My bonus is clearly in the national interest In the news this week:£53m bonuses for Treasury mandarins- "SENIOR civil servants in the department responsible for the tax credit fiasco have been paid more than £53million in bonuses. Nearly half the sum was paid in the last 12 months... Critics pointed... Read more...
Eastbourne has changed since 1954 "A military helicopter destroyed the conservatory of a £1.75 million mansion when its pilot swooped too low to look at a sunbathing au pair, a court heard yesterday.The four servicemen flying the Merlin helicopter were said to have dropped to 500ft or lower for the... Read more...
We've criticised the Government for raising capital gains tax on small business by 80 per cent, and supported the many justified complaints from business groups and others. But in the interests of debate, here is an alternative view from a respected commentator - Martin Wolf in the Financial Times:... Read more...
Yet more evidence of the failures of the state education system have come to light today: Fewer than half of 16-year-olds this year achieved five A*-C grade GCSEs including English and maths; Only a quarter achieved five A*-C grade GCSEs including English, maths, science and a foreign language;... Read more...
Of all the things a council could interfere in, Slough Council has banned its community bonfire – especially for bonfire night – because it breaches their ‘clean air policy’. With the proliferation of green politics and the development of ‘climate change’ departments in local authorities, we’re certainly not surprised such... Read more...
The Derby TaxPayers’ Alliance branch launched yesterday with a meeting of prominent tax activists in Derby and a leading journalist from the Derby Evening Telegraph interested in the formation of the local grassroots branch. Joining us is Josephine Rooney, who came to national attention when she refused... Read more...
According to local reports Ken Meeson, the leader of Solihull Council, is warning of substantial council tax hikes next year in a bid to claw back enough money to straddle the deficit opened by a cut in their government grant. This follows this year’s inflation busting 5% rise in council... Read more...
The OECD has just released an update on its historical tax burden series. It shows that taxes in Britain are at the highest level for 20 years. This is very worrying. While other countries are stabilising or reducing their taxes, Britain’s tax burden continues to rocket. A decade ago... Read more...
Coming just a few days after the superbug scandal at the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells Hospital NHS Trust and the admission that 20 hospitals have worse infection rates than Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells is the lastest in a series of revelations about the sub-standard level of care in the NHS.... Read more...
This week we have yet another local government non-job that squanders taxpayers’ money. Our target this week is Sandwell Council who think they’re not handing out enough benefits. Their advertisement for a ‘Welfare Rights Team Manager’ in the Guardian jobs pages this week reads as follows: “Welfare Rights... Read more...
A damning Ofsted report has revealed that the state education system is failing the poorest children in our society: Just 51 per cent of secondary schools were judged to be good or outstanding;34 per cent were merely satisfactory; 10 per cent were inadequate;Only 12 per cent of 16-year-olds in... Read more...
Download West Midlands Research Note 1: Council Mileage Allowances (PDF) Read more...
Alan Johnson's attempt to fool the British public into thinking that the tragic deaths at Maidstone & Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust are an isolated case becomes more disingenuous by the day. A new scandal has now emerged at the Royal Blackburn Hospital in Lancashire's neonatal unit. Six babies have tested... Read more...
In today’s Birmingham Post (business supplement) John Duckers writes of the increasingly powerful threat to democracy that is Advantage West Midlands, the Regional Development Agency that controls £400 million-per-year of taxpayers’ money. Ducker states with some conviction that, “AWM is fast becoming an unelected mini-government with uncontested authority over... Read more...
A new paper, "Labour supply and marginal tax rates" by AJ de Bruin from the Erasmus University in Rotterdam, investigates the effect of labour income taxes on the supply of paid labour for several Western countries over the last two decades. For the countries with the best data, namely... Read more...
James Lee, chairman of the Maidstone & Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust, has resigned following the Healthcare Commission's report on an outbreak of C. difficile there that has claimed over ninety lives. The Telegraph have seen his letter to Alan Johnson. He wrote: "We had to be concerned about finance because... Read more...
While it's great news that, in Britain, tax cuts have become fashionable to talk about again, we don't yet have a plan from any of the main political parties to reduce the overall burden of tax. The Conservative conference announcement was very welcome, but on paper at least, it was... Read more...
Philip Stephens has an interesting piece in the Financial Times on whether the terms of political debate are changing in favour of lower taxes: "The politics of the 1980s were defined by a view that tax cuts were good and public spending wasteful. The public realm was neglected in favour... Read more...
Gershon efficiency agreements in preparation It's been a while since we blogged the government's ludicrous Night at the Opera Gershon "efficiency" cuts (see many previous blogs eg here). But they popped up again last week both in Darling's Pre-Budget Report, and a report from The Public Accounts... Read more...
It might be easy to think that once a real crisis like the poor housing that armed forces personnel are provided with breaks, with a furious reaction from the public and in the media, politicians will finally get on the job and ensure it is fixed. However, today the Liberal... Read more...
Remember Alan Johnson telling us that the Maidstone & Tunbridge wells scandal was an "isolated incident". We thought this was unlikely at the time: "Mr Johnson told BBC Radio 4's Today programme this morning that the Kent outbreak was an isolated incident." Heis either fudging the issue or outright lying. ... Read more...
With the ongoing weakening in standards and concerns that schools are teaching to the test the A-levels are becoming less and less useful for universities trying to assess students for entry to university. Oxford and Cambridge universities are responding by setting up their own tests. The Telegraph describes a range... Read more...
The Telegraph reports that patients are taking to pulling their own teeth as they are unable to find an NHS dentist. There have been massive increases in the NHS budget, often more than 7 per cent annually, in recent years. That there should still be such basic, and worsening, shortages... Read more...
The Government appears to have performed a U-turn on the national road pricing scheme. The Telegraph reports that the Department for Transport will tell MPs next week: "It is not the department's intention, at this stage, to take the separate powers needed to price the national road network." ... Read more...