Oh heck, I lost £55 billion.....

[Workingman]

..... I know, I'll slash the welfare budget to get some of it back.

So goes the thinking of George Osborne.

The figures from Parliament's Public Accounts Committee (PAC) show that governemnt had to write off £13.2 billion due to losses and fraud. A figure suspected to be around £6 billion will be added once local government figures are included. There is also a gap of £35 billion between what the chancellor actually collects in taxes and what the accounts say he should be getting. The shortfall is due to inefficiency and a failure to get to grips with avoidance and evasion.

The chancellor's answer to these problems: "You are going to have to find billions of pounds more in welfare savings if you want to reduce the deficit, eliminate the deficit and get our debt falling." By his maths cuts of around £12 billion should do it - talk about aiming at the easy target.

Now, you might have missed these staggering and important items of news for the country and its people because it didn't last too long on the news sites. Mr Mandela had recently passed away and Nigella was accused of hoovering up white powders like an industrial vacuum cleaner, of these things we had to be kept informed.

[cruiser2]

George Osborne should look down the back of the sofa. May find a few missing billions there.
I have just received a letter showing the amount of pension I will receive starting in April 2014. It is three pages long and lists the benefits I could receive. The cost of sending this to every pensioner must be over one million pounds.
Have also received two letters from HMRC giving two different Notice of Coding for next year.
Had a talk with my ex boss yesterday. He told me he had been overpaid his State pension since he reached 65, five years ago. He will not have to pay back the overpayment. What a shambles

[Diflower]

Easy targets indeed WM

[KateLMead]

I agree Di..Sitting targets and we can do nothing about it.. As Frank says news is scant we are told only as much that is considered good for us.