This morning David Cameron announced a new Conservative plan to fund 5,000 "community organisers". Those organisers would be given a rather vague mandate to "identify local community leaders, bring communities together, help people start their own neighbourhood groups, and give communities the help they need to take control and tackle... Read more...
Basildon is hoping to inject a touch ofHollywood magic to Essex, with the recent erection of a 5ft tall sign spellingout the name of the town (the US counterpart has letters nine times the heightof ours). But lacking Hollywood's hills, the new"BASILDON" sign will welcome visitors from the side... Read more...
Great to see your suggestions for non-jobs tumbling in and it’s fair to say that some have been real eye-openers. Perhaps the most ridiculous have come under the touchy-feely ‘community leader’ type category that we often focus in on as being needless and costly. The worst of these must... Read more...
In case you'd somehow forgotten, we taxpayers are forced mega-investors in a number of banks. Our two biggest holdings are RBS and Lloyds. In the case of RBS, we own 84% of the equity, and in the case of Lloyds, 41%. These holdings cost us a total of £65.8bn -... Read more...
The car scrappage scheme has come to an end today leavinggovernment to justify its high cost for its supposed benefits. The governmentclaim that the scheme has saved 4,000 jobs - the cost of the scheme was £400million – equating to £100,000 of public money per job saved. ... Read more...
The Financial Times has looked into the funding of all all-party groups. They find the that all-party groups received £1 million last year from external bodies, including major companies. For example, the Associate Parliamentary Health Group receives support from AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers Squib, GlaxoSmithKline and Pfizer. After MPs expenses and ex-ministers... Read more...
Buying politicians is of all times. For as long as there are politicians, some will be bought. We have tried to tackle it for hundreds of years. With some success: open corruption is certainly less rife here than in other countries. Tackling it directly (with registers of interest, criminal sanctions,... Read more...
Unfortunately today the WMTPA brings you the latest oversight from the council that brought you such cringeworthy bloopers as mistaking itself for its namesake city in Alabama, USA. That’s right, a canny TPA supporter has spotted a glaring error on the postal voter cards that have been flooded out... Read more...
Delivering high quality public services depends in part on good management. Maximising productivity without losing sight of key objectives requires capable managers and they do have a role to play in the NHS. But how many is enough? Figures released yesterday from the NHS Information Centre have shown that there... Read more...
The first national rail strike for 16 years has been announced by the RMT union, coming into effect after Easter. The strike will last four days and has been designed to cause maximum chaos for Britain’s commuters who will be returning to work after the Easter bank holiday weekend. The... Read more...
Last week, I wrote about the decision made by the cabinet of East Riding of Yorkshire Council (ERYC) to approve a discretionary payment of £364, 205 to the pension pot of outgoing Corporate Services Director, Sue Lockwood. This decision was called-in by opposition councillors, and yesterday the Corporate Issues Scrutiny... Read more...
“The pressing need to cut public spending will be an overriding theme of the coming election campaign. The promptness, extent and nature of the savings made will be the defining issue for the incoming government. This timely book provides some useful pointers.” - Nigel Lawson, former Chancellor of the Exchequer... Read more...
Dancing elephant delusion The government has been mercilessly mocked for the budget's assertion that it will conjure up £11bn through yet more of its notorious Gershon-style public sector efficiency savings.Although not detailed in the main budget document, it transpired these savings are to include £550m pa from somehow making our heavily unionised... Read more...
We've just finished the TPA's first Post-Budget Briefing and launch of the new book How to Cut Public Spending (and Still Win an Election) - which you can buy here. In the briefing, a series of speakers set out new analysis of the fiscal situation and the contents of the... Read more...
Budget dayis, sadly, often a day when motorists see their tax burden go up and today thegovernment did not disappoint. As well as the 3 pence increase in fuel duty thenew rates of Vehicle Excise Duty (VED) will come into force on 1 April. Thegovernment say... Read more...
Although the budget has revised down the government's forecast of borrowing and debt, in terms of the big picture it has made virtually no difference. Total debt is still forecast to rise to £1.4 trillion by 2014-15, which is £56,000 for every household in Britain.What's more, the government's definition of... Read more...
Buried in the sheaf of documents released with today's Budget is an interesting little policy document on quangos - everyone's favourite topic. Read more...
Ruth Lea is a leading economic commentator and Economic Adviser to Arbuthnot Banking Group. Chancellor Darling spoke with piety in today’s “do little” budget. Government policies had averted disaster and – reflecting the interventionist activism – borrowing was actually expected to be lower than at the time of the... Read more...
Alistair Darling announced in his speech that the Government had a plan to rapidly reduce the national debt: "Mr Deputy Speaker, this is the fastest deficit reduction plan of any G7 country and will meet our statutory obligations." There are two big problems with that statement. First, the comparison to... Read more...
Today’s budget saw a freeze in the basic rate limit of income and the level of personal allowance (tables A.3 and A.4). Historical data tells us that the basic rate limit is nowhere near as high as it should be already, if it had kept pace with increases in people's... Read more...
It's been non-jobs galore again this week, and special thanks to those of you who sent in job adverts you felt were worthy of this week’s title. Do continue to get in touch to tell us about non-jobs in your area. Of those sent in, the award for babble must... Read more...
As I passed - and, I confess, paused to heckle - several PCS union strike pickets on my way through Westminster this morning, two things struck me. The first was that the strike is clearly a flop. Most of the pickets I saw were down to a skeleton crew of... Read more...
The Government has just spent £71 million pounds on building motorcycle test centres, all for the sake of 1.2 miles an hour, what a waste. It’s all thanks to the metric nuts in Europe, who decided that our motorcyclists have to perform manoeuvres at a speed of 50km per hour... Read more...
Councillors in Stoke have expressed their disgust as the local authority spends over £700 on umbrellas for senior staff and councillors in spite of the fact services are being cut whilst staff elsewhere in the council are being told to save money (The Sentinel). It’s not so much the... Read more...