The TaxPayers' Alliance - Home

Tuesday July 31

Blogs

5.30pm, West Midlands:  Support our petition against THE pUBLIC Arts Centre - new regional TPA campaign demands no more money for one of the biggest arts funding fiascos in the country.

5.30pm, West Midlands:  West Bromwich has paid the price for Sandwell Council's High Tax Policies - taxes on local businesses have been hiked to pay for failing projects like THE pUBLIC.

11.30am, Burning Our Money:  Prolonging the Agony of School - the costings behind proposals to raise the minimum age at which a pupil leaves education are largely a work of fiction.

11.00am, Better Government:  Quality not quantity is the way to improve education standards - more education at current standards won't do much to improve Britain's worrying record in education.

10.00am, Better Government:  Bonuses for failing flood defence bosses should be paid back - officials responsible for flood defence clearly haven't earned five figure bonuses.

The West Midlands TaxPayers' Alliance Launch

The West Midlands TaxPayers' Alliance launches this morning outside THE pUBLIC art gallery, where so much taxpayers' money has been wasted.

9.00am, West Midlands:  TPA Launches West Midlands Campaign - Details of the event and the press release for the West Midlands TPA Launch.

9.00am, West Midlands:  West Midlands Waste Dossier - the shocking record of politicians wasting taxpayers' money in the West Midlands.

9.00am, West Midlands:  West Midlands Council - the local heroes who will be overseeing the running of the West Midlands TPA.

9.00am, West Midlands:  Launch Flyer - see the leaflet being sent to thousands of homes announcing the new West Midlands TPA.

Media Coverage

- Great U-turn on bins as councils bring back weekly collections

"Corin Taylor, of the Taxpayers' Alliance, said: "Fortnightly bin collections were always a bad idea, and so it's good to see the Government retreating on its earlier advice to councils.

"But millions of pounds of taxpayers' money has yet again been wasted on Government incompetence."" - Mail

News Round-Up

Libby Purves - The silencing of our Mr Spocks:  In Blu-Tack Britain, expertise is unwelcome

"So The Sunday Telegraph got Jeff Howell, a chartered surveyor, to have his own house inspected. Mr Howell had replastered it with environmentally friendly hemp, insulated it widely and carefully, and monitors his energy use. He called in two separate inspectors “trained” on the Government’s programme, who both committed technical howlers, missing swaths of visible insulation, and coming up with a low rating and an estimate of power consumption four times higher than Mr Howell’s reality. “Box tickers, didn’t even tick the right boxes,” he said scornfully." - Times

At £2.9bn (that’s £1,000 an inch) the wider M6

"The cost of widening the M6 is expected to reach more than £1,000 a inch, it emerged yesterday [...] according to Highways Agency figures, the total bill for the three-year project will be £2.9 billion.  The original estimate was £670 million." - Mail

Monday July 30

Blogs

2.30pm, Economics 101:  Private equity firms show the need for simpler, lower taxes for all - rich people paying lower marginal rates than poor people is no argument for raising the rate on the rich, it is an argument for cutting it on the poor.

11.30am, Better Government:  NHS Pay Plan has failed - the 'Agenda for Change' reform of pay has  proven very expensive and delivered little by way of improvement in service quality.

10.45am, Burning Our Money:  Limits of Taxation Update - Higher taxes are leading to increased tax evasion, more waste that honest taxpayers wind up paying for.

10am, Burning Our Money:  'Green Tokenism' - Government Cars - New research by the TaxPayers' Alliance shows government is wasting our money on hybrid cars.

Media Coverage

- Policies on climate are 'incoherent'

"Meanwhile, the Government was last night accused of green tokenism amid claims it wasted £900,000 of taxpayers' money buying hybrid cars for ministers and civil servants.

The TaxPayers'Alliance, which campaigns for lower taxes, said the money should have been spent on ordinary cars – which could have cost up to £8,000 less – and planting 70,000 trees." - Metro

- Criminals yet to pay courts £6m

"Blair Gibbs, spokesman for the Taxpayers' Alliance, a national pressure group which campaigns against wasting tax payers' money, said the amount owed to courts was on the increase because magistrates dish out fines to repeat offenders.

He said: "It is no surprise the amount going unpaid is growing because fines are only suitable for certain types of low-level criminal.

"Taxpayers will now have to pay extra for the Government to try and recover this money from criminals."   

News Round-Up

Anger in the ranks at bill of £484,000 for injury to RAF clerk

"An RAF computer clerk who suffered a hand injury while typing in numbers has cost the Ministry of Defence £484,000 in damages and legal costs - almost 30 times what a soldier injured in combat might receive for a similar injury.

The clerk, who is in her 20s and has not been named, was diagnosed with the RSI-style condition de Quervain's tenosynovitis.

A serving soldier who comes home from war suffering from "permanent severely impaired grip in both hands" would only get a one-off payment of £16,500." - Telegraph

Fraud costs £600m

"About 100 fraud cases worth £100,000 or more came to court in the first six months of this year, and the biggest victim was the British taxpayer, figures suggest today. Fraud is running at near-record levels for the fourth six-month period in succession. The sums involved totalled more than £600 million." - Times

£3 million for prisoners 'kept in jail too long'

"Taxpayers face a compensation bill of almost £3 million for wrongful imprisonment, and millions more to cover convicts' legal costs." - Mail

Sunday July 29

Blogs

2.00pm, Burning Our Money: Weekly Waste Round-Up 69 - EU water directives, bonuses for quango chiefs and limos for Ministers. Total for the week- £65,006,858,000...

Media Coverage

- Stoke-on-Trent clears trees for metal version

"The Sunday Telegraph reported earlier this month that local authorities were spending more than £100 million a year to hire 3,500 "carbon-reduction advisers" and other workers charged with combating climate change." - Telegraph

Pupil wins £7,000 pay-out for slipping on wet school floor

Blair Gibbs, of the Taxpayers' Alliance pressure group, was also astonished at the pay-outs. He said: "We are concerned about the growing compensation culture in schools. Awards paid out involves taxpayers' money which affects everyone. It is not the same as making a claim against a private company.

"Some awards are paid out far too quickly without enough checks being made as to their validity. This is encouraging chancers to try to win cash for claims they might not have submitted previously. And many solicitors firms are offering to pursue these claims on a no-win-no-fee basis. Lots of local authorities now receive claims from solicitors firms, rather than directly from the claimants themselves." - Sunday Mercury

News Round-Up

Home Information Packs will lead to higher council tax bills

"Details collected for the Government’s new Home Information Packs (HIPs) could be used to force up council tax bills, it emerged last night .... The Valuation Office Agency, which will be in charge of a future council tax revaluation, has already signed controversial deals to access detailed information on homes from the Land Registry and online estate agent Rightmove. Now it has also asked for access to the new Home Information Pack database." - Sunday Express

Official: Doctors do less work for much more pay

"A damining official report to be published this week will show doctors are working significantly fewer hours for more pay. The GPs’ Workload Survey, the first such study for 15 years, has found that after the introduction of a new contract three years ago, doctors are working on average about 15% fewer hours. During the same period pay has risen by nearly a quarter. The report is likely to generate a backlash among nurses, who the study found are taking up much of the slack." - Sunday Times

Corby is yob capital of Britain

"The “new” town of Corby in Northamptonshire was recently branded by an official report as the yob capital of Britain. The National Audit Office said almost 50 per cent of adults in the town believed bad behaviour was a problem while 55 per cent of those given Asbos breached their conditions. In Corby, one in two people believed they would see yobbish behaviour when stepping outside their front door. The town had nearly 3,000 incidents of criminal damage per 100,000 people and half its residents believed antisocial behaviour was a big or fairly big problem." - Sunday Express

Millions of pounds are set to be paid out by the Government to prisoners kept in jail beyond their release dates.

"More than 50 inmates, including murderers and rapists, are preparing to submit claims for damages, arguing that delays to their parole hearings breached their human rights. That figure is expected to rise because the number of deferred hearings has trebled from 155 in 2004-05 to 513 last year. Total compensation could top £7 million .... 

Nick Herbert, the shadow justice secretary, said: "It is appalling that public money should be wasted like this. It could have paid for secure accommodation so that violent offenders are not released early onto our streets. Gordon Brown's refusal when he was Chancellor to provide sufficient prison capacity has overloaded the prison and probation services, and re-offending has soared." - Sunday Telegraph

Brown's £1 billion flood profit

"Gordon Brown is set to rake in a tax windfall of £1billion from Britain’s flood disaster. VAT on building repair work will dwarf the £46million so far pledged by the Government for restoring towns and homes devastated by the deluge." - Sunday Express

Comment Round-Up

David Smith on why the Bank of England may have squeezed inflation enough with recent rate rises

"At this time of year, when many ordinary folk have departed for their holidays, the men and women of the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee (MPC) still have work to do. For the past three summers, August has been busy for the MPC. They raised Bank rate by a quarter point in August 2004, cut by a quarter in August 2005 and hiked a quarter this time last year. The 2005 cut has been blamed, not entirely accurately, for reviving house-price inflation, while 2006’s hike started the current phase of monetary tightening." - Sunday Times

Matt Rudd on the proliferation of official warnings on everything and anything

"‘Keep away from fire” said the label on the T-shirt that I was putting on my one-year-old son. First one of the day and we aren’t even dressed yet. Today I’m counting the number of times that my family is told what to do and what not to do by the powers that be. By “powers that be” I mean everyone who deems it appropriate to print signs or record messages giving orders to us about how to conduct our lives. Because we know Big Brother is watching us but it feels like he’s watching us more these days. I want to know how much more." - Sunday Times

Saturday July 28

Media Coverage

Matthew Elliott writes for ConservativeHome on the 2012 Watchdog

"All this could mean further rises in the budget of the Olympics.  The TaxPayers’ Alliance has looked at Athens.  If London were to repeat the more than five-fold rise there we could see a budget as high as £12.6 billion." - ConservativeHome

The £12.6 billion Olympics?

"The cost of staging London’s Olympics is expected to soar even higher, campaigners warned yesterday. The TaxPayers’ Alliance claimed the final bill could top £12.6billion — a figure based on over-runs for the 2004 Athens Olympics and a hard-hitting report by the Government’s official spending watchdog.

The TPA’s claims the original budget may have to be quadrupled came amid growing concern the “revised” budget was under severe strain. Olympics minister Tessa Jowell has revealed Treasury panicking over costs means the main stadium will not have a roof." - Daily Express

Olympic hopefuls who need cash to go for gold

"Today pressure group the Taxpayers' Alliance launched a "2012 watchdog" to scrutinise the cost of the Games -- with a warning that inflation could increase the final bill to £12.6billion. London's preparations have been praised by international inspectors and Mayor Ken Livingstone has promised there will be no fare or council tax increases to pay the bigger bill. Bulldozers are starting to clear the Olympic park in Stratford this week and construction inflation is expected to top six per cent for two years. Extensive remediation of the former industrial land is required, especially around the aquatics centre.

This week the Standard revealed that designs for the 80,000-seat Olympic stadium were being revised to keep costs down. Taxpayers' Alliance spokesman Alex Story, who rowed in 1996 in Atlanta, said: "The event lasts for two weeks but the huge costs might yet have to be borne by taxpayers for decades to come." - Evening Standard

News Round-Up

Welsh mother guilty of £24,000 tax credit fraud

"A married woman claimed almost £24,000 in tax credits by pretending she was single. Jacqueline Dillane, 43, from Milford Haven, was yesterday given a suspended sentence by Swansea Crown Court and ordered to undertake community service." - icWales

USA should cut corporate tax rate, says Greenspan

"The US needs to reduce corporate tax rates to prevent business profits from being squeezed by the rising cost of raising finance through debt and equities, Alan Greenspan, former Federal Reserve chairman, warned on Thursday ....  Mr Greenspan said the reforms of the 1980s had been largely undone by tinkering with the tax code. He argued that the Bush administration should seize the moment and cut business rates before economic consequences and political obstacles mounted." - Financial Times

Smallest tax base in the world?  Just 3% of Indians pay taxes...

"In a country of over a billion people, only 31.5 million people pay taxes, and this is after the number of taxpayers has grown by nearly 11 percent between March 2002 and March 2006. In response to a Right to Information (RTI) query by seasoned RTI campaigner P. Hari Kumar, 24, of Kasaragod in north Kerala, the finance ministry has said that the number of taxpayers has increased from 28.4 million in 2002 to 31.5 million in 2006." - IndiaeNews

Comment Round-Up

Legitimate ways to avoid inheritance tax

"Mitigating IHT has become more difficult since the government tightened up rules on trusts that were being used for tax planning.  But people should not despair as there are still some perfectly legal ways of minimising IHT." - Scotsman

Friday July 27

Blogs

The TaxPayers’ Alliance is today announcing the formation of the ‘2012 Watchdog’ – a panel headed by two former Olympians - to scrutinise the progress of the London Olympic Games between now and the opening ceremony on Friday 27 July 2012.

The 2012 Watchdog blog, which will feature regular posts on 2012 and campaign news, can be found here.

4.00pm, Burning Our Money:  PFI Debt - Slightly Uncooking the Books - there is still some way to go before our public sector debt figures really reflect all of our PFI liabilities let alone all the money our government has committed to paying.

1.15pm, 2012 Watchdog:  Rumble in the Olympic Jungle - signs of a clash between Tessa Jowell, the Olympics Minister, and Ken Livingstone, London Mayor.  Edward Leigh saw this problem coming.

12.30pm, 2012 Watchdog: Launch Press Release and Research Note - explaining the purpose of the 2012 Watchdog, setting out how we got to the current Olympics overrun and a couple of reasons we worry the budget could rise further.

12.30pm, 2012 Watchdog:  Members - members of the 2012 Watchdog panel who are contributing their time and expertise in a voluntary capacity.

11am, Better Government:  Thousands of patients dying thanks to poor management in the NHS - only effective, decentralised management can take care of the little things that keep people alive in hospital.

11am, Better Government:  Public service reform to stall - what public service reform? - the argument over whether Blair's reform agenda will be continued ignorees the fact that Blairite reforms were never more than superficial.

9am, Burning Our Money:  ID Cards:  Already Burning Money - there is already a cost overrun in the ID card project.

Media Coverage

- MPs' costs rise at twice inflation rate

"The Taxpayers' Alliance, which campaigns for lower public spending, said it was unacceptable for MPs to receive such big increases when millions of other workers were getting below-inflation wage rises.

Matthew Elliott, its chief executive, said: "When members of the public are having to tighten their belts, Members of Parliament should not show contempt for taxpayers by receiving inflation-busting increases in expenses from the public purse." - Telegraph

- MPs hand taxpayers £95m bill for expenses

"It's completely out of order for MPs t o claim more and more expenses when people are suffering under the burden of higher taxes," said Matthew Elliott of The TaxPayers' Alliance.

"When members of the public are having to tighten their belts, Members of Parliament should not show contempt for taxpayers by receiving inflation-busting increases in expenses from the public purse.

"No wonder trust in politicians is at an all-time low if they're not fully committed to providing value for money." - Mail

- MPs begin 73-day break ... as their expenses hit £95m

"Matthew Elliott, of the TaxPayers' Alliance, said:  "It's completely out of order for MPs to claim more and more expenses when people are suffering under the burden of higher taxes.
"When members of the public are having to tighten their belts, MPs should not show contempt for taxpayers by receiving inflation-busting increases in expenses from the public purse." - Express

- MPs claim a record £95m

"Matthew Elliott, of the TaxPayers' Alliance, said:  "When the public are tightening their belts, MPs should not show contempt." - Sun

- MPs Leg It

"Matthew Elliott, chief executive of the TaxPayers' Alliance, fumed: "The population is facing rising tax bills and higher utility charges and many people are having to work longer hours or take second jobs just to maintain their standard of living.

"The idea that politicans can go off for three months seems really old fashioned.  They need to spend more time at Westminster and cut back on holidays.  A three-month holiday is a ridiculous luxury." - Star

News Round-Up

Scrounger gets £100k flat on us

"A CHEAT who bought a flat by falsely claiming benefits can KEEP it — and stands to make £70,000 profit.

Carolyn Fernie, 48, swindled taxpayers out of £56,000 over 19 years by pretending to be the apartment’s unemployed tenant rather than its owner.

She was given council housing benefit to cover her “rent” of up to £270 a month — and used it to pay off the mortgage in just eight years." - Sun

Whitehall pensions bill soars to £128bn

"The bill for the gold-plated pensions owed to civil servants soared by more than 25 per cent last year, it was revealed last night.  Government pension liabilities rose from £101 billion in 2005-06 to £128 billion last year." - Mail

PFI rule change could hit state capital projects

"A squeeze on capital spending on schools, hospitals and other public infrastructure could be in prospect as billions of pounds worth of private finance initiative projects are poised to come back on to the government's balance sheet." - Financial Times

Thursday July 26

Blogs

5pm, Burning Our Money:  Teaching to the Test - a new video advertising the ReportPlus system gives up the pretence that schools are trying to build genuine understanding instead of just teaching to the test.

11am, Burning Our Money:  Splish Splash Splosh! - Alan Johnson retreats from private sector involvement in the NHS.  The contracts were awful but with both parties retreating from serious reform we're drifting downstream towards a worse and worse health service.

Media Coverage

- Matthew Elliott attacks Britain’s fiscal apartheid

"TPA Chief Executive Matthew Elliott appeared on BBC2’s Daily Politics show to talk about the unfairness of the “Barnett Formula”, which means that people in Scotland receive £1,500 more government spending that people living in England.

“Britain is now suffering from a fiscal apartheid, where each English household gives £350 per year to Scotland for services they do not enjoy south of the border. This situation is unfair and unsustainable.”" - Daily Politics

- £50m rioters bribed with burgers

"Matthew Elliott, chief executive of the Taxpayers' Alliance said:

"The Government is right to treat genuine asylum seekers with dignity and to provide them with food and shelter, but when they start rioting they are rejecting our country's goodwill and lose the right to be treated as decent people. Rewarding bad behaviour, encourages more bad behaviour. No other government in Europe would give rioting asylum seekers McDonald's meals, so neither should we." - Express

- Anti-Cig Vaccine Free on the NHS

"Blair Gibbs, campaign director at the Taxpayers' Alliance, said:

"The NHS is funded by taxpayers but it has never taken account of personal responsibility. When budgets are tight and new drugs are getting more expensive, rationing decisions should favour those who did not choose to make themselves ill. People choose to smoke and they can choose to stop. Taxpayers have paid enough to treat smokers over the years. This is an injustice."" - Daily Star

- MPs hand taxpayers £95m bill for expenses

"It's completely out of order for MPs t o claim more and more expenses when people are suffering under the burden of higher taxes," said Matthew Elliott of The TaxPayers' Alliance.

"When members of the public are having to tighten their belts, Members of Parliament should not show contempt for taxpayers by receiving inflation-busting increases in expenses from the public purse.

"No wonder trust in politicians is at an all-time low if they're not fully committed to providing value for money." - Mail

News Round-Up

Alan Johnson to limit private sector in the NHS

"In a clear break with the Blair years, Mr Johnson announced there would not be an expansion of contracts with the private sector to provide operations for NHS patients after those in the pipeline had been approved.

Gordon Brown is understood to want to limit competition between the NHS and the private sector in what some have seen as the privatisation of the health service.  Mr Johnson was making his first appearance before the Commons health select committee, whose members questioned him about the future direction of the health service.

"I don't believe there is the need for another independent sector treatment centre [ISTC] procurement and there won't be a third wave," he said.

"We will instead move towards greater local determination."" - Telegraph

China tipped to be main driver of the global economy this year

"China will become the biggest driver of global economic activity this year for the first time, the International Monetary Fund said yesterday as it raised its already bullish forecasts for growth.

China is the world’s fourth-largest economy, but accounts for only 5 per cent of the global economy on market-exchange rate terms.

However, it is projected to grow by a blistering 11.2 per cent this year, far above the predicted 2 per cent expansion of the US economy. It will make the largest contribution to the world’s growth rate of any country, the IMF said." - Times

Blair's celebrity spree at Chequers (oh, and you paid)

"Tony Blair used his last 18 months in power to entertain a bewildering array of minor celebrities at his official country retreat, it has emerged.

Chequers, historically used to receive foreign dignitaries, diplomats and ministers, played host to the likes of Charlotte Church and her rugby player partner Gavin Henson, husband-and-wife TV hosts Vernon Kay and Tess Daly, and GMTV presenters Fiona Phillips and Lorraine Kelly." - Mail

Wednesday July 25

Blogs

5.50pm, Economics 101 - Encouraging words from Cameron on trade - talk of unilateral free trade is very welcome.

5.30pm, Burning Our Money:  Non-job of the week - a waste spin-doctor for Gloucestershire County Council.

5.30pm, Burning Our Money: Red Tape Industry - the National Audit Office exposes the government's attempt to cut the regulatory burden as a farce. 

11am, Better Government:  Worthless government pledges to cut red tape - the National Audit Office finds that firms have little confidence that regulation will be cut.  Those firms are right.  The National Audit office also finds that the way government measures the cost of regulation is deeply flawed.  It could learn important lessons from successful reforms in the Canadian province of British Columbia.

10am, Better Government:  Whitehall paying over the odds for outsiders - Senior civil servants don't properly check that inflated salaries for new external hires represent good value for money.  With a litany of disasters, such as IT projects with budgets rocketing out of control, it seems unlikely that they do.

Media Coverage

- Ridiculous waste on the Forth Road Bridge

"Matthew Elliott, Chief Executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance appeared on Scotland’s Talk 107 to talk about the Forth Road Bridge.

“It’s ridiculous that taxpayers are having to shell out £2 million to dismantle the toll booths having just paid £5 million to construct them. Taxpayers deserve better value for money.” - Talk 107

- Councils want to follow Ireland's lead and ban plastic bags

"But the green measures have not gone unnoticed by pressure groups watching town hall's spending. The Taxpayers' Alliance loudly lambasted councils last week for frittering millions on "green" departments. Each employed, on average, eight "green" staff, it said. The city's and Britain's most deprived borough, Tower Hamlets, has 58 staff working on "global warming" matters. Islington in the north of the capital is recruiting a "carbon reduction adviser"." - South China Morning Post

- Letter:  Schemes to fall out over

"I refer of course to the amusing report by Paul Dale (Economic masterplan is 'unclear and indecisive', Post July 23) and also your editorial on The West Midlands Regional Assembly's response to Advantage West Midlands' Regional Economic Strategy, after a year-long draft study into how this region can close a "guestimated" £10 billion productivity gap between the West Midlands and the rest of the UK.

I just loved the bit where the WMRA says the report should highlight ways of preventing villages from becoming the "domain of rich car-owning commuting people"." - Birmingham

News Round-Up

Waste on the Forth Road Bridge

"TAXPAYERS are set to get a £2million bill for removing the toll booths on the Forth Road Bridge - just a year after £5million of public cash was spent upgrading them." - Daily Record

Watchdog criticises excessive business tax probes

"Large businesses are subjected to an excessive number of tax investigations with only small sums of money at stake, according to a National Audit Office report.

Despite an attempt to focus more closely on high- risk businesses, Revenue & Customs was still carrying out many low-value inquiries, the spending watchdog said today in a report on the management of large business corporation tax.

Almost 60 per cent of the inquiries being pursued in February this year were expected collectively to produce less than 1 per cent of the total tax yield generated by compliance checks." - Financial Times

Farm Software still to cost £55 million

"Nearly £500 for every farmer in England will still have to be spent to get the software responsible for last year's farm payments fiasco to work properly, the Government has admitted.

It disclosed that £55 million will have to be spent to get the Rural Payments Agency's IT system to work to pay England's 115,000 farmers correctly - though it should have been working at the end of 2005." - Telegraph

Jane Moore - It's time to turn off the spongers' money tap

"If you're a grafting taxpayer currently perched on a sandbag while floodwaters devastate your hard-earned home and possessions, be warned:  This story may further damage your health.

While you watch your life floating away, Carl and Samantha Gillespie are enjoying the dry warmth and comfort of their new £500,000 deatched home in a quiet, leafy suburb of Berkshire.  Bought at your expense.

You see, Carl and Samantha have 12 children between them and their last council house burnt down when one of the youngest ones played with a cigarette lighter.

So West Berkshire Council spent £350,000 buying them a new home, plus a further £150,000 on renovations, including double glazing, furniture, carpets and central heating.

[...]

Chris says:  "We're not scroungers and if it was economical for me to work then I would do" - The Sun

Tuesday July 24

Blogs

6.45pm, Campaign: Postman Pat-ernalism needs reform - a pensions row at Royal Mail, and more evidence of the unfairness of public sector pension settlements...

5.00pm, West Midlands:  More congestion... - councils are going to squander more public money planning road pricing for the region but at least the West Midlands won't be pioneering new charges for motorists.

11.00am, Economics 101: Government doesn't have a magic wand - what political messages are the Harry Potter books imparting to young minds?

10.30am, Burning Our Money: A night at the fag packet Olympics - exactly how much of the multi-billion figure for the 2012 games was drawn up on the back of fag packet in a Singapore bar?

Media Coverage

- Taxpayers foot the bill for scrounger family's £1/2 million home

"Blair Gibbs, spokesman  for the TaxPayers' Alliance, said:  "When are the politicians going to get a grip on our benefits system?
"They have created this madness where people can have as many children as they like and not go out to work, and then claim - quite rightly - that they would be poorer if they did" - Express

- Two poisoned hedgehogs that cost the taxpayer £50,000

"Blair Gibbs, of the Taxpayers' Alliance, said: "No hedgehog should die in vain but this is a bad joke. What do these Defra officials think they are doing with our money?" - Mail

- Unpaid court fines rise to £486 million

"Blair Gibbs, spokesman for the TaxPayers' Alliance, attacked the Government after the figures were released, following a Freedom of Information request.

He said: 'Ministers are relying on fines and weak community sentences because they haven't built enough prisons to cope with our high crime rate.'" - METRO

News Round-Up

Government runs harder to stand still

"Gordon Brown's announcement of an extra 250,000 new homes on top of the previous target by 2016 does little more than match the latest projected increase in demand - always assuming the incentives and penalties set out in yesterday's green paper can deliver the land and planning consents.

Housebuilding fell behind projected household formation in the 1990s, and Labour's priority when it took office in 1997 was to refurbish the existing stock.

As a result, completions in England reached virtually a postwar low of 129,500 in 2001, against peaks above 300,000 in the 1960s. Council housing virtually ceased - 277 completions in 2006 with other forms of social housing failing to plug the gap." - Financial Times

Plans underway for compulsory green levy

"Airlines, car dealers, power companies and petrol stations would have to ask customers to pay a green levy under plans outlined by MPs today.

Taxi companies, diesel train operators and sellers of patio heaters would also fall foul of a law aimed at businesses that emit large amounts of carbon dioxide. Customers will be able to opt out of paying the extra amount destined for projects to stop global warming, such as planting trees and erecting windmills." - Times

'Bin rage' assaults on collectors double

"The number of attacks unleashed by householders upon binmen has almost doubled within the past year.

A rising number of residents are lashing out at refuse collectors in frustration at finding their bins still full because they have failed to follow strict recycling rules." - Telegraph

Monday July 23

Blogs

1.00pm, Burning Our Money:  Temping Docs - thanks to the incompetent management, such as the fiasco of the MTAS junior doctor recruitment system, the NHS is having to pay huge amounts extra for temporary staff.

10am, Economics 101:  Cost of Government Day - in a new report the TaxPayers' Alliance reveals that today is the day we've finally earned enough to pay for government spending and regulation.

Media Coverage

Call to reveal cost of informers

"Corin Taylor, from the Taxpayers' Alliance, conceded that the police often had to deal with "shady characters" but he said: "The police ought to be open about it and if they think that it's a justified use of taxpayers' money they should tell us how much they have spent. If they have got nothing to hide they should be open about it."

News Round-Up

The mayor's nasty tactics against the unwary

"If they really wanted to warn motorists not to park where I had, about six places away from the one spot that even a foreigner could see was temporarily illegal, they would have put cones in each space. But that was not their intention at all: it was to fleece the public." - Times

Plea to speed up tax reforms or 'lose big firms'

"SOME of the UK's biggest companies are urging Chancellor Alistair Darling to speed up tax reforms or risk seeing household names move away to cheaper locations.

The UK's tax regime is approaching a "tipping point" where big firms will be lured away by lower taxes, according to a survey of top PLCs and inward investors by KPMG.

Almost half the bosses surveyed said they had investigated moving overseas in an effort to cut their tax bills, and more than four out of five said tax was a growing influence on where they chose to locate." - The Scotsman

Shocking news:  Britain's a wet country

"It is a very human tendency to blame someone for the vagaries of the weather. A run of bad summers in the 1950s was blamed on nuclear bomb tests, the rains during the First World War were blamed on artillery going off on the Western Front and two centuries ago it was the battles of the Napoleonic Wars that were blamed for upsetting nature. And now it’s global warming.

But climate change was supposed to be making our summers drier, not wetter. Leaving that aside, even if we accept that the recent downpours are a sign of global warming, then a single wet summer hardly adds up to any particular trend. No, it’s far more plausible to explain this latest wet spell as a natural blip in the climate." - Times

Sunday July 22

Blogs

12.00am, Burning Our Money: Police (In)efficiency - do we get value for money for all the extra billions we're spending on the police?

9.00am, Burning Our Money: Weekly Waste Round-Up 68 - this weeks total - £270,000,000...

Media Coverage

Failed migrants get UK cash to start a business at home

"Blair Gibbs, of the Taxpayers' Alliance, said: "It is one thing paying these people's air fares to go home. But it is quite another to give them money to start a business. It is absurd to think we have an obligation to these people once they have left the country. Most people will think if we don't owe them a living while they are in Britain, we certainly don't owe them a living when they go home." - News of the World

A lunatic crop of laws for global warming

  "[C]onsider some other recent reports inspired by the political response to "global warming". Last week, some of our leading travel firms asked the High Court to declare illegal the £2 billion a year Gordon Brown is costing airline passengers with his tax of up to £80 on every UK-bought airline ticket .... And, as this newspaper reported last week, the Taxpayers' Alliance reveals that local councils are paying at least £102 million a year on a new army of "climate change-related" officials. The list goes on and on." - Sunday Telegraph

Local tax is not local if it is still controlled from the centre

"Scrap council tax by all means and set the revenue loss of £23 billion (a tiny percentage of all local spending anyway) against savings from better government – overspending on large projects was recently detailed by the Taxpayers Alliance, and another report revealed that £80 billion had been wasted by poor decision-making. It needs people who can think from professional and industrial experience, and who are not taxation addicted, to realise that there are techniques for moving tax revenue – techniques not understood by politicians and senior civil servants who do not have subject knowledge and managerial experience." - Sunday Times

News Round-Up

Taxpayers paying for iPods and gift vouchers for drug addicts

"DRUG addicts are to be offered gift vouchers and prizes on the National Health Service under plans by the government’s medicine watchdog to encourage them to stay clean. The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) will recommend the system of inducements, which could enable clinics to offer televisions and iPods as prizes, to tackle the burgeoning drugs problem. But patients denied drugs for blindness, Alzheimer’s and lung cancer under Nice rationing are likely to accuse it of wasting public money." - Sunday Times

Comment Round-Up

Irwin Stelzer on why politicians will hit the dealmakers with new taxes, but not just yet...

"In Britain, where the decision on tax technically rests with the new chancellor, Alistair Darling, nobody is in any doubt that the final call will be made by Gordon Brown. Brown would love to get his hands on additional tax revenues to spend on more social programmes. But he has to consider whether a crackdown would lead to a flight of high earners from London, taking with them the revenues they now provide for the Treasury, and the jobs their spending creates. The difficulty of doing that sort of arithmetic is as good an excuse as any for doing nothing, at least until the autumn." - Sunday Times

Liam Halligan on the disaster of Metronet for taxpayers

"Mr Brown has become addicted to PFI, which has allowed him to rack up multi-billion pound liabilities, mostly hidden from the national accounts. This is Enron-style financial management in the taxpayers' name. That is why the Tories must resist this PFI addiction and call for a moratorium on all new projects. Because, just as this Tube PPP deal is a disaster for London, so PFI is a disaster for Britain." - Sunday Telegraph

David Smith on inequality and the UK's skills shortage

"The central point is that when claims of record levels of inequality are bandied around, people will often reach for the knee-jerk response; that the rich need to be taxed a lot more and the poor given more direct financial support from the government." - Sunday Times

Saturday July 21

Media Coverage

£24bn scandal of the inheritance tax trap

"The harsh toll of inheritance tax and stamp duty on middle Britain  was condemned by the country’s biggest mortgage lender yesterday. The Halifax highlighted the tide of money pouring into Government coffers after ministers stubbornly refused to raise thresholds for both taxes in line with house price inflation. If they had been increased, the Halifax said inheritance tax would now start at £490,000 and three per cent stamp duty at £720,000 – not £250,000.

Blair Gibbs, spokesman for the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “In­heritance tax barely registered as an issue in 1997 because the threshold was still well above average house prices. “But these figures show how, in just 10 years, Gordon Brown has allowed an estate duty to become a death tax that punishes millions of ordinary families. “This tax grab is completely immoral and should go.” - Daily Express

Revealed - £525 million cost of Kent's PFI schemes

  "Corin Taylor, of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, told KoS that PFI deals were not good value for money. “PFI comes at an enormous cost to taxpayers, which has to be paid back over many years,” he said. “While it has the potential to cut delays to building projects, some are more suited to PFI than others and it is worrying that so many have gone over-budget.

“Often this is because contracts aren’t properly drawn up at the start and firms then make millions in refinancing deals when the spec changes.” - Saturday Observer

News Round-Up

Chief Medical Officer wants new taxes on alcohol

"[Liam Donaldson] wishes Britain was more like the Continent. "I said to some teenage children in France: 'Would you ever go out to get drunk?' and they said: 'We can't see the point of it, we don't want to go out and get sick.'  "In our culture getting drunk is seen as an exciting and status thing to do. We need to try and get away from that."  His answer is to make excessive drinking too expensive. "I would certainly strongly commend increased taxation, the evidence is quite strong that putting the price up helps. Prices of alcohol have fallen relative to the cost of living." - Interview, Telegraph

Hundreds of thousands face extra fines from HMRC if they miss the looming July 31 deadline

"HM Revenue & Customs said 900,000 people missed the January 31 deadline for submitting returns, racking up a £100 fine. They will suffer a second fine if they don't get the forms in by July 31, plus a statutory penalty which doubles from 5 per cent of the tax outstanding to 10 per cent." - Telegraph

Private equity debate kicks off in the United States with calls for higher taxes on Wall Street's "super-rich"

"In a new age of fabulous fortunes, the tax rate paid by a breed of financial billionaires is  fueling a Wall Street-versus-Washington dispute over fairness in the U.S. economy. Leaders of private equity firms such as Blackstone Group and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. are reaping huge paydays as they buy and sell some of America's biggest companies. But much of the money they pocket is considered investment income, and taxed at the 15% rate for capital gains.

Congress is now considering taxing these earnings at the ordinary income tax rate — which for Wall Street titans (and anyone else who makes $349,700 and up) is 35%. The proposal has triggered a debate that is echoing across the political landscape and on the presidential campaign trail." - Los Angeles Times

The taxman in Argentina is using Google Earth to track down tax fraudsters

"Argentina's tax authorities are using satellite images generated on the Internet by Google Earth to track down fraud, local media has said. According to Buenos Aires province tax official Santiago Montoya, images of properties from the sky can help square the actual size of properties with that declared by taxpayers to make sure the proper amount of taxes is being paid, the reports said." - News.com (Australia)

Friday July 20

Blogs

6pm, Better Government:  Spinning Crime - don't let them fool you.  Serious crime has been going up a lot.

2.30pm, West Midlands:  Delays for road pricing - councils are failing to agree the terms and creating yet more delay for a road pricing deal that is expensive and may well do nothing at all to ease congestion.

2pm, Burning our Money: Audit warns of more Olympic Overspend - more increases in the Olympic budget might be ahead, particularly if we don't hold politicians properly accountable.

News Round-Up

Olympics budget under threat

"Significant uncertainty" over costs could take the final bill past the Government's latest £9.3 billion estimate because the Olympic Development Agency does not know how much contractors will charge.

Edward Leigh, the chairman of the public accounts committee, said an increased terrorist threat could add even more to the total figure. He added that there were concerns that designs for many buildings to house the games had not been finished." - Telegraph

£611,000 for Olympic part-timer in pay, perks and severance package

"Mr Lemley left suddenly last October after falling out with every member of the Authority's 12-strong board.  He then launched a stinging attack on the political interference in the Olympicsand warned that the cost of the event in 2012 would rise exponentially." - Mail

Unpleasant side to tax reform proposals

"Chris Morgan, of KPMG, said he was concerned at the possible scope of new “controlled companies” rules, which would tax “mobile” or “passive” income in all jurisdictions. It would create a “compliance nightmare” and potentially result in higher taxes than the current system, which targets subsidiaries in low tax countries. “If things go badly it would drive a lot of income inside the tax net. Worldwide taxation of passive income would significantly increase the tax take.” - Financial Times

Worst June on record for public deficit

"The Office for National Statistics had bad news for Chancellor Alistair Darling, just three weeks into his new job, when it revealed the worst public sector deficit for June since records began in 1993.

Public sector net borrowing - the Government's preferred measure of the public finances - was £7.4bn last month, above expectations for borrowing of £6bn. The ONS said higher local government borrowing drove the figure up but added that much of the data in this area was still provisional." - Telegraph

Thursday July 19

Blogs

3.45pm, Campaign: A Viking revolt over indirect taxes? - even Norwegians have a limit when it comes to tolerance of stealth taxes...

12.00am, Campaign: We're all going to get sent to Climate Camp - shady goings on in the green movement...

10.15am, Burning Our Money: It just gets worse at the BBC - the corporation should prove its worth by competing without taxpayer subsidy...

10.00am, Economics 101: EU protectionism on the rise - new German proposals betray a worrying preference for harmonised standards that undermine competition...

Media Coverage

Let the regions cut taxes to boost growth

"The best way to help the less prosperous regions in the north, now and in the future, is to allow them to attract new businesses by lowering their corporate tax rates ....  Treasury ministers need to consider seriously the prospect that allowing regions to reduce tax rates would do their hard work for them. Such clear thinking would benefit taxpayers in all parts of the country." - Financial Times

NAO report reveals huge scale of welfare dependency

"Six million Britons are living in households where nobody works - costing the taxpayer almost £13 billion a year in benefits alone, a spending watchdog report reveals today ....

Matthew Elliott of the Taxpayers' Alliance said: "It is extremely depressing that there are literally millions of people in the UK who are out of work and not even bothering to look for a job. Not only are these people taking advantage of taxpayers but they are also setting an appalling example for their children, who are being brought up to believe that such behaviour is acceptable. Hardworking taxpayers shouldn't have to pay out billions of pounds to people who are too lazy to get off their couches to find a job. Many people thought that Shameless was a funny TV comedy. Unfortunately it was depiction of how millions of people live in Britain today." - Daily Mail

TPA in the Yorkshire Post on the cost of public project over-runs

"There is no single solution that will end the problem, but an important first step is to hold public officials properly to account for allowing costs on projects to escalate. When budgets balloon, heads must roll. The public need to be told about mistakes early to keep projects on-budget and this means we need greater contractual transparency.

Terminal 5 at Heathrow has been built on time and within budget, showing what competent management, lack of political meddling and effective contracts can do. With so much taxpayers' money at stake, and a catalogue of failure to draw on, it should not be too much to ask for politicians to improve on their dismal record. The British public haven't forgotten the costly Dome fiasco, but it seems that too many in the Government have." - Yorkshire Post

News Round-Up

Increase in police funding "fails to hit crime"

"An increase in police funding of more than 40 per cent, to £12 billion a year, appears to have had little impact on crime levels, according to a Parliamentary report published today .... The select committee says that in spite of the rise in police funding in real terms from £8.5 billion to more than £12 billion a year, most of the fall in crime occurred before the Home Office injected more cash." - Times

Taxpayers facing huge bill for failure of Metronet

"Taxpayers could be left footing a bill for hundreds of millions of pounds after Metronet, the London Underground contractor, filed for administration yesterday in a move unions fear will trigger a wave of redundancies." - Times (see Burning Our Money: Metronet Meltdown)

Brown facing threat of new EU referendum campaign

"A cross-party campaign to be launched in September will personally target Gordon Broqwn for refusing voters a referendum on the new European Union treaty." - Telegraph

Compensation scheme for miners cost more to administer than was actually paid out

"Almost 300,000 miners with a disabling chest disease have received less money in compensation than it cost the Government to administer their claim, a report discloses today ....  The NAO reveals that the “top ten” solicitors’ firms have already been paid a total of £636 million, with two — Thompsons and Beresfords — each earning more than £115 million. By contrast, 69 per cent — 296,000 — of the 430,000 miners who have been awarded compensation for lung disease received less than the £3,200 that, on average, it costs the department to administer each claim." - Times

Reforms to lone parent benefits

"Single parents will be forced to look for work as soon as their youngest child reaches the age of 7 under benefit reforms that will also introduce a form of workfare to Britain. Peter Hain, the Work and Pensions Secretary, went farther than expected as he announced measures to drive 300,000 lone parents into paid employment. Proposals to stop income support payments in October next year to lone parents when their child reaches the age of 12 were confirmed. The parents will instead be paid jobseekers’ allowance, which requires recipients to prove that they are looking for work." - Times

Comment Round-Up

Senator Sam Brownback - one of the candidates for the Republican Presidential nomination - advocates an opt-in flat tax system

"The low rate and simplicity of the new system would be attractive enough that today's income tax structure would become nearly obsolete. We have seen this in Hong Kong, which has two tax systems, but where almost everyone opts for the flat tax system. Also looking abroad, I'd note that of the sixteen jurisdictions that have gone to a flat tax, none have returned to their previous systems. A 2004 analysis of eleven countries with a flat tax found that nine of the eleven outperformed the average GDP growth rate in major industrial countries.

This proposal will do more than protect and ensure a strong economy.  The optional flat tax offers the path to remain competitive in an increasingly flat world where capital moves to the most favorable climate. It provides more freedom, growth and a new way forward for America's economy." - RealClearPolitics

Wednesday July 18

Blogs

2.00pm, Burning Our Money: Non-Job of the Week 22 - more green jobsworths at Islington Council.  Whoever thought that climate change could be such a nice little earner...

9.00am,  Better Government: "End" Of Targets - government moves to abandon targets are very superficial.

Media Coverage

On Talk 107 radio in Edinburgh this morning, the TPA's Campaign Director criticised MSPs for overspending their communications allowance ahead of May's Scottish elections (see below):

"The unsolicited communications we now get from any of our four classes of politicians - be they councillors, MSPs, MPs or MEPs - seem to be getting glossier and glossier."

News Round-Up

Mass overspend on MSPs "communications allowance" ahead of May elections

"The number of items posted by MSPs at taxpayers' expense leapt by 80 per cent in the year before the Holyrood election, it emerged today. The increase suggests MSPs desperate to raise their profile with the voters scrambled to make the most of the free postage they are allowed to send out newsletters, reports and surveys to constituents ....  And once the parliament's mail screening contract and the stock of postage stamps were taken into account, the total cost of mail services and postage was £557,169 - £98,000 over budget." - Edinburgh Evening News

Bulk of money for sick miners' scheme was spent on red tape

"The NAO says that when the final claim is settled, £4.1 billion will have been paid in compensation. The administrative costs to the former DTI, renamed the Department for Business and Enterprise, will total an additional £2.3 billion. More than 55 per cent of that — £1.3 billion — will have been paid into the bank accounts of several hundred law firms that registered claims against the DTI." - Times

Tube Company Metronet goes into administration

"In a short statement this morning, the company confirmed that it had written to London Mayor Ken Livingstone to formally seek the appointment of a PPP administrator.

It follows a decision by Chris Bolt, PPP Arbiter, to dismiss a claim for £551 million of emergency funding on Monday. He would only grant Metronet £121 million." - Times

Man fighting his council tax banding ends up punishing his neighbours

"John Pigden, 69, discovered that of a dozen identical properties on the same road, most were rated as being in band D for council tax, while his and one other had been rated as band E.  The former marketing manager appealed to the Valuation Office Agency against the banding to claim back 15 years of overpayment. When valuation officers visited Crest Way, in Portslade near Brighton, they ruled that Mr Pidgen had been paying the correct amount, but that the owners of the other three-bedroom detached houses had all been undercharged since the estate was built in 1992. All the houses have now been declared band E properties, forcing their owners to pay an extra £30 a month in council tax." - Telegraph

Tuesday July 17

Blogs

9.45pm, Campaign: The Causes of Political Disengagement - a CPS seminar raised some important issues about what lies behind public cynicism towards the politicians...

Media Coverage

  - Pupil given £5,700 after breaking into school

"A Taxpayers' Alliance spokesman said: "Compensation should be paid for the tiny number of legitimate cases, but the vast majority are basically people out to make a quick buck at the expense of taxpayers. Local councils should stand up to these chancers."" - Telegraph

  Littlejohn - Carbon advisers?  Just empty the bins

"Just as I predicted, the latest employment bonanza for the Guardianistas is the 'climate change' racket. Town Halls across Britain are estimated to have spent more than £100 million recruiting an army of green warriors." - Mail

- Big pay rises for top tax collectors

"Blair Gibbs, spokesman for the TaxPayers' Alliance, said:  "We'd prefer to see civil servants getting pay rises only when they manage to remove the need for any further tax rises by spending our money better in the first place."" - Daily Express

- £250,000 GP

"Matthew Elliott, chief executive of the Taxpayers' Alliance, said: "It is disappointing that GPs are earning this much at a time when the NHS is under severe financial pressure.

"Nobody denies that GPs should earn a decent wage. But more than £100,000 is a lot of money especially when they don't offer things like outofhours care or home visits, which they used to." - Mail

News Round-Up

'Cliff-edge' womens pensions move criticised

"Liberal Democrat policy chief and former pensions spokesman Steve Webb said it was "indefensible" for it to press ahead with a "cliff-edge" reform programme under which women will lose or gain depending on their date of birth.

Ministers proposed a cut-off date of April 6, 2010 for the introduction of a new system.  This would mean anyone who turns 60 before then will lose out if they took time out of work and did not keep up their national insurance contributions." - ePolitix.com

Private Equity takes on its critics

"The private equity industry will on Tuesday unveil its first attempt to stem the rising tide of political criticism with the publication of a review proposing greater financial transparency and improvements to corporate governance which could include appointing independent directors." - Financial Times

Jones vows to take business woes to Brown

"Business grievances about high tax and “nightmare” regulation will be conveyed directly to Gordon Brown, Lord Jones, the former CBI director-general turned trade promotion minister, pledged on Monday.

The former Sir Digby, awarded a peerage by the prime minister to accompany his new role, faced hostile questioning from Labour MPs over his refusal to join the Labour party despite accepting a ministerial role." - Financial Times

Monday July 16

Blogs

3.45pm, Better Government: Ofsted succumbing to Parkinson's Law? - the national schools inspectorate has swollen in size and taken on new responsibilities, but has just been judged "not fit for purpose"...

12.30pm, Campaign: The 'Recall' - how to hold politicians to account - a device used in some US states could revitalise local democracy and give taxpayers a real voice...

11.45am, Burning Our Money: Metronet Meltdown - the parlous state of Metronet is leaving taxpayers' with an enormous bill...

10.45am, Economics 101: More excuses for increasing tax on business - an "infrastructure tax" to help fund Crossrail is just another burden on London businesses...

10.30am, Burning Our Money: The global warming industry in local government - town halls are employing people using our council tax money to save the planet...

9.30am, Burning Our Money: BBC Brussels bias - another BBC bias probe, this time into its sympathy for the European Union...

9.00am, Burning Our Money: 24/7 Government delayed due to technical operating difficulities - the spiralling cost of government websites...

Media Coverage

Jailed addicts to get safer syringes on the taxpayer

"CONVICTS are to receive Government help to ensure they can inject heroin safely inside