What’s the biggest waste of money you have ever seen?

[3luckystars]

Last summer I was in a newsagent and the woman in front of me bought 11 of those rubishy childrens magazines, she was having a party and wanted them to keep the children busy.

It was €55.

I’m sure there is a lot worse things that people have wasted money on, (and I can’t believe I am still thinking about It) but even one of them magazines is a total waste of money.

Marble Arch Mound

Most public enquiries...
Vast amounts of money spent on hand wringing and public emoting...when reports with recommendations finally come out , usually years later few people care and very few changes happen.

Local council staff/civil service working from home and having their utility bills paid by the tax payers.
Get back f*cking work like the rest of us have to

The pumpkin farm near me.
Costs about £15 for a pumpkin you can buy in Aldi for £1.99.
I blame the instagramers who go taking pictures.

Tattoos - look shite, hurt, sag, fade and I can't believe how much they cost.

Oh and the £41 hair perfume that DD wanted at Sephora yesterday (that she wasn't allowed to buy)

I accidentally spent £8 on a bag of pick and mix sweets at the cinema once 😳 It wasn't even a big bag!

When GCSE changes were implemented and we threw out perfectly good sets of textbooks.
Ditto A level.
All these exam changes must have cost the taxpayer £m.

Very possible when a sandwich costs a fiver!

I was going to say! That's only just over £11 each, possible if they were having lunch.

I did that with sweets at a Christmas Market a tenner for a few bits of fudge ! 😳

I work for my local council and I certainly don’t get my utility bills paid when I work from home

The magazines seem a far better option than a lot of party bag tat

My son loved them as a child he would do all the puzzles and stories etc.

I find it astonishing how much people spend on their cars. I know so many people living to really tight budgets, can't afford to do a lot of the things we do, but then they have eyewateringly expensive cars that also cost a fortune to insure and fill with petrol (I know because exH insisted on having one)

We love M&M World! But surely you just pop in there as well as doing everything else, not "instead of looking at amazing history". No one travels to London from a long way (costing ££££) JUST to go to M&M World, you pop in for about 20 mins 😂 and it's free to go in so no money wasted at all!
We always pop in when we are in London, quick selfie with the Beatles M&Ms and then off we go to do something much more worthy 😉

We live in a flat part of the country in an agricultural area. Our local council spent £200k putting signs on our roundabouts saying ER->. It means escape route. So if the sea comes in (20 miles away) or there is a flood, the sign indicates the direction to higher ground (10 miles away). To think that’s the best use of taxpayers money they could come up with! 😳I suppose it could be useful if the sea arrives one day while you happen to be in your car indecisive at the roundabout! 😂

Ulez cameras in conservative held boroughs in London. Gawd Bless the GLA! They keep having to replace them!

HS2 is a given.

Rishi Sunak's helicopter bill.

Millennium Dome.
War in Iraq.
Lockdowns, and the massively expensive campaign of fear.
The golden, diamond and platty joob blow outs; it seemed as if there was no time between any of these at all.

A nasty, mean minded and inaccurate post.

Many years ago as a child i was taken for a mooch around Harrods as part of a trip to London. There was a huge cut glass bear (approx waist height to an adult).

£100,000.

i often think about the people who have £100k and think “well, i’ve got everything else but my house IS remarkably cut glass bear-free. Hmmmm.”

Weddings.

It's a day for other people and 50% fail. Buy a car!

@Darkside1471 that Marble Arch thing was just odd.
When it was closing I remember reading a review or something online and it said about how once you had been to the top you get the lift down and it travelled down through a sort of fancy light exhibition - which actually looked quite cool.
Unfortunately all the advertising I saw for the mound never mentioned this part at all so no one knew about it.
They marketed it literally as a hill to climb and that was it.
Weird.

I took the kids to a sporting event last year with a Pick and Mix stand in the grounds. I turned my back on them for 30 seconds (!) and when I came to pay it was £37. Thirty Seven sodding pounds! The bags didn't even have that much in them but they had each added to huge fudge cubes. Even the lady on the stall was slightly embarrassed to charge me that and knocked off the odd pennies to round it down.

I made them drag those sweets out for days....

That's mostly because local councils couldn't possibly imagine that there would be life after Covid, and sold all the offices mid pandemic. There is no "work" to get back to!

The stupid Rwanda idea that's already cost millions.

That's not just a waste of money, it's also immoral!

Same here!! Who are all these council employees getting utility bills paid by the taxpayer? I'm a council employee and WFH 75% of the time, during winter I am usually sitting at my desk in a coat cos I can't afford to put the heating on 😂