Back in 2010 in Tameside, we had a leadership battle between Labour councillors with the then incumbent leader Roy Oldham and Councillor Kieran Quinn. At the time Roy was suffering from cancer and had little time to rally support and ended up losing the leadership in May last year. He... Read more...
Public support billions of extra spending cuts to foreign aid, high speed rail and trade union funding A major new YouGov / TaxPayers' Alliance poll of 2,732 British adults reveals that the public support billions in spending cuts to foreign aid, high speed rail, trade union funding and a Green... Read more...
Following my article for the Spectator Coffee House about how the Government's proposal for a new high speed rail line is a waste of money and will mean ordinary people paying billions for a rich man's train. David Begg responds with a series of fictions. He argues that the line... Read more...
As reported in the South Wales Echo 21st June, a scheme to provide free laptop computers to children throughout Wales is to be scrapped. The previous Welsh Assembly Government had earmarked funding that would have seen 1200 laptops provided to children within areas of deprivation in South Wales. However, like... Read more...
How well is your council performing? Given the number of performance managers and change managers there are, they should be performing well. Councils tell us they need to bring in people from outside of their organisations to help them become more efficient. Then they tell us they need to pay... Read more...
The Treasury and Office for National Statistics have released the latest public sector finances statistical bulletin with figures relating to April and May. For all the talk in the media of ‘savage cuts’, total current expenditure rose from £50.6 billion in May last year to £51.7 billion in May 2011.... Read more...
The Government's planned high speed rail line will benefit a fortunate minority of passengers but cost well over £1,000 for every family in Britain. Why are ordinary families doing their shopping and paying higher VAT; motorists paying a fortune at the pump; and commuters who will get a worse service,... Read more...
The Times has today published (£) the results of a poll by Populus, outlining the public’s perception of the UK’s tax system and other factors contributing to growth like education and skills. The poll looked at key competitors: Britain, the US, France, Germany, India and China. Out of these six,... Read more...
Earlier this year, the Labour group on Hull City Council asked officers to look at their proposed budget. This was done, and officers signed-off the proposals, saying the books balanced. As I have previously reported, Labour won a surprise victory and took control of the council. Last Thursday, it passed... Read more...
Always good to have a new museum in a city, but last week’s opening of Bristol’s harbourside M Shed raises a few interesting questions about the public and private funding of culture. Two years late and £8 million over budget, the M Shed inhabits the site of the former Industrial... Read more...
The Cabinet Office has today published online the names, job titles and salaries of all civil service directors and more senior civil servants in departments and agencies. The TaxPayers’ Alliance first advocated HR transparency in our response to the ‘Code of recommended practice for local authorities on data transparency’. Starting... Read more...
The normally quiet market town of Winslow, Buckinghamshire, has become the centre of heated debate in recent months. Last year, Aylesbury Vale District Council (AVDC) decided to reintroduce parking charges at the Greyhound Lane car park. Those people who work in the town but have to commute by car are... Read more...
Shane Greer recently wrote that we should support International Aid spending because it is "about protecting Britain's interests", he goes on to narrow that down and says "it's about defence". At its broadest, this argument is so broad as to be pretty meaningless. Any policy decision that makes the world... Read more...
TPA supporter John Martin remains unhappy with Norfolk County Council’s approach to spending its residents’ money. Some months ago, we endured “Norfolk’s Big Conversation”. This was the formal title given to the consultation exercise carried out by Norfolk County Council (NCC) before making a series of savage cuts in frontline... Read more...
The TaxPayers' Alliance has discovered that 287 Royal Mail employees were last year languishing in a 'surplus pool', potentially costing taxpayers over £8 million a year. The previous year the figure was even higher, with 458 employees on the payroll with no official job title, potentially costing taxpayers almost £13... Read more...
The Coalition Against Hate Education has been campaigning against Western taxpayers' money supporting 'Hate Education' in the Palestinian Territories since January 2008.Two major reports underpin the campaign: the first, Palestinian Hate Education since Annapolis, explores how UK and Western taxpayers' money is supporting 'hate education' in the Palestinian territories, radicalising young... Read more...
The reforms set to be announced by George Osborne in his Mansion House speech tonight, aiming to ring-fence retail banking, are an incomplete response to the financial crisis, and if the Government aren't careful they could be actively unhelpful. While the details are very complex, there are some simple issues... Read more...
A councillor's job is to represent their constituents interests. They should be finding out what is going on in the community, engaging people in the democratic process, and where there are problems, they should be troubleshooting, ensuring we get what we pay for. Why then does Oxford City Council require... Read more...
An article in this week's Sunday Times (not available online) nicely captured how complex the tax system is. The paper enquired about how long it takes for staff to respond to mail from taxpayers; the outcome shouldn't be surprising for those who have had to sit and wait for HMRC... Read more...
Eric Pickles, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, guaranteed all councils would return to weekly waste collections when the Government was formed, as over the previous years many had switched to fortnightly collections. But it’s over 12 months since the Coalition Agreement was signed and the situation... Read more...
The recovery has been distinctly lacklustre recently. Recovering from a financial crisis is hard and, as higher spending tends to mean lower growth, an economy straining under the heavy load of spending at 46 per cent of national income was always going to struggle. Construction in particular seems to have... Read more...
I wrote recently on how Merseyside Councils have started to work together to reduce costs. Sharing services, and reducing the number of senior officers will potentially save taxpayers millions of pounds. Good news if these reforms are carried through. It has been reported today that Roger Ching, the strategic director... Read more...
It's great to see councils trying to find ways of working more efficiently. Technology absolutely has a role to play, with laptops and mobile phones (both now can be bought relatively cheaply) meaning staff aren't tied to their desks and can do more work on the go. But sometimes I... Read more...
Since releasing our report last summer on Taxpayer funding of trade unions, more and more stories have emerged highlighting examples public sector employees working full time on trade union duties. Thanks to hard work over at the Guido Fawkes blog and continuous attention on our blog, momentum is building against... Read more...