Pub pic

When one confesses to having been a public servant in the pub it is usually assumed - at least in the sort of pubs that I use - that one is a tax man. And it is well known that tax men, like field marshalls, never retire. They always hang on to their special lines to HQ in case they pick up any tasty morsels during their travels.

So I like to keep a grip on where all the tax goes to give my splutterings a bit of backbone. Quick trawl for an update to find that included here, courtesy of a site called http://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/, which looks useful and is the work of an expatriate conservative to be found at http://www.christopherchantrill.com/. Not the best credentials to puff the site to an old lefty like myself, but it does carry a lot of stuff, including a lot of useful links. Lets hope the man has done his homework properly.

A little startled to find that the biggest single item was public pensions, but I dare say the definitions have been cunningly tweaked to make it so. Not untrue exactly, but not the only way to present the information. And I have not yet found a way to check but I assume that 'State Protection' includes police, justice, spies, snooping and all that kind of thing. A rather sinister sounding term, but at least it was not the even more sinister 'State Security', with its German connections.