Projects/Where Does My Money Go/Data/Old

= Government Finances: Old Info =

Original info from Julian Todd
Here's the vote in Parliament about the government spending I told you about:

http://www.publicwhip.org.uk/division.php?date=2007-06-29&number=169

[ed: summary UK had a vote on making more financial info available but not enough MPs turned up for the voted so it disappeared]

In my opinion, the standards of presentation of financial information of any kind in any place (public or private) are absolutely unacceptable. I think at the bottom of it all is a raw list of money transfers from account A to account B at time T of amount M; although this is unintuitive to most accountants I have spoken to. Everything above this level is virtually fictitious -- What do you think gives a fairer impression of a loan shark arrangement? This way, or something which has some interest calculations thrown in?

All this business about asset values and stuff, is an irrelevant over-complicated distraction from the base data structure of accountancy -- all that explains is what opportunities (for sale of assets) there are at the time. Unless you sell your house, it's value is meaningless. And the value these assets have exactly the same relevance as the value of all the things you could buy with cash in hand. Yet the current catalogue of goods on the market does not get included into the usual balance sheet of what could be sold.

Anyway, so there's some real creativity that needs doing. For UK gov, the Consolidated Fund Act has nothing in it: http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2007/ukpga_20070031_en_1

The actual transfer of cash to the departments is in the Appropriation Act:

http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2007/ukpga_20070001_en_3

(The Finance Act does the tax arrangements -- which I think is relevant: one can ask how much of the money transfered to the Home Office circulates directly back to the Treasury because of income tax -- also for corporations tax breaks are more lucrative than subsidies.)

FOI should be able break this down into spending by the subdivisions within the departments.

Hope we can find a way to present this financial information easily and visualize the flows.

Further Info
Haphazard authorizations can also happen: http://www.publicwhip.org.uk/division.php?date=2002-10-15&number=320

More info from Julian about Judiciary:

There's also another little known twist to it in that the judiciary helps itself to the consolidated fund before it gets to parliamentary authorization in order to protect its in== More Details == dependence -- which could otherwise be threatened by withholding payments due (as, for example, the US systematically does to the UN).

Most recent authorization (2008-07-08) (again from Julian):

Here's the full Bill as it ran through (click on the PDF link to see the big charts)

http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2007-08/consolidatedfundappropriationno2.html

Oh, and here's how it went through the Parliamentary process:

http://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2008-07-08a.1285.0