MoD 'paid £22 for 65p lightbulbs'

[juddy]

The Military of Defence paid £22 each for lightbulbs available for just 65p, it has been reported.
Defence chiefs are also said to have shelled out £103 each for screws, believed to be on sale online for £2.60.
The spending came to light just days after the Government detailed how it planned to make 11,000 redundancies across the armed forces.
Defence Secretary Liam Fox criticised the inflated prices as showing a "lack of common sense" and evidence of a waste of taxpayers' money by the previous Labour government.
A solider, who works in the stores at a UK base, said he could not ignore the "criminal" waste he saw every day.
He told the Sun newspaper: "You're talking about a fortune for these bulbs. If I order 100, that's over two grand. But you can pick them up for 65p each, the exact same ones. There must be thousands of lightbulbs across the MoD. If people paid attention to simple things like this, they could save a lot of money - and maybe jobs."
According to the soldier, who the Sun did not name, specialist contractors source items for the military and add their costs on to the price. But he said large savings could be made by buying in bulk.
Dr Fox told paper: "We are already tackling the procurement problems we inherited head-on. When money is tight and we need to protect the front line, waste is inexcusable.
"This is classic evidence of how Labour wasted taxpayers' money and shows a complete lack of common sense. No wonder the last government left the MoD with a budget deficit of £38 billion."
An MoD spokesman said: "Given the current financial situation, we are looking at existing contracts to ensure value for money and taking steps to make efficiency savings."

[Dinty]

G'day All, I'm assuming your talking about the MoD in the UK, if so the abbreviation is 'Ministry of Defence' cheers Dennis

[juddy]

G'day All, I'm assuming your talking about the MoD in the UK, if so the abbreviation is 'Ministry of Defence' cheers Dennis

Yes The uk mob......... wasteful......

[PAT303]

Thats nothing,Halliburton have been selling $20 chinese made hammers to the US army for $600 for years. Pat

[isuzurover]

Hmm althought I don't doubt waste by the defence force (MoD etc) of any country, I smell somewhat of a media beatup.

IRC perenties 4x4s cost about $130000 each at the time a civvie equivalent was $20-40k. It could be argued that they are (essentially) the same vehicle...

[Bigbjorn]

Not just the UK. At one govt. auction I attended in the nineties there was one lot of new thread cutting taps that came from World War 2. Only eight tons of them.

And what about the tan/red army boots used in the two world wars. Our army went to black boots in the latter half of the forties. In the late eighties multiple pallet cage lots of new red ones were still being sent to auction.

Boxes of new Sidchrome ring spanners in the odd sizing of 3/4" - 25/32" were passing through govt. auctions for forty+ years after WW2. I believe they were used on some part of Blitz wagons.

I bought a large quantity of new taper shank drills and machine reamers in 2001 that were from WW2. Mostly Morse and Pratt & Whitney in original packing. Good stuff.

Plenty more horror stories like these.

[wagoo]

Yes, Not only the UK MoD.Why do you think LandRover used to covet military supply contracts. It was money for old rope, and they could offload any amount of surplus bits and bobs at grossly inflated prices that other manufacturers would just have to scrap. The crates of hardly ever wear out or break stuff we would see at army surplus sales was just crazy.
Wagoo.