The TaxPayers’ Rebel Alliance
You’ve heard of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, right? They are the group who claim to represent the taxpayer, and whenever any publicly funded organisation spends any money on anything, they have something to say about it, usually complaining about the waste of public money that is coming out of the pocket of the taxpayer.
Well, there’s just one problem. There seems to be an assumption that the Taxpayers Alliance represents all taxpayers, judging by the fact that they are quoted by the BBC and other media sources pretty much whenever anyone spends any money. Only their mission statement makes it clear that they will not always represent my views:
The TaxPayers’ Alliance is Britain’s independent grassroots campaign for lower taxes. After years of being ignored by politicians of all parties, the TPA is committed to forcing politicians to listen to ordinary taxpayers.TaxPayers’ Alliance
I’m all up for politicians to be forced to listen to taxpayers. I’m 100% behind that. No problem there. But I’m not always going to be in support of lower taxes, if it comes at a social cost. I’m in favour of reducing waste, and inefficiency, I’m in favour of the public sector being expected to be open about what it is spending its money on, but I’m not in favour of draconian knee-jerk reactions to try and save twenty quid at the expense of decent working conditions, or helping people.
Take a look at the Portsmouth Council / Facebook thing. A freedom of information request revealed that Portsmouth Council staff, in total, were spending an average of 413 hours per month on Facebook. Portsmouth Council were unable to determine whether this time was during workers’ breaks, when they were allowed to do personal surfing, or when they were supposed to be working, when obviously they shouldn’t.
Yet while the TaxPayers’ Alliance admitted this equated to only six minutes per staff member per month, they seemed to fail to notice that there was no evidence that this was being done in clocked-in office hours:
Even if everybody does just spend a small amount of time on the site it is still being paid for by the taxpayer. It is a huge amount of work time, and therefore money being wasted.’Mark Wallace from the Taxpayers’ Alliance, quoted in Portsmouth Today
And so, Portsmouth Council banned their workers accessing Facebook, despite the fact that — assuming 22 working days in a month — workers were averaging around only 15 seconds per day on Facebook, and there wasn’t any evidence that this was being done in work time. This sort of kneejerk reaction is typical of what happens when the TaxPayers’ Alliance goes wading in, despite the fact that when you look at the statistics, that sort of reaction is entirely unreasonable.
The council probably loses more money in terms of people wiping their arse more times than is strictly necessary (as hey, that wastes toilet paper as well).
There’s also another reason why I don’t feel the TaxPayers’ Alliance represents me. They aren’t all taxpayers…
The Taxpayers’ Alliance, a campaign group that calls for tax and spending cuts and claims to represent the interests of taxpayers, has admitted one of its directors does not pay British tax. The Guardian has learned that Alexander Heath, a director of the increasingly influential free market, rightwing lobby group, lives in a farmhouse in the Loire and has not paid British tax for years.The Guardian
So I therefore feel it is necessary to set up a different group, offering a different voice to the TaxPayers’ Alliance, to represent those tax payers who the TaxPayers’ Alliance does not represent (particularly because their name implies they represent all taxpayers when they plainly do not). I therefore propose setting up the TaxPayers’ Rebel Alliance, so named for three reasons.
Firstly, because it’s a link to Star Wars and I think it has a certain nerdy cool to it. Secondly, it represents that we may take a different view to the standard TaxPayers’ Alliance. And thirdly, it frames the TaxPayers’ Alliance as representing the Evil Empire with Darth Vader and stuff, which, while not strictly accurate, is at least amusing.
The TaxPayers’ Rebel Alliance therefore has three key points:
- We believe that the public sector should remember that they should be responsible and open about how they spend their money, remembering that it comes from the ordinary taxpayer
- We believe that sometimes it is beneficial to the country when the public sector spends money, and they should not automatically be criticised for doing so — only where it waste can be demonstrated.
- We believe that every time the national media give a voice to the TaxPayers’ Alliance, they should give our contrary opinion an equal voice
And, in a nutshell, that’s it. Who’s with me?
Gary Miller says:
October 12th, 2009 at 8:25 am
Good points; I’m in!
Chris Hunt says:
October 12th, 2009 at 8:49 am
“These are not the tax savings you’re looking for…”
Imran says:
October 12th, 2009 at 12:37 pm
Something similar exists;
http://www.taxpayersalliance.org/
The Other Taxpayer’s Alliance.
Name not as cool though, I admit.
David Edwards says:
October 12th, 2009 at 4:10 pm
I’m in, but a bit worried that the third key point is that the rebels aren’t allowed to agree with TPA under any circumstances see above: “our contrary opinion”.
Surely the whole point is to respond to a situation around payments from the public purse, not just what TPA has said?
JackP says:
October 12th, 2009 at 7:29 pm
@David, that’s a fair point. It may be that we agree with the TPA from time to time. It should not be assumed that we would automatically disagree. Perhaps that would be better phrased “when we have a contrary opinion”
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