Sir John Bourn is set to retire over the scandal of his excessive travel expenses while head of the National Audit Office (NAO).

How unsackable Sir John Bourn sealed his fate

Extract from the article in the Telegraph:

"The man who was virtually impossible to sack finally agreed to retire yesterday, after a furore over the six-figure taxpayer-funded expenses bill he racked up travelling the world, often with his wife.

Sir John Bourn, the Government's spending watchdog, spent £365,000 in travel expenses and £27,000 in restaurant bill in just three years as head of the National Audit Office (NAO).

The auditor general is currently one of the few officials who cannot be sacked by the Government and can only be dismissed after votes in both houses of Parliament. However, following pressure from MPs, Sir John announced yesterday that he would step down in January.

He still faces the prospect of an embarrassing public showdown next week with MPs, who were drawing up plans for improving the "governance" of the NAO following the expenses scandal.

His six-figure expenses bill is particularly embarrassing for the Government as Sir John was also recruited in 2006 to a new position to police the ministerial code of conduct, which sets out standards of behaviour for ministers. Downing Street said yesterday he would also step down from this role when he retires."

I already had a low opinion of Sir John Bourn. - Over 2 years ago I wrote to Edward Leigh MP, who was chair of the Public Accounts Committee, explaining that obesity and the host of obesity-related illnesses needed a change of thinking. - Here is part of what I wrote to him:

"In your position as Chairman of the Committee of Public Accounts, I hope that you will be interested in my findings, which if implemented, would produce massive improvements in health and massive savings in NHS health expenditure. It seems clear to me that the orthodox advice on how to reduce obesity must be wrong since at any one time most obese people are reputed to be dieting (ie eating fewer calories than their body needs in the belief that this will make them slimmer) - and yet obesity continues to increase in both incidence and severity - so the advice does not work. It is clearly based on assumption and assertion, rather than evidence. - I seek to interest you in the connection between salt/sodium intake and obesity. I would be very grateful if you would be kind enough to read the rest this email.

The increasingly prevalent ill-health spectrum encompassed by the term 'obesity' is commonly attributed to over-eating and/or to inactivity. But we all know people who take little or no exercise and eat a great deal but stay slim and fit. Clearly an abundance of calories and inactivity does not cause obesity. So why do certain people - and only certain people - become obese? - My website is www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk which explains about the groups of people who are sensitive to salt, and therefore suffer from excess water retention in the blood stream (leading to obesity) - most importantly, children, and most tragically and dramatically, steroid victims. - I promise that you will find it interesting. It gives an alternative explanation of how obesity comes about. Furthermore, I submit that inactivity is a consequence of obesity rather than a cause of it. The conventional calorie/fat-reduction advice is extremely well-known, even by children, yet has been spectacularly unsuccessful. There has never been any actual evidence to support the calorie theory. - There is, however, evidence against it. (See below.) Most people who are overweight are either dieting or have dieted, yet most of them are heavier than when they first dieted. This CANNOT be because they are all doing it wrong or all lacking in will-power! - I submit that the advice is not only wrong, but is counter-productive. - I lost over 3 stones in weight solely by reducing my salt/sodium intake.

An article by me, about Obesity and the Salt Connection, appeared in the December 2004 issue of British Mensa's monthly glossy magazine. It appears on my website, accessed from a link on the left. I hope you will spare the time to read it. In the recent (April 2005) issue of the British Mensa magazine is a letter from a Mensa member, Joyce Barnard, whom I advised a few years ago that to lose weight all she needed to do was reduce her salt intake. She followed my advice and lost 5 stones (70 pounds) in a year! She went from 17 stones to 12 stones. Every severely obese person who has followed my advice to forget about calories and simply make a genuine effort to reduce their salt intake has lost weight. Typically they seem to lose about 14 pounds in the first month."
My letter was passed on to the National Audit Office for their comments on the points I raised in my letter.

The eventual outcome was that I was sent a copy of "Tackling Obesity in England", a publication dated February 2001 and priced, according to its cover, at £11! - It is described as a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General - i.e. Sir John Bourn - and the claim is made therein that the National Audit Office saves the taxpayer millions of pounds every year...(o: - Not on the matter of obesity, it doesn't, Sir John!!! - When you are completely wrong in your basic assumptions, what follows from them is not going to be the best way forward...

In the Introduction it says: "While some people are more genetically susceptible than others, the direct cause of obesity in any individual is always an excess intake over energy expenditure." - This is a categorically untrue statement. - The most severe obesity is caused by reckless prescribing of drugs that result in sensitivity to salt, sodium retention and water retention, and all obesity is worsened by following the dieting advice of the health professionals who fraudulently claim that eating fewer calories than the body requires results in obesity reduction. - It doesn't; it results in weight gain, because of increased fluid retention.

If he or Edward Leigh had bothered to read my letter and give serious consideration to what it said, they could have started to turn round the obesity crisis by now, and saved a lot of suffering by individuals, and saved a lot of taxpayers' money too.