Britannia Radio

TaxPayers' Alliance Bulletin - 22nd December 2010 Happy Christmas Dear Supporter, After a busy year the TaxPayers' Alliance team is off for a well-earned Christmas break today. 2010 has been a fantastic year for the TPA, with some of the spending cuts that we have long called for finally coming to fruition. The book "How to cut spending and still win an election," edited by Matthew Sinclair, crystallised our ideas about this and was published earlier this year. We also saw a new, more transparent system for MPs' expenses. Expenses is something that we've campaigned on right from the start of the scandal, and it was great to see many of our suggestions taken on board. The Crown Prosecution service also took action after our 'Bring them to Justice' campaign. In January 2011 we will see former Labour MP David Chaytor sentenced, after he admitted his guilt to three charges of fraud over his expenses. The long awaited bonfire of the quangos was lit with hundreds being scrapped or merged, potentially saving taxpayers billions of pounds. Regional Development Agencies have been scrapped too. The TaxPayers' Alliance has continued to enjoy success in the media this year, with all of our research papers being reported in the media, and an average of 600 high quality media hits each month. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of you for your encouragement, kindness and hard work over the last year. But, of course, there is still more to do, so we will be back in the office from the 4th of January 2011, to continue to campaign for lower taxes, transparency, accountability and better value for money for taxpayers. On behalf of the entire team here, may I wish you a very Merry Christmas and a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year. Andrew Allum Chairman of the TPA Survey results Thank you to so many of you for filling out our supporters' survey. It was a really helpful insight into your interests and backgrounds, which should strengthen our grassroots campaign going forward. As we promised, a random selection of six supporters who answered the surve have won prizes. We have sent e-mails to those who won to get their details. There were some really interesting results. Unsurprisingly, most TPA supporters have a good idea of just how much is taken from us in tax, 40-49 per cent of national income in line with the OECD statistics. Quite sensibly, most of you then wanted to cut the tax burden to under 30 per cent of national income. Ideally, how much do you think should be taken in tax, as a share of national income? Nearly sixty-six per cent of you would consider changing your vote if a party proposed more action to cut spending. Some commentators attacking the TPA like to pretend that the only people who care about wasteful spending and high taxes are the rich. The survey shows that the biggest group in our supporter base earn £15,000-24,999. The bracket containing the second highest number of TPA supporters was £0-14,999. Most of you are very satisfied with the TPA campaign, which is great news. We'll try to keep it up. You would like to see more online and e-mail campaigns on specific issues. Look out for more of those kinds of campaigns in the New Year. One little change we would like to make in 2011: at the moment lots of people receiving our e-mail bulletin aren't members of the TPA on Facebook. If you have a Facebook account but haven't joined our "page", please click here and press "Like" so we can use that service to keep you up to date and hear your views. Is your council worth their salt? As the UK is blasted by snow and icy weather, the TaxPayers' Alliance has compiled a list of how much local councils have spent on road salt. In our full council-by-council breakdown, we also reveal the total cost of purchasing emergency salt in 2009-10; buying emergency salt can be as much as three to four times as expensive per tonne. So have some councils done too little, too late? The key findings of this research are: - The total cost of purchasing emergency supplies of road salt in 2009-10 was £10.5 million. - Emergency spending on road salt last winter varied greatly between neighbouring councils, with some planning well and others having to panic buy at high prices. - The council that spent the most on emergency road salt in 2009-10 was North Yorkshire with £533,652. - So far, councils have ordered less salt this year (2010-11) than they did last year (2009-10). In 2009-10 councils ordered 1,509,129 tonnes and this year 1,482,730 tonnes has been ordered. While the 2010-11 total may rise, these figures show that they have not prepared adequately by buying more in advance when the price is lower. Not ordering in advance could also risk not being able to get the salt needed. - 75 out of 205 councils have not received all of this year's road salt order. For a full breakdown of road salt orders and expenditure on emergency supplies last year please see Chris Daniel's full report. The report had over 60 media hits and was in many of the national papers, running on the front page of the Metro for example. National broadcast coverage helped spead the message and also at a local level many newspapers and radio stations interviewed us and reported on our findings.