After I wrote yesterday about some councils not complying with Freedom of Information (FOI) legislation, a supporter left a comment alerting us to a story in Kirklees.It was reported in March in the Huddersfield Daily Examiner that the leader of Kirklees Council, Cllr Mehboob Khan, had been meddling in public... Read more...
Anna Bailey recently chronicled the difficulties faced by people trying to exercise their legal right to get information from Nottingham City Council. The point of the Freedom of Information Act was to open up public information to greater scrutiny and make government more transparent. It was intended that public bodies... Read more...
The Cabinet Office has published an updated list of the top earners in the civil service and government quangos. Martin Rosenbaum has the full list of new additions on his blog here. The updated list includes 27 officials who did not appear on the original Cabinet Office release on July... Read more...
Central government spending soared by 4.9 per cent to £52 billion in June 2011, up from £49.5 billion in June last year according to Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) figures. The higher than budgeted figures led to an increase in public sector net borrowing from £13.6 to £14.0 billion. Tax... Read more...
Last week, Anna Bailey wrote about Nottingham City Council's cavalier attitude to transparency. Unfortunately, this council is not alone. One of our supporters from Hertfordshire has been experiencing difficulties with his local council, and the secretary from our West Yorkshire Branch, Nigel Shaw, and I have been in a battle... Read more...
The Forum of Private Business (FPB) have released a new report, the latest in their quarterly Referendum series of member surveys. This one is about the cost of compliance with regulation from health and safety to employment law and PAYE and National Insurance. The FPB represent small firms who often... Read more...
A cunning plan for saving taxpayers’ money was revealed recently by East Devon District Council. Valuable flowers are being stolen from municipal flower displays on a regular basis in Axminster, Exmouth and Sidmouth. ‘One week we lost about 50 heathers from a garden in Honiton, which cost about £200,’ said... Read more...
Full council meetings can be very boring affairs. When I attended a full meeting of the East Riding of Yorkshire Council a few months ago, I was told by a journalist that it starts with prayers and doesn't get any more exciting than that!Yesterday afternoon, I sat in the public... Read more...
Transparency watchers are all too well aware that Nottingham City Council is the only local authority in England refusing to publish all spending over £500. What is less well known is the accountability-dodging council’s repeated flouting of Freedom of Information legislation (FOI), and the role the council’s leadership plays in... Read more...
OFCOM announced today that it will require BT to reduce the cost of wholesale broadband to areas of the UK in which it is the only provider of fixed Internet access. The price reduction is another important step in the process to provide more broadband access to rural areas in... Read more...
Regional newspapers have been in decline for a number of years. According to figures published by the Press Gazette, only three daily regional newspapers managed to increase circulation in the last six months of 2010, and the average rate of decline is 6.5% year on year. It is a similar... Read more...
Jeremy Warner has added his voice to the campaign to abolish the 50p top rate of income tax. In a thoughtful article in yesterday’s Daily Telegraph, Mr Warner reaffirmed the growing consensus that far from raising any revenue for the Treasury, the 50p rate raises so little, if indeed it... Read more...
Do trade union bosses really feel their members’ pain? Reading this morning’s news that Derek Simpson, former General Secretary of Unite, received a 'golden goodbye' of over half a million pounds when he retired, it certainly doesn’t sound like it. Hearing that Mr Simpson received such a huge pay-out upon... Read more...
Yesterday's City AM reported that over a quarter of large businesses are considering moving abroad, with most citing Britain’s high and complex taxes as the biggest reason. It would be disastrous if any of these companies follow through on that. Jobs would disappear and growth would be affected. The tax... Read more...
The cost of parking is always a vexed issue. None of us want to pay when we don't have to, and will invariably find free on-street parking, rather than pay for a car park. High fees push people away from smaller towns and cities, as we have seen in Salisbury,... Read more...
Yesterday, the Sunday Express reported on our Freedom of Information request about Departmental internet usage. We asked each Government Department to send us a list of websites their staff had visited, in order of frequency, and the amount of time spent on these sites. We also asked for details of... Read more...
Last month John Henvest, our coordinator in Hampshire, wrote about taxpayers being taken for a ride in Southampton. Many council workers were hiring taxis, rather than using their own vehicles because the council reduced the mileage rate paid from a very generous 54p per mile to the HMRC recommended 45p. At... Read more...
Sign up to receive our weekly bulletin direct to your inbox every FridayFair FuelMost of the price we pay for petrol or diesel is tax. We recently carried out research showing that motorists pay excess taxes of around £18 billion over and above the cost they would reasonably be expected... Read more...
On July 12th Sajid Javid MP proposed a ten minute rule bill to cap the UK's national debt. Ironically, he is seeking to enshrine in law what Gordon Brown originally established as his two fiscal rules. First was the ‘Golden Rule’ that the government should only borrow to invest in... Read more...
The Office for Budget Responsibility seem to have inherited the unfortunate habit of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, who feel the need to express any fiscal gap in terms of the tax hike that would be needed to fix the situation. Or at best talk neutrally about the amount that... Read more...
My new book Let them eat carbon looks at the incredible cost and dubious record of climate change policy here and around the world. This week we have had a graphic reminder of what that means, particularly for poor and elderly people who are hardest hit. Statistics out today show... Read more...
On 3 June I wrote how the leader of Liverpool City Council, Joe Anderson, was urging other Merseyside councils to work together to reduce costs. In a quote to the Liverpool Daily Post he said:“I raised the issue of procurement and sharing services together with a view to save money... Read more...
This morning the Office for Budget Responsibility released a report on the sustainability of Britain's public finances. This is an issue that the TPA has highlighted in a number of publications, including the book How to Cut Public Spending. Estimates have been produced showing Britain faces a particularly severe challenge... Read more...
This afternoon the Government published an Electricity Market Reform White Paper. It includes a number of measures including guaranteeing electricity prices for some low carbon suppliers and a floor under the carbon price as announced in Budget 2011. They claim it will reduce energy prices, though only after some time... Read more...