It is not just the British Government that pisses away cash. All Governments do it. If you are spending other folks (i.e. taxpayers) dosh you do not count the pennies as if it was your own dosh. That is why the State is always inherently wasteful. However much cash it is given it will never be enough. In this vein I bring you a little gem from the USA.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded $1.5 million to study biological and social factors for why “three-quarters” of lesbians are obese and why gay males are not, calling it an issue of “high public-health significance." Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Mass., has received two grants administered by NIH’s Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) to study the relationship between sexual orientation and obesity.
I offer one explanation. Gay men have many more sexual encounters each year than gay women and many of these tend to be transitory – thus looking good is more important to them. That is a statement of fact. But do I really care? Whatever the reason what is the NIH going to do with the data? Round up the fat lesbians and send them off to health farms? Stick gay men on a diet of full fat ice cream?
The reality is that whatever results this survey comes up with there is sod all that the Government can do to alter the fact that there are more fat lesbians than gay men. It is thus an utterly pointless waste of taxpayer’s cash. No-one spending their own cash would come up with a survey where the answer is not worth knowing and where there is nothing that can be done even when the answer is known. Only Governments could possibly contemplate engaging in such folly.
And Obama reckons that he is doing all that he can do to tackle the ruinous US deficit?
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