Blogs
3.00pm, Burning Our Money: Non-job of the week - a new head of "Contact Islington" will be paid £67,500.
12.45pm, Better Government: Not Me Guv Government - supervision of the banking system now suffers for having an unclear management structure.
11.55am, West Midlands: Poems on 'The Public' by David Bartley - sign the TaxPayers' Alliance petition for no more money to be spent on the massively over-budget art gallery in Sandwell.
11.50am, Better Government: Britain falls in international education league tables - Daniel Hannan writes for the Telegraph explaining how allowing parents to opt-out of state education could mean more can enjoy the high standards in private schools.
Media Coverage
- Freelance execs cash in on Olympics
"Little wonder then that about nine in ten Brits think the games will go over-budget, while two-thirds think the event is an unnecessary risk – in contrast to the widespread support initially.
Matthew Eliot, chief executive of the Taxpayers Alliance, which commissioned the poll, yesterday summed up the feeling among taxpayers, who are partly funding the over-spend.
He told the Daily Mail: “When London bid for the 2012 Olympics, we were told it was a golden opportunity to showcase the capital and encourage sport.
“Now we’ve got the Games, it seems to be a tawdry money-making opportunity for a few fat cats at taxpayers’ expense. No wonder people are disillusioned.” - Freelance UK
- Rapists and killers buy their own cars for day trips from open prison
"Blair Gibbs, of the TaxPayers' Alliance, said: 'Privileges like this - which are always defended by the prison reform lobby - make a mockery of our justice system.
'As taxes have risen, many ordinary law-abiding families make regular sacrifices to keep a car on the road as their only mode of transport. It is a complete insult to taxpayers that their hard-earned money should be spent housing and feeding criminals in prison, who are then allowed the luxury of buying their own motors to cruise around in.
'Where is the justice in a system that allows murderers who are still serving their sentence the right to afford a smart new car, while millions of ordinary people who've never committed a crime can't even begin to afford the same?'" - Mail
- 34 killer cons get jail cars
"The TaxPayers' Alliance said the perk "makes a mockery of our justice system." - Sun
Spanish Home Prices Rocket
"A large number of the buyers boosting the market in Spain are British, with a recent poll by the Taxpayers Alliance revealing that two in every five people in the UK are seriously considering moving abroad. This is a dramatic increase since last year and the highest since records began in 1991, with over 300,000 leaving in the last year, with Spain one of the most popular destinations." - Homes Worldwide
News Round-Up
Dorothy-Grace Elder: Off the leash
"An SNP away day at the luxurious Dunblane Hydro in September 03 cost taxpayers £2,495 and similar events costing £500 to £1,000, in various hotels, pepper the years.
The Tory Group does not charge taxpayers for away days. “We pay from Party funds” I was told. Ironically, when Tory ex leader David McLetchie was being roasted over taxi chits, the SNP was quietly getting the public to pay for flowers and even £55 for “A Selkirk glass gift”. The format for claiming the dosh states “I certify that the expenses claimed have been incurred by the Party exclusively for the purpose of assisting MSPs to perform their Parliamentary duties” as Tricia Marwick, then Nationalist business manager, wrote on 30th January 2001.. when she claimed £101:90p for flowers “from The Edinburgh Flower Shop.” For whom? Doesn’t say.
Do flowers assist MSPs to “perform their Parliamentary duties”?
But £13,950 overall was claimed the same month. Regular orders for flowers under Marwick (later Standards Convener) and her successor Fiona Hyslop (now education secretary) pop up all over - for whom is never stated. There were “2 laptops for research” costing £3,950:35 in March 2001 and another four laptops (£4,145) by April 2005; plus a Digital video camera worth £1112:25. Luxury requests don’t have to be put to the very vigilant Allowances Office. The frills were all approved by the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body, (SPCB) a five MSP cabal which meets in secret.
The expenses review should end SPCB control and appoint outsiders to oversee the death of mindless extravagance. No flowers, please." - Scottish Daily Express
Fraser Nelson: Guess how much tax the rich pay?
"Where would the Liberal Democrats be without the insinuation that the rich are let off lightly by the tax system? But I would like to let CoffeeHousers in on what seems to be a secret. The richest 10% actually stump up the majority (53%) of tax collected in Britain. And the richest 1% stump up a staggering 22% of the tax collected - twice their share of earnings. This is a statistic which should warm the heart of the most ardent redistributionist. It’s all in this Revenue and Customs excel sheet here - scroll to the bottom. And why do we have this situation? Not because of anything Labour’s done. The step change came in 1988, when Nigel Lawson cut the top rate of tax. The top 1% then paid a far lower 14% of the tax collected. When their top rate was cut, they earned and declared more and the system became fairer: turns out that Lawson was the biggest redistributionist of them all. For the LibDems, this points to a horrible, unpalatable truth: if you want to squeeze more tax from the rich, cut their tax rates. As JFK said it's "the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run"." - Spectator CoffeeHouse
Gordon's misguided juries
"Gordon Brown's new citizens' juries are in danger of missing many of the issues that trouble voters, according to a Daily Mail poll. Our finds identify a number of key policy areas the public are keen to have a say on which do not appear to feature in the Prime Minister's 'ask the people' agenda."
[...]
But opponents of the initiative say that even on the issues they are asked to deliberate, the verdicats are unlikely to be radical. They point out that jury members are picked and paid by firms working for the Government's spin doctors, and that the information with which they are presented is liable to be highly one-sided or at least filtered to remove anything embarassing to Labour." - Mail
Crap: A Guide to Politics by Terry Arthur
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