One week on from the initial announcement that we have teamed up with the Daily Mail to bring a private prosecution against any MPs who may have broken the law in their expenses claims, I thought it was a good opportunity to give you an update on our progress. As... Read more...
So Sir Roy McNulty is to fill the £80,510 per year position of chairman at Advantage West Midlands, despite actually pulling out of the original race in April 2008, according to the Birmingham Post. Sir Roy’s withdrawal was apparently “amid speculation that he had been asked by the Government... Read more...
Last month the WMTPA blogged on how the West Midlands Fire Service is spending £23million kitting out a new base for call centre staff when the council-owned i54 project in Wolverhampton is across the road and still has tumbleweed blowing through it. Well, last Friday the Birmingham Post reported how... Read more...
Too often in the public sector, and in many private companies, bonuses are paid out year in, year out to executives presiding over failing organisations or according to targets that don't really reflect ambitious expectations of performance. Sir Terry Leahy, Chief Executive of Tesco is not presiding over a... Read more...
At the TaxPayers' Alliance, we often have to criticise HMRC. Whether they're harassing law abiding taxpayers, pushing for new powers to take money straight out of people's bank accounts without approval from a court or losing people's personal data - they often need to be criticised. However, today they've really... Read more...
The Telegraph reports that the chairman of the Labour Party has written to their activists to invite submissions calling for MPs to be deselected. Unfortunately, all that does is move the Labour Party to a similar position to the Conservatives, where the small core of local activists can take... Read more...
The outrage over MPs’ expenses has been a catalyst for a wider debate on constitutional reform. The current political zeitgeist has fostered calls for significant change in how politics operates in the UK. Suggestions abound on how to achieve this, and one topic that has reared its head is that... Read more...
As the expenses scandal now turns towards a more constructive stage, potential reforms are thick on the ground. From wholesale electoral change (see here), to the beefing up the FoI Act (see here), interested parties on all sides are queuing up to offer their diagnosis and prescription. Gordon Brown concentrated... Read more...
This week's reports from the IMF and Standard and Poors (see this post) have piled the pressure on George Osborne.The IMF says he must be much tougher than Darling in tackling the build-up of public sector debt. And he must place the emphasis on cutting expenditure rather than raising taxes.S&P... Read more...
There is a debate going on at the moment, largely amongst educationalists, about whether to treat students as consumers or "partners in a learning community". It's a debate which appears to have no easy resolution, but on the ground - in campuses across the UK - it also appears to... Read more...
Harriet Harman is quoted in today's Telegraph saying that a reform of the MPs' expenses must not lead to "a millionaires' Parliament". It's very unusual that I agree with anything Ms Harman says, but I have found we have common ground here. The last thing we want, and the worst... Read more...
In the second of today’s duck-related blogs, Sir Peter Viggers is to step down at the next election after The Telegraph revealed that he claimed £1,645 for a ‘duck island’ in the middle of his pond. This is of course a ludicrous claim and it is absolutely right that he... Read more...
The Daily Star recently reported "A Duckin' Waste of £300,000". A DEFRA-funded study showed that rain, or a nice shower, is good for ducks. Susie Squire, TPA Campaign Manager, criticised the spending, saying that "It is common sense that ducks like rain and water. The last thing the government should be allocating... Read more...
With MPs’ expenses dominating the headlines, news that the pay-packets of Shell executives have been challenged by shareholders may seem unsurprising. The FT says that 59 per cent of the company’s shareholders have voted down the remuneration report at Shell, in scenes similar to those at shareholder meetings of Next... Read more...
Today, the Commons will vote on the level of the BBC licence fee. The Government seems to be planning to approve yet another increase, whilst the Tories are proposing a freeze. A freeze would of course be better than another rise, but in actual fact a cut is perfectly possible.... Read more...
The whole MPs' expenses scandal has reinforced the need for transparency in public spending. The entire sorry affair, from John Reid's sparkly toilet seat to Elliot Morley's phantom mortgage,is a textbook study of exactly how secrecy breeds deceit. Happily, the internet provides just the technology to change that. Indeed,... Read more...
The Coventry Telegraph has revealed how Warwickshire County Council’s “Go Green” boss has been using his 4x4 vehicle to clock up almost 10,000 miles, costing taxpayers no less than £8,500. Martin Healey, the council’s ‘environmental leader’, hasn’t exactly been leading by example as his expenses claims for mileage topped... Read more...
The news, reported in the Telegraph, that Nick Brown has claimed tens of thousands of pounds, including £18,000 just for food, in expenses without even submitting receipts makes it clear why we can't trust the political parties to decide which candidates need to go. At the moment, the decision over what... Read more...
The expenses scandal rumbles on. The revelations of the past 10 days or so have lifted the lid on a culture of recklessness and greed in Westminster. Receipt after receipt for items such as bathplugs and light bulbs have exasperated the people paying for it all – the taxpayers. ... Read more...
500+ jobs are on offer this week in the government sector, a week where parliament and government lost the people’s trust over the Commons expenses scandal. With everyone’s eyes on how the politicians spend our money, we give you our non-job of the week as another reason why taxpayers need... Read more...
You’re a business owner in Dudley trying your level best to make it through this difficult period and hoping that things pick-up so that you can retain staff and turn a profit. You may be faced with something of an uphill struggle and then out of nowhere – Is it... Read more...
Today the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) published the results of its long running enquiry into the Ministry of Defence’s (MoD) 20 largest military procurements. Pulling no punches in its criticisms, the report highlights a total cost overrun of £205 million and 96 months of additional ‘slippage’ from set target dates, equivalent... Read more...
The Express & Star revealed today that disgraced ex-West Midlands Fire Chief Frank Sheehan will be receiving a taxpayer-funded pension of over £100,000 despite being forced to quit following a child pornography investigation. Sheehan, who was not charged as the CPS claimed it wasn’t in the public interest to... Read more...
At the Police Federation's annual conference, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith was told that she and the Government had created a "Hokey Cokey" Criminal Justice System. Police representatives made it clear that they are frustrated with the system that allows convicted felons back on the streets too easily. They claim the... Read more...