The TaxPayers' Alliance - Campaign

Newspeak takes hold

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 IngSoc that is most developed.

The excellent Plain English Campaign has for years been emphasising the importance of clear use of language. It's perfectly simple - explaining things clearly is the best way to get ideas across. Confusing jargon and mangled English lead to misunderstandings, which waste money and make services inaccessible. As a tactic for deceit and obscuring the truth, it undermines accountability and restricts public scrutiny of politicians and the public sector.

My colleague Mike Denham reported recently on an unmanned police station which, residents have been told, will be closed unless they pretend it is manned and open:

Cricklade residents (aka the customers) are angry because their local police station is closed- ie if you go there you find nobody manning the front desk, and even if you shout, nobody comes. But rather than putting it right, North Wiltshire's top cop advises them to pretend the station's functioning properly as it is. Otherwise, he says, it will be perceived the residents perceive it's closed, and it will be closed. Even though in real world terms, it's closed already. 

Confusing, isn't it?

Sadly, this example is far from unique. The case of Cricklade police station is apparently one of a police force talking nonsense in order to wriggle off the hook and obscure the issue. Plenty of other agencies similarly use the practice for deceit, whilst others just don't seem to engage their brain before opening their mouth or tapping the keyboard.

For example, a TPA researcher has just received another classic gobbet of gibberish, this time by email from Welwyn Hatfield Council, whose Customer Services Advisor's email sign-off describes the Council as providing

access to your services and information 24 hours day, 7 days a week.

It then goes on to explain that

The Contact Centre and Offices are open
Monday to Thursday from 8.45am to 5.15pm
and Fridays 8.45am to 4.45pm

That's right - in Welwyn, "24 hours a day, 7 days a week" actually means "eight and a half or sometimes eight hours a day, five days a week". That might well be a perfectly adequate service for people, but why is it necessary to describe it as something it simply isn't?

The EU is another arena in which Newspeak reigns supreme. Famously, after the French voted "Non" to the EU Constitution, Jean-Claude Juncker, Luxembourg's Prime Minister who was EU President at the time, announced

"The French and Dutch did not really vote 'No' to the European constitution"

Except of course that they, erm, did. Immediately after the referenda went the "wrong" way, the EU establishment set about preparing the ground for forcing the constitution on the people irrespective of their wishes. It is testament to the power of language that their first step was a barefaced attempt to redefine the result as one that was actually favourable to the Constitution.

This deceit not only wastes money and confuses people, it conceals a multitude of sins. By not only denying failures but actually redefining them as successes, disgraceful disasters are allowed to continue, and popular opinion is ignored or manipulated.

The EU Constitution rumbles on despite its outright rejection at the ballot box by two founder nations of the EU, Cricklade's residents have to pretend to talk to police officers who aren't there whilst continuing to live without adequate police cover, children and pensioners live in fear of "care" as a word which is actually synonymous with "abuse", Welwyn residents get 24/7 information from a 8.5/5 service and confusion reigns supreme. War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery and Ignorance is Strength.

The mangling of the English language hobbles our democracy, obscures scrutiny, wastes money and cheats the needy of access to services. We cannot win purely by getting the sums right and the numbers to add up, we will also have to win a cultural victory by demanding clarity from the people who spend our money and run our government.

The remarkable transformation of the Millennium Dome

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 the Dome was a synonym for failure, over-budget profligacy and right-on irrelevance. It's telling that the only real difference between 2000 and 2007 is that the public sector is no longer in charge of the place...

Barbara Lockwood: Norwich's tireless low-tax campaigner

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 of supporters joining her to fight against high taxes. 

Over the past months, she has sent out over 200 TPA leaflets, drawing in an impressive response from local residents angry at such high rates of tax.

Here she gives us some information about herself and what she wants to achieve in her campaigns:

“I’m not sure if anybody is interested in my past and hectic lifestyle, but I thought I would forward a report on my movements since the Thatcher years when she introduced the Poll Tax to cover the hierarchy and force the middle and low paid and students to cover all in 1991/2.

I won’t go into the full story (it would be a book) however, as then a retiring Nan and Granddad, with two teenagers at home looking for employment, I exploded when told my husband would have to pay the tax for the four of us.  On mobilising annoyed students we joined the Trafalgar and Downing Street protests that absolutely appalled me when confronted with riot police on horseback determined to aggravate all – even me.

This continued here in Norwich with a despicable four-month Crown Court case of 15 students and families from Colchester, who I helped as a Mackenzie friend.  Believe me, the whole case was a waste of taxes and a complete farce.  I lost complete faith in my own country and it still continues – even more.

We now have a government creeping along wasting every penny of this country’s taxes: spending madness with a population following suit.  Where will it end?

My long standing campaign over the yet again unfair Council Tax Banding will continue until it is reviewed and accorded within ability to pay, or maybe replaced with a local tax. 

Greedy governments must be made to relieve, all citizens allowed to achieve and stealth taxing must be outlawed.

I would appreciate to know how many others would agree; come on, let’s have some replies.”

If you'd like to join the campaign in Norwich you can get in touch with Barbara by emailing her or me at our London office.  If you're campaigning for lower taxes, please do as Barbara has done and let us know what you've been doing to help the campaign.  You never know, maybe your example could inspire other taxpayers to join our campaign and crusade for lower taxes...

Dispatches from the front line

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 where TPA activist Tony Callaghan has been leafleting.  Keep up the good work, gents.  Already our Central Norfolk and Norwich branch has well over 40 members.  Stay posted for our new-year meeting I’m arranging to oppose council tax increases in Norfolk. 

David Moncaster, from our Shipley branch, has been the first activist to sign up 10 friends in our 10 Friends Challenge.  Congratulations David and we hope you enjoy your copy of ‘How to Label a Goat’.  So come on the rest of you, get recruiting.  I’ve got the dates confirmed when your councils are voting to put up your council tax.  It’s up to us to be outside protesting, showing the strength of opposition, so we’ve got to build our numbers to take the fight to the politicians so eager to take more and more of our money.

Sorting out Southwark

Southwark Council have had a nightmare couple of weeks. Last week they admitted that almost every single one of their departments had gone over budget and predicted above-inflation council tax rises for the foreseeable future. After that bad news, this week the TPA's first Council Spending Uncovered paper revealed that they spend £5million a year on publicity.

Whilst the Council obviously has serious problems in its policies and management, it is encouraging that they resisted the temptation to deny the publicity figure, or to claim the spending was justified (unlike some other councils, but more on those disgraceful examples in later posts). Today's South London Press reports that:

Councillor Toby Eckersley, executive member for finance, said he was calling for a review on the publicity spending.

He said: "In light of this, all areas of discretionary expenditure need to be looked at very closely."

If a review is being launched, and they genuinely have taken on board the urgent need to cut out their unnecessary expenditure, this is good news. TPA doesn't just exist to complain; we raise these concerns about waste because we want things to be put right. I hope that Cllr Eckersley's review goes ahead and finds savings for the hard-pressed taxpayers of Southwark. I'm sure they will thank him for it.

It's an encouraging sign that TPA's research is not just reaching and informing the public, but is helping politicians realise that things must change. The figure for Southwark's publicity spend, which almost equals the amount spent by the GLA, is a shocking one - Cllr Eckersley is to be congratulated for admitting that and, hopefully, deciding to do something about it.

Who helps the helpers?

A telling fact came out in answer to a parliamentary question from John Leech MP the other day. He asked Caroline Flint, Minister for Employment, how many Job Centre Plus staff had been sacked for not turning up to work in the last year.

Whilst it would have been safe to assume there would be at least a few - every organisation gets bad apples once in a while - I don't think anyone could have predicted the real answer: 497.

That is a lot. If you consider that these people's profession was to advise people on how to both get and keep jobs, it is quite worrying. If you then take into account that in the public sector it is more difficult to get the sack than in the private sector, it appears that JobCentre Plus have a serious problem on their hands.

Not only is it worrying for JCP, it is also less than satisfactory for jobseekers and the taxpayer.

If there are so many job advisers who can't even turn up to work enough to keep their own job, how on earth are the unemployed people they are supposed to assist meant to manage it? That is damaging to the prospects of jobseekers, damaging to their dependents and damaging to wider society. The individual and social harm done by long-term benefit dependency is well-documented, so it is in all our interests for this service to be as effective as possible.

Not only does the taxpayer foot the bill for those who remain on unemployment benefit, this shocking figure also represent an added recruitment bill. In 2006-07, JBC recruited 2,770 people. That means that 18% of all new recruits to JobCentres were replacements for the ineffective staff who had been fired - recruits with all the attendant costs of advertising and training.

Yet again, it seems the mismanagement of our services is letting down the taxpayer and those the services are meant to help.

It's paying off

Only mere days after our report highlighted massive overspend in council publicity, Coventry City Council have pledged to lower their publicity spending next year. 

What a breakthrough, especially on a day where Hammersmith and Fulham council announce yet another council tax cut!  It shows how our activism, combined with top notch research, is putting the pressure on local politicians and council officers to lower their wasteful spending.  Quite rightly people are asking why any council should use taxpayers’ money for self-congratulatory propaganda and they’re catching the councils out.  This should certainly be a wake up call to taxpayers to get involved, because we can make the changes in our government that we want!

So please get involved and hold your council to account.  Pressure them into admitting the sum of our money used to pat themselves on the back is just too high.  Let us know how you get on by emailing your campaign news to us so we can publicise further taxpayer victories.  Keep up the fight.

Great news from Hammersmith & Fulham

Congratulations to Hammersmith and Fulham Council, who have announced today that they are delivering another 3% cut in council tax.

Across the country, council tax has doubled in the last ten years and yet councils claim they still don't have enough money. Taxes, they claim, must be raised further. Services, they say, must also be cut.

H&F's example gives the lie to all this blather and blarney.

Instead of squeezing taxpayers further and starving services of investment, they have now cut taxes for two years in a row and improved their performance rating to the 4-star top ranking.

The conclusion must be that the other councils have got their policies wrong - their simplistic link between money in from taxes and performance out through services is a misrepresentation. Somewhere along the line there are clearly other sinks that money is falling into; otherwise the doubling in council tax would have had a much bigger impact on services.

It is to identify some of the inefficiencies and costly irrelevancies that have swallowed all that extra tax revenue that the TaxPayers' Alliance has launched the Council Spending Uncovered Series, the first paper of which was published this week. That paper revealed that, far from divert money into crumbling services, Britain's councils have increased spending on publicity by 130% in the last ten years. The problem is, at least in part, one of priorities - glossy newsletters, costly advertising and PR appear to be valued in many Town Halls above meals on wheels, policing, refuse collection and the other things which actually improve quality of life for ordinary people.

The Council Spending Uncovered Series aims to shine the spotlight on areas where money is spent unnecessarily, or which are wrongly prioritised at the expense of more important activities.

Hammersmith and Fulham have done a superb job of diagnosing many of these illnesses themselves. They have correctly identified the two things that should be their priorities - reducing the tax burden on hard-pressed taxpayers and delivering front line services. Everything else in between, be it surplus office space or self-congratulatory pamphlets that no-one reads, is just so much fluff. By rightly downgrading spending on irrelevant or illusory projects, they are improving the quality of services, allowing taxpayers to keep more of their own money and materially making life better for the people they were elected to serve.

That is what local Government should be about.

Even if other councils cannot find it in themselves to follow H&F's example out of a genuine wish to do the best for people, they should pay heed to the approval ratings that come with performance like this. It is so simple that politicians sometimes seem to overlook the basic fact that actually doing a good job, actually making people happy, is the best way to convince them to vote for you - and it's a great deal cheaper than trying to buy approval with spin.