Five months on from the publication of the Ten Per Cent Challenge, our detailed council-by-council proposals for how to cut council tax, there are encouraging signs that the publication has got into the internal discussions going on in Town Halls worried about their growing unpopularity.

In Friday’s PR Week, the PR industry’s in-house magazine, there was an interesting article by Alex Aiken, Director of Comms at Westminster City Council. Local Government PR teams are obviously getting worried that they may be for the high jump in spending reviews – a concern heightened by the news that Boris Johnson is slashing his PR spending by 20%.

Aiken offers some tips to PR Week’s readers on how they and their departments can weather the "credit crunch challenge". Pursuing campaigns that are popular with the public, improving organisational efficiency and recycling the avalanche of glossy are all tips that you would expect to be on the list, but one of them stands out as an encouraging sign:

Second, try the ‘ten per cent test’. Take advice from the Taxpayers Alliance and reduce spending – or raise income by ten per cent.

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.

Second, try the ‘ten per cent test’. Take advice from the Taxpayers Alliance and reduce spending – or raise income by ten per cent.

Good on you, Mr Aiken! When he suggests raising income by ten per cent, it should be noted that if you do this through extended advertising income for any council publications – as Hammersmith & Fulham have done – it allows you to reduce the burden on taxpayers.

Hopefully we will see improvements in Westminster’s accounts next year as a result and other councils will follow their lead. This is a good sign that the Council Spending Uncovered papers had a genuine impact in Town Halls – which can only be to the benefit of taxpayers.

A new report has revealed that 35 out of the Liberal Democrats 53 English seats could be lost to the Conservatives unless they promise tax cuts. Coincidentally Lib Dem Leader Nick Clegg has promised £20 billion in tax cuts condemning the Conservatives tax and spend plans as “unimaginative” and promising the Lib Dems will be “more creative”. The question is will the two main parties match the Lib Dems new pledge of tax cuts?

Liberal Democrat conferences are not usually the place where important new debates occur. Previous conferences have debated the issue of whether goldfish could be won at local fairs, how to protect the earth from asteroids and whether 16 year olds should have access to internet pornography. All weighty subjects no doubt but not priority issues for the average British citizen.

In short, Lib Dem conferences are usually snooze fests where barmy socialists and ultra libertarians battle it out for the right to control a party which has not seen power in eighty years. However, at this conference, a serious debate about the balance between funding essential services and relieving the burden on struggling families is beginning to occur. The Liberal Democrats have actually begun to talk about reducing the size of the Government and cutting tax and this is to be welcomed.

The two main parties should take note and respond. The Labour party is facing an electoral wipe-out with Conservative poll leads averaging 20 per cent. If the party does not take decisive action to respond to the needs of Britain’s struggling families they will be punished at the polls. Meanwhile, the Conservatives are eager to preserve their momentum in the face of this bold Lib Dem move onto Conservative turf. The Conservatives have been timid in their approach to tax cuts because they fear a repeat of the 2001 and 2005 elections when Labour successfully portrayed any attempt to reduce the tax burden as a secret Tory plan to sack thousands of Nurses, Doctors and Teachers. However, it seems the mood has changed.

The majority of people now recognise the amount of government waste and believe they can spend their money better than the Government. More than two-thirds of the population believe that the Government wastes one-sixth of the money it spends and over half think that figure is one fifth of the money it spends. Tax is now third on the list of concerns of British voters. This is a very different Britain to the one that massively endorsed Brown’s 2002 national insurance tax increases to fund the NHS.

Taxpayers will reward any party that recognises the call for lower taxes and responds accordingly. The Liberal Democrat plan is not perfect. There are many flaws in it. The pledge to soak the rich by closing tax loopholes could cost this country dear by driving away wealth creators. However, a debate about significant  tax reduction has begun and for this the Lib Dems are to be congratulated.

Further to the devastating findings of our report on Regional Development Agencies, a lot of our supporters have been writing to their MP, council or RDA to demand that the RDAs be scrapped. One supporter in the North East wrote to Dari Taylor, MP for Stockton South, about the issue.

Instead of responding with her own view on why £15 billion has been squandered on a clutch of agencies that have had little or no appreciable impact on development, Ms Taylor wrote to ONE North East, the local RDA, to get their answer.

Unsurprisingly, the Chief Executive of the RDA, Alan Clarke (not that Alan Clarke) is utterly convinced that the RDA is key to the survival of jobs in the region – not least, of course, his own £187,694 a year.

Here is his letter (apologies for the quality of page 2):
Download one_north_east_page_1.pdf
Download one_north_east_page_2.pdf

In his letter, Mr Clarke says he wants to "respond to [the TPA's] claims and outline our achievements". It may not come as a surprise that he then goes on to do an awful lot of the latter without once trying to engage with, debate or even question or findings. It’s a lot more convenient to sidestep hard evidence about your failures than it is to argue with it, apparently.

His argument defending ONE North East seems to be based on the following:

i) "In the nine years since it was established to lead economic growth in the region, ONE North East has consistently met or exceeded its performance targets."

Mr Clarke seems to have mixed up actual success on the ground with ticking Government boxes. Our report never sought to suggest that the RDAs aren’t smug about themselves – far from it – rather it points out that you can tick all the boxes in the world but they won’t actually help people if your approach is fundamentally flawed. The RDAs are unaccountable, unelected and almost unsackable, and the result is exactly this attitude – they don’t have to demonstrate any improvement in reality to the people paying the bills just as long as other unaccountable bureaucrats agree they’re working hard.

ii) "Our investment is tightly targeted at business, people and place…"

What does that actually mean?

iii) "The latest statistics for the last financial year show that the regional development agency helped create more than 17,000 new jobs in the North East and assisted over 23,000 firms to improve their performance."

He neglects to mention, of course, that these are ONE North East’s own figures, produced by them to justify their own existence. They are shall we say unlikely to write to the Government with the truth, which is "Yeah, really sorry but we’re not quite sure what we have achieved actually…" The RDAs are  extremely reluctant to publish the definition of what they mean by "creating jobs" or "attracting businesses". More often than not, according to businesses themselves, they are claiming the credit for writing irrelevant letters to businesses that are creating jobs anyway. The lack of any appreciable improvement, as we discovered, over time compared to the regions’ performance before the RDAs existed is a testament to this paper-thin justification.

iv) "Importantly…there is strong support for One North East across the business, public and voluntary sectors."

Really? Where is this strong support? When I debated the issue on BBC Radio Newcastle in August one of the guests was a businesswoman who had received direct aid from ONE North East and even she said she was worried about what they were up to, how they spent taxpayers’ money and the fact that they operate behind closed doors. A lot of councillors are furious that so much money and power intended for local development is allocated to unaccountable quangocrats. Even the Government have just slashed RDA funding. Support seems pretty thin on the ground to me.

All in all, as Terry-Thomas would have said, "What an absolute shower." Do keep writing to RDAs, MPs, Ministers and newspapers about the RDA rip-off and let us know what response you get. This vacuous reply shows we’ve really got them on the spot, and these bureaucratic behemoths should be humanely put down as soon as possible.

Yes, as a response to concerns about possible water shortages and the potential unaffordability of water in future, the EU is threatening to reach for the tax laws and tax water!

EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas has apparently come up with the brainwave to "ensure people pay for what they use". Perhaps someone should explain water bills to him…

The EU’s love of complex regulation has already managed to sneak in, showing that no idea is so idiotic that you can’t embellish it even further, as Stavros has another idea to really drive the measures home.

"if someone who lives near the sea has a swimming pool, then they will have to pay more. It is only logical to tax more heavily those who can afford to have a swimming pool, when they could just as easily swim in the sea"

Even if you leave to one side the bizarre complexities of such a scheme and the enforcement impossibilities, Stavros has apparently failed to realise that the sea where he grew up, in Greece, is quite a lot more swimmable than that where I did (see the beautiful beach near my parents home pictured, right, this August). If he wants to try the Boxing Day dip at Seaton Carew, he’s welcome…

The NHS National Programme for IT (NPfIT) has a bad reputation – it’s over budget, running late, losing contractors, saddled with poorly negotiated contracts and at the end of it, it may not produce anything particularly useful. That’s not a new opinion; you’ll regularly hear politicians, journalists, industry analysts and members of the public say the same thing – in varying degrees of tact and clean language. Until this week, though, it hadn’t been a view publicly espoused by NHS Trusts.

Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals Foundation Trust has this week officially left the NPfIT on the basis that it’s "taking forever" and, according to the article, also doubt whether the programme will ever deliver at all. They’re right – the NHS database was meant to be in place by 2010, but the NAO now reckon 2015 is the most optimistic forecast.

Newcastle Hospitals have decided to buy another patient records system from the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center in the USA, which is currently used in 20 Pittsburgh hospitals. As the article points out, there could be problems with the system they buy, but the shocking thing about this news is that it has come to this at all.

Under NPfIT, the Trusts who are to be made to use whatever system emerges from it (if any do at some unspecified point in the future) have no say in the contracts, no direct recourse to legal action if things go wrong and in fact have been totally disenfranchised from the outset. It’s no wonder that Newcastle Hospitals have quit the scheme when they are essentially treated by the Government as serfs rather than customers of NPfIT.

If even NHS Trusts feel that they aren’t being listened to and are being centrally dictated to, it’s clear that the situation for taxpayers and patients is even worse.

The failure to fundamentally reform the NHS by introducing at minimum proper accountability and a clear allocation of power and responsibility has led to this bizarre situation. Follow this, if you can:

1) An NHS Trust is nominally, to a certain extent in charge of its own finances.
2) The income it actually gets, though, is decided at a number of other points, although the amount of treatment they carry out is an important factor in the calculation.
3) To prove they have carried out a particular number of treatments, though, they need a computer system that accurately records those figures in full.
4) That system, they are told, is going to be given to them by NPfIT, over which they have no control. That means that if NPfIT fails to produce a decent system, then they will have waited for ten years for nothing.
5) To get it installed they have to apply to the Minister in charge of NPfIT, not the system provider. The Minister or their delegated committee will assess the Trust’s application and then instruct the provider in the Trust’s area.
6) If the system then fails in some unspecified way, the Trust has no recourse to sue the supplier, as they themselves have never dealt with them directly.

It’s not just a mess, it’s a governmental spaghetti junction. There are risks in what Newcastle Hospitals Trust is doing, but they’ve been driven to the decision by the absurd and inefficient structure of our Government. A lot more Trusts are going to get fed up of waiting in the next 7, 10, 12 15 or however many years and decide they and their patients would be better off with a system now that they know actually works. If, and it’s a big if, the NPfIT produces a workable system in 10 years time there will as a result of this chaos still be a lot of people left wondering whether it was worth the £12bn in the first place.

British taxpayers fund the Palestinian Authority (PA) through our contributions to the European Union (EU) budget and by our direct bilateral assistance to the PA. In 2006 this amounted to £47.5 million of our money going to finance the PA budget. The PA has used this money to create a programme in which Palestinian children are encouraged to revere suicide bombers see here. We – the UK taxpayers – want the British Government to pressure the PA to stop this hate education. We want some return for this £47.5 million – this means the PA spending our money building the peace rather than revering suicide bombers.

In our report Funding Hate Education we showed how the Palestinian Authority and Hamas indoctrinate Palestinian children to revere suicide bombers, hate the west and support attacks on British and American troops in Iraq. Now in this children’s programme, the female terrorist, Dalal Mughrabi who participated in the murder of 12 children and 25 adults in a bus attack on Israel in 1978 is celebrated as the "beloved bride, daughter of Jaffa, jasmine flower." Since Annapolis there has clearly been no change in the propensity of the PA to produce hate education.

This show follows close on the heels of last week’s programme where children were asked geography questions in order to receive prizes. No problem there, except for the fact that these questions all implicitly denied Israel’s right to exist. The correct answers to these questions all suggested that the whole of the former British mandated territory of Palestine was legitimately still part of Palestine. If you would like to see for yourself watch the show here.

British Taxpayers pay for this hate education in the following three ways. We fund the Palestinian education system which distributes school textbooks preaching hatred of the west and the destruction of Israel. We contribute to paying off the PA's debts and thereby give it more money to spend on hate propaganda. We also free up resources for the PA to spend on hate propaganda by financing the provision of essential services the PA would otherwise be expected to provide. British Taxpayers want the UK government to use the considerable leverage we have as a provider of aid to force the PA to stop producing this kind of hate education and to start promoting peace and reconciliation between the Palestinian and Israeli people.

We haven’t always been the best of friends with Essex County Council, as they haven’t always been the wisest spenders of taxpayers’ money. Today, though, I’m delighted to say they have announced something excellent: a council tax rebate.

Recognising that people are suffering increased hardship in the grip of the credit crunch, their leader Lord Hanningfield has announced that they plan to give the rebate to pensioners, poor families and members of the Armed Forces. This will be a welcome relief from the ever-rising levels of tax, household and other bills, and Essex are to be applauded for recognising what everyone knows but few in power will say: tax is a serious burden on household finances and reducing it is a great way to help those in need.

I fervently hope that, having found the budget savings to afford this one-off repayment, Lord Hanningfield and his colleagues make the rebate permanent by giving the people of Essex a tax cut. The rebate is a good move and will help a lot of people, but a tax cut would make an even bigger difference to people’s lives and make Essex a leading council in breaking open the untruth that council tax must always inexorably rise.

If you want to help pile on the pressure for more council tax rebates and cuts, please join the TaxPayers’ Alliance – for FREE – here.

Trespassers will be shot; Council snoopers will be shot again.  Makes a good yard sign, no?

The front page of the Express today carries another ‘I don’t believe it’ story.  Council snoopers now aim to extend their powers to regulate the great British garden.  A DEFRA policy document aims to push yet another environmental agenda, giving Councils the powers to ban certain types of environmentally unfriendly gardens.  This isn’t aimed at banning the use of gardens as toxic waste dumps; rather it’s focused on the outlawing of fast-growing plants and even lawns.  Yes, it doesn’t have to just be green to be ‘green’, it has to be regulated as government-approved green to be allowed.  I somehow doubt Chuck Norris would approve DEFRA’s new policy.

With Councils now empowered to pay local taxpayers to snoop on their neighbours to monitor ‘local environmental activity’, perhaps they’re teeing up a big push to extend their scope of control and interference in our lives even further.  Slough Council banned a bonfire last year and the DEFRA policy paper now recommends taxes on barbecue’s, paper plates and cups too.

Has this government not met a tax increase or regulation it didn’t like?

We have the largest tax code in the Western world.  Businesses flee this country to lower taxing and lightly regulated nations.  Most tragic of all, Britons choose to live abroad to escape the laws, interference and meddling from our all-powerful 21st Century government.  Who can blame them when this government ratchets up more regulations and taxes to frustrate our lives even more?

If you want to join the campaign to stop government interfering and taxing us, then you can support our campaign and become a grassroots activist – for FREE – here.

The only way to stop politicians buying their votes with your money is to shrink the size of government and to cut taxes.

We already knew that the rise in stamp duty threshold was not exactly going to benefit Londoners or the South East.  But now it’s official: three out of four constituencies who will benefit are Labour-held, according to Harry Wallop of the Daily Telegraph.  In the 2005 election Labour did well among home owners with a mortgage grateful for the rising property prices.  Now that they are falling Labour is in deep trouble and if the housing market does not revive within a year or so more handouts are to be expected.

Giving a benefit to a particular group of voters to gain elections is nothing new.  Northern Rock was famously bailed out because of its importance in Labour heartlands.  Labour introduced vegaid, a £120 cheque for pregnant women to buy healthy food (for all we know some will spend it on cigarettes because the cheque is irrespective of actual purchases).  A month ago a top official was overheard saying that Brown would give a £150 fuel cheque to every family receiving child benefit.

Buying votes is not limited to the Labour Party.  Giving help to “hard working (swing- voting) families” is on every politicians’ lips.

Another characteristic is that when large numbers of voters are made to believe that they benefit from a particular financial measure or a service, that perceived benefit will never be abolished.  The CAP and the NHS are good examples.  Politicians in rural seats dare not propose the abolition of the expensive, wasteful and market hostile Common Agricultural Policy.  Numerically there are few farmers.  But many country voters believe that subsidised farming protects their own way of life.  This belief differs from factual evidence.  Since New Zealand abolished all its farming subsidies it has become the most profitable farming country in the world.  More people work in it than before.  Promoting a particular interest as a general benefit is of course what every lobby group does.

The NHS is still pretty much untouchable even though the great majority of us will never take out more than we put in.  It could be replaced by insurance a private sector provision but not politician will take that electoral risk.

How do we stop politicians from buying their votes with your money?  There is only one way: to shrink the size of government and to cut taxes.  So you can keep and spend your hard earned money as you – and not the politicians- see fit.

Councillor JP Floru
Prospective European Parliamentary Candidate 2009 (London)

A bit of pub philosophising here – or rather the outcome of a discussion at the weekend over a few jars – but what would get this country further up in arms over all issues relating to tax?

One gem is to abolish what is called ‘withholding’ – the policy of automatically taking income tax from people’s pay cheques.  Now I know there are positive and negatives to abolishing withholding.  The efficiency argument is there, that if the income tax is taken automatically then there need not be form filling and the payment can be instant and much smoother.

However, one of the reasons the anti-income tax movement has embraced the Fair Tax in the United States, is down to cross-the-board hatred of filling in tax returns.  If you have to sit down and write out a cheque each month to the government, it’s a deliberate task that requires thought.  You write out any cheque and you contemplate where it’ll go, what it’s spent on and used for, whether it’s a cheque for utilities and the like.

Now factor that in with government and having taxpayers write out a cheque every month to the government and you might get a lot more people asking – “where’s my money going?”

Just a thought.

It’s fast approaching the first anniversary of the Conservative announcement to raise the inheritance tax (IHT) threshold to £1 million.  With near perfect timing the Telegraph has an article this morning saying the Conservatives will raise the IHT threshold to £2 million.

Under the policy proposals married individuals will be allowed to pass on £1 million at the time of death, meaning married couples can combine their £1 million limit into a collective £2 million.   

Statistics show that under the policy 9 million more would escape paying inheritance tax, which is fantastic news.

Coming from a position that wishes the outright abolition of inheritance tax, it’s clearly an advance from the Conservatives.  Yet still, the debate talks in terms of ‘allowances’ and limits as if we should be thankful the government are being generous enough to let us keep more of what we have already paid tax on.

Inheritance tax already takes in a pittance compared to other taxes.  Both parties are committed to raising the threshold, meaning the sum gained from IHT will continue to decline.  Therefore, perhaps the next step is abolition? 

If politics is getting from A to B in increments, then it’s feasible to suggest IHT will be abolished within the first term of a Conservative government.  It’s the path they’re walking.  We can understand – but not entirely accept – the gesture politics of IHT make it politically sensitive (if you’re not up for a fight) to tinker, rather than abolish, it. 

Yet with a tax that takes in next to nothing, resembling the remnants of a long-gone class war, we should abolish the tax and move onto cutting the other taxes that are hitting people the hardest.

If you like what you’ve read please join and become part of our grassroots campaign for lower taxes – for FREE – here.