On Wed, 7 Jun 2006, Dave Arquati wrote:

That suffers the misconception that cancelling project X means the
money being spent on it could go to project Y instead. A lot of
funding is very project-specific - for example, if that were not
true, the DfT would have a list of schemes ranked by benefit-cost
ratios, and would fund them down the list from the top BCR until
they ran out of money.

Even worse is the philosophy that if the current budget isn't spent
out, then the department or division in question is deemed to have
over-budgeted, so their next budget can have an equal amount deducted
from it too.

So, towards the end of the budgeting period, departments/divisions are
inclined to throw money at anything they're allowed to fund,
irrespective of need, to make sure the budget allocation will be spent
out by the end of the period. The fact that something else (that
they're not authorised to fund) is justifiably crying out for
resources, has no place in that logic, unfortunately.