02/07/2009

The Tax Payers Alliance

Whenever there is a news story about public expenditure one can almost guarantee that the report will contain a comment by a spokesperson from the Tax Payers Alliance, as has been seen today in reports about AMs using expenses to rent office space from their own parties.

The impression given is that the Tax Payers Alliance is a grass roots organization who's objective is to speak up for the ordinary men and women who pay the taxes that government spends. This is a very false impression.

The TPA is, in fact, an ultra right wing organization founded by loyal Thatcherites for the purpose of promoting the most discredited and unacceptable aspects of Thatcherite economic policy.

Whatever the rights or wrongs of the way that Assembly Members rent offices one has to remember that in commenting on the story the TPA is doing so from a political position of being ideologically opposed to the existence of the Assembly. Their comments should be seen in that context and the journalists using their comments should make that context clear.

7 comments:

  1. totally agree. For some reason jurno's in Wales seem keen to promote the taxpayers alliance as if they are some watchdog like ofcom. They are a right wing organisation?

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  2. Notice they had very little to say when the Royal's cost was reported on?

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  3. the TPA get away with it because they have got the money to fund people to say that any expenditure by the Tax Payer is bad and the Labour Party and the left in general who do all this spending of taxes are the spawn of Satan, if the left want to discredit them then they should be funding their own 'think tank' to counter most of the tosh the TPA comes out with, have they got the will, i doubt it.

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  4. You're quite right. It's about time the BBC realised this.

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  5. The TPA regularly criticise profligate Tory councils across the whole of the UK. Their ideological position is that all public authorities should only spend what is absolutely necessary. If they have a right wing bias it is only because most left wing administrations seem to think it is their own money they are spending.

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  6. They are not independent, they do have an idiolgical basis for existance and they do have an agenda. I wonder why such a closed organisation is given any credibility by the media?

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