The TaxPayers' Alliance - Campaign

Why are they here - at our expense?

There is always a huge amount going at the party conferences, and this year's Tory conference in Birmingham (where I'm blogging from) is no different. Certainly for the TPA we've had a whirlwind of leafleting, networking and promoting the tax cuts message.

In between the main conference events and the numerous fringe meetings, though, are a range of stands and stalls. We had one on Monday to sign up supporters, distribute information about the TPA and dish out our latest bit of TPA kit, a nifty torch pen that projects "TAX CUTS PLEASE", which have proved extremely popular.

In fact, a lot of organisations have got them - charities, pressure groups, internal Tory organisations, businesses and so on. Why, though, are there public sector organisations here, paid for by the taxpayer?

At a quick glance I can spot at least 11 public sector exhibitors, each of whom must have paid thousands for a stand. Why are the Standards Board, the Equality and Human Rights Commission or the Ordnance Survey coughing up our cash to come and lobby at a party political event? Even worse, there are a number of councils here - including Hampshire and Tameside?

They should be getting on with their jobs, not squandering money on self-promotion like this. The people they are meant to be serving would get a better deal if they stayed in their offices and got on with their jobs - they have no reason to be here, and taxpayers don't cough up their hard-earned cash for them to strut their stuff on the political stage.

Thanks for reading.  If you agree with our campaign for lower taxes and want to know more about the TPA, you can register online, completely free of charge, here.

TaxPayers' Alliance welcomes Osborne's council tax freeze

The TaxPayers' Alliance (TPA) welcomed George Osborne's plans for a council tax freeze, and invited the Shadow Chancellor to take up the TPA's numerous proposals on how savings can be made.
       
        Matthew Elliott Chief Executive of the TaxPayers' Alliance, said:
       

       

 

       

"It's great news for taxpayers that George Osborne has promised a council tax freeze, and it's even better news that he has committed to making serious savings in Whitehall. He's right to say that there are huge savings that can be made by cutting out waste and putting a stop to unnecessary spending. We have plenty of proposals of how to make those savings, and we look forward to George Osborne carrying them out. He may be surprised, but there are so many savings that can be made we're confident he will be able to go further and afford tax cuts."
       

       

 

       

For further comments, enquiries or to arrange broadcast interviews, please contact Mark Wallace, TPA Campaign Director on 07795 084 113.

Some councillors just don't get it

Sometimes you get the impression that some people have got so used to wasting other people's money that they can't see anything else it could be used for. An irate letter in yesterday's Middlesbourgh Evening Gazette from Cllr David McLuckie, Chairman of the Cleveland Police Authority, is a case in point.

Cllr McLuckie wrote in hugh dudgeon to claim that we had "totally distorted" revelations that £36,000 had been wasted by Cleveland Police on two pieces of stained glass artwork for their police stations.

His first point seems to be that the stations themselves cost £33.4 million, so £36,000 is a drop in the ocean. Well, I'm sorry that he's got so used to splashing taxpayers' cash around that he thinks that the entire council tax bills of 36 families are insignificant. I wonder if he'd like to sit 36 families down and explain that their money has gone down the drain?

His second, more fundamental point is that:

"The suggestion from the chief executive of the Taxpayers' Alliance that the money should have been spent on officers is ludicrous because public spending regulations would have made that impossible...Presumably he also does not understand that the rules on public finance would not allow money allocated for major capital or building projects to be used to meet the costs of employing officers."

It's sad that the good Councillor has got so little imagination. In overall accounting terms, just because something is in the capital budgets account does not, I repeat not, mean it has to be spent even if it's on a capital building project that is useless in the fight against crime like in this instance. If these stained glass installations had never been commissioned the money would have ended up back in the central coffers, free to be spent on police officers, genuinely needed capital projects, or even - brace yourself - used to keep taxes down next year.

It's also depressing that Councillor McLuckie seems to think the status quo must always remain the status quo. How about a system that if a project comes in under budget, that money can be reallocated directly to the front line? Would that really be so harmful?

The TPA at the Conservative Party Conference

In this, the middle of conference season, the TaxPayers’ Alliance has already made appearances at the UKIP Party Conference and the Labour Party Conference.  They will be stirring up the dust again this coming week with several speaking engagements at the Conservative Party Conference.  With this much on the schedule, it will be impossible to miss us.

TPA Chairman, Andrew Alum, will be chairing the TPA/Global Vision fringe event on Tuesday 30 September at 5:45 PM on the topic “What next for Britain and Europe?” with a well rounded panel ready for questions.  Other speakers at the event include Ruth Lea, the Director of Global Vision, Martin Boon, Director of ICM Research, constitutional lawyer, Martin Howe QC and Iain Martin, Head of Comment at the Daily Telegraph.

Keep an eye out for our Chief Executive, Matthew Elliott speaking at the Selsdon Group’s event “Freedom from High Taxes” on Tuesday 30 September at 10:00 AM.  You can also find him Tuesday evening at 7:00 PM speaking on the topic “What should be the priorities for a first term Conservative Treasury?” at an event co-hosted by the TPA, Policy Exchange and the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Whales.

TPA Policy Analyst, Matthew Sinclair will be making an appearance at British Shipping’s event “What are ‘food miles’ and what’s the problem?” also on Tuesday at 12:45 PM.

Mark Wallace, our Campaign Director, will be speaking at a debate entitled “From XL to X-tinct?  How should the Conservatives support international travel through Brown’s recession?”

If hearing them speak isn’t enough for you and you want to help out, you can volunteer to hand out leaflets and spread our message of lower taxes.  If you’re interested, meet Tim or Fiona McEvoy at our stand in the Freedom Zone at noon on Monday 29 September.

And if you’d like to meet John Redwood come by our meet and greet session on Tuesday in the Freedom Zone from 3 to 4, and meet the TPA founders, Matthew Elliott and Andrew Allum and Global Vision Director Ruth Lea between 4 and 5.

Live blogs will be continuing from Conference all week.

No such thing as a free council lunch

TPA supporter Ian Taylor has handed me a couple of press clippings exposing an incredibly blasé attitude to taxpayers' money from Shepway Council leaders.  They recently spent £2,000 of taxpayers money on a civic lunch for Council dignitaries, businessmen and 100 Mayors at ‘The Grand Hotel’ (how fitting) – enough to pay for two years Band D Council Tax for a single adult in the area.

Cllr George Bunting defended the waste saying it was only ‘modest’!

It’s this ambivalence to how councillors spend taxpayers’ money that needs to stop.  One moment politicians don’t mind feeding themselves with £2,000 of your money.  The next it’s £3,000.  Then £4,000.  By the way they squander our money on non-jobs and pathetic bureaucracy, they’re far from being the best judge of what comprises ‘modest’ spending.

Modest spending is delivering frontline services at the lowest possible cost.  We need to eradicate the local government mindset that public money is government money and that it’s there to make the politicians lives better.  The British people pay their taxes for services that can make their lives better, not to indulge self-serving politicians (no pun intended about the Mayoral buffet).

Cllr George Bunting, who thinks you should pay for his grandstanding lunches with other highflying council apparatchiks, can be contacted at george.bunting@shepway.gov.uk.  Perhaps you can let him know that £2,000 of taxpayers’ money is far from being a modest amount and that given councillor allowances and expenses, they can afford their own lunches in the future.

Michael van Clarke: Brown Bankrupts Britain

TPA supporter Michael van Clarke gives his view on the credit crunch:

Few people seem to fully appreciate the catastrophic damage 12 years of Gordon Brown have wreaked on our society. By 2010 Gordon’s debt bombshell will put the total UK housing market in negative equity.

The Broken Economy

	1997	2007	2008	2010
Personal Debt	500 billion	1.41 trillion	1.5 trillion	1.57 trillion
National Debt	348 billion	0.7 trillion*	0.742 trillion*	0.9 trillion*
Capitalised State Worker Pension Liabilities	325 billion	0.95 trillion	1.071 trillion**	1.12 trillion
TOTAL DEBTS	1.173 trillion	3.06 trillion	3.31 trillion	3.59 trillion
Value of UK Housing Average house price x 25 million homes	1.75 trillion 25m x £70.000	5 trillion 25m x £200,000	4.35 trillion 25m x £174,000	3.5 trillion 25m x £140,000
Equity in £	577 billion	1.94 trillion	1.04 trillion	- .09 trillion
Equity as %	33%	38.8%	24%	- 2.6%

Sources; BoE, ONS, IFS , *Includes off balance sheet liabilities including Railtrack, Northern Rock, PFI, **Hargreaves Lansdowne

Put simply – the average UK homeowner outrightly owned about one third of his/her home in 1997. The other two thirds were mortgaged by the owner or the government on their behalf. In 2010 the average UK homeowner will own nothing. His equity will be more than wiped out by Government debts and liabilities and their own excessive consumer borrowings.

The debts and liabilities the Government has taken on in our name in addition to the debts consumers have been encouraged to take on to allow Brown to keep taxing us stealthily, means the UK will be in negative equity by 2010. Each household in Britain will be left with average debts and liabilities of £145,000. More than the average value of a home by then. It will cost each household an average of £8,700 each year just to service the interest on this debt without paying down a single penny of it. These figures do not even include unfunded state pensions for all of us which make the true figure far worse.

Labour has vastly accelerated the poor financial management of recent Governments and is still in denial - blaming the credit crunch. It’s like blaming the mess you’ve created on a loan shark for not lending you any more money..

Make no mistake these are your debts. If you die before they are paid then your children and grandchildren will continue to pay them.

Gordon’s claims of successful and prudent economics is the biggest lie of our generation. He kept boasting about an economy growing consistently at around 3% year after year and how strong and resilient it was. What he didn’t say is that it was costing 8% of GDP in new debt each year. If you run a company, this is called ‘buying business’. It’s what amateurs and frauds do. They present a good topline to get the plaudits and bonuses whilst quietly wrecking the balance sheet. Unfortunately it will take at least two generations to repair the damage economically and socially.

In 2010 Total UK Debts and Liabilities as a percentage of GDP will hit 259% this is higher than at any time in history. The previous National Debt record of 250% was in 1947 after the country had been destroyed by the Second World War. Thanks Gordon.

Reforming financial institutions alone will not prevent a re-run in years to come. Government powers need to be curtailed by reforming the constitution. Why can a government, especially one voted in by only 25% of the electorate, not only raise taxes on income and spending in their term of office, but also spend our pensions, our homes, our childrens’ inheritance and our childrens’ and grandchildrens’ income through the debt and liabilities they are allowed to rack up? At the very least they should be limited to spending only a (smaller) proportion of current GDP income or spending from reserves?

Can anyone answer this for me?

Councillor thinks he can do job 600 miles away

A few weeks ago a furore broke out over the Camden Councillor who moved to Arizona to study for a PhD.  Due to the outrage that he was still pocketing a £700 a month allowance, he’s subsequently tendered his resignation to the Council.  Consider that taxpayers one, councillors aboard the gravy train nil. 

Now TPA activist Tony Sharp has found that a Northamptonshire County Councillor believes he can do his job just as well from Switzerland.  From all of some 600 miles away from Northamptonshire, Cllr James Ashton believes he can sufficiently represent his constituents.  But he can't inspect potholes that need fixing, meet constituents who have pressing concerns and attend meetings despite being hundreds of miles away.  Moreover, is he still claiming his £7,086 taxpayer-funded allowance despite only being able to email or call officers and constituents?

Tony also comments on the disgraceful state of the County Council website:

“The end of the Evening Telegraph article says he is a member of the Enterprise Scrutiny Committee and Stronger Communities Scrutiny Committee. This is borne out by the website page for Cllr Ashton. However, the Democratic Services department at Northamptonshire County Council have confirmed to me that these committees no longer exist. They have been replaced by the Customers and Communities Committee, of which Cllr Ashton is not a member.

The County Council website is so completely out of date it is not clear what committees, if any, he is a member of. If he is not a member of any committee, a question that needs to be asked is whether he has avoided committee membership so he can limit his council duties thus enabling him to commute from Switzerland.

Therefore it is possible the only council meetings Cllr Ashton attends are those of the full council, of which there have only been three since March. Although residents rightly expect their councillor to sit on committees and represent their interests, it could be that Cllr Ashton is not delivering his end of the deal. By retaining his County Council seat and potentially only attending three meetings in the last six months, Cllr Ashton is still entitled to his basic member's allowance of around £7,000 per annum, any special responsibility allowances and of course travel expenses.”

As it seems Cllr Ashton is using his email to remain in contact with his constituents, why not ask him yourself to justify his absence from his constituency and whether he is still claiming his £7,000+ a year salary? 

Email him at JAshton@northamptonshire.gov.uk and ask him these very important questions.  As always, if you get any replies - and you should seeing as Cllr Ashton is committed to working on email to represent his constituents - then do let us know by emailing them through to me.  We can't let councillors cut and run with your money.  After all, there should be no taxation without representation.

Thanks for reading.  If you agree with our campaign for lower taxes and want to know more about the TPA, you can register online, completely free of charge, here.

When you're in a hole, stop borrowing

Anyone reading the Express this morning is more than likely to choke on their cornflakes at the sight of the £900 extra we’ll have to pay in tax to cover Brown’s impending borrowing and spending spree. 

Trying to buy his way out of trouble, Brown is heading for another budget binge designed to provide new childcare places in nursery schools and other ‘investment programmes’ which will only serve to increase the size of government.  Look at it like this: under Labour the amount government spends has doubled.  They spend £80,000 a second of your money.  Are you satisfied that the doubling of government expenditure has gone to better public services?  I didn’t think so.

In an astonishing sign of detachment from reality Brown admitted “it is right to borrow and raise public expenditure”.  Rising unemployment means fewer NI, income tax and other tax receipts gained through employment.  A gradually increasing unemployment benefit roster means fewer is coming in yet more is leaving Treasury coffers in handouts.  So, with less coming in, Gordon wants to spend more.  Clearly it's the economics of the strait-jacket.

But Brown is in the bunker and resorting to what Labour does best (or worst) – spending your money.  Yet this strategy is entirely New Labour.  Slyly borrowing to fund spending increases, they lack the political guts to hike up taxes now to pay for current spending which will come crashing down as a tax will bill we’ll all have to pay when the debt needs to be paid off.  On the one hand the Government berate banks and city traders for ‘irresponsible’ lending and dealing.  On the other, with a barefaced cheek, they concede to borrowing more to ratchet up spending.  Gordon talks – you pay!

Opening up the secret Senate

Good news from Hampshire today - the "Hampshire Senate", which looks remarkably like a county-wide replica of the failed regional assemblies, has buckled under pressure from the TPA and the public and has agreed to hold its meetings in public rather than in secret.

I'm far from alone in being naturally suspicious of any group of politicians and quangocrats who decide things could be run much better by self-selected groups of people in unaccountable organisations meeting - and spending taxpayers' money - behind closed doors. They have less need to produce policies the public like, they can spend money like water and at the end of the day if they fail the public are far less able to hold them to account.

The Hampshire Senate has already proved the second of these principals right after its first meeting was initially planned to be an all-expenses overnight stay in a plush hotel. Hopefully this new openness, which should be backed up with fully published minutes, accounts, expense receipts and suchlike, will deter that kind of thinking in future, but the Senate is still far from a good idea.

For a start, it's a duplication of another sub-regional body in the area, the Partnership for Urban South Hampshire (which should also be abolished, I might add). Even the Government have already said they are interested in PUSH, not the Senate.

What's more, why should this body and the people who sit on it have any say over the wide range of areas they are set to discuss?

Apparently the Senate wants to tackle climate change, drug abuse, public spending methods and teenage pregnancy to start off with. These issues are important but all are dealt with by huge numbers of departments, civil servants, quangos and other bodies already - what will the Senators be bringing to the table?

The mission as it has been laid out so far smacks of people enjoying the title of Senator and adding to their sense of self-importance by taking on mighty issues irrespective of whether it's a good use of their time and our money. Presumably they'll later move on to raising the Titanic, World Peace and exactly why belly button fluff is blue.

There is no good reason why representatives of SEEDA, the failed Regional Development Agency, or the local military commander should have a vote on teenage pregnancy, sex education, climate change and congestion measures. Arguably a big problem surrounding public policy in this area as it stands is that too much power is already in the hands of unaccountable bureaucrats and inexperienced politicians. That power should be given back to the people and civil society, not gathered at even more expense into yet another layer of government.

The news that the Senate is to be open and on the record is welcome - but that openness will hopefully serve to inform the people of Hampshire clearly and immediately that this is a pointless project that at best will cost money and produce hot air. At worst it will further complicate the tangled web of public sector initiatives and pile more chaos and confusion into a State that needs urgent simplification.

Thanks for reading.  If you agree with our campaign for lower taxes and want to know more about the TPA, you can register online, completely free of charge, here.

Time for the Tories to ditch Toynbee

The Conservative love affair with the darling of the left Polly Toynbee must end now. If we consider that James McGrath was sacked by the Boris team for suggesting that those who wanted to leave the country should be allowed to go (i.e. the obvious) then Polly’s take on the collapse of Lehman Brothers should have her cast aside without a moment’s hesitation.

In an Evening Standard debate on 15 September Polly Toynbee said “we've seen rather a dearth of bankers jumping out of window ledges and maybe we could see a bit more of that.” Poking fun at city bankers is something those not blessed with their salaries can all enjoy but making light of suicide is something quite different. Suicide is a tragedy. It is not a fitting subject for such levity. The fact an individual could make such remarks reveals her deep seated hatred for the very people whose eighteen hour days have created the wealth Toynbee is so keen to redistribute

Polly Toynbee’s outburst would not matter had not the Conservatives, in one of their darker moments, embraced her as a Tory icon. In 2006 Greg Clark MP suggested that "It is the social commentator Polly Toynbee who supplies imagery that is more appropriate for Conservative social policy in the 21st century." He called Toynbee a “serious thinker” who provided “effective analysis”. Absurdly, the Conservatives were advised to ditch Winston Churchill, recently voted Greatest ever Briton, by the British people, in a BBC poll, because his ideas were outdated.

The Conservatives were now to combat relative as well as absolute poverty and this necessitates more than simple wealth redistribution. It requires income equalisation. The Conservatives declared war on relative poverty in 2006. All people were entitled to more than the basics and the objective of social policy was to ensure that there was more income equality. Here Mr Clark appeared to endorse the notion that all people had a right to a certain percentage of the nation’s wealth.

This right was not dependent on them doing anything in particular such as working or saving or adopting any other form of sensible behaviour which we should seek to encourage. This war on relative poverty is one Britons are certain to lose whatever happens. It can only be ‘won’ if income inequality ends i.e. working harder or saving does not confer on yourself or your offspring any advantage. It was fair to say that in 2006 many right wingers were a little worried about Mr Clark’s remarks. Now times are very different.

The Conservatives have kept their admirable commitment to combat poverty, which we should all support.  However, Cameron has leapt to the defence of capitalism and realizes the danger that the left will use this current crisis to undermine a system which has enriched us all. In the Financial Times Mr Cameron has said ““We must not let the left use this as an excuse to wreck an important part of the British and world economy.” For this he is to be congratulated.

Now it is time for Mr Clark to defend capitalism and basic decency by condemning Polly Toynbee, rejecting her flawed analysis on this current crisis and restoring Winston Churchill to his rightful place as a right wing icon. This present crisis reveals how absurd the notion of relative poverty is. The loss of thousands of high paid jobs in the British banking sector will probably make incomes in this country more equal. In recessions relative poverty has a habit of decreasing because the rich lose more absolutely as their shares plummet, their businesses go bankrupt and they lose their well paid jobs. The poor have little and hence less to lose. Therefore, the gap between rich and poor decreases when there is a recession.

Clearly this is not something to celebrate. Recessions do not enrich the working poor. The working poor have less to lose but they still lose as their incomes stagnate and many of them lose their jobs. It takes an individual of the unique brilliance of Polly Toynbee to celebrate such an occurence. Someone who cares more about the arbitrary lines on a chart which make up relative equality than whether the incomes of the poor are increasing and their prospects improving. Needless to say I do not share Toynbee's enthusiasm.

Ms Toynbee’s remarks reveal the danger of the notion of relative poverty. It is a very nasty idea formulated by people who despise those who are successful and wish to bring them down. It has nothing to do with helping the working poor and struggling working families which should be the objective of all parties. It is hard to see how the poor will be helped by wealthy bankers climbing onto rooftops and jumping off. Those who celebrate, promote or make light of such occurrences should be rejected by all decent people. Consequently, Mr Clark must now formally denounce Ms Toynbee and distance the Conservatives from this rather nasty, malevolent and deeply flawed individual.