Friday 19 March 2010



TaxPayers' Alliance Bulletin - 19th March 2010
 
NEW RELEASE: The TPA Manifesto

Today we are proud to announce the release of the TaxPayers’ Alliance manifesto. It brings together into one handy leaflet the policies which we think should be the top priorities for whoever is Prime Minister after the General Election. The manifesto sets out exactly what we think should happen in the first three months, the first year and then the first 5 years following the election. A whole range of policies are included, and as well as promoting good ideas to politicians of all parties, this will be a great benchmark for us to chart the success or failure of the next Government. You can have a look at a PDF version of the manifesto here, and we’ll have hard copies to hand out very soon. As well as a handy source of information on our policies, this is also a reminder of quite how many ideas have been generated by the TPA in recent years – the manifesto is bursting with proposals, and even then we couldn’t include them all!

Taking the fight to UNISON

As you will probably have seen in our one-off bulletin earlier this week, we’ve really taken the fight to UNISON over the issue of public sector non-jobs. When UNISON launched a scaremongering video about cutting public spending, our New Media Co-ordinator Andy Whitehurst (who recently did the website redesign) acted swiftly to produce an excellent rebuttal.

Thanks to the great reaction from so many of you who spread the video on to your friends and hosted it on your websites. It was swiftly picked up by the well known bloggers Iain Dale, Guido Fawkes and Conservative Home, too.

As a result our video now has 20,626 views on Youtube, compared to only 3,128 for UNISON’s original effort. This really is a great victory, showing that far more people support our message than that of UNISON. Watch the Truth about non-jobs here.

New TPA Book!

In these tough economic times there’s a war of words in the political arena over how and when to cut public spending, and by how much. Of course with the Budget coming up next Wednesday the debate is set to intensify even further. Into that fray comes our new book, which sets out how Britain can start building a sustainable economic recovery. It’s available to pre-order now on Amazon: How to Cut Public Spending (and Still Win an Election).

Defend the anti-PC Mayor

Peter Davies, the directly elected Mayor of Doncaster, is famous for his no-nonsense opposition to political correctness and public sector waste. Despite the widespread acclaim for his refreshing take on things, he has now become the latest victim of political correctness.

Apparently, one person has filed a complaint that Mayor Davies’ policy to remove as much political correctness from the council as is legally possible could "incite racial hatred".  As well as the fact that we of course agree with the need to cut down on the number of PC initiatives councils pursue, this investigation will undoubtedly cost the taxpayer thousands of pounds. In effect, Mayor Davies is being investigated at great expenses simply for doing what he promised in his manifesto.

The Campaign Against Political Correctness have launched an online petition in his support here. Hundreds of people have already signed – let’s make it thousands!

Best of the Blogs:

Burning our Money: Non-Job of the week
Better Government: Debating Healthcare