West Midlands Waste Dossier
This document sets out the dismal record of politicians wasting taxpayers' money in the West Midlands.Download West Midlands Waste Dossier (PDF) Read more...
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West Midlands Council
Our supporters include those who run businesses operating in many industry sectors across the region as well as civil society. All of them support the TaxPayers’ Alliance in a personal capacity.Paul Biggs, Regional Director, Association of British Drivers (ABD)Alan Blumenthal, Managing Director, Suits PlusKeith Bradshaw, Chairman, Listers of CoventryEdward Carter,... Read more...
Private equity firms show the need for simpler, lower taxes for all
The Taxpayers’ Alliance exists first and foremost to defend the interests and rights of ordinary hardworking taxpayers. It is ordinary taxpayers who have to foot the mounting bill for a monolithic government bureaucracy wasting money on pointless, feel good projects. Taxpayers have seen more of their own money swallowed up... Read more...
Launch Flyer
This A5 flyer sets out, in a compact form, the objectives of, and reasons for, the West Midlands TaxPayers' Alliance. It is concise introduction to the new campaign and is just the right size and length to be given out to Saturday shoppers to read on the bus home. We... Read more...
NHS Pay Plan has failed
The Telegraph reports that the 'Agenda for Change' reform of NHS pay has failed to deliver improved productivity, according to the King's Fund health research organisation. The cost of the change was under-estimated by £200 million and may have made up nearly half of last year's NHS deficits.This is a... Read more...
Limits Of Taxation Update
Adaptation or disability? News that some of Britain's paralympians are repaying all that tax-funded support they get by defrauding us out of even more:"A BRITISH Paralympics squad has allegedly become embroiled in an multi-million-pound scam involving the tax-free sale of top of the range luxury cars. Several members of the... Read more...
'Green Tokenism' - Government Cars
Car of choice for Hollywood movie stars and British civil servants New research by the TaxPayers' Alliance reveals that £888,000 of taxpayers' money could have been saved if the Government Car & Despatch Service (GCDS) had bought normal cars, which cost around £8000 less each, instead of Toyota Prius and... Read more...
Weekly Waste Round-Up 69
In the news this week:EU water directives blow £65bn- "Water bills have already been soaring in recent years. But by far the greater part of that money has been spent, not on repairing pipes and drains, to avoid floods and provide us with extra water, but on complying with three... Read more...
PFI Debt- Slightly Uncooking The Books
The Financial Times reports today (here and here) that up to £30bn of PFI debt may shortly be reclassified back to where it belongs- on the government's balance sheet. As BOM readers will know, up until now Mr Brown's Enron style fiscal accounting has massaged most of it away (see... Read more...
Thousands of patients dying thanks to poor management in the NHS
The Times reported yesterday that the National Patient Safety Agency has found that thousands are dying every year thanks to poor communication between hospital staff, faulty equipment and a lack of skills.Politicians managing from Whitehall without proper management experience and subject knowledge cannot understand what is really going on in... Read more...
Public service reform to stall - what public service reform?
An interesting article by Nicholas Timmins in the Financial Times today looks at whether public service reform will stall under Gordon Brown:"The odd straw in the wind has been spotted, captured and analysed to death for any sign of a repudiation of the previous administration's approach.Does Alan Johnson's declaration that... Read more...
ID Cards: Already Burning Money
The memory- and the cost- linger on... You may have thought that the £19bn ID cards project (see BOM's cost primer here) was safely asleep in the long stinging nettles, but it isn't. It's alive and well and already costing us plenty.Computing reports:"The government has spent £53m on consultants for... Read more...
Teaching To The Test
Teaching to the test: getting better all the time Before you read this blog, you need to click here and watch the video.ResultsPlus. Glossy? Certainly. Slick? Yup. Blood boiling? Arrrrgggghhhh.We're all surely aware by now that the government's regime of school management via tests and tables has some serious shortcomings.In... Read more...
Splish Splash Splosh!
Does anyone have a clue where we're heading? Halfway across a severely swollen river is not a good time to let the tiller go. But that of course is precisely what Cap'n Alan Johnson is doing on the good ship NHS. Whereas Commissar Hewitt had it hard about, Cap'n Al... Read more...
Red Tape Industry
Production is booming Quite apart from taxes, government imposes a further huge burden on us in the form of regulation.One part of this- although only one part- is red tape. Successive governments routinely promise to slash it, but somehow the slashing never seems to inflict much more than a mild... Read more...
Non-job of the week
This week we turn our gaze away from Tower Shamlets and the other one party states of East London and cast our watchful eye on the South West for our non-job of the week. Gloucestershire County Council has applied for a spin doctor for their waste department. Yes, rubbish needs... Read more...
Encouraging words from Cameron on trade
For far too long the language and rhetoric of international tradeagreements has been depressingly mercantilist. If one country agrees toreduce its protectionist measures it is talked of as a "concession" anda "sell-out", whilst politicians and diplomats who dogmatically clingonto their ridiculous trade policies are saluted and commended fordefending their country's... Read more...
Worthless government pledges to cut red tape
Last year, Gordon Brown committed the Government to reduce the total cost to businesses and charities of regulation from £20 billion a year to £16 billion a year by 2010. In response, Whitehall departments have drawn up plans to abolish unnecessary regulations and reform others.But a National Audit Office survey... Read more...
Whitehall paying over the odds for outsiders
An interesting piece by Sue Cameron in today's Financial Times reveals how outsiders recruited into the top ranks of the civil service are being paid up to £100,000 more than the advertised top rate for the job, and that £6 million a year is being spent on commercial headhunters whose... Read more...
Postman Pat-ernalism needs reform
News broke this morning in the Daily Mirror that Royal Mail had agreed to alter its pension’s policy; forcing workers to put in five years more graft in order to claim their pension.Despite this being taken from a ‘company document’ seen by the Mirror, Royal Mail this afternoon denied they... Read more...
More congestion...
The future may look a little brighter today for those in the West Midlands who are in opposition to costly road pricing proposals (Birmingham Post, 24.07.07), as the region will now not be amongst the first to pioneer the plans. However, we mustn’t be fooled into thinking that this was... Read more...
Government doesn't have a magic wand
Freedom Fighters?Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the seventh and last book in the Harry Potter series, has just become Britain’s fastest selling book in history, beating the record held by... Read more...
A Night At The Fag Packet Olympics
2012 planning meeting As we've blogged many times, the 2012 London Olympics is a classic of fag packet planning. And that original £2.375bn budget was almost certainly dreamed up over an evening playing the Withnail drinking game down at the Stoat and Weasel.Last week the National Audit Office produced its... Read more...
Temping Docs
Hands up anyone who'd like to try a brain op We've blogged before about how the NHS wastes vast amounts of money through employing expensive- and quite possibly poorly qualified- temps (eg here).Now it turns out that hospitals are having to employ hundreds of locums to cover for shortages caused... Read more...