The Telegraph reports that many parents are struggling to find the right primary school for their children: "Many more have been forced to accept second, third or fourth choice schools amid unprecedented demand among parents, it is claimed. In some areas, more than 200 four and five-year-olds have yet to... Read more...
Further to my comments on the Fabian Society's attempts to "defend inheritance tax" and launch an anti-taxpayers alliance, Nick Cowen over at Civitas has written up an account of the Fabians' debate on the topic, held last night. It's an amusing account, and lays out several crucial arguments against both... Read more...
Have you ever heard of RegenWM? Well you’re paying for them so pay attention. Here’s their mission: Read more...
On Monday we launched the Ten Percent Challenge - throwing down the gauntlet to councils by identifying savings from non-essential and over-inflated budgets that could be used to reduce council tax by 3.5% across England and Scotland. As you might expect, the reactions of people around the country has been... Read more...
The real tax grab This morning Gordon Brown was interviewed by John Humphrys on BBC R4 Today. Unfortunately John Humphrys allowed him to get away with a number of infelicities that should have been properly challenged: "Tax is only 37% of GDP" - when Humphrys put it... Read more...
For all of those who criticised our Council Spending Uncovered paper on publicity spending, take a look at our non-job of the week: “Publications Editor£26,067 - £27,584 (pay award pending) This is your chance to get involved in producing our Council publications. In our county, effectively communicating... Read more...
The Telegraph report that the definitive guide to British laws has doubled in size over the last twenty years: This is a crushing burden of new regulation. Ordinary people and businesses have an ever-expanding variety of laws that they are expected to obey. The vast complexity of the... Read more...
According to Mark Mardell’s blog on the BBC News website, West Midlands in Europe, our local money-guzzling Euro-quango, have been busy hosting a climate change seminar in Brussels. In case you don't know them West Midlands in Europe are, of course, partnered by two of the usual suspects –... Read more...
A WMTPA activist called today to draw my attention to the plight of his local council, Staffordshire Moorlands District Council, as reported in Friday’s edition of the Leek Post & Times. So the story goes, central Government owe the council no less than £2.8million for their commitment to investing... Read more...
New Conservative plans, reported in the Telegraph, for detailed, public crime mapping could do great things for the relationship between ordinary people and the police. Particularly if they are combined with the election of local police chiefs: "The maps would have to be updated each month, while police would have... Read more...
You'll need plenty of £2 coins As you may have heard, ex-Sun editor Kelvin MacKenzie is so incensed by the unaccountable money burning antics of his local council that he's standing for election as a councillor. His Red Mist Party pledge card reads: Cut car parking charges,... Read more...
Norfolk TPA campaigners met with senior members of Norfolk County and South Norfolk District Councils yesterday to discuss how the County and District can achieve tax cuts for hard-working families across Norfolk next year. Our senior campaigners Tony Flynn, Barbara Lockwood and Tony Callaghan met with Cllr Daniel Cox... Read more...
We've already responded to the story that two new bosses for the failing National Programme for IT are going to be appointed at a cost of nearly half a million pounds a year in salaries alone, from the Telegraph report: "Matthew Elliot, the chief executive of The TaxPayers' Alliance, said:... Read more...
An interesting new paper, written by economist Keith Marsden and published by the Centre for Policy Studies, presents further evidence of how smaller governments perform better on a range of measures than do larger governments. The paper shows how countries with low taxes and spending relative to GDP enjoy... Read more...
Two words guaranteed to strike fear into the heart of any good believer in small, efficient government! Further to our recent work with the Cut the VAT coalition on the amount of money the Treasury made from the 2007 floods, the excellent EUReferendum blog has waded in (apologies for... Read more...
An excellent Policy Exchange report out today has hammered some important nails into the coffin of taxpayer funding for political parties. We've long argued that the reason parties are struggling financially is nothing to do with the needs of the modern political industry, and all to do with the fact... Read more...
All of us here at the TaxPayers’ Alliance would like to wish all our supporters and activists a happy St. George’s Day. On this day for England, however, please also spare a thought for the Barnett Formula. Read more...
As councils up and down the country do their best to expand their middle management, bloat their own salaries and scale back frontline services, they never fail to come up with yet another non-job for us to expose. This week Liverpool City Council burns taxpayers’ money by offering this... Read more...
This government just doesn’t get poverty. Rather, it begets it. The government thinks there is child poverty and fuel poverty. Today – and next week in Parliament – the pressing issue is tax poverty. Poverty is a shortage of income for people to pay the necessities and have... Read more...
Next week Labour MP Frank Field will table an amendment to save the 10p tax band. If you’ve read a paper, watched the news or, really, just been awake at any time in the past fortnight, you’ll have heard of the gathering storm in the Labour Party about the abolition... Read more...
The TPA is a strong supporter of the Cut the VAT coalition, a wide range of organisations from the Federation of Master Builders and the Empty Homes Agency to the Countryside Alliance and National Energy Action that has grouped together to push for a cut in VAT on home improvement... Read more...
"Almost one million teenagers have failed to achieve even the lowest possible passing grade, G, in five GCSEs since Labour took power in 1997. The report by the Bow Group found that the number of pupils failing to achieve five GCSEs rose last year to 90,000 - the highest figure... Read more...
Haircuts from the Old Lady Mervyn King has taken heavy flak over his handling of the banking crisis, especially from government politicians. For months he stood virtually alone in the corridors of power arguing that the bankers had made the profits, so they should reap the losses. Thank goodness... Read more...
The Express and Star reports that Supplementary Business Rates, as recommended by the Centre for Cities, would raise £27.5million by allowing local councils to levy an extra 2p in the pound on businesses in their area. Apparently this additional money would be spent on transport, roads and housing. ... Read more...