TaxPayers' Alliance Bulletin - 1st August 2008

The strange death of the Tory Climate Crusade

TPA Policy Analyst Matthew Sinclair teamed up this week with Chris Pope of the American Enterprise Institute on an article entitled 'The Strange Death of the Tory Climate Crusade', which charts the unpopularity of green taxes and the way the Conservatives have been forced to move away from them to issues that are both higher on voters' lists of concerns and more environmentally sensible. The failure of Zac Goldsmith and John Gummer's green tax proposals, and the current unpopularity of the Government's planned changes to Vehicle Excise Duty are, Sinclair and Pope argue, a lesson that all parties across the developed world should pay careful attention to.

Having been initially published on www.american.com, it is republished today in the Yorkshire Post, is soon to be republished in Australia and has been warmly welcomed in the USA, for example with these words from the Charleston Daily Mail:

"If Republican Sen. John McCain can read only one thing today, it should be “The Strange Death of the Tory Climate Crusade.”

We think they're wasting our money...they are now

In the comments section of the blog, we were alerted to a non-job at Moray Council that inspires laughter and exasperation in equal measure. In essence, you're all paying someone almost twenty grand to organise street football - what once needed four jumpers for goalposts and a slightly deflated ball is now the job of a council official. You can read our blog post on the job here.

It's outrageous that councils are getting away with squandering money like this - but hopefully we can put a stop to it. Please email the leader of Moray Council, Cllr George McIntyre at convener@moray.gov.uk, to alert him to this non-job, ask him what the point of the post is and that he’ll do something to stop the wastage of taxpayers’ money.

Petition Days

We got a good response to our call for people to come forward and volunteer to get involved in petitioning for lower Council Tax in last week’s bulletin. Keep Monday September 1st in your Diary for our petition in Chichester – time and venue to be confirmed. But if you would like to help us with one of these events, and in doing so sign up literally hundreds of new supporters in just a few hours, send our Grassroots Coordinator an email at tim.aker@taxpayersalliance.com and we’ll get a petition day organised in your area soon!

Recruit your friends electronically

We’re recruiting at lightning speed and need your help to add more people to the TPA supporter roll so we can show the politicians the strength of feeling for lower taxes. One easy way to do this is electronically - simply email this link http://www.mainhighway.com/tpa/join/join.php to your friends and family, urging them to join up for free. Also, if you would like any leaflets and supporter sign-up forms, email Tim at tim.aker@taxpayersalliance.com.

Letters

In these bulletins we regularly get the chance to highlight the outstanding letters written by TPA supporters to local papers. There's another great example in today's Surrey Advertiser by Peter Webb highlighting the poor deal people in the area get from their council. With so much to go on this week, from green taxes, council’s stealing each other’s logos, councillor pensions and the continuing saga over MPs expenses; why not get writing to your local paper. We put all our supporters’ letters on our media blog, so if you’ve written a letter to the paper and it gets in, let us know. For good measure, it helps if you name drop the TPA and better still declare yourself a supporter so we can show the politicians we’re winning the people over to our low-tax message.

Pick of the blogs

Campaign: The Sun Says: Cut Taxes
Campaign: First principles for a low tax society
Campaign: Great minds think alike...but fools seldom differ
Campaign: It's time to delete innocents from the DNA database
Better Government: First, do no harm
Better Government: Woefully inadequate
Better Government: The case against windfall taxes
Non-job of the week: Lambeth Council: Enviro-Crime Enforcement Officer
Burning Our Money: Dependent watchdog
Burning Our Money: British Energy - Another Giveaway?

Finally…if you think anyone you know would be interested in hearing from us, pass this bulletin on. They can join us for free here. Either click the link ‘send to a friend’ below or forward this email. From our work on the ground and talking to people, the more people hear about us and our message, the more support we bring to the campaign.

www.taxpayersalliance.com