Sandwell Council, no doubt keen to keep their noses clean after presiding over THE pUBLIC art gallery disaster, have been boasting lately about the fact they’re introducing the “lowest council tax rise in the Black Country”. The “lowest rise” certainly has an oxymoronic ring to it, and – let’s... Read more...
Somewhere out in the future everything's going to be fine For taxpayers the Budget's fiscal projections are worrisome. Read more...
…unless we can stop them! Sutton Council’s cabinet approved on Monday a plan to increase council tax and pay council fat cat officers £10,000 more – an increase of 11%, taking their pay to well above £100,000 a year. To put it in perspective, the cost of the salary... Read more...
People might be forgiven for thinking it is just the largest and most polluting cars that are going to face increased tax with the big boost to Vehicle Excise Duty today. This report, from the BBC News website, suggests that Darling has raised taxes on "high-polluting" cars: "In his first... Read more...
Anyone picking up the Daily Express today will find on the front page the embodiment of the political class smugly jabbing his finger at the British public. In David Cameron’s budget response yesterday, Mr Cameron listed the areas where Labour had failed, concluding that Britain now lives under record... Read more...
I thought the North East said “No” to the North East Regional Assembly? Aye, they said ‘no’ to an elected regional assembly, but it still exists, illegitimate, unwanted and unaccountable. If there’s any doubt that it exists, just take a look in the Guardian Society jobs pages today and... Read more...
I’ve just returned from Horley, Surrey, where I was leafleting and recruiting with our new East Surrey TPA organiser Clive Greig (pictured). Even though it rained non-stop (not as bad as yesterday, mind) we pressed on handing out leaflets and telling people about the TPA’s mission to lower taxes... Read more...
We’ve been informed that Advantage West Midlands have treated themselves to yet another conference yesterday in a handy Worcester location. Liam Byrne was wheeled out to discuss exactly which new taxes to slap on businesses to fund transport now that road pricing has been rejected by our local councils. ... Read more...
Sickening hypocrisy Essex County Council's £1.5m plan to make its Council Tax payers prop up 15 local post offices is merely the latest twist in a long and dismal saga of public sector buck-passing. The Essex post offices are among 2,500 unprofitable branches (from over 14,000) earmarked... Read more...
…If they can’t work to budget, if they can’t deliver frontline services and if they squander your money on pointless non-jobs, then should local councils really be running local Post Offices? Essex County Council appears to be leading the way in committing £1.5million to saving 15 Post Offices across... Read more...
As my colleague posted yesterday, Kent County Council Chief Executive Peter Gilroy, who last year was England's highest paid local government employee, has been fighting an increasingly desperate rearguard action to try to keep his salary secret from the taxpayers who foot the bill. His fairly weak excuse was... Read more...
Dippy diplomas- neither vocational fish nor academic fowl Schools Secretary Ed Balls has been out and about today trying to defend the government's new school Diploma scheme. And it certainly needs defending. As BOM readers will be well aware, the government has taken the worrisome... Read more...
With the budget round the corner the government is leaking the more unpopular aspects so as to mitigate the damage done on the day. First they leave Northern Rock off the balance sheet, then higher fuel taxes are mooted and now today in the Metro there’s speculation that prescription charges... Read more...
Let me ask you something. Do you think that someone whose salary you pay should be accountable to you? From your hard earned taxes, the government employs civil servants, bureaucrats and, what really gripes us, town hall fats. They live off your money, so they should be accountable - all... Read more...
The Audit Commission may well have promoted Stoke-on-Trent City Council from the very bottom of the council class, but it seems they may well be back to their old tricks... The Sentinel reported this week that the council spent at least £50,000 of taxpayers’ money demolishing a school when... Read more...
Lancashire’s taxpayers, after footing Council Tax bills that have doubled in the last ten years, better brace themselves to hear where their money’s going. We found this job at Lancashire County Council from the Guardian Society jobs page, which is our non-job of the week: “Woodlands from waste development... Read more...
Opening up the countryside The government's £250m pa eco-quango Natural England has just shredded another £4.5m. Discovering Lost Ways, a £15 million project, was set up by the Government six years ago to restore forgotten countryside rights of way. But: "Staff searched hundreds of land deeds, maps... Read more...
Tomorrow the seven West Midlands councils involved in the transport and congestion debate are expected to conclude that the plan to introduce unpopular charges on motorists in the area is flawed, and therefore banish the spectre of road pricing. At least for the time being (Birmingham Post). The conditions... Read more...
How progress happens So what should we make of the schools lottery fiasco? Brighton's attempt to impose Marxist-Leninist principles on school place allocation (originally blogged here) has backfired spectacularly, with an outright reduction in the proportion of kids getting their first choice secondary school. It's reportedly declined from... Read more...
The seaside city of Brighton & Hove suffers an endemic problem; a few excellent, over-subscribed schools, and many poor to average ones. A situation which characterizes state education in this country as a whole. Competition for places at the good schools in Brighton is predictably fierce, but last year... Read more...
There was a very telling poll of political attitudes out over the weekend, commissioned from Yougov by the Daily Telegraph - the full results can be found here. While the newspaper reports headlined on the growing pressure on Michael Martin, there were some very interesting figures on the question of... Read more...
Since the launch of our third Council Spending Uncovered paper last week, which looked into the cost of the Local Government Pension Scheme, there has been a lot of media discussion of the issue - which is, of course, exactly what we hoped for. This is a crucial issue and... Read more...
Regular visitors to this site will be well aware that we don't agree with every proposal coming out of CCHQ at the moment, but today's announcement on prisons was really excellent. The two key elements that the Shadow Justice team got right were incentives and managerial freedom and responsbility:... Read more...
TPA Activist Brian Sturman (see left) is a prolific letter writer for the low tax cause and consistently writes letters holding our wasteful politicians to account. His letters routinely find their way into the Eastern Daily Press and Norwich Evening News and have reached as far away as the Northumberland... Read more...