The new localism After nine years of tractor factory misery, the government is going to "abandon" its public service targets. According to Andy Burnham, new Chief Secretary to HM Treasury:"A bonfire of government targets to ease red tape affecting schools, hospitals and town halls will be ordered tomorrow as part... Read more...
To the Centre for Policy Studies for a seminar on “political disengagement”. Peter Bradley, the ex-Labour MP and author of a new report – Anti-Social Britain: Tackling Political Disengagement – was speaking on the subject of voter apathy, what has caused it and who was to... Read more...
On 1st April this year Ofsted was re-launched as the Office for Standards in Education, Children'sServices and Skills, with an increased remit to inspect children’s homes, adult learning and fostering agencies. There is already concern that that this bureaucratic expansion has only increased Ofsted’s complexity, meaning it is no longer... Read more...
One problem we face in British politics is the over-centralisation of the political system. Taxpayers are often financing a system too unfair and iniquitous as to defy belief. Yet we are too distant from the centre of power, we lack the ability to transform the system that forces us to... Read more...
Good at PR... less good at doing the job on budget Taxpayers should be very concerned about the parlous state of Metronet. That's the company that has £17bn of Public Private Partnership contracts to maintain, renew, and upgrade nine of London's Underground (LU) lines. And today it's teetering on the... Read more...
The Times reports that this week the government has proposed to allow local authorities to levy an additional tax on businesses in the form of an infrastructure tax which will be paid by business in the city of London, and will be limited to 4p in the pound. This new... Read more...
Yesterday the Sunday Telegraph reported on a TaxPayers' Alliance study of local government's attempts to fight global warming: "Using figures obtained from 25 councils across England and Wales, the Taxpayers' Alliance, a pressure group, calculated that councils on average now employ eight people to work on green issues. If that figure were repeated... Read more...
We blogged a while ago about a BBC probe into its own bias. Last week we had the BBC smear campaign against the Queen. Now the BBC is probing the Today programme to gauge the extent of its bias in favour of the European Union. In a letter to Sir... Read more...
Estimated cost* of government websites As regular BOM readers may recall, back in 2001 Tony Blair held a Special Information Age Cabinet (see this blog). He breathlessly announced:"I want the UK to be the world's leading Internet economy... I am bringing forward our target for getting all Government services online... Read more...
Shutting after five years In the news this week:£25m school shut after just five years- "Plans have been made to close a secondary school in Essex built at a cost of £25m five years ago. Bishops Park College in Clacton (pic above) opened in 2002 and was hailed as a... Read more...
There has been some speculation in recent days that regional assemblies are about to be abolished. The faux-oversight they were supposed to offer the vast regional development agencies was always a sham, and now it seems that Gordon Brown has had enough of them. In yesterday’s Times, the move... Read more...
Campaign News Visit the new TaxPayers' Alliance website... Launched at the weekend, the new TPA website has a brand new layout and improved design. We listened to feedback on the site and from responses to our website survey and have tried to accommodate the wishes of our existing audience as... Read more...
So long suckers The NHS financial crisis is costing us a fortune. Brown's seven years of plenty may have come to an abrupt halt, but in an organisation legendary for squandering public money, that translates into ever more, and ever crasser wastefulness. This morning we learn of yet another huge... Read more...
It is now looking increasingly likely that the West Midlands will be bidding adieu to its regional assembly after it seems that the power of the assemblies in the South West and North East could be handed back to elected councils as early as 2010. Jon Walker comments in today’s... Read more...
In its annual audit of the department, the National Audit Office yesterday refused to sign off HMRC's annual accounts, "due to levels of claimant error and fraud in the tax credits system". The NAO report was full of damning evidence on the failure of tax credits: 1. Tax credits overpayment... Read more...
The TaxPayers' Alliance is putting out a major report tomorrow on the scale of overruns in public sector capital procurement projects. We have examined over 300 projects and calculated the total overrun (which runs into many £billions), the average overrun, how much this costs each household every year (many hundreds... Read more...
Download Reducing the Burden: Policies for tax reform (PDF)There are some good ideas in the Liberal Democrat tax proposals: Simplification of the tax code and postcard-style returns could ease the administrative burden faced by individuals and companies. Britain has the most complex tax system in the world, having recently overtaken India;... Read more...
Hey kids! Here's a cool way to waste £119m! Nanny's simple-minded attempt to get school children eating more fresh fruit and veg has been a total flop.The idea was that school kids only eat crisps and sweeties because they aren't given the alternative of fresh fruit and veg. Give them... Read more...
This year we British taxpayers will shell out £4.7bn on the government's international aid programme; that's nearly £200 for every British household.Setting aside the highly contentious issue of whether taxpayers should be forced to contribute to overseas charity in the first place, do we get value for money?As we blogged... Read more...
Gordon Brown has announced that housing, and providing housing for first time buyers in particular, will be the main priority of next year’s parliamentary agenda. He claims that "[p] utting affordable housing within the reach not just of the few but the many is vital both to meeting individual aspirations... Read more...
An article in the Birmingham Post on Monday reported that Nasim Awan, the chairman of Springfield Neighbourhood Forum has called for an investigation into how £21million of public money is being spent through the Enterprising Communities Programme, an initiative that covers the Sparkbrook, Sparkhill, Saltley and Small Heath areas and... Read more...
Whilst smokers around the rest of the country have been banished to outdoor shelters, there is one place the United Kingdom where they can still enjoy a cigarette in the comfort of a bar or pub without fearing the long arm of the law. That’s right, Stoke-On-Trent Council haven’t failed... Read more...
BBC Radio West Midlands reported this morning that Sandwell Council has appointed a new Tourism Officer in order to attract thousands more visitors to the area, and so the one star council continues to spend money on dubious ideas when other local issues should undoubtedly be higher on their agenda.... Read more...
Early this year we released our Town Hall Rich List which showed that Tower Hamlets, one of the poorest boroughs in the country, had 27 employees earning more than £100,000 a year. One of those 27 individuals was a Mr Alex Cosgrave, who earns £148,173.38 as Corporate Director of Environment... Read more...