Advantage West Midlands – our unelected, unaccountable but nevertheless extremely expensive taxpayerfunded quango – have been missing their targets left, right and centre. There’s an excellent blog by our friends at the West Midlands NO! campaign, detailing exactly how poorly our regional bureaucrats are performing by the standards of... Read more...
Wrecked on Granite As already blogged, yesterday's Treasury statement on the extended Northern Rock guarantee suggested taxpayers are now on the hook for all of the Crock's borrowings, except for a few billion of subordinated debt: ie we are guaranteeing around £100bn. Yet most of today's headlines... Read more...
There are two points surrounding yesterday's events at Northern Rock that really need to be cleared up. First, the BBC's Business Editor, Robert Peston, is very enthusiastic about Bradford & Bingley's offer to help out at Northern Rock: "In the worst case of the Rock being nationalised, it could... Read more...
Several papers report comments made by Shadow Chancellor George Osborne. He said: "I will approach each Budget thinking how I can reducetaxes; how can I prepare Britain's economy to compete with China in theworld economy. Lower taxes are good for peopleand the economy. Next year I hope to set out... Read more...
In the midst of the festive season, as we all splash our hard-earned cash on our nearest and dearest, it’s interesting to see what our local councils are choosing to do with our money… Staffordshire County CouncilFamily Group Conference Convener (£27,594 - £30,598 Pro rata, per annum (subject to... Read more...
The Guardian reports today on a National Audit Office report that criticises botched reforms to neonatal care: "Scores of premature babies may be dying unnecessarily across England because the NHS mismanaged a reform of neonatal units in 2003, parliament's spending watchdog reveals today." Most of the Guardian's account speaks for... Read more...
Orwellian comparisons are always popular in political debate, but whilst surveillance cameras, biometric ID cards and politically correct "thought-crime" laws are certainly of some concern, it is in the field of language that Winston Smith would find the Britain of 2007 most recognisable. Newspeak is undoubtedly the policy area of... Read more...
Darling's the one in the cap Today, Chancellor Darling has extended the taxpayers' guarantee to virtually all Northern Rock's borrowings: retail deposits, wholesale deposits, unsecured borrowing, secured borrowing where the security actually turns out to be insufficient, collateralised and uncollaterised derivatives, onshore and offshore. The whole kit... Read more...
How a pensions black hole works Yesterday our battered beleaguered rulers bunged £3.9bn more taxpayers' money into yet another pensions black hole. Now, all of us sympathise with the 130,000 people who lost all or part of their pensions when their companies went bust up to 2003.... Read more...
The bureaucratic procedure attached to the simple act of clearing up a broken lightbulb is more important than it might seem. It is important because it demonstrates just how unwieldy the procedures are becoming in too much of the public sector for even the most basic of task. All this,... Read more...
Not content with spending thousands of pounds a month on publicity and hiring a new PR exec on a bumper salary, Stoke-On-Trent City Council have outdone themselves again by blowing almost three quarters of a million on refurbishing their offices. The Sentinel reports that many have questioned whether £729,000 of... Read more...
Why have three out front when none will do? Worrying news from Cricklade: "NORTH Wiltshire's top cop has warned residents in Cricklade they could be responsible for the closure of their own police station. Cricklade Police Station, in High Street, no longer has a manned front desk due to... Read more...
We already have not just a two-tiered health service but a many tiered one. The top tier is occupied by the roughly 13 per cent of the population who have private medical insurance. The other tiers are composed of the various sections of the population who get very different results... Read more...
Researchers at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden have taken a look at the amounts spent on cancer care in the UK and have found that the Department of Health's picture of low cancer survival rates but low costs isn't quite accurate. The Department of Health's analysis apparently fails to include... Read more...
Just a thought - after a week which has seen sell-out and apparently legendary concerts by the reformed Led Zeppelin and The Verve, the O2 (as the Dome has been renamed) is now being described as the world's best entertainment venue. All this success only makes it more amazing that... Read more...
During the research for a project I'm working on I found myself looking through GlaxoSmithKline's accounts. Remembering the debate over the Public Sector Rich List I got curious and wondered just how much JP Garnier - the reputedly well-paid boss at a big private company like GSK - gets paid. ... Read more...
Barbara Lockwood is an experienced campaigner for lower taxes, and runs the campaign Folk Against Council Tax (F.A.C.T) as well as being a supporter and active member of the TaxPayers’ Alliance. She has a well-known reputation in Norwich battling against greedy government and the unfair council tax, with a host... Read more...
Is this what you want? So just let me make sure I've got this right. We're paying our policemen better than they've ever been paid, yet they're going on strike (or at least, intending to come down en masse with Blue Flu). Having perused the stats, we can confirm they're... Read more...
An interesting piece by Arthur Laffer (of the famous "Laffer curve") and Stephen Moore in the Wall Street Journal shows how US states with higher taxes and regulations have lost people and businesses to states with lower taxes and regulations. The authors write: "The American Legislative Exchange Council has just... Read more...
Funeral costs and, increasingly, inheritance tax put huge financial strain on bereaved relatives, and now a leading Stafford funeral director has complained to the Staffordshire Newsletter about the 100% inflation in charges from burial and cremation agreed by the borough council. Chris Emery of William Emery and sons is quoted... Read more...
Braving the cold, several TPA supporters have been active campaigning for lower taxes. Tony Flynn has recently been out in Diss and Tivetshall handing out TPA recruitment leaflets and has set up a low tax campaign site in Norfolk www.atflynn.co.uk. We’ve also had several recruitment leaflets back from Alpington, Norwich... Read more...
There is little doubt that the staging of a nativity play is a stressful experience, and that the prospect of directing tens of small children to present one of the oldest stories of all time is a daunting one. Well, for the teachers at one school in Shropshire the annual... Read more...
There are going to be a few changes... No wonder they don't want him to retire. This morning President Putin has even found time to help us beleaguered British taxpayers. He's ordered the closure of no fewer than 15 offices of the totally useless quango the British Council. BOM readers... Read more...
If this were simply another case of public sector workers complaining about a poor deal from the Government because they weren't going to get another inflation-busting pay increase the TaxPayers' Alliance wouldn't be particularly sympathetic. Public sector workers have had a pretty good deal over the last decade and most... Read more...