It is very helpful to have the political agenda revealed behind trades union opposition to government spending cuts. Gary Heather, President of the Islington Trades Union Council, is calling for a day of protest in Islington on Budget Day. Read more...
Scotland was the first part of the UK where taxpayers could see their politicians' expenses claims. Now the Scottish Government have published all items of spending in April above £25,000 on their website, you can view them here. It is far more detailed information than we got from the COINS... Read more...
An excellent initiative from Francis Maude at the Cabinet Office has given us a new insight into the staffing of "Ministerial and non-Ministerial departments, their executive agencies and Non-Departmental Public Bodies (NDPBs)" (i.e. this should basically be everything but the actual big services like the NHS, schools and the police). ... Read more...
The evidence against ring-fencing the NHS budget is piling up daily. NHS targets compromise safety in some operations according to a survey. Surgeons are often expected to carry out "complicated operations within tight time-scales" and many were "operating on patients they hadn't seen before". One quote from a surgeon was... Read more...
Last week I wrote about the abolition of one of the localregeneration quangos, Hull Forward. Since then, Hull Forward has been winningthe PR war, and there is a popular misconception in the city that regenerationwork will now stop. It wasn’t helped by Cllr Rick Welton, the cabinet portfolioholder responsible for regeneration, who... Read more...
I have been walking past a puddle in Highbury Fields, our local park, for weeks now, presuming that someone was dealing with the mains leak that was creating it. Apparently, it has been at the centre of a major local controversy as no one was dealing with it until a... Read more...
Just picture the scene; you’ve decided to visit BBC Gardeners World Live on a lovely sunny day in June. People mill around admiring gardens, asking experts for advice, purchasing bulbs and shrubs. You can’t quite decide which exhibit you’d like to visit next – Apuldram Roses? Dibleys Nurseries? Hooksgreen Herbs?... Read more...
The IPPR released a paper at the end of last week saying that plans to decentralise public service delivery should be combined with minimum guarantees of what they should provide. Equality, Entitlements and Localism was written by a member of staff seconded from the Equalities and Human Rights Commission and... Read more...
Well there’s no doubt about it, there are definitely fewer government jobs being listed on the Guardian jobsite with only 241 featured today, versus almost 500 back in October 2009, and it’s fair to say that this did look like good news for the taxpayer. That was before we noticed... Read more...
A lot of people are urging the government to cut back on the number of documents they translate into foreign languages. Well here’s one written in a language of their own that could do with being translated into English. One of our supporters sent this advert over after finding... Read more...
Staff at Newcastle Borough Council have been sent on a taxpayer-funded driving course to teach them how to reverse backwards into car parking spaces. The 24 employees were given a “smarter driving session” by instructors from the Energy Saving Trust, who advised them to reverse into car parking spaces... Read more...
The government is planning to spend £1 billion promoting tourism around the 2012 Olympics in Britain. Is it just me who thinks this is utterly idiotic? We are already spending billions on the Olympics, the cost of which is bound to overrun even more than the initial overrun, the chances... Read more...
This weekend Tom Clougherty, from the Adam Smith Institute, wrote an interesting piece for the Yorkshire Post. He argued that the NHS budget shouldn't be ring-fenced - indeed, no budget should with a fiscal deficit of more than £150 billion to tackle. There is plenty of waste in the NHS... Read more...
Here is the table summarising the growth projections used in the 2010 Budget(Table Removed): Read more...
On the 23rd June the TaxPayers' Alliance and the Institute of Economic Affairs will be holding a briefing in the wake of the coalition government's Emergency Budget, bringing together key economic experts to discuss their thoughts and findings. Speakers will discuss the likely consequences of the actions taken and not... Read more...
Boris Johnson nearly got a nasty shock when Islington Council leader Catherine West claimed that the London Mayor had pledged to build 50,000 affordable new homes in her borough! Fortunately, it was a typo in the glossy broadsheet Islington Now council magazine—and that figure was meant to be across all... Read more...
Earlier this week, the Treasury announced that they are going to hold a consultation on forthcoming spending cuts as part of a review that will set spending plans for the rest of this Parliament. Some people are cynical about this exercise, and it might just be a PR exercise, as... Read more...
I wrote yesterday about commentary and economic evidence coming out of the United States about how the effect on confidence might mean cuts in spending boost economic growth. In his column for the New York Times David Brooks takes up the same topic. The whole article is worth reading but... Read more...
Last week a member of the public got in touch with us in some confusion over the recommendations he received in the post from the Energy Saving Trust. They claimed they could save him no less than £1,849 on fuel bills, but in reality their misjudged advice threatened to increase... Read more...
Some commentators argue that we can't cut spending, and need to keep borrowing, because cuts will endanger economic growth. There are two big problems with that logic, which I've discussed on this blog repeatedly. First, high spending undermines the trend rate of economic growth. That is well established throughout the... Read more...
Pity those ex-MPs who lost their seats or stood down at the General Election. After years spent in near-Dickensian poverty scraping by on a mere £60k+, with the stress of managing a free second home thrown in and often having to spend time with their families in the workplace as... Read more...
Despite the current urgency for cutting back national expenditure, local government just carries on spending our money on superfluous jobs. Islington Council’s latest vacancy is for a Senior Communications and Marketing Officer at a salary of up to £37,851. Marketing what? What exactly is the council selling? Apparently, this... Read more...
Yet again, TPA supporters have been sending in non-jobs they’ve spotted in their local press. This week we learned that three new assistant finance director posts were being created at Barnet Council at a total cost of almost £300,000. One of these new vacancies, with a salary of £90k, is... Read more...
The news buzzing around Hull today is one of the local Quangos, Hull Forward, will close-down in September. I naturally feel for the 34 staff who will lose their jobs, but I would be lying if I said I wasn't happy Hull Forward is going to be abolished. Some... Read more...