TPA Bulletin - 1st April 2010
Town Hall Rich List
The TaxPayers’ Alliance released our annual Town Hall Rich List on April 1st – but the findings from the report were certainly no joke. In fact, it is taxpayers being taken for fools, as at least 1,250 council staff are now paid £100,000 a year or more. This number is up a staggering 14 percent from the previous year. We also found that the average pay rise for these fat cats is 5 percent – and all this during a recession. Many workers in both the public and private sectors are expecting tough times ahead, made all the worse by too much borrowing and excessive spending in the public sector. But despite this, council top-brass continue to rake in the big cash.
Many councils still stubbornly refuse to respond to our Freedom of Information requests, despite the fact that the general public and all political parties now support our call for transparency over executive pay in the public sector. This is our fourth Rich List and our biggest yet so the time for talk is over – taxpayers across the UK want to see where their money is going, and our influential report has played a major role in making this a genuine possibility in the near future.
As always the Town Hall Rich List was well reported in local and national media, as well as online. National newspapers gave our story hundreds of column inches, with comment and news:
There were too many local papers covering the report to mention them all, but here’s how the Yorkshire Post told the story.
Our Research Director Matt Sinclair was interviewed on BBC 5Live’s ‘Morning Report’ and Colourful Radio’s news bulletins
Policy Analyst John O’Connell was interviewed for BBC television news in Kent and London and ITV news for Yorkshire, Meridian, Central, London, North West and Anglia regions.
He also talked about the Town Hall Rich List on BBC Radio in: London, Devon, Merseyside, Suffolk, Leeds, Shropshire, Scotland, 3 Counties, Essex, Derby, Cumbria, Manchester, Humberside, Stoke, Tees, Peterborough, Kent, Leicester, Northampton and the following commercial radio stations: Ram FM, Forth, Leicester Sound and Sun Talk.
Campaign Manager Emma Boon was on BBC local radio stations in Norfolk, Bristol and Lincolnshire, as well as featuring on Southend and Chelmsford Radio’s news bulletins.
Tick Tock!
Last week we told you about big campaign that will be taking place in the run up to the election. We’ve been working really hard here at ‘Think Tank Central’ to pull our ideas together but we’re still not ready to tell you exactly what we’ll be up to. Here’s what we will say though, our latest project will see us taking a really fundamental message about the nation's fiscal situation on tour around the country. Keep your eyes on London for the launch on the 12th of April, and a bulletin next week will reveal all.
EU Quangos
This week we released new research revealing the extent of EU quangos. We’ve had longstanding concerns about the arms length bodies in Britain, currently there are more than a thousand of them. Our new research found that EU quangos now have bigger budgets, and more staff than ever, and they’re spending more than £1billion. See our new research here.
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