Booming independent schools You see it's like this- when customers call the shots, suppliers have to provide what they want.Hence the current moves by independent schools to abandon the government's increasingly whacky National Curriculum and implement one based on what parents want. For primary level pupils this would include more... Read more...
Sandwell Council will be opening its doors on 1st December in the hope of luring a whole new crop of bureaucrats to their ranks. The date for their careers event is advertised in the Halesowen News, where deputy council leader Pauline Hilton also boasts: "As the largest employer... Read more...
Our campaign director Mark Wallace noticed this from the BBC Website: “A panel which reviews councillors' allowances in Lancashire is looking for two new people to sit on its board. The independent remuneration panel monitors Lancaster City Council's members' allowance scheme and makes recommendations on potential changes. ... Read more...
We investigate Government Shopping The Simple Shopper features regularly on BOM. Every year his antics cost us taxpayers billions. Not only that, he often fails to bring home the actual overpriced bacon at all. From PFI, to GPs' contracts, to military kit, to IT systems, to post-it notes, the Shopper... Read more...
A recent National Audit Office report into sustainable employment reveals the inadequacy of the government’s efforts to keep people off welfare. A key finding is that the the proportion of people moving repeatedly between work and the dole queue has barely changed since the early 1980’s. More than a... Read more...
The Conservative government in Canada has just delivered a budget which cuts both personal and business taxes. Key changes include: The federal corporation tax will fall from 22.1 per cent to 15 per cent by 2012. The small business corporation tax will fall to 11 per cent from... Read more...
It’s not a good week for NHS Trusts. Yesterday the 5 Boroughs Partnership NHS Trust disclosed they spent £6,000 of taxpayers’ money on 1500 annual reports of which only 40 were distributed to residents in the North West. Today the East London NHS Foundation Trust is in our sights because... Read more...
The Conservatives have today laid out their new plans for giving people direct democratic control of Council Tax rises. The proposal is that any Council wishing to raise Council Tax by more than a nationally determined threshold would have to hold a referendum to get the electorate's permission to do... Read more...
Ken Taylor, the Conservative leader of Coventry City Council should be applauded for his comments in the Coventry Telegraph, stating that he will urge his group to reject the above-inflation pay increases recommended by an outside panel. Many general council staff are still in dispute over single-status pay packages,... Read more...
In a response to a tip off from a TPA activist, I issued a Freedom of Information request to the 5 Boroughs Partnership NHS Trust in the North West. The issue was over their annual report, not so much the content of the report itself, but the brochure produced at... Read more...
Suddenly I feel unwell Lifelong union man Alan Johnson was put into the Department of Health for one reason and one reason only: to buy off the fractious strike-minded NHS unions after the disastrous regime of Patricia Hewitt.Obviously, your traditional union buy-off simply comprises dishing out taxpayers' money in the... Read more...
From the Financial Times: "A pioneering £700m-a-year government scheme to buy surgical treatment centres and diagnostic services from the private sector is set to be more than halved by ministers. The decision – expected later this week – will not only mark another retreat from the use of the private... Read more...
The Telegraph reports a study by researchers at Lancaster University that claims to show that the £3 billion spent on education reforms such as specialist schools has been wasted. "By comparing results between schools, the researchers found the Excellence in Cities and specialist schools programmes boosted grades over the period... Read more...
Q. If you were in charge of any ministry which one would it be and why? I would like to be the last Minister for Europe. Q. What are the three most successful policies you can think of in the post-war era? Privatisation and the “right to buy” council homes. ... Read more...
Last week we blogged on how the EU has not signed off its own accounts for well over a decade and had sacked former accountant Marta Andreasen for saying the EU was rife with “slush funds and fraud”. On urging our activists to ask their MEP’s why the EU... Read more...
The helicopter force of Apache gunships and Chinook transports that the British Army relies upon for support and mobility is apparently falling to pieces. Half of the Apache gunships were grounded over summer and one third of the Chinooks withdrawn from service as not "fit for purpose". These can... Read more...
This year’s Public Sector Rich List includes a list of the top ten ‘Rewards for Failure’. But it’s not enough just to show how failure has been rewarded with taxpayers’ money; British taxpayers also have a right to complain. Even where people have left their job – as Rose Gibb... Read more...
Another day, another depressing headline. Yet another international league that Britain is at the bottom of: "UK children aged 11 to 16 have the lowest international awareness among their age group in 10 countries, a British Council survey says." The British Council receives £195,352,000 per year in government funding supposedly... Read more...
They stopped the Asylum Centre, but we still had to pay In the news this week-Non-existent asylum centres cost £35m- "Botched plans to detain thousands of asylum seekers in the depths of the countryside have wasted £35 million of taxpayers' money. Officials at the Home Office have also been... Read more...
In November 2006 the TaxPayers' Alliance produced the first ever list of the richest people in the public sector. The second edition of the annual Public Sector Rich List presents a list of the 300 most highly paid people in the public sector – people receiving remuneration packages of at... Read more...
Regeneration via the built environment From Caligula to Hitler to Caeusescu to John Prescott, deluded Big Government autocrats have always loved bulldozing other people's homes to erect their Thousand Year monuments.A key part of Prescott's plan was called Housing Market Renewal, the grandiose project to rebuild the North and parts... Read more...
In any campaign it's important to look not only at individual successes and the immediate future but to also consider the bigger picture. In the TPA's case that means asking whether victories on individual taxes and specific issues of waste and inefficiency are altering the overall tone of the tax... Read more...
Marta Andreasen, the former chief accountant of the European Union, has lost her claim against the EU for wrongful dismissal. She was sacked after alleging that EU book-keeping was riddled with “slush funds and fraud” and disclosing that there was a £130million discrepancy between two sets of EU accounts which,... Read more...
The idea of allowing communities to form co-operative schools, proposed by the Conservatives yesterday in Manchester, has a lot to recommend it. It would get politicians out of the management of education in many areas if the idea was taken-up on the same scale as in Sweden and Spain. Those... Read more...