Targets not reality

Not a huge shock but the release by nine government departments of their annual reports has shown that this Labour government has failed to meet two-thirds of its targets. If you thought Gordon Brown was incompetent then take a look at some his possible replacements: Jack Straw's Ministry of Justice missed seven of its targets, Ed Balls' Department for Children, Schools and Families missed eight, James Purnell's Department for Work and Pensions missed nine and Andy Burnham's Department for Culture, Media and Sport missed eight. It is good to see that the new Labour stars are just as crap as their more experienced colleagues.

Amongst the key targets missed were:
- reducing levels of re-offending - target reduce by 5%, result reduce by 0.1%
- halving the number of children in poverty - target reduce by half, result a rise of 200,000
- raising educational standards in secondary schools - does anyone believe any of the figures on educational standards? And they can't even meet their targets with fiddled figures
- reducing health inequalities
- improving the lives of vulnerable elderly people - reducing hospital bed numbers was a big help here
- getting more people to use public transport - ever increasing public transport prices could not have helped here although the amount of extra taxation on drivers was a good attempt to move results their way


Labour great at setting targets, crap at meeting them.