It was a busy day for the TPA in Norfolk yesterday. Events started as early as 7am when senior TPA activist Tony Callaghan was interviewed on BBC Radio Norfolk about the story we highlighted last. Tony went to say how unfair it was that North Norfolk District Council sent out at least 500 notices to council, some of who can’t pay.
Again it’s a big step in our grassroots campaign to have our activists called to conduct radio interviews. So, I think we can all congratulate Tony on an eloquent, competent and interesting interview. He certainly made the TPA proud.
It also appears our grassroots campaign highlighting North Norfolk council’s malicious campaign against the vulnerable has ruffled a few feathers. None other than the Chief Executive of North Norfolk rushed to the Eastern Daily Press last Saturday to berate us, saying our statistics were “flawed”. Note to the Chief: all statistics we received were from your council accounts! Yet again we see a desperate attempt at defending the indefensible by a bureaucracy that seeks to tax and tax but over-reacts when being held to account.
At Midday a group of us met at the Nelson Hotel in Norwich to discuss how to take the campaign forward in Norwich. These meetings are vital to our campaign, because we need your ideas. It’s your campaign to defend your money from the taxman after all. We evaluated the campaign over the past weeks, which saw unprecedented levels of local press coverage from our grassroots campaigning and decided to maintain that strategy. Remember all it took was our activists highlighting a story, a shocking one at that, and lobbying the press and radio to make it a story worth covering. You don’t need to be a media professional to get involved. Our activists are people like you and me, we have principles the politicians have ignored for too long and we’re acting on it.
We’re going to highlight any stories where government is misusing its power to coerce the taxpayer into submission and we’re going to shame those that stand by such abuses of power. The politicians need to remember they are public servants – in our service. As such they should start spending our money better and taking less of it. If not, they can rest assured that TPA activists are now out there holding public bodies to account because, we’re all agreed on this, enough is enough!
If you want to join the TPA campaign, perhaps even setting up a group in your area or have a story you’d like us to campaign on, then please do contact me.
Don’t just sit there waiting for change, make it happen!