Your very own grassroots coordinator went to two conferences this year, the UK Independence Party Conference and the Conservative Party Conference to preach the virtues of a low tax society (as well as signing up new supporters to the campaign). 

UKIP gave the TPA an opportunity to make a keynote address about our aims and our approach to big government and high taxes.  Rather than print out my 17-minute speech, here’s a video of it for your interest. (Thanks to Simon Richards at the Freedom Association for the camerawork).

Part 1:

Part 2:

At the Conservative Party Conference, I was invited onto a speaking competition called ‘Tories got talent’, to set out our vision.  I didn’t win, but I had a message that brought some truths that needed to be discussed.  I said, quite bluntly, that it is the job of all freedom lovers and low tax activists inside political parties and out to hold all local authorities and government to account.  We will not get the lower taxes we want just by toeing party lines.  It might not be popular, but if you believe in lower taxes, you must fight for them even if it means turning your fire on those in the same party.

I also manned our stand in the Freedom Zone and met several delegates who were responsive to our message. 

The joy I have being the grassroots coordinator here is meeting low tax activists of all parties and none.  In talking to people you get to convey the message, sometimes disagreeing, but that’s the responsibility of us here to turn the doubters into TPA supporters.

I’d also like to thank all those TPA supporters who have come to help us hand out leaflets and campaign at the Party conferences. 

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.

With Sir Ian Blair’s resignation there have been a flurry of accusations – most notably from the Home Secretary – that he was pushed for "political reasons" by the Mayor, and criticisms of policing being a political issue. No doubt this is meant to sound like a condemnation, but is there actually anything wrong with having the involvement of democratically elected representatives in this most crucial of public services?

Last year we had the absurd scene of the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police telling the London Assembly that he didn’t care what they and the people they represented thought of him, saying: ”If you think you have the power to get rid of me, go on, do it." They passed a vote of no confidence in him – a damning thing to happen – but true to his statement of defiance he stayed stubbornly in his post, a public servant sitting in denial of the public’s will.

Voters are the people who foot the bill for the police and are at the sharp end of crime if the police fail, so it is shocking that they have so little control over what policies the police pursue. For Londoners to have any control over who is the Commissioner or what he gets up to, they currently have to go through their limited representation on the Metropolitan Police Authority. Boris has beefed that up by chairing the MPA himself but it’s still an unnecessary degree of separation between the police and the people.

When Jacqui Smith makes the criticism that Boris is trying to politicise policing, she is in fact suggesting that this is a public service, paid for by and defending the people, that the people themselves should have no say over. When she says "political", read "democratic".

Of course, policing is not only a massive political issue for the people affected by it and funding it, it is to a certain extent politically managed already. The Whitehall machine pours regulations, initiatives and rules onto police officers around the country and the Home Secretary has the power to appoint Chief Police Officers. For all her moaning about having the Mayor of London involving himself in how the City he runs is policed, she seems to have no compunction about involving the Home Secretary in the same issue, despite her representing not a single London voter (she represents Redditch in Parliament).

In reality, the problem with policing at the moment is that it isn’t democratic enough. It’s run – to the great frustration of many police officers – off a spreadsheet in Whitehall, based on abstract calculations made by people with no knowledge of the localities or people whose lives they are dealing with.

People unquestionably should have the right to vote for who runs their local police, what their priorities are and how the police should function to achieve their aim of reducing crime. The resistance of people like Jacqui Smith and the members of the Association of Chief Police Officers to this idea has, I suspect, rather more to do with the fact that the public won’t vote for their politically correct, form-filling policing model which has failed us so badly. The problem, Jacqui, is not that policing is being politicised, but that it isn’t politicised enough.

George Osborne’s policy commitment to freeze Council Tax for two years is welcome.  It’s a start, in the very least, to reducing Council Tax for Britain’s families.  Yet in the Evening Standard yesterday, a chain-gang of councils marched out to reject any Council Tax freeze, claiming it would lead to “misery” for taxpayers.

How on earth would cutting publicity budgets and consultants lead to misery?  I’ll tell you what’s miserable – seeing pensioners dragged through the courts because they can’t pay your soaring levels of Council Tax when councillors can vote time and again to increase their allowances.   

But before even a general election, which could be years away, the following councils have decreed and doomed their residents to even higher Council Tax:

Islington (Lib Dem)
Kingston (Lib Dem)
Richmond (Lib Dem)
Southwark (Lib Dem)
Sutton (Lib Dem)
Brent (Lib Dem/ Tory)
Camden (Lib Dem/Tory)
Waltham Forest (Labour/Lib Dem)
Barking and Dagenham (Labour)
Hackney (Labour)
Haringey (Labour)
Greenwich (Labour)
Lambeth (Labour)
Lewisham (Labour)
Newham (Labour)
Tower Hamlets (Labour)

It’s emblematic of the culture in local government that these Councils continue to defend the indefensible, to lump you with ever increasing Council Tax.  So important are consultants (oddly enough former council employees or former councillors) and PR consultants that their absence will lead to taxpayer misery.  Yeah, right.

If you have the misfortune to reside under the authority of the apparatchiks governing the councils above, I’ve hyperlinked the email addresses for the leaders or elected mayors of the councils so you can give them a good barracking and ask them – politely in the TPA fashion – why they want to take more of your money.

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.