More gutter journalism from the Taxpayers' Alliance
In a very short period of time the TPA has risen from nowhere to become a high profile pressure group. Their meteoric rise has been fuelled, not by their deeply flawed message, but by their skills in media manipulation and their unprincipled pursuit of cheap tabloid headlines.
Matthew Elliott, the co-founder and chief executive of the TPA is frank when detailing how the alliance has built up this media profile, doing the work that once would have been done by journalists themselves.The TPA mission statement is simple. There is no penumbra. They are pledged, inter alia to:
"What we've tried to do since 2004 is understand how the media works, so we've tried to give news stories to journalists on a plate. Journalists have 101 things to do in their day and don't often have time to read long and dry reports from think-thanks. So we use the Freedom of Information Act and a team of researchers to get fresh figures from government and local councils, which we package up into brief, media-friendly research papers, complete with eye-catching headline figures to give reporters a ready-made top line".
The Independent
- Oppose all tax rises
- Criticise all examples of wasteful and unnecessary spending
Take a look at this year’s Public Sector Rich list. Once again we see the TPA mounting an ad hominen attack on Jane Collins. Who on earth, you may ask, is Jane Collins? Jane is filed away in the TPA resources under the sub-heading “Waste”, sub-sub heading “public sector rich list”. If you accept the TPA message, Jane is a wastrel, a taxpayer subsidised fat cat. This year she appears on page 44 of the TPA document, to be precise at number 239. Jane is currently ripping of the taxpayer to the tune of £175,000 a year. What a crook she must be.
You have never heard of Jane Collins. You wouldn’t have done. She does not seek personal publicity. She just gets on with her job. She is, by training, a paediatric neurologist. Rather a good one, actually. She is also the Chief Executive of Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, the most famous children’s hospital in the world. Last year, Jane’s salary was £150,000 a year. This year it is £175,000. And that, ipso facto if you buy into the TPA fraud, is a disgrace.
Well travelled, ex-quangocrat Matthew Elliot, a co-founder of the TPA and an ambitious Über right-wing spinmeister, says:
“While ordinary families are suffering in the financial crisis, the public sector elite are enjoying record pay packages. Far too often, senior officials get massive pay rises and generous bonuses despite serious failures on their watch. Where someone is earning huge amounts at taxpayers’ expense they must be accountable to the people who pay the bill and who rely on the services they run. We all deserve to know how our money is being spent, and people should have the right to decide if they are getting value for money. Public services will never improve if people are being rewarded for failure.”Look down their list of prominent supporters here. Not many teachers, doctors and nurses on the list. And can you find anyone on the list earning less than £150,000 a year? And remember, the TPA oppose ALL tax increases, indeed they seem to oppose all taxation, including green taxes. The motivation of the TPA is clear. They want to reduce the tax burden on the super-rich, and they will take any steps to achieve that end. They are deeply, profoundly hypocritical. They use the freedom of information legislation to find out about public sector pay. But try asking them for details of their funding. They will not tell you.
The Taxpayers’ Alliance
Matthew Elliott is a talented media manipulator, so talented in fact that he has been compared to Goebbels. The Spectator is not renowned for being a hot bed of left wing politics:
Who pays for the TaxPayers' Alliance?
For an organisation so concerned with transparency, the TaxPayers' Alliance is surprisingly opaque about its own finances. No list of donors is available. It states only that all donations are from private sources and that no single donation accounts for more that 5% of income. But 5% of what? The Alliance's 2006 accounts record an income of £130,000 – up from £68,000 in 2005 – but that seems hardly enough to sustain 10 full-time staff and offices in London and Birmingham. Let's hope those staff are at least paid the minimum wage and claim any tax credits due to them. In 2007 the Alliance published "abbreviated" accounts, which meant income and expenditure were withheld.
The OTHER taxpayers alliance.
The TaxPayers’ Alliance publicity machine would have had Goebbels stunned. This is a précis of the Alliance’s hits for the first week of September [2008]: government slated for giving the homeless charity Shelter £100,000 to produce 13 leaflets promoting ‘eco-towns’; Cleveland police shamed for spending £36,000 on two stained-glass windows; Stoke-on-Trent Primary Care Trust revealed to be spending £65,000 on promoting walking routes and employing ‘walk leaders’; Fylde and Wyre council spending £2,130 making a video entitled ‘Recycling made easy’. And so it goes on: no longer is the story ‘Robert Chote says political party’s figures don’t add up’ but ‘Matthew Elliott says taxpayers are being ripped off’.Richard Murphy, founder of the rival Tax Justice Network, an independent coalition of researchers who focus on exposing tax avoidance and tax havens, is stinging in his criticism of the alliance:
The Spectator
"A new financial elite are seeking to capture the resources of society to promote their new form of wealth accumulation through financial services... The TPA is massively helpful to this. The tax system it promotes, claiming it has popular support, is regressive and will widen the poverty gap because it promotes tax reduction, flat tax, tax simplification, which always allows more scope for tax avoidance for the wealthy, and all in the name of ordinary people."Learn more about the hidden depths of the TPA and get a proper, rational approach to taxation, at the real Tax Payers Alliance here, and the Tax Justice Network (here)
Richard Murphy in The Independent
Labels: gutter journalism, right wing politics, Taxpayers' Alliance
34 Comments:
Well said, Dr C.
Would the likes of Matthew Elliott cope with being Big Boss at GOS, I wonder?
"Last year, Jane’s salary was £150,000 a year. This year it is £175,000. And that, ipso facto if you buy into the TPA fraud, is a disgrace."
Well, a 17.5% pay increase is a disgrace considering that the nurses in her Trust only got 1.9%. Surprised you fell for that one, Crippen.
"...considering that the nurses in her Trust only got 1.9%"
Like many others on 'ere, I would rather that grunts at the sharp end were paid their "due" (soldiers being one glaring example) - but the TPA still strike something of a duff note. Especially when you consider the going rate for failing bankers.
Absolutely with all nurses on the disgraceful way they have been treated over the last couple years. Their pay is bad and the pay rises are in fact pay CUTS, all packaged for three years until after the next general election. I am staggered that they accepted it.
But that is a separate issue to this.
GOS is the most famous front line paediatric hospital in the world and the suggestion that the GOS chief executive is ripping of the taxpayer with her salary of £175,000 is too silly for words.
What about all those City private sector workers who get January bonuses bigger than Jane Collins' annual pay... and she does not get a bonus.
John
Isn't the point about the tax payers alliance that they are concerned about tax payers money and not private shareholders?
If you think that a particular CEO or whatever is paid far too much then you have the option of not giving them any money by not buying their products/not buying shares in their company, whereas if you don't want to give a large chunk of your earnings to 'public sector fat cats' you can stop paying taxes and go to jail. That seems a hell of a difference to me.
Ditto their own funding, given that they aren't spending your money and their aims are pretty clear I don't see what you are complaining about - I imagine that most left wing\green pressure groups don't detail every part of their spending and have more influence in govt that TPA.
Their list of prominent people are mostly rich, which isn't surprising given that most prominent people are skilled at whatever it is they do and are therefore likely to be rich and there would be little point in putting together a list of people who aren't prominent.
I don't think that your argument about all of the people on the list being motivated solely by self interest stands up either, after all a fair few of the super rich have funded labour in the past (their leadership in the post war years setting up the welfare state were hardly drawn from the working class, or now for that matter) or called for higher taxes in the US for example - Buffet, Soros, all the celebs that campaigned for Obama etc. Although given your link to the (other) taxpayers alliance talks about the 'discredited' Thatcherite policies I guess if they consider begging the IMF for loans/the British disease/3 day weeks/winter of discontent to be the height of good economic management it’s to be expected that any talk about the long term economic benefits of a lower tax burden vs a higher one are dismissed without comment. It also opens you up to the charge of hypocrisy, after all which group has benefited more than doctors from the vast expenditure by the government in recent years, and you have confessed to voting labour the last few times?
As to the city workers bonuses
private sector fat cats = not my money or yours
public sector fat cats = taxpayers money = my money
If you think that a particular CEO or whatever is paid far too much then you have the option of not giving them any money by not buying their products/not buying shares in their company....
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But it's not as simple as that, is it. The timid savers, the financially unversed, have no real opportunity to influence the fat cats at the top of Northern Rock, or the Halifax Building Society. Even more so the mortgage payers; if you don't like the mortgage charges, you are stuck with them. Too many penalties to move.
As regards hospitals, well, at the moment with Choose and Book, you CAN choose which one you go to.
John
I've no doubt that the TPA and your "mate" Wat Tyler will publish a stinging riposte to your ad hominem attacks on their organisation which, believe it or not, has rank and file support from many hardworking folk in the private sector who have seen their pension funds eroded by NuLabour's mismanagement of the economy whilst subsidising gold-plated schemes enjoyed by Ministers, MPs, civil servants, teachers and NHS employees (even GPs who are supposedly subcontracted and technically in the private sector!). Your comparison of Jane Collins with high-fliers in the City is ridiculous. In all but name, GOS is a charity so perhaps you should compare her salary with those of similar standing in the charitable sector. I doubt that many of them enjoyed such a large pay rise in the last twelve months.
I've no doubt that the TPA and your "mate" Wat Tyler will publish a stinging riposte to your ad hominem attacks on their organisation...
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They may well, and that's fine. But neither you nor Mike above address the issue of the cheap tabloid tactics which the TPA openly admit to using.
Why is it ridiculous to compare the CEO of GOS with people working in the city? Do you think that running an internationally famous post-graduate teaching hospital is a sinecure? Yes, GOS has charitable status but that does not mean management only has to arrange a flag day.
I'm sure the public sector has some inefficient employees, as does the private sector. But the TPA attack on on the public sector comes at a bad time. You say:
"Your comparison of Jane Collins with high-fliers in the City is ridiculous."
The only way it becomes ridiculous is when you consider that it is the cynicism and avarice that abounds in the City, and on Wall Street, that has destroyed the economy. Now the taxpayer has to pick up the tab.
Why doesn't the TPA name and shame all the bonus-sodden fat cats in the banking and financial sector who, through personal greed, have brought the world economy to its knees.
John
Your comparison of Jane Collins with high-fliers in the City is ridiculous. In all but name, GOS is a charity...
Riiiiight, so on that note, perhaps you could explain how the market "works" for acute paediatric care (witness the nonsense that is PBR)?
My dad has always been "public health" - firstly as an army doc, and subsequently as a Consultant Paediatrian. He's coming up to retirement (thank gawd) and takes home a salary that most bankers of his seniority would consider spare change. For a line of work that is tougher than most.
"Ridiculous" comparisons, my arrse.
cough, Consultant Paediatrician.
Rage-induced spelling, cough.
But it's not as simple as that, is it. The timid savers, the financially unversed, have no real opportunity to influence the fat cats at the top of Northern Rock, or the Halifax Building Society. Even more so the mortgage payers; if you don't like the mortgage charges, you are stuck with them. Too many penalties to move.
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True, it is a bit more complicated, but that is after the contract has been signed, and if you believe a company is wasting vast sums of its shareholders money you can avoid them at the start or (at a cost) switch to their competitors afterwards.
As regards hospitals, well, at the moment with Choose and Book, you CAN choose which one you go to
Sure, can you point out what procedure those who agree with TPA message can follow to prevent their earnings being spent on projects their consider wasteful? Starting with the many pointless groups funded by the taxpayers to produce pointless leaflets and campaigns that you've so ably pointed out over the years, like Dame Christine Beasley and the Coeliac scam that are still displayed just below this post?
The size of the rise is ill-judged, but muttering about the pay is a bit of a joke. You can read something about the sizes of the pay of CEOs in charities here, but it seems clear that the CEOs of the big charities are are now on well above £ 100 K pa.
It is also clear that the drive to pay charity CEOs more has been driven by the perceived need to professionalise or (I would say) "business-ise" the voluntary (ditto public) sectors. In a nutshell, once they staryed wanting to attract "biusiness executive talent" to these jobs, they had to start paying only-20-odd-%-less-than-equivalent business level salaries.
Which also shows up a classic TPA-type piece of heads-you-lose-tails-I-win bullshit: who have been the kind of folk banging on for the last two decades about the need to "bring business practises and talent into the public sector"? Well... exactly the sort of folk who fund and staff the TPA. And now that the sector has responded by getting more like a business... they are flogging it for "wasting taxpayers money". Classic.
You couldn't make it up.
A few other relevant points would seem to be:
(i) I would have guessed a senior London hospital consultant with merit awards would have been on that sort of money anyway. If they do private work, much more.
- I wonder what a world-class paediatric neurologist earns per year in the US under the kind of private healthcare system the TPA would presumably prefer?
(ii) At least by seconding her to run the Trust rather than hiring some muppet from Northern Foods or similar they get someone who might know something about medicine and hospitals.
(iii) Similarly, do we really believe the kind of besuited human smirk that they could have got from PriceWaterhouseCoopers or similar would have done it for £ 175 K pa? Dream on.
But it's not as simple as that, is it. The timid savers, the financially unversed, have no real opportunity to influence the fat cats at the top of Northern Rock, or the Halifax Building Society. Even more so the mortgage payers; if you don't like the mortgage charges, you are stuck with them. Too many penalties to move.
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True, it is a bit more complicated, but that is after the contract has been signed,
Sure, a contract has been signed, but hardly an arms length contract between equals. Thinks of all the poor buggers (like me) who were caught up in the endowment scams. Most of them (like me) did not really understand what was going on.
and if you believe a company is wasting vast sums of its shareholders money you can avoid them at the start or (at a cost) switch to their competitors afterwards.
Easy to say that. What about all those Equitable Life pensioners? What about all those nurses who were tempted OUT of their index linked pensions to by financial “products” hawked by the spivs…sorry, the “financial advisors”; what can I really do about the size of my electricity bill? I can’t stop using it; what about the cost of rail travel; the cost of water; what can I really do to influence the Utilities which were flogged off to the private sector?; the city has just buggered up the economy – what can I do to change that? I can’t take my business elsewhere
As regards hospitals, well, at the moment with Choose and Book, you CAN choose which one you go toSure, can you point out what procedure those who agree with TPA message can follow to prevent their earnings being spent on projects their consider wasteful?
Yes. Use Choose and Book to avoid a hospital that is giving bad service, and then it will close. In theory. In practice, it is unlikely to be effective unless a hospital is known to be outrageously bad.
Starting with the many pointless groups funded by the taxpayers to produce pointless leaflets and campaigns that you've so ably pointed out over the years, like Dame Christine Beasley and the Coeliac scam that are still displayed just below this post?
That’s fair comment. Am I hoisted on my own petard? Well, Dame Christine is the CHIEF NURSE and has not, to my knowledge, taken any action to support nurses to do anything about their latest derisory pay rise. She could be removed. If the RCM passed a vote of no confidence in her, she would surely have to resign. They should. But I mentioned Dame Christine specifically because I believe that she has let her colleagues down. The TPA does not do qualitative analysis of all public sector employees. It tars all with the same brush, and condemns all by tabloid innuendo. Disgraceful.
The coeliac scam is a classic example of waste in the NHS. I have consistently argued that there should be a front end charge on the NHS to stop waste. Suggesting that coeliac disease sufferers make a reasonable means tested contribution towards the cost of their pizza bases is again a SPECIFIC example, and not a crass generalisation of the kind that the TPA makes.
Finally, Mike, you have not said if you are comfortable with the manipulative headline grabbing tactic employed by the TPA.
Are you?
John
They may well, and that's fine. But neither you nor Mike above address the issue of the cheap tabloid tactics which the TPA openly admit to using.
So they take advantage of journalists being lazy by giving them a selection of the facts along with a few juicy anecdotes to get a headline and the appropriate emotional impact on the reader. Like every other half competent pressure group then really.
To take a group you support I'm sure I can find plenty of press releases/op eds from gun control supporters after various shootings worldwide praising our gun laws for banning certain rifles in ’87 and pistols in ’97 and therefore making us all safer which going for shock effect with the details. Without mentioning that the murder rate was 1.12 per 100k in ’86 and 1.43 per 100k in ’98, so up by over a quarter then.
source
Or to quote a US gun control group
Assault weapons—just like armor-piercing bullets, machine guns, and plastic firearms—are a new topic. The weapons' menacing looks, coupled with the public's confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons—anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun—can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons. In addition, few people can envision a practical use for these weapons.
VPC
I just happen to take a very long time to put my thoughts to paper
Overall I take it as a given that journalists and PR types are as a whole untrustworthy and likely to conceal a lot that weakens their argument either through laziness or dishonesty, I don't expect TPA to be any different.
Easy to say that. What about all those Equitable Life pensioners? What about all those nurses who were tempted OUT of their index linked pensions to by financial “products” hawked by the spivs…sorry, the “financial advisors”; what can I really do about the size of my electricity bill? I can’t stop using it; what about the cost of rail travel; the cost of water; what can I really do to influence the Utilities which were flogged off to the private sector?; the city has just buggered up the economy – what can I do to change that? I can’t take my business elsewhere Sure, a contract has been signed, but hardly an arms length contract between equals. Thinks of all the poor buggers (like me) who were caught up in the endowment scams. Most of them (like me) did not really understand what was going on
Yep – the private sector is hugely inefficient and lots of people get hurt by it and have very little influence over companies like utilities. Which isn’t really any different to the government running things directly, except that companies can rarely fail/be forced to fail by the government if it becomes too desirable politically to ‘do something’. There is little we can do about the government’s role in the economy – large increases in the national debt, raids on private sector pensions, failure to do anything about the inflation in house prices that made everyone feel better and richer and therefore the government more popular, failure in its proper role of setting up the FSA, BoE and treasury to ensure that things didn’t get 'buggered up', shoddy equipment for servicemen on front lines whilst programs their own defence reviews state are essential for long term security like nimrod, type 45s and astute class still get cut.
Yes. Use Choose and Book to avoid a hospital that is giving bad service, and then it will close. In theory. In practice, it is unlikely to be effective unless a hospital is known to be outrageously bad
That equally applies to the larger companies
When it comes to crass generalisation it unfortunately works and is and has been used to great effect by those in favour of higher state spending, didn’t you say how you yourself voted labour in part due to their “24 hours to save the NHS” and other slogans like “education, education, education” and “tory cuts”, without them mentioning that you would lose the authority to send patients to whatever consultant you wanted, able to form an association with other doctors to cover out of hours care…….
She is a fat cat. That's why Brown is going to increase her tax rate to 45%
Nick
Goebbels, blah blah blah
If you think some pressure group with spiffy press releases are scarier than Nazis...well grow some cojones Doc.
Maybe- just maybe - other people in this world are entitled to their opinion. Maybe the rich want to keep their vast wealth, and maybe the poor want to keep their meagre earnings rather than have homeless groups PISS THEM UP AGAINST A WALL by producing eco-SHIT. Maybe their message has resonance, even with people like me on 40k a year, with a mortgage, children and no wealth at all. Maybe your glorious big government which has destroyed your economy, your country and your future, should LISTEN to what the TPA has to say?
Jesus - the woman is at the top of her game in a high profile role and people are complaining about 175k...
If you fancy joining Primary Health's GP practice here down under, you'll bag yourself her salary ++ in sign on plus her salary ++ pa.
She may or may not be a fat cat. The point is the TPA says her performance and salary should be scrutinised. You scrutinised it and thought it was OK. I'm Atilla-Hun-right-wing and I think she of all people probably deserves her big salary. But jeez, the TPA has every right to examine it - we go to jail if we don't pay tax, if the government takes my money they need to justify its expenditure.
And what's this about the TPA releasing its accounts? Release your own, pal. You're making public comment, does that mean you need to tell us what your expenses are? You're so damn brave your entire identity is concealed. So is mine but I believe in privacy, except when the public is footing the bill.
"Jesus - the woman is at the top of her game in a high profile role and people are complaining about 175k... "
No-one is complaining specifically about her and her salary.
For God's sake is it not obvious that they are listing everybody - EVERYBODY - being paid large amounts by the government as salary and appending a question mark? Clearly having this sort of role is different from some of the pointless quangos that are around but the TPA is not in a position to rank people by level of virtue.
The TPA is a single-issue pressure group, and that’s what they focus on – a single issue.
They’re no different in that respect from, say, PETA or Fathers4Justice, to take two random examples. No-one expects Fathers4Justice to issue press releases saying that, to be honest, mothers do a damn fine job and children should, by and large, probably live with them after a separation. Not because it isn’t true, but because that’s not their raison d’etre.
I happen to think that targeting Jane Collins is hopelessly misguided – someone who runs GOS deserves all that and more, IMHO – but I’m all for a pressure group which keeps an eye on the massive explosion of public sector non-jobs which have proliferated under the current government.
And Dr C public sector jobs should come under more scrutiny than private sector ones because the public are funding them.
On occasion, Wat Tyler has valuable things to say about waste in both DoH and MOD (not least PFI etc), but - contra its mission statement - I don't feel like the TPA speaks "for me." Not in the slightest.
See sick-of-wonk's excellent comment above.
Goebbels, blah blah blah
If you think some pressure group with spiffy press releases are scarier than Nazis...well grow some cojones Doc.
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It wos the Spectator wot made that comparison which I thought, coming from such a right wing source, was a telling remark.
John
She may or may not be a fat cat. The point is the TPA says her performance and salary should be scrutinised. You scrutinised it and thought it was OK. I'm Atilla-Hun-right-wing and I think she of all people probably deserves her big salary. But jeez, the TPA has every right to examine it - we go to jail if we don't pay tax, if the government takes my money they need to justify its expenditure.
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Of course they have every right to examine Jane Collin's salary. It's easy too, you can look it up. But that is not what the TPA is about. They are about an insidious innuendo that EVERYONE working in the public sector is ipso facto incompetent and overpaid.
Why does the TPA not produce a list of all the bankers in the city, give us full details of their annual salary, their annual bonuses, their fringe benefits (BUPA etc) and their pension pots. And who pays most of their salaries? Well, blow me down, it's the pension funds. No wonder the annuity business is such a rip off. I would rather put my money in the post office savings than buy an annuity in the city.
These are the guys who have brought the economy to its knees through their greed. And now WE, the taxpayer, are being forced to rescue them.
Why does the TPA not mention this?
John
"It wos the Spectator wot made that comparison which I thought, coming from such a right wing source, was a telling remark."
You thought it was a telling remark? No, it was a stupid remark. It says something about the quality of writing in the Spectator but it adds nothing to the debate about the TPA.
Do you disagree?
You thought it was a telling remark? No, it was a stupid remark. It says something about the quality of writing in the Spectator but it adds nothing to the debate about the TPA.
Do you disagree?
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well, if pushed, i do slightly in that it was an extravagant comparison and not really appropriate, so ok, i wish perhaps i hadn't quoted it.
but the TPA are nonetheless brilliant and cynical media manipulators. Perhaps a better comparison would have been with |Max Clifford.
do YOU agree????
John
It's amusing to see that Crippen is returning to his Labour roots; Reading between the lines it's easy to ascertain that the "Real" Taxpayers' Alliance is little more than a front for public sector trade unionists. As a member of what is probably the most suucessful public sector trade union in history (the BMA) it's hardly surprising that Crippen has found a new home.
However good a neurologist Jane Collins may be - is she really worth a 16% annual pay rise ? Especially against the background of an NHS which "can't afford" life prolonging anti-cancer drugs and rank and file public servants (of which I am one) being asked to put up and shut up with pay rises averaging 2.5%.
And this made me LOL
"As to the city workers bonuses
private sector fat cats = not my money or yours
public sector fat cats = taxpayers money = my money"
Er what about the billions of taxpayer pounds without which many banks wouldn't now exist, and the fat cat salaries/bonus culture that contributed to running the entire banking system into the ground and which the taxpayer is now having to re-imburse, that money came from me and you and went straight into their pockets.
They are laughing at us all as they drink chapagne on their private yatchs....
It's amusing to see that Crippen is returning to his Labour roots; Reading between the lines it's easy to ascertain that the "Real" Taxpayers' Alliance is little more than a front for public sector trade unionists. As a member of what is probably the most suucessful public sector trade union in history (the BMA) it's hardly surprising that Crippen has found a new home.
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Why, thank you! My Labour roots?
Hmmmm. I think I shall ask Polly Toynbee around for supper.
Part of the Real Taxpayers Mission statement is closing tax loopholes, through which the uber rich climb, and closing tax havens where the uber rich hide to avoid UK tax altogether.
Is there a problem with that?
John
‘but the TPA are nonetheless brilliant and cynical media manipulators’
Dr C, it isn’t really rocket science, though, is it – you have to tailor press releases to your likely readership and then make yourself available for comment. That’s it, more or less.
It isn’t really a case of journalists being lazy as Mike was saying yesterday, more a case of the number of press releases they get every day. When I was the editor of a small niche monthly title (sales c. 30,000) I would get literally dozens of press releases every day. Of course the ones that are succinct, well-written and highlight the salient points will get the most attention.
I don’t want to spend hours of my day reading through endless badly written, badly targeted press gumph any more than doctors, I suspect, want to read every leaflet that comes from drugs companies or medical supplies companies.
So whoever drafts the TPA press releases is obviously bloody good at their job.
Why, thank you! My Labour roots?
Hmmmm. I think I shall ask Polly Toynbee around for supper.
Part of the Real Taxpayers Mission statement is closing tax loopholes, through which the uber rich climb, and closing tax havens where the uber rich hide to avoid UK tax altogether.
Is there a problem with that?
***************
Well, you and Polly Toynbee are pretty much aligned politically so you would find much commmon ground if you were to have her round for supper. As for the Real Taxpayers' Alliance mission statement, the truth is that they do not have one, merely cross-referncing to that of the Tax Justice Network. Talking of "loopholes" perhaps smacks a bit of hypocrisy coming from a GP partner, whose tax advisor has almost certainly exploited every single loophole in the book on his behalf.
Your case is completely undermined when you trot out the old canard that the city and the bonus of those greedy bankers drinking champagne on their yacht (no wonder we still have labour with morons like m munro) destroyed the economy.
The financial crisis is a direct result of mismanagement of the economy by the BoE, which was in turn given the wrong targets by the biggest twat of them all, a certain G Brown. The financial problems are a consequence, not the cause.
I am amazed that there are still people who believe Brown and Darling.
As for the poor dears who borrowed money but did not know what they were doing, please pull the other one. Indicative of your way of thinking though, as I guess you probably know better than them what is good for them.
As for the TPA, their basic premise is that the state is NOT entitled to our money, and if it is going to coerce us and take it, we sure as hell should be looking at how it is spent.
Seeing the mess this country is in in almost all walk of life, not only are most people in the public sector overpaid, they should be fired too.
So a right-wing pressure group has learnt to use the same PR tactics as the BMA, ASH, Alcohol Concern, the BMJ, Greenpeace, Liberty and every other modern organisation which has something to say. As a result, journalists are occasionally running with their stories instead of ignoring them.
The swine.
Dr C, have you actually read the rich list? You keep moaning that there "aren't any bankers on the list" but there are! Try searching "northern rock"... They also say "of the nationalised banks and building societies, only Northern Rock is included, as it was the only one to be nationalised in 2006-2007 or 2007-2008, the period of the remuneration details. Next year's Rich List will contain the remuneration details of the directors of the other nationalised financial institutions, such as Bradford and Bingley, if they remain in the public sector." Seems reasonable! Your righteous indignation wouldn't have anything to do with the fact that the NHS estimate that 4000 GPs earn 150k, would it?
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