Two vacancies have emerged on Camden Council’s Standards Committee for independent residents or members of the public who work in Camden. 

This is an ideal opportunity for TPA activists to hold Camden Councillors to account and see that they abide by the council’s code of conduct. 

This may not have a direct effect on Camden Council’s tax and spending policy, but you will play a valuable role in holding them to account.  Are they misusing taxpayer-funded council property?  Have they voted for an eye watering pay increase, yet not increased their workload accordingly?  There are plenty of questions you can ask to defend the taxpayer’s interest.

You find out more and apply here.

Please do get involved.  It’s up to us to change things, and change starts with you rolling up your sleeves and telling the politicians they’re public servants, not the masters of the people!

Taxpayers celebrate in Edinburgh last night

When we published the second Council Spending Uncovered paper on councils’ massive publicity spending, Edinburgh City Council came in for quite a bit of criticism when it was revealed they were the biggest spender on spin in Scotland – splashing out £3.4m a year.

So I was delighted to read this article in last night’s Edinburgh Evening News:

SPENDING REVELATION LEADS TO CITY SPIN DOCTOR REVIEW

AN independent review of the city council’s public relations department is to be launched to ensure it is run efficiently.

The measure, which could lead to cutbacks, comes after it was discovered the local authority spends more on publicity and spin doctors than any other council in Scotland.

Figures published by The Taxpayers Alliance showed the council spent GBP 3.37 million on public relations in 2006/7 – up 118.4 per cent on 1996/7.

The cash has been spent on measures such as press officers, adverts and Outlook, the council’s free newspaper.

The council’s head of corporate communications, Isabell Reid, said: "It’s important to us that both the members and the people of Edinburgh have confidence we are delivering an efficient and cost-effective service."

If this a genuine review that is seriously looking to make savings, it is great news for Edinburgh’s taxpayers. It is also an encouraging message for everyone campaigning with the TPA – we are making a difference.

The thinking behind the Council Spending Uncovered series has always been that people deserve to know how their money is being spent, and that taxpayers should be allowed to make their own minds up as to whether their local council’s spending is justified.

We’ve drawn attention to some areas where we think savings can be made on the basis that if taxpayers agree it will put sufficient pressure on councils to tighten things up. There are also many councillors out there whose instinct is to save money and cut out waste but find themselves faced with such a big job, and sometimes with obstructive Officers, that savings can be difficult to pin down. By offering a few suggestions, we hope we can help willing councils to move in the right direction and marshall sufficient public pressure to force even unwilling authorities to make savings.

Edinburgh’s decision vindicates that thinking – and congratulations are due to them for doing the best thing for their taxpayers. Of course it doesn’t end here; we will be keeping an eagle eye out to see what savings are actually made as a result of the review, and this is the first step on a long road to relieving the appalling burden on taxpayers. Now we’ve shown the power of this kind of campaigning, though, these kind of victories will be repeated. Taxpayers One – Councils Nil.

Click here for the full text of the letter sent by the TaxPayers’ Alliance to Mr John Lyon, Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, requesting an investigation into Michael Martin MP, Speaker of the House of Commons, regarding taxi expenses and alleged attempts by someone in his department to mislead the public over expenses claims:

Download 080225_michael_martin_mp.pdf

Being an activist in the TPA means you’re not just joining a political pressure group, you’re a guerrilla in our taxpayers’ army.  We want to equip you with all you need to be able to hold your politicians to account as well as securing victories for the taxpayer.  With our national grassroots campaign we’re out to see that you can win victories for your community.  This chapter in our activist guide can help you with direct lobbying, that is pressuring politicians to do what you want them to do!

As a vindication of our ‘story creating’ chapter in the activist guide, we were alerted to the potential councillor pay rise on offer at Bournemouth Council.  Seeing this, I blogged but thought that we could go further.  Comments on the Bournemouth Echo website were extraordinarily hostile to the pay deal.  Yet complaining on a website wouldn’t help.  We had to go directly to the councillors, show the force of our numbers and introduce them to the reality on the ground – taxpayers were not happy with Bournemouth Council increasing Council Tax and increasing their pay.  It just wasn’t on.

Therefore we rallied TPA activists to lobby and persuade councillors to vote against the pay deal.  We may not have defeated the pay deal, but we pushed the opposition on the council to endorsing an independent, taxpayer remuneration panel so that such ridiculous increases can never happen again. 

Our problem was we didn’t have enough activists lobbying Bournemouth Council.  We should have had so many people email Bournemouth Council that their system should have crashed under the weight of our emails.  They should have known the minute they logged into their email account that they were facing electoral disaster if they voted for that pay increase.  That is what we need.  That is your job.  This can be your victory.

This is your campaign to stop the taxman taking your money.  When set piece events such as a crucial vote at Full Council arise, set up your own lobby campaign.  Here’s how to get a lobbying campaign going where you can potentially save the taxpayer money:

1. Let me know of the story at HQ so we can draft in activists nationwide to help you and raise interest in local media.  But we’ll be relying on you to build the campaign up.
2. Find out when the issue affecting your borough is to be voted and where, is it on at a committee, Cabinet or full council meeting?  This way we know how long we have to lobby and who we have to contact.
3. Find out the contact details of the councillors you need to lobby.  You can find out either by going to the ‘Your Council’ area on the council website or by contacting the ‘Democratic Services’ department at your local council.
4. When communicating with councillors, be polite.  We have the moral high ground by the virtue of our arguments, there’s no need to give it away with abusive language.
5. Then you’re set.  Tell your friends, colleagues and neighbours to get lobbying; you have all the information you need to hand.  You’ve made it simple to contact your local councillors and given anyone interested a timeframe to contact your councillors.  Councillors will react to constituent emails first, as is the case from our Bournemouth campaign so your role is extremely important in recruiting local activists to get involved.  Remember:  Politicians only fear losing!  So the more people in your community you get on board, the greater likelihood they will listen!
6. After sending the initial communication, wait a day or until you get a response.  Then fire off your enquiry again.  But keep it simple.  Ask them how they will vote, why they will vote that way and if they will consider changing their mind.
7. Finally:  Never give up!  Our campaign can only get stronger if we can tell taxpayers that we’ve saved communities an £X value.  This shows our campaign is working and that your activism in the TPA gets real results.

There must be hundreds of instances where your council is voting to throw away yet more of your money.  Be it on their expenses, salaries or perks, or on pointless pork-barrel projects, their votes make it happen.  You can change their vote; you can save the taxpayer money.  For too long I heard the phrase “nothing will ever change”, that political action is pointless.  Then I looked around, I looked long and hard at the people telling me nothing will ever change, and saw how they would give in whenever they faced difficulty.  The politicians live the high life, services decline while taxes soar.  They never acted and they suffered the consequences.

Are you going to give in and open your wallet to your council or government to take whatever they want whenever they like?  Or are you going to stand up and do your bit?  Political action needn’t be the deferring defeat to the political class, it can make a real difference to your community.

Bournemouth Council, in all its arrogance, voted itself the proposed pay deal we tirelessly campaigned against over the past two weeks.  Last Thursday the Council awarded themselves a 17% pay increase, the Cabinet gave themselves an astonishing 32% pay increase and the leader awarded himself a 34% pay increase.  In the same meeting, the Council voted for a 4.9% Council Tax increase, the maximum amount given the 5% cap imposed on councils.  You don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to know where your Council Tax rise is going.

Despite persistent lobbying from hard-working TaxPayers’ Alliance activists and campaigners, we managed to rally the opposition on Bournemouth Council to stand against these rises recommended by an independent panel which, as it turned out, wasn’t that independent at all. 

Bournemouth Council is yet to publish online the minutes for the Full Council meeting, but nevertheless if you are still unaware how your councillor voted you can click the link here to find your councillor’s contact details.  Already the Bournemouth Echo story reporting the massive pay hike has 94 comments from apoplectic taxpayers demanding action over such snout-in-the-trough greed.  Feel free to add your disgust at this prime example of gravy-train politics.

If you’re angry, then help us form a Bournemouth branch of the TaxPayers’ Alliance.  If you want to hold these politicians to account, then join us and contact me to get involved.  We showed Bournemouth Council our strength in the sheer number of activists who lobbied and contacted Bournemouth councillors to protest against the pay increases.  Although we didn’t get the result we wanted, we came close as I understand there were wobbles from several Tory councillors who knew just how unpopular this pay deal was.  With your help next time, with your input we can force the politicians to climb down and see that you, the taxpayer, have had a direct say over how they spend your money.  Nothing will change if you don’t get involved!

SEE UPDATE AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PAGE

Tonight at 7PM Bournemouth Council vote on their allowances, which we have been campaigning and lobbying against for the past week.  Thanks go to Jonathan Sheppard, Peter Roberts, Christopher Way, Linda Berkeley, Vivienne Reed, Ed Hallam, Mohammed Hasan, John Sheperd and many others who helped lobby for lower taxes and against such outrageous salaries for a council Cabinet clearly failing the taxpayers in Bournemouth.

Yet, tonight we also see another example of local government snouts in the trough.  We were alerted to this story by TPA supporter Robert Halfon.

Harlow Council will vote at their full council this evening on their medium term financial strategy.  As part of this strategy is a cost cutting measure.  That cost cutting measure involves the top 10 officers earmarking themselves almost £100,000 for a "pay review" before 2010.  Do you see the problem? 

In addition to this, £98,000 has also been set aside for future pay increases for senior officers.  Finally, and this is all we know from the story so God knows what we’ll find when we dig around, a further £106,000 is allocated for the possibility of a vacant strategic director post to be filled after 2009.  You can read the full story here.

We’ve well in Bournemouth, and who knows we might even win tonight, so let’s do even more in Harlow to keep the momentum going.  This is your money going into the pockets of Council officers, unaccountable bureaucrats taking more and more money from frontline services, the services you expect and demand.  The Audit Commission only give Harlow Council 2-stars for the handling of its finances and providing value for money, so this is hardly surprising.  Now is the time for you to make yet another stand for your rights as taxpayers.  Here is a list of every councillor in Harlow, please contact them and ask them to vote against this shocking pay hike for Town Hall fat cats:

Cllr Sean Folan (Labour) – (01279) 427575 / [email protected]
Cllr Leslie Rideout (Lib Dem) – (01279) 437541 / [email protected]
Cllr Robert Thurston (Lib Dem) – (01279) 864777 / [email protected]
Cllr Simon Carter (Con) – (01279) 429443 / [email protected]
Cllr Tony Hall (Con) – (01279) 445897 / [email protected]
Cllr Andrew Johnson (Con) – (01279) 865673 / [email protected]
Cllr Rob Eschle (Labour) – (01279) 425785 / [email protected]
Cllr Eleanor Macey (Lib Dem) – (01279) 324193 / [email protected]
Cllr Christopher Millington (Lib Dem) – (01279) 864777 / [email protected]
Cllr Michael Garnett (Con) – (01279) 437401 / [email protected]
Cllr Muriel Jolles (Con) – (01279) 432242 / [email protected]
Cllr Sue Livings (Con) – (01279) 422339 / [email protected]
Cllr Jean Clark (Labour) – (01279) 423474 / [email protected]
Cllr Anthony Durcan (Labour) – 07967 138663 / [email protected].
Cllr Mike Danvers (Labour) – 01279 425934 / [email protected]
Cllr Margaret Hulcoop (Labour) – (01279) 452252 / [email protected]
Cllr Gregory Peck (Labour) – (01279) 433604 / [email protected]
Cllr Mark Wilkinson (Labour) – 07866 433991 / [email protected]
Cllr Eddie Johnson (Con) – (01279) 324689 / [email protected]
Cllr Joshua Jolles (Con) – (01279) 432242 / [email protected]
Cllr Patrick McClarnon (Labour) – (01279) 441702 / patrick.mcclarnon@harlow.gov[email protected]
Cllr Ian Jackson (Lib Dem) – (01279) 416138 / [email protected]
Cllr Linda Pailing (Lib Dem) – (01279) 305802 / [email protected]
Cllr Edna Stevens (Labour) – (01279) 324183 / [email protected]
Cllr Su Lawton (Lib Dem) – (01279) 300938 / [email protected]
Cllr Lorna Spenceley (Lib Dem) – (01279) 324676 / [email protected]
Cllr Lee Dangerfield (Con) – (01279) 833515 / [email protected]
Cllr Nicholas Churchill (Con) – (01279) 621094 / [email protected]
Cllr John Paul Goddard (Independent) – (01279) 416455 / [email protected]
Cllr Sarah-Jane Dangerfield (Con) – (01279) 8335515 / [email protected]
Cllr Kevin Brooks (Labour) – (01279) 302856 / [email protected]
Cllr Bob Davis (Labour) – (01279) 319117 / [email protected]
Cllr David Carter (Con) – (01279) 420340  / [email protected]

A few points to note:

1. Independent councillor John Paul Goddard is quoted in the story as wanting to block the pay increases
2. This is a matter of taxpayers’ money being misspent
3. Harlow Council is no overall control, so use that to your advantage when lobbying the councillors to vote against this pay increase for council bureaucrats.

Keep up the great work, folks and spread the message.  The more people we have involved in our grassroots campaigns, the stronger we will be and the more the politicians will listen.  Now, once more into the breach…

UPDATE:

It appears that, after an outcry, the council have overturned these plans for big pay rises.  False alarm.

This Thursday will see Bournemouth Council vote on its pay increases we detail here.  Since last Thursday we’ve been lobbying hard for the full council to reconsider this plan and we have to keep up the pressure.  How can it be right that a council loses a star rating from the Audit Commission then uses a 4.9% Council Tax increase to push their salaries up by well over 17% for councillors, and 30%+ for the cabinet.

In the real world, if you or I don’t get results – we lose our jobs.  Yet Bournemouth’s Cabinet think they can get away with rewarding failure.

Not on my watch!

If you’re free on Thursday evening and live in or around Bournemouth, please go to the Full Council on Thursday 21 February at 7PM and sit in the public gallery, as is your right.  You can also put a question to Bournemouth Council’s Cabinet by simply emailing [email protected] with your question on councillor pay BY 6PM TONIGHT.

Ask them why they want to reward failure with taxpayers’ money!

You can find travel directions here and a map to the Town Hall here.

Please turn up and make your voice heard.  But also if you can’t turn up, please continue to lobby Bournemouth’s councillors.  You can find the contact details of those we have not heard replies from here.

It’s times like these that we can challenge the mistaken belief that you can’t change anything in politics.  We’re close to achieving a breakthrough for direct taxpayer lobbying, normal people campaigning to stop politicians wasting our money.  You can make that change.  By just taking that small amount of time in your day to lobby Bournemouth Council, you could save the taxpayer money.  Not bad for 10 minutes work…

There’s been a lot of coverage given to the latest proposal from "public health expert" and Chairman of Health England Professor Julian Le Grand, namely that the smoking ban has not gone far enough and smokers should have to buy a licence to purchase tobacco in future.

Even if we ignore the unparalleled idiocy questionable logic of calling one’s philosophy "libertarian paternalism" (presumably drawn from the fine intellectual tradition of free market Communism and tolerant racism), the idea is unpleasant even in its implementation.

Smokers have to pay £10 on top of the existing tobacco duty, but that would only be one thrust of the deterrent. He actually intends to put the awkwardness and incompetence of public sector bureaucracy to use deliberately – the licence service will be unco-operative and hard to use on purpose:

He said it was the inconvenience of getting a permit – as much as the cost – that would deter people from persisting with the smoking habit.

"You’ve got to get a form, a complex form – the government’s good at complex forms; you have got to get a photograph." (BBC News Online)

Since when did the thorny tangle of government forms become a good thing? We should be moving away from complex, difficult bureaucracy, not deliberately expanding it.

Whilst he’s utterly wrong on almost all counts, it is at least notable that an NHS agency has just admitted on record that the public sector has an appalling habit of setting up impenetrable forms that put people off using services.

Presumably the message was approved by the other members of Health Britain, on whose behalf Prof Le Grand speaks, in which case the Chief Executive of NICE, the Deputy Chief Medical Officer, the Department of Health’s Chief Economist, Chief Knowledge Officer and Director General of Social Care and 13 other leading civil servants and experts have also just diagnosed the real problem with healthcare in this country – bureaucracy. Whilst it’s a refreshingly open diagnosis, it is somewhat depressing that they have decided to encourage the disease rather than cure it.

There’s been a lot of coverage given to the latest proposal from "public health expert" and Chairman of Health England Professor Julian Le Grand, namely that the smoking ban has not gone far enough and smokers should have to buy a licence to purchase tobacco in future.

Even if we ignore the unparalleled idiocy questionable logic of calling one’s philosophy "libertarian paternalism" (presumably drawn from the fine intellectual tradition of free market Communism and tolerant racism), the idea is unpleasant even in its implementation.

Smokers have to pay £10 on top of the existing tobacco duty, but that would only be one thrust of the deterrent. He actually intends to put the awkwardness and incompetence of public sector bureaucracy to use deliberately – the licence service will be unco-operative and hard to use on purpose:

He said it was the inconvenience of getting a permit – as much as the cost – that would deter people from persisting with the smoking habit.

"You’ve got to get a form, a complex form – the government’s good at complex forms; you have got to get a photograph." (BBC News Online)

Since when did the thorny tangle of government forms become a good thing? We should be moving away from complex, difficult bureaucracy, not deliberately expanding it.

Whilst he’s utterly wrong on almost all counts, it is at least notable that an NHS agency has just admitted on record that the public sector has an appalling habit of setting up impenetrable forms that put people off using services.

Presumably the message was approved by the other members of Health Britain, on whose behalf Prof Le Grand speaks, in which case the Chief Executive of NICE, the Deputy Chief Medical Officer, the Department of Health’s Chief Economist, Chief Knowledge Officer and Director General of Social Care and 13 other leading civil servants and experts have also just diagnosed the real problem with healthcare in this country – bureaucracy.

Dear TPA supporters,

Thank you to all those who lobbied Bournemouth’s councillors this past weekend over their pay deal that would see their salaries rise by 17%, the cabinet by 32% and the leader by 34%.  This pay deal comes after Bournemouth council dropped a star to a 2 star rating from the Audit Commission, compared to 83% of other councils who have 3 or more stars.  We can’t allow councils like Bournemouth to use taxpayers’ money to reward failure! 

As a result of our lobbying, the following councillors have declared they will vote against the pay deal:

Basil Ratcliffe
Pat Lewis
Claire Smith 
Richard Smith
Roger West
Carol Ainge
Sue Levell
Ronald Whittaker

Therefore can I ask that you no longer lobby these councillors and concentrate on those that haven’t replied to emails or are wavering?

Some councillors have yet to make up their mind.  Please make these points to the undecided councillors to express taxpayers’ frustration at the pay deal:
(a) The Independent Remuneration Panel only makes unbinding recommendations to councillors on their pay – they can reject the deal.
(b) Bournemouth can lead the way in delivering taxpayer value for money by rejecting the pay deal.
(c) The government can barely afford to give front line public servants – police and teachers – more money.  What message does it send when councillors give themselves a 17% pay increase?
(d) If they reply asking if you’re a constituent, be honest.  Even if you don’t live in Bournemouth, your taxes go to fund local government under the granting system.  This is not just a local issue and they should have to explain how a pay increase of 17, 32 and 34% would be value for money and see an increase in councillor activity by such rates. 
(e) Finally, if they will vote for the pay deal, ask them if Bournemouth council’s level of service will go up by the same percentage.

The wavering councillors you should direct these points to are:

Cllr Robert Lawton (Con) – 07974 215933 / [email protected]
Cllr Andrew Morgan (Con) – [email protected]
Cllr Rod Cooper (Con) – [email protected]

All other councillors are yet to respond, so please keep lobbying them.  You can find the contact details for the other councillors by following this link to our campaign blog.

As you can see already, we’re getting some good coverage of this campaign.  There’s only three days left for us to capitalise and lobby to get Bournemouth Council to back down over this pay deal.  Please take only five minutes of your day to contact Bournemouth’s councillors and fight on behalf of Bournemouth’s taxpayers. 

Thank you for all your help and efforts, keep up the excellent work!

Best wishes,

Tim Aker
Grassroots Coordinator
www.taxpayersalliance.com

…may well be HM Revenue and Customs, now that the Serious Crime Act has come into power, giving HMRC "across the board" powers to listen in on phone calls, intercept emails and letters and bug homes and cars. Powers that were previously only granted for investigating drug and firearms offences are going to be used against people suspected of not calculating their tax return properly. 

There are a multitude of problems with this, so many that it’s difficult to know where to start, in fact.

Let’s begin with the question of privacy and data security. HMRC, and indeed the public sector in general, hardly has a glowing record of protecting the information that it already has. If this organisation cannot be trusted with the names, addresses and bank account details of people in receipt of benefits, should we really trust them to record private conversations and open personal correspondence?

Furthermore, will they be any good at using the new powers? As I mentioned earlier, they’ve previously been able to listen in on people involved in firearms and drug crimes. Judging from the boom in both types of offence, HMRC perhaps need more time to focus on these issues rather than having a long list of other crimes to use bugging on as well.

There is very little evidence that bugging powers will actually be of any use even if HMRC suddenly became good at their job, either. How many of these small fry that the Revenue will be able to use the powers on do actually email their friends or phone their accountant to brag about their wicked ways?

The timing of the new powers is not just unfortunate given the recent collapse of confidence in HMRC, it is remarkably clumsy given recent news about the horrendous scale of bugging in Britain. Apparently more than 600 public bodies including many local councils have got intercept powers, and over 1,000 requests for intercepts and bugging are made every day. The Interception of Communciations Commissioner has already expressed concerns that over 1,000 people a year are wrongly bugged due to admin errors or monitored without proper permission.

The simple fact is that not only are these new powers intrusive, they are over-complicating HMRC’s job – a job that they have more than shown they are struggling to do properly already, and which hardly needs yet more complexity. When will they realise that simpler structures are easier to run?

Yesterday we blogged this story here about Bournemouth Council’s cabinet approving a salary deal that would see their pay skyrocket by 32%.  Within this pay package is a 36% increase for the Deputy Leader and a 34% increase for the Leader of the council, taking his salary to £36,000 a year!  These recommendations by the council’s ‘Independent’ Remuneration Panel were all passed by the Cabinet, without debate, this week.  Next week the Full Council votes on this remuneration package.  It’s up to us to lobby the council to reject this pay hike. 

If you’re living in Bournemouth, can you say that the quality of council services has gone up by 34%?  Of course not.  The Audit Commission report last week gave Bournemouth Council a mere 2 star rating.  To compare, the Audit Commission have 3 or 4 stars to 83% of all councils meaning Bournemouth Council has to justify this excessive pay rise for, what has been judged as, under performance.

Bournemouth’s taxpayers need your help.  Please take five minutes out of your day to send an email or call a Bournemouth Councillor to ask them to challenge and reject the councillor remuneration package at the next Full Council meeting on Thursday 21st February.

Below is a list of Bournemouth’s Councillors and their phone and email details.  Please call or email one, two or even all of them if you have the time and lobby them to reject the pay deal on Thursday.  If you can’t or don’t have the time to make these calls or send emails then please pass this blog onto other concerned taxpayers who want to do something about spiralling councillor salaries and high council tax.  The point is to urge these councillors to put taxpayer value-for-money first.  Politely ask the councillors to challenge the pay deal and to vote against it. 

Cllr Alexander Adams (Con) – 07968 123484 / [email protected]
Cllr Carol Ainge (Lib Dem) – [email protected]
Cllr Mark Anderson (Con) – 01202 775483 / [email protected]
Cllr Sue Anderson (Con) – 01202 397047 / [email protected]
Cllr Linda Bailey (Con) – [email protected]
Cllr Beryl Baxter (Labour) – [email protected]
Cllr John Beesley (Con) – 07860 391219 / [email protected]
Cllr Derek Borthwick (Independent) – [email protected]
Cllr Robert Chapman (Con) – 01202 532778 /  [email protected]
Cllr Stephen Chappell (Con) – [email protected]
Cllr Peter Charon (Con) – 07775556132 / 01202299996 / [email protected]
Cllr Eddie Coope (Con) – [email protected]
Cllr Elaine Cooper (Con) – [email protected]
Cllr Rod Cooper (Con) – [email protected]
Cllr Nigel Cowley (Con) – 07709 431241 / [email protected]
Cllr Sue Cowley (Con) – 07709 431241 / [email protected]
Cllr Malcolm Davies (Con) – [email protected]
Cllr Heather Drayton (Con) – [email protected]
Cllr Beverley Dunlop (Con) – 07855 395117 / [email protected]
Cllr Michael Everingham (Independent) – 0794 115 2242 / [email protected]
Cllr Anne Filer (Con) – 01202 399205 / [email protected]; [email protected]
Cllr Michael Filer (Con) – [email protected]
Cllr Barry Goldbart (Con) – 07734 211750 / [email protected]

Cllr Nicola Greene (Con) – 07961 936387 / [email protected]
Cllr Michael Griffiths (Con) – 07815 817222 / [email protected]
Cllr Ben Grower (Labour) – 07714 344635 / [email protected]
Cllr Paul Hughes (Con) – 07732 169122 / [email protected]
Cllr David Kelsey (Con) – 07816 417675 / [email protected]
Cllr Nick King (Con) – 07771727402 / [email protected]
Cllr Ian Lancashire (Con) – [email protected]
Cllr Robert Lawton (Con) – 07974 215933 / [email protected]
Cllr Sue Levell (Lib Dem) – [email protected]
Cllr Pat Lewis (Lib Dem) – 07742 900717 / [email protected]
Cllr Stephen Macloughlin (Con) – 01202 513229 / [email protected]
Cllr Jane Montrose (Con) – 07843 062222 / [email protected]
Cllr Andrew Morgan (Con) – [email protected]
Cllr Ian Newport (Con) – 07971 602296 / [email protected]
Cllr Lisa Northover (Lib Dem) – 07515355982 / [email protected]
Cllr Lynda Price (Con) – [email protected]
Cllr Basil Ratcliffe (Con) – [email protected]
Cllr Anne Rey (Independent) – 07973 814382 / [email protected]
Cllr Christopher Rochester (Con) – [email protected]
Cllr Allister Russell (Con) – [email protected]
Cllr David Shaw (Con) – 07951 511287 / [email protected]
Cllr Claire Smith (Lib Dem) – [email protected]
Cllr David Smith (Con) – 07832 186424 / [email protected]
Cllr Richard Smith (Lib Dem) – 0780 8227276 / [email protected]
Cllr Philip Stanley-Watts (Con) – [email protected]
Cllr Ted Taylor (Labour) – [email protected]
Cllr John Trickett (Con) – 07910 011239 / [email protected]
Cllr Christopher Wakefield (Con) – 07775 677162 / [email protected]
Cllr Michael Weinhonig (Con) – 07877 430667 / [email protected]
Cllr Roger West (Lib Dem) – [email protected]
Cllr Ronald Whittaker (Independent) – [email protected]

This is a test of our grassroots campaigns.  If we make enough calls to Bournemouth’s councillors and show the strength of feeling against this incredibly high pay deal at the taxpayer’s expense, we can show other councils that we won’t tolerate unjust increases elsewhere.  Please take just 5 minutes to make that call or send that email that could make all the difference.  Do let us know how many calls you’ve made and blind copy me ([email protected]) into the emails you send.  The activist who lobbies the most will get a free copy of ‘How to label a goat’ by Ross Clark as a way to thank you for your dedication. 

Finally, pass on this blog to anyone interested who might want to get involved in our grassroots campaign for lower taxes.  This is your campaign, it’s time we made our voice heard!