The TaxPayers' Alliance - Burning our Money

Taxpayers funding births abroad

So we hear news about NHS budget deficits and hospitals not having enough money to clean wards properly.  Apparently, however, there’s enough money to pay for treatment abroad rather than spending the money on the NHS at home.

Taken from the public purse, 269 women took advantage of the EU scheme to shop around for healthcare.  A further 88 were sent abroad to have treatment for hearing aids, blood tests and speech therapy, the government has admitted.

Rather than paying people to go abroad to have hospital treatment, perhaps the government should put our money to frontline services.  Recruiting and training doctors and nurses, rather than administrators and bureaucrats, would be a start to curing the sickness within our healthcare system.                                              

Ministers told to back off from the Beeb

The appointment of Sir Michael Lyons, author of the expensive and ineffective Lyons report into local government finance, to the Chairmanship of the BBC was seen as just another act of cronyism. 

The Daily Mail reports today (not online) that the House of Lords communications committee has criticised ministers’ roles in public service appointments.  Keeping politicians in key roles over public appointments, they argue, leads to promotions based on cronyism and not merit.

While the report doesn’t comment on Sir Michael’s ability to perform competently in his new role, despite being a professional bureaucrat with no history in broadcasting, the committee suggests that politicians meddle too much in the selection of senior officials.  Tessa Jowell, then culture minister, appointed the committee who drew up the short list that led to Sir Michael’s appointment as BBC Chairman.  At the time Sir Michael was a member of the Labour Party with close ties to Gordon Brown.

To avoid future cronyism, Lord Fowler – who chairs the Lords Communications Committee – called on future appointments to be completely non-political and subject to greater parliamentary scrutiny.

While this report was seldom reported, it is another step forward for the better government campaign.  Political interference in services, such as the BBC, has clearly led to a collapse in faith in our politician’s ability to deliver high quality public services. 

BBC Brussels Bias

We blogged a while ago about a BBC probe into its own bias.  Last week we had the BBC smear campaign against the Queen.  Now the BBC is probing the Today programme to gauge the extent of its bias in favour of the European Union.

In a letter to Sir Michael Lyons, UKIP Peer Lord Pearson claimed only one in five interviewees on the Today show held a eurosceptic viewpoint.  Lyons’ reply pledged an inquiry by the BBC Trust into Euro-bias.

This is hardly surprising.

For years the BBC has been pilloried for its taxpayer-funded Euro-bias.  When the Euro was on the political agenda the BBC commissioned ‘Referendum Street’ where an ‘average’ street debated the pro’s and cons of the Euro and then voted – shock, horror - for the Euro.  This all came at a time when the overwhelming majority of the public were firmly opposed to the Euro, and have been since.

This means your money paying for views you don’t accept or want thrown through your TV screens day in, day out. 

Not that this development is anything to cry about.  With the BBC under even more scrutiny the public will quickly come to the conclusion that it needs to be privatised, so its views can reflect the demand and opinions in the market and not the wishy-washy liberalism of the metropolitan elite.