The TaxPayers' Alliance - West Midlands

Wolverhampton Action Day

Saturday 23rd August saw the first of our West Midlands Action Days in Wolverhampton, with activists turning out to petition the city council for lower council tax.

The weather held out long enough for us to to collect almost 100 signatures, and phase two – another Action Day at the local market – is already being planned!

Even on a busy Saturday afternoon, shoppers were incredibly receptive and overwhelmingly supportive of our cause, with many asking questions about the Wolverhampton TPA.  At one point TPA Activist Don Morris even had a queue of people waiting to sign! Local residents clearly feel pretty strongly that it’s time for a tax cut!

It looks as though our next day will be in Worcester in September, so if you want to do something proactive to help the TPA and our campaign for less waste and lower taxes then please do come along! Doing something like this encourages others to get involved, so get in touch with me at fiona.mcevoy@taxpayersalliance.com to register your interest in having a TPA Action Day near you!

Sandwell Chief Exec jets off to USA on public cash

It has been revealed this week by the Express & Star that Sandwell Council will soon be doing a considerable amount of jet-setting at the expense of their ever-tolerant residents, who have also discovered today that the multi-million pound The Public gallery has yet to lease out any of its office spaces to private business.

Not only will six councillors and officers be travelling to Amsterdam on a ‘fact-finding’ mission to find out how the city de-clutters its streets (and yes, they do have internet access), but Allison Fraser, the council’s Chief Executive will be flying off to sunnier climes in Florida USA for a ‘self-awareness’ training course.

The course, run by Avatar, promises a journey of self-exploration, with the following learning benefits:

- Allison will be more likeable and able to like herself more (although others may find themselves less taken with her).
- Allison will be more real and authentic.
- Allison will learn to protect herself against the abrasions of the world (and perhaps to ignore the disastrous failings of the council she presides over).
- Allison will gain a connection with the undefined self.
- Allison will obtain the keys to successfully operate in the world.

If such psychobabble seems familiar, it’s because Avatar was founded by Harry Palmer, a former Scientology missionary who devised the “Avatar theory” during a prolonged session in a flotation tank. If such sessions generally give rise to ways of making money hand-over-fist for peddling intangible mumbo jumbo, then perhaps Allison would be better having one of those, because Sandwell Council could certainly use the cash.

The chief executive has already completed stage one of the course in Germany, and her more real and authentic self will join her undefined self for the second stage of the course in Florida.

Oh, and far from staying in some squalid kibbutz-style set-up in order to fortify herself from worldly abrasions, she’ll be put-up at he International Drive resort, billed as one of the most “dynamic vacation destinations” the like of which most Sandwell residents could only dream of…

It isn’t just the cost, it isn’t just the location, it isn’t just the fact that this course teaches pancake-deep, self-indulgent drivel, and it isn’t even the fact that this £5k buys absolutely nothing for residents in Oldbury, West Bromwich, Smethwick, Tipton etc. that makes it such an affront. It’s the attitude of these executive officers who’ve become so detached from life in Sandwell that they’ve actually convinced themselves that this is a worthwhile and value for money project, and cannot see just how insulting this is to hardworking taxpayers in the Borough, many of whom have cancelled summer holidays in their efforts to make ends meet.

Wobbly Business Link West Midlands in trouble again

Over twenty advisors at Business Link West Midlands are facing the chop as the quango is accused of underachieving and consequently failing the very business community it was set-up to assist (Birmingham Post).

The staff have been put on 30-day gardening leave whilst the Institute of Directors carries out a consultation expected to conclude on 19th September.

Business Link West Midlands have ping-ponged from one disastrous situation to another by the sounds of things, and when its various strands merged last year, their own staff were accusing it of wasting taxpayers’ money.

Worse still, the business community, far from queuing out the door to receive the organisation’s restorative advice, actually gave the quango a wide-birth and subsequently its then Chief Executive, David Draycott, resigned as plans to shed 150 office staff and advisers were announced.

Fair to say, things weren’t going swimmingly.

Enter Advantage West Midlands, who (predictably) fund this failing operation, and made efforts to rescue it by “parachuting in secondees at management level”, no doubt equipped with financial defibrillators, in an all-out attempt to bring it back to life. But did they really achieve anything?

Unfortunately it seems Business Link West Midlands is still in trouble, new Chief Executive Alison White explaining that they have now ‘looked at’ the client-facing side of the organisation to ensure they give the best advice. This very much implies that this was a problem area, and yet Business Link’s mandate is (in its own words) to provide “support, information and advice”, so it looks as though Ms White’s carefully worded comments are actually a euphemism trying to cover the fact that they’ve been offering sub-standard "information and advice".

The subtext of the article really doesn’t take much analysis: the offerings of Business Link West Midlands have been so misleading that the organisation has been potentially damaging for business in the area.   

Despite this fiasco the Chief Executive remains improbably optimistic; commenting that “we have strong aspirations to become the best publicly funded business support organisation in the country”. 

There’s nothing wrong with a little positivity, but if they were to review their own business as they’ve tried to review other private businesses, they may well find an organisation beyond resuscitation that continues to devour money from the public purse and yet produces very few real results.

Just how much more of this shuffling around will be allowed to go on before the viability of Business Link West Midlands is seriously called in to question? And how much more money can AWM justify sinking into a quickly deteriorating, black-hole of a quango, before they pull the plug?

Dudley Council spend £1m on elaborate publicity

The Express & Star has revealed today that Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council spent almost £1m on public relations during the last financial year.

Taxpayers’ shelled out £945,000 to promote the council’s image to…well…themselves. This included the total wage bill of £680,000 for no less than 18 press officers and £265,000 in running costs.

Though this outlay has been criticised as ‘incredible’, the council finance chief has defended it as value for money.

The article doesn’t go to great lengths to describe what initiatives this cash has been spent on, but the indication is that a chunk of the cost went towards “a series of ads, posters and leaflets featuring the character of Direct Dave”, which we are informed were “produced and circulated at taxpayers’ expense”.

Direct Dave, no doubt hilarious to his creator, seems (bizarrely) to be styled on Crocodile Dundee, and is presumably supposed to give residents a chuckle as they ponder the various ways in which they can pay their ever increasing council tax.

And it seems that Dudley are loathe to promote anything without a gimmick, as the article also mentioned the “Don’t Dirty Dudley” campaign – warning that dropping litter or leaving dog mess around will result in a £50 fine – which was launched by television’s Kim & Aggie, who are unlikely to have waved the appearance fee and the what they’d expect to earn from allowing the council to produce a range of promotional literature with their images on it. 

Plugging “Don’t Dirty Dudley” into Google brings up an old press release from the launch of this enterprise (if you could really call it that) which gives a good idea of what sort lame and pointless PR exercises these 18 press officers are wasting this vast budget on.

Apologies to anyone who finds this give-away remotely appealing.

What cleaning ladies and books (or indeed small cardboard page-markers) have in common with someone getting a £50 fine for dropping a Twix wrapper or not using a pooper-scoop, is surely now completely unclear to anyone in possession of a rational mind. 

Regardless of the peculiar characters Dudley Council are using to communicate with their public, there’s little doubt that this is an expensive and elaborate way to express relatively straight-forward public messages. What is more, it’s worrying for residents that the council finance chief would defend this as value for money, and unfortunately this attitude indicates that taxpayers’ in Dudley can look forward to more zany advertising campaigns paid for with council tax money that they, in many cases, can’t really afford to give.   

Sweet home Birmingham, Alabama

First we had central government mistaking Newcastle-Under-Lyme for Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, now Birmingham City Council has gone one better and failed to recognise their own city.

If you live in Birmingham you will be receiving – or may have already received – a Birmingham City Council leaflet, complete with information on just how and when to recycle your household waste. The flyer urges you to keep your city green and tidy, and as a reminder of just what you’re rummaging through your bins for, a photograph of Brum in all her glory…

But hang on a second, where’s the Rotunda? The BT tower? Or Selfridges for that matter? Where’s the Beetham Tower, visible for miles? This city doesn’t look like Birmingham at all. It doesn’t even look British!

That’s because it’s not British, or even European, but it is Birmingham. Birmingham, Alabama, USA.

That’s correct, after printing no less than 720,000 recycling leaflets for the whole of the city, it took a local resident from Kings Norton to point out the obvious: that some lackadaisical staff member at BCC had clearly had one eye on the clock as they Googled for an image of Birmingham, and from that point on, right until the proof of the leaflet was okay-d with the printer, no-one at the city council happened to notice that they were promoting a green agenda for a city 4,000 miles away.

So just how could the press office turn this one around? What gem could the anonymous spokesman offer to help us realise that the mistake is ours, not theirs?  

The following lame excuse for spin is as close as Birmingham City Council is ever going to get to admitting their complete incompetence:

“There’s no point tinkering with it…it’s a generic skyline picture. The picture on the leaflet is meant to symbolically represent an urban area”.

So Birmingham, Alabama is meant to symbolically represent an urban area like Birmingham in the UK? Hmmm. That’s what we pay their salaries for folks!

We’re assured these things aren’t going to be recalled and pulped, so at least this ineptitude isn’t going to cost us all extra, but nevertheless, it really does speak volumes of the attention to detail and level of service provided by this local authority.

High cost of policing biker bash falls to residents

Last year Canadian biker Gerry Tobin was shot dead by fellow bikers on the M40 after attending the annual ‘Bulldog Bash’ in Warwickshire. This year the cost of policing the event will be a staggering £1.4million.

Although the police are refusing to give exact details on just how this money will be spent, The Coventry Telegraph reports that:

“Most of the huge bill will go to pay for thousands of extra police man-hours and will include paying officers from neighbouring forces who will be drafted in.
Officers are expected to be on constant guard. They also intend to monitor every one of the thousands of visitors at the festival and will be using special automatic number-plate recognition equipment to alert them to would-be troublemakers.
Stop and searches will also take place at two locations near the site and some roads will be closed while the festival is on”.

To put the cost of this into perspective, the policing of last year’s event cost a fraction of this amount at £97,639.

Tobin’s murder has cast a shadow over this event which is perhaps unjustified, and no doubt thousands of bikers will arrive in Warwickshire for the four day stint intent on nothing but a good time. Local business most probably prospers from the trade and it’s likely that in years gone by the Bulldog Bash has been a real asset for the local community and it’s tourism, but this level of policing can only change the tone of what no doubt started as an innocent summer gathering for the biking community.

£1.4million of policing translates as a presence so heavy and so oppressive that it can only be disruptive and unwelcome, as well as intimidating for local residents. And what if something happens regardless and the security needs to be upped once more next year? Will this festival be preserved at any cost to the taxpayer? Surely ordinary residents can’t be expected to shell out more year on year for something that benefits so few?

There’s little doubt that the events organisers should be expected to shell out for any extra security, and if this results in inflated ticket prices, so be it. Perhaps the prospect of increasingly expensive tickets would act as a deterrent to those thinking of causing trouble.

Most people aren’t so familiar with the biking community, and even less so with the murky underworld of criminality that is often associated with it, so to ask residents in Warwickshire to shoulder the vast cost of hosting something that is now quite clearly considered to be a hostile and dangerous event is both unfair and ridiculous. 

Stafford make cutbacks

Stafford Borough Council are publicising the fact that they plan to axe 8 cashier jobs, at a total saving of £80,000 per annum, ending the option for residents to make cash payments at council offices in an effort to encourage them to pay their bills by direct debit or credit card.

Although it's heartening that this council are willing to make cutbacks and promote greater efficiency in order to save public money, it seems that Stafford are missing the opportunity to save much more by trimming back on their growing middle-management.

Our Council Spending Series showed that the cost of managers on £50k per year nearly quadrupled at Stafford Borough Council between 1997 and 2007, with more than three times as many executives being recruited in 2007 for jobs that simply didn’t exist in 1997.

What is more, their spending on council publicity rose by 102.9% over the same time period.

Our Ten Percent Challenge showed that by shaving just 10% off what Stafford Borough Council spend on publicity, middle-management and employer contributions to the staff pension pot they stand to save £225,600.

It’s good that this council are looking at how they can save, but if they’re really serious about giving residents value for money there’s much more they can, and should, do.

Bridge plans dropped after five years

Stratford-Upon-Avon, famed birthplace of William Shakespeare, is probably one of the most beautiful towns in the country, so it’s understandable that local residents would be particularly protective of its distinctive medieval streets and picturesque river views. When, in 2003, Warwickshire County Council and Advantage West Midlands-funded sub-quango World Class Stratford put forward proposals for and new footbridge across the Avon, the local population instinctively knew that the £2million plans were all wrong and united in their opposition.

In four separate local polls the proposals for the bridge were rejected, and yet the county council and World Class Stratford rode-roughshod over public opinion and pushed on regardless. Over the next five years Stratfordians campaigned passionately against the bridge proposals, led by residents group Stratford Voice, and at the end of March this year a vote was attended by over 20,000 people who voted overwhelmingly (88%) for these plans to be dropped.

This result was barely acknowledged by local leaders. In the meantime, the predicted cost of the footbridge rose to £3.3million.

At the council elections in May this dissatisfaction surfaced once again, with the ruling Conservative council feeling the backlash and loosing five seats, completely counter to the national trend.

Last week Stratford Voice member and West Midlands TaxPayers’ Alliance supporter, David Bowie, got in touch to say that after all this time and £312,000 the plans have been quietly dropped by the council and World Class Stratford.

Time, effort, designs, consultations, polling – so much time, energy and money has been spent by both the local residents campaigning in opposition, and local government-funded bodies, doggedly continuing with this bridge project. If these bodies had actually listened to the needs and wants of their local population in the first place these five years of pointless activity could have been avoided.

At least the people of Stratford had the opportunity to remind their elected officials who put them their in the first place and exactly whom they are answerable to, but there can be little doubt that these highly unpopular plans survived so long for being championed and largely funded by an unelected local quango who were themselves impervious to public opinion.   

It is most worrying that a body like World Class Stratford could wield enough power to push local councils on against their better judgement, and though Stratfordians have ultimately emerged victorious from this hard fought and prolonged fight, it shouldn’t be too long before AWM are flexing their financial muscle once more and attempting to leave their mark on this vulnerable town. 

Fingerprinting and a city centre smoking ban: Birmingham City Council spends your money

Today The Stirrer followed up on a story reported there yesterday about children at Birmingham schools having their fingerprints taken in order to eat a school meal. The website became aware of the procedure after being contacted by a parent who felt concerned that this contravened civil liberties.

As is turns out this system is in place at Bournville School, a state-run comprehensive, and is being introduced this coming October at Camp Hill School for Girls, a selective grammar school in the city, and though the term 'fingerprinting' has been replaced with "finger-based ID scheme", presumably to avoid any undertones of criminality, one of the stated reasons for introducing this clandestine system is to avoid the theft of the swipe cards used to purchase food at lunch.

  So the school has a problem with theft, and the way they choose to address it is by fingerprinting everyone else? Hmmm, familiar. And in the meantime the thieves are still at large, and have themselves only been inconvienienced by having to diversify in what they steal.

Those defending the scheme have said that it will also give schools and parents the opportunity to monitor what youngsters are eating...

Birmingham City Council clearly want to keep the scheme at arms-length, saying that the decision to adopt it is for individual schools and their governing bodies to make, but they've hardly shyed away from freedom-eroding measures this week with the Birmingham Mail revealing council plans for the city centre to become 'smoke free'.

Though there are no official plans for the social pariahs that are smokers to wear cow-bells yet, it has been proposed by the city's "public protection committee" (in place to save us from ourselves) that the ban on smoking inside public buildings should be extended on to the street in certain 'zones' in much the same way as alcohol has been. Councillors now want Government approval in order to trial the zones, with a view to becoming the UK's first 'smoke free' city.

Obviously local bar, pub and restaurant owners are hardly jumping for joy at the prospect of another pronounced slump in their trade, and smokers will be wondering what the next stage of coercion will be.

In truth, the comparisons with alcohol restricted zones are not at all valid. You may not be allowed to knock back alcohol on the public streets, but you are encouraged to do so inside a pub, and obviously the reverse is true with the current smoking ban. If these further proposals were introduced without any sort of ban on the sale of tobacco, residents are looking at an absurd situation where they may buy a packet of cigarettes in a city centre shop but have to smuggle them home to smoke.

Regardless of the endless to-ing and fro-ing over the efficacy of the smoking ban, there are two important issues here. Firstly, that the streets of Birmingham city centre are not under the outright ownership of Birmingham City Council, they were built over generations by and for the people of Birmingham who bought and paid for them with tax pounds, and the city council is in place as a custodian. In this capacity, and bearing in mind the passive effects of smoking are all but dissipated by the outdoor air,  their jurisdiction to shoo away law-abiding citizens for choosing to indulge in something they aren't very keen on should certainly be questioned.

Secondly, taxpayers' money should spent on those things that make a real difference to local residents' lives - well-run frontline services and tax cuts. Surely the fingerprinting of innocent children is beyond the mandate of the local authority? Birmingham City Council doesn't seem to care, and has clearly spent council time and ploughed public money into researching, debating and introducing these intrusive and restrictive measures. Its blind amibition to forge a unique identity for itself as a city means that this won't be the last we hear of it becoming the UK's first 'smoke free city' either, even if many of the shoo-ees will be paying for the shoo-ers to make the case against them.

Birmingham might endlessly boast of it's fairly unimpressive oxymoronic "low rise" of 1.9% on council tax, but taxpayers have every right to despair when they learn about such needless, controlling and expensive schemes being mooted at their (considerable) expense. 

Coventry staff cash in on carbon cutting

The big wigs at Coventry City Council are pretty serious about climate change. They’ve developed a comprehensive Climate Change Strategy, they have Nigel Lee and Gary Ridley acting as two of the country’s first very ‘climate change councillors’ with specific responsibility for climate change issues, and the website is dotted with inspiring pictures of unidentified council-types enthusiastically brandishing inflatable globes.

All of this is carefully constructed to let local residents know that if and when the forecasted climate apocalypse does strike, Coventry City Council will be blameless.

Inevitably though, some madcap ideas have surfaced alongside perfectly reasonable suggestions, and today’s Coventry Telegraph reports that the city council has launched a ‘carbon hotline’ for the exclusive use of local authority staff.

The 17,000 employees will be encouraged to call the line with their ‘carbon cutting suggestions’, and so it appears that a council offering environmental advice and assistance to private business (via their own team of expert consultants) now need to seek further advice from their completely unqualified personnel.

And if a member of staff does suggest a decent carbon cutting measure, their reward won’t be limited to the warm fuzzy feeling that comes from helping the environment; indeed, all accepted suggestions will result in a hard cash award for whoever proposed the measure. The council haven’t said exactly how much, but Nigel Lee casually suggests that it could be a ‘percentage of the savings’.

So taxpayers pay for the hotline, they pay for the environmental consultants and the climate change councillors, they pay for the general staff anyway (including for the time they spend ignoring their actual job trying to dream up carbon cutting measures), and what happens if one of these people actually comes up trumps and contributes something that makes a saving? Well we give them some more cash from the public purse.

Perhaps the council needs to establish what qualifies as an actual saving after all this expenditure has been taken into account?

Without intending to insult the intelligence of Coventry City Council general staff, I doubt many of them are scientists specialising in climate change or environmental issues, and therefore many of their suggestions are more than likely going to be lifted from the internet or picked up from another external source, so why can’t those who are receiving taxpayers’ money to investigate climate change issues do the research, save the other 17,000 the time, and save local residents the cost of this ridiculous hotline?