No fewer than 524 public sector jobs advertised on the Guardian jobsite today, and – as with every week – there’s no certainly shortage of dubious positions. This week’s non-job fits firmly into the category of unnecessary and ultimately intrusive roles that have become a staple within local government.... Read more...
TAXPAYERS UNITE IN WEST YORKSHIRE TO FIGHT COUNCIL TAX INCREASES Taxpayers in West Yorkshire are coming together to fight the year-on-year increases in council tax and national taxes and to hold local councils in West Yorkshire to account for their spending decisions. Excesses in expenditure are causing a... Read more...
The end of last week gave us a pretty worrying insight into Birmingham City Council’s bookkeeping as the district auditor refused to sign-off the local authority’s 2009/10 accounts citing 'significant weaknesses' in their accuracy. According to the Birmingham Post, this refusal will cost taxpayers an additional £60k in extra... Read more...
Back in October the TPA released the first ever report of the total raised in nationwide parking fines. The report was met with much media attention and interest from the public and this was hardly surprising; with so many drivers throughout the UK, many have inevitably been hit with a... Read more...
CentreForum, a liberal minded think-tank working out of King's College London, have released an interesting paper today on public sector wage bargaining. (To read the full report, click here.) In brief, the reports author - Alison Wolf, a professor of public sector management - makes the case for bringing an... Read more...
Tough choices. Difficult decisions. We all know the drill by now. But an enormous deficit requires a clear, detailed plan to tackle it, and thus far none of the parties have gone into nearly enough detail on how this plan might look. The fact that of the 2.24m net new... Read more...
Hopefully Mr Osborne has got his scissors ready Greece is giving us all an object lesson in the limits of credit card government. According to this morning's FT: "...anxiety over Greece rose in financial markets, driving Greek bond yields up to 7.25 per cent, closing on Hungary, a non-eurozone state bailed out... Read more...
Today is my last day at the TaxPayers' Alliance, and without too much fanfare, there's just a few things I would like to say. The first is a huge thank you to everyone who has made my time here at the TPA so enjoyable, interesting and fulfilling. It has... Read more...
It is difficult to write when one is totally incandescent with rage. Indeed it's probably advisable not to. But the news (reported in the Times today) that Harriet Harman and a phalanx of Parliament and democracy hating MPs are to block vital Commons reform, by means of a truly pathetic... Read more...
You may remember that back in November I reported here that we were lodging a complaint with Norfolk Police about clear and criminal breaches of the FoI Act by staff at the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit. Two months on, the story has got messier and messier. When I originally... Read more...
The Department for Transport have released a new survey, the January 2010 survey of "Public attitudes towards climate change and the impact on transport". Much of the poll is pretty useless as it asks ridiculous questions. For example, it asked whether respondents agreed with the statement "I would be... Read more...
The world's biggest and most influential bond manager, PIMCO, has just passed a further and even more worrying judgement on our precarious financial position (see this blog for previous warning). Bill Gross, PIMCO's top man, offers the following advice to investors: "The UK is a must to avoid. Its Gilts are resting on... Read more...
The Birmingham and Black Country accents might be distinctive and colourful but readers of the Express & Star are concerned that Aston University are spending rather too much investigating what impact of these beloved local dialects. The research in question - which will involve recording live performances and interviewing... Read more...
Back in November 2009 we published Lost Along the Way, an investigation into the cost of DfID's spending. It found that in 2008-09, of the £5.8 billion development programme overseen by DfID, approximately £741 million (13 per cent) had been 'lost along the way' to the bureaucratic and other internal... Read more...
Sorry to be a bit late off the mark on this issue, I was getting some work done on a big project yesterday. The growth figures came out and the recession is over... just. Mark Bathgate has a great blog over at the Spectator Coffee House pointing out just what a... Read more...
Big competition for this week’s non-job, with new organisation the Child Maintenance Enforcement Commission advertising for almost £400,000 worth of jobs, many of which were specifically marketing/PR/press related and based on building the image rather than addressing issues. Additionally, Camden Council are on the look out for a Sustainability... Read more...
According to the Birmingham Mail, a city council service director was paid £200,000pa to stay at home for two years, remaining on gardening leave even after an allegation against him was dismissed. City MP Khalid Mahmood is calling for a probe into how Berkley Broomes was paid his enormous... Read more...
We've just had a very interesting new estimate of public spending waste. According to a detailed study of spending in London, 15% of what taxpayers spend on public services gets wasted. In London alone that amounts to £11bn pa, and if extrapolated across the entire country suggests total waste is running at £75bn pa.... Read more...
Fraud adversely affects taxpayers, whatever sector it occurs in. The money lost in the public sector will be passed on to taxpayers in the form of higher taxes and rising costs of bought services. Charges on punitive fines may also rise. The costs of fraud in the private sector are... Read more...
News broke this week that Northern Rock, which is of course owned by taxpayers, has spent £10 million sponsoring Newcastle United. It's absurd that a bank who needed our cash to keep its head above water is now using that money to sponsor sports teams. Even TPA Campaign Director Mark Wallace -... Read more...
It’s always great to hear what WMTPA supporters and local residents have to say about public spending within the region, and I was recently emailed by gentleman who was both shocked and confused by the amount of money being spent by Birmingham City Council on an IT system. Already... Read more...
Sometimes profligate spending at local councils spirals off into the realms of obscurity, and it certainly has today with reports in the press that Leek Council in Staffordshire spent £2,700 hiring camels this Christmas. The camels were part of a live nativity that was originally put on two years... Read more...
Finally, it seems that many Councils and other public bodies are starting to listen. Today’s Times reports that many top level public sector roles will have their pay levels cut back; this is recognition that executive remuneration had lost touch with reality, and not just in the context of the... Read more...
This week’s non-job was spotted and sent in by a TPA activist and is really is the archetypal wishy-washy, semi-indefinable role that has proliferated in local government over the past few years. Let’s not forget there’s a squeeze on public finances and there will be for the foreseeable future, so... Read more...