Brewdog founder James Watt has announced he is setting up an unofficial government efficiency watchdog in the style of Elon Musk’s department in the USA.
In a post on LinkedIn (where else), Watt said his venture would monitor public sector waste through efforts including FOIs, an anonymous hotline where public sector workers can report waste, and taking “an entrepreneurial approach to the public sector.”
Musk is the head of the new Department of Government Efficiency in Donald Trump’s administration. So far in his role, he has implemented severe spending cuts on what he perceives to be wastes of money, which has included shutting down entire government departments.
Watt has said people should see his “Shadow Doge” project as the “underground cousin” of Musk’s department
He wrote: “It’s time to actually do something.
“I’m sick of talking about how broken our government is. And I’m sure you’re sick of hearing about it. So, I am introducing Shadow Doge.
“You can think of it as the unofficial, underground cousin of America’s Department Of Government Efficiency.”
Watt added: “Labour inherited a mess – but Rt Hon Rachel Reeves has made it worse: Hundreds of thousands of people are losing their jobs. Growth has tanked. Inflation is spiking. Our entrepreneurs are leaving in droves.”
He went on to claim that he wants to show the government can “become significantly more frugal with how it spends our money.”
But some have pointed out that Watt’s idea of being frugal could be as severe as things like paying workers the living wage…
Related: Brewdog founder James Watt and fiance Georgia Toffolo have ‘quarterly reviews’ of relationship