with all the trimmings, the silence in the streets as families celebrate in their own traditional ways.

But (who said that everything before “but” is meaningless?) I am not looking forward to the endless Christmas Muzak ringing out everywhere. There is no escape and it literally drives people mad, especially shop workers, says clinical psychologist Linda Blair.

Department store staff will have to listen to Jingle Bells 300 times in the run-up to Christmas. “It really does stop you from being able to focus on anything else,” she says. “You’re simply spending all of your energy trying not to hear what you’re hearing.” Bears have the answer: they hibernate. q SIR James Dyson, one of our most outstanding industrialists, has consistently maintained that Britain will be better off outside the EU. Now he says the demand from Brussels for a massive “divorce” settlement is outrageous and Britain should call their bluff because the nations in the group depend so heavily on selling stuff to us.

This is a whip-smart businessman talking, not some doom-monger economist or politico who has never done a day’s work in his life. The EU is growing more strident as Brexit approaches. Chief negotiator Michel Barnier has given us a two-week, pay up or no deal ultimatum. And scraping his barrel of threats, he is also wielding the big stick of banning us from taking pets abroad. Pathetic. q A NEW statistic gives a good indication that British business is alive and well: vehicles travelled 68 billion miles on our motorways in the year ending in June, up by more than a third since the mid-1990s. Yes, an incredible 68 billion, the great majority to do with work. The bad news is that there are on average 3,700 traffic jams every day, so bad that traffic lights are having to be installed at the junction of the M6 and M62 in Cheshire. But let’s be positive. We are thriving as never before. q THE number of patients waiting on hospital trolleys for more than four hours has gone up six-fold in the past few years and the NHS fears that A&E departments will be unable to cope this winter (they fear the same thing every year). As usual, there are calls for more cash, but better organisation could reduce the queues.

Thousands of people who go to A&E shouldn’t be there, those with minor cuts and scrapes, coughs, headaches, hangovers. Admittedly they probably can’t get an appointment to see their GP for two weeks but the local pharmacy is well able to deal with many problems and should be the first port of call in non-urgent cases.

A&E stands for Accident and Emergency. There should be someone on the door turning away time wasters. It would save many lives. q THE judge who awarded £80,000 damages to a Somali thug who has committed crime after crime here was no doubt following the law, but in this case the law is a downright ass. Abdulrahman Mohammed was “improperly detained” but it can’t be right to hand so much money to a repeat offender who should have been thrown out of our country many times over? A top barrister once told me that, whatever the complexities, the law must always make sense, very far from the case here. q THIS year’s Cenotaph parade was more poignant than ever with the Queen passing on the duty of laying the wreath to her son and heir. I only have to hear the first notes of Nimrod to feel the emotion surge up from my chest.