Cameron: "Cuts will change our way of life"

[L19red]

where is that from Dennis? Its an apocalyptic view of the lib dems in government.

[cochcaer]

 

And consider the history. Conservative-Liberal coalitions in Britain tend to end up being dominated by the Tories. As the constitutional historian Vernon Bogdanor wrote on these pages in May: "The Liberal Unionists of 1886 and Liberal Nationals of 1931 were swallowed whole by the Conservatives, while the independent Liberals left the Conservative-dominated national government after just one year in 1932, in protest at an imperial tariff." Why should it be different this time around?

 

If it isn't, the Liberal Democrats could be finished for good. l

Because of the way the Commons works, the Liberal Democrats may split. A group led by Clegg would then work with the Conservatives - and fight the next election on a common manifesto - thetorydiary

[Strontium]

So you still see fit to criticise a subject you obviously know fuck all about?

 

 

I do?

 

I gave you an example of a person giving back ten thousand pound whilst employing his brother.

 

Su-fucking-prise you ignored that.

 

 

It's nice that people manage to only spend £120,000 of their £130,000 annual allowance, I don't know what you expect me to say about it though, and I'm not interested in getting into petty arguments any more.

 

I have no idea but I hope you are severly injured in a car crash and have to claim benefits from a wheelchair and have to spend your days beating up whole battalions of policemen while claiming money on behalf of your gay partner landlord mincery arrangments and get interviewed by the BBC. Hope this helps.

 

 

What a lovely person you are Dennis.

[lifetime fan]

I do?

 

 

 

 

It's nice that people manage to only spend £120,000 of their £130,000 annual allowance, I don't know what you expect me to say about it though, and I'm not interested in getting into petty arguments any more.

 

 

 

 

What a lovely person you are Dennis.

 

Do I really have to quote your ignorant post again?

 

You obviously know fuck all about the subject yet still see fit to criticise it.

[Thants]

Today (and tomorrow) is the last day for getting this higher up the charts.

 

mv1OigmYcvQ

[BatChainPuller]

There a lot of similarities between the Lib Dems and students - they both signed up for a three or four year course that they will end up paying for for the rest of their lives.

[cochcaer]

Today (and tomorrow) is the last day for getting this higher up the charts.

lV5SXYqGg1g

[King Emlyn]

There a lot of similarities between the Lib Dems and students - they both signed up for a three or four year course that they will end up paying for for the rest of their lives.

Ba dum tish!

[dennis tooth]

 

The British had, until recently, a reputation for stolid indifference to the antics of our political masters.

 

If you wanted an activist citizenry, you had to cross the Channel. When the government bailed out the banks with generous infusions of public money, we stood by and watched. Though the police warned in February of last year that the country could look forward to a "summer of rage", we failed to muster the anger and resentment expected of us.

 

The G20 demonstrations aside, a terrible recession combined with revelations of expense account padding in Parliament were not enough to bring us onto the streets. For a while it seemed that nothing would be. After years of being told that there was no alternative, perhaps we had started to believe it.

 

A little more than a month ago things began to change. Perhaps future historians will mark the beginning of the current disturbances to October 27, when some 70 people shut down a Vodafone store on London's Oxford Street.

 

The company had settled a tax dispute with the government on extremely favourable terms and an organisation called UK Uncut decided to bring the matter of tax avoidance and tax evasion to a wider audience. Though, in the words of Laurie Penny the first protest was "organised only slightly more efficiently than a French farce", what she described showed a very Gallic impatience with the politely ineffectual demonstrations that had marked our recent past.

 

In the weeks that followed mass protests by students against the government's plans for higher education and an unprecedented series of occupations of university buildings took place against an increasing number of rapidly improvised demonstrations at Vodafone and Top Shop branches as well as high street banks.

 

Response to financial crisis

 

As the links between the UK Uncut protests and the student movement show, what we are seeing now is a belated response to the financial crisis. Politicians have so far failed to debate the options facing the country. The main parties fought an election earlier this year without serious discussion of the causes or consequences of the financial crisis.

 

Both the Labour Party and the Conservatives remained convinced that the state should model itself ever more closely on the private sector, even though the private sector had proved hopelessly unfit for any kind of public responsibility. In the Autumn of 2009 the Labour minister Peter Mandelson was promising the same 'consumer revolution' in higher education that so infuriated the students a year later.

 

Once in government, the Conservatives, in coalition with the Liberal Democrats, signalled their desire to open up new opportunities for private companies to deliver public services at a profit. At the same time they have announced deep cuts in public expenditure. Today I am writing in the British Library, an institution that bestows all but incalculable public benefit.

 

Reductions in its budget will force it to shed 200 jobs in the next two to three years. This is only a tiny fraction of the jobs that will be lost in the coming months – the Office of Budget Responsibility estimates the total will be 330,000. Others have warned that it will be closer to a million.

 

The current government tells us that these and other cuts will somehow restore the confidence of private investors. In fact cutting public expenditure will increase unemployment at a time when the global economy is at best sluggish and Britain itself struggles with high levels of consumer and mortgage debt. The charity Shelter estimates that 3 per cent of British households are in arrears with their rent or their mortgage payments, twice as many as this time last year.

 

So it is hardly surprising that private investors aren't investing in anything much, other than government bonds. To reduce public spending right now is at best an unprecedented gamble, at worst an act of vandalism by a Chancellor prone to confuse the interests of those who own the country with the interests of those who only live here.

 

Though the rich have profited disproportionately from financialisation and globalisation – the ram-raid and the getaway respectively of modern moneymaking – their vast fortunes, and the pressing need to tax them, have so far barely registered in mainstream political discussion.

 

Media failure

 

The media too have failed to offer anything like a serious examination of the issues. Most of us still have no real idea how the financial system works or how bankers make their annual bonuses.

 

The crisis came unexpectedly, shattered the credit-driven growth that had sustained the country since the mid-nineties, and left opinion-formers frantic to change the subject. Rather than admit that their previous beliefs about the economy were wrong, many have been all too happy to go along with the fantasy that the system is fundamentally sound and that recovery is just around the corner.

 

There is another way of dealing with the deficit, and with the wider crisis in the economy that caused it. The demonstrators and the occupiers are starting to piece it together. Rather than cut public spending and hope for the best, or expand borrowing indefinitely, the government could bring in higher taxes on the wealthy, including a levy on assets held offshore and onshore.

 

The money could be used to support public sector investment – sustaining current levels of employment and bringing new jobs and opportunities for education, as well as an improved physical and social infrastructure. Instead of cutting jobs at the British Library, the government should be building sister institutions in South London and the north of England, along with new public housing. It should be creating high-speed rail links, nature reserves and new universities.

 

The money raised could also bring the major banks into full public ownership and create a network of regional development banks with a mandate to support small and medium sized businesses. And once steps have finally been taken to address the economic emergency we can begin to debate how best to prevent a repeat of the last disastrous business cycle. Everything that has been obscure could be dragged into the light, from the organisation of the media to the structure of the enterprise.

 

When the major institutions of government and information fail to register the barest outlines of reality, when they fail to acknowledge the likely consequences of the policies currently being pursued, and when they ignore the existence of alternatives they gradually lose plausibility. In the face of this failure to inform the British are beginning to question the basis on which they are governed.

 

The long, drowsy year of apathy and inaction, debt and celebrity-worship are over. In Britain, as elsewhere, the public is back.

 

Dan Hind has worked in publishing since 1998 and is the author of two well-acclaimed books: The Return of the Public and The Threat to Reason. He is also a regular contributor to The Guardian.

[dennis tooth]

THE WELL UNFAIR STATE

 

 

SCHNEWS SURVEYS THE GOVT’S PLANS FOR WICKED CUTS TO BENEFIT SYSTEM

 

Tuition fees got you riled up? Wait ‘til you get a handle on what our Tory chums have got planned next - flagged up since the first announcement of spending cuts, the recent consultation paper entitled Universal Credit - is a massive demolition (sorry, overhaul) of the existing benefits system. With all benefits and tax credits being rolled into one system, the screws are gonna get tightened.

 

As part of their ‘divide and rule’ tactics, the present government of millionaires claim that the coming cuts in benefits are all being made against those out of work - in the interest of those in work. This is a lie. In fact 80% of those in receipt of housing benefit are working, and there will be cuts on Working Tax Credits!

 

The truth is that the proposed benefits cuts are not made against ‘dole scroungers’, they are made against all of us, whether in work or out of work, on benefits or not. Their aim is to lower wages and make us fight each other, rather than fighting against them. Only the rich and the bankers who caused the economic crisis will benefit.

 

According to Brighton Benefits Camapign, who alongside many around the country are staging protests -”It is not time anymore to have ‘disabled’, ‘single mothers’, or ‘dole claimants’ campaigns - this is an attack on everybody, especially those in work, and we need to fight together. This is NOT a struggle to protect the state and its benefits system, but to defend ourselves from a vile attack from an entrenched gang of millionaires and big businesses, who want to use the benefit system to squeeze us and multiply their profits.”

 

Housing benefits will be one of the biggest casualties, decimated by politicians who have never in their silver-spoon lives had to worry how they’re gonna pay the rent.

 

SQUEEZE THE SPONGERS!

 

While Local Housing Allowances - the amount of housing benefit you can claim - will be reduced across the board to match the lowest 30% of rents in the area (rather than the previous 50%), there are to be caps on LHA. This’ll cause many of the highest price property areas, like inner-city London, to become stomping grounds of the rich only, ‘cleansing’ the areas from ordinary tenants on lower wages.

 

If your under 35 and single, you’ll only be able to claim for rooms in shared accommodation. And if you’re on JSA and Housing Benefits for a year, your housing benefit will be slashed by 10%, along with the lower JSA you can receive and the hassle from the Job Centre. In the government’s warped logic, the mass unemployment caused by the recession and the fucked-up sky-high rents seen as the norm are you’re fault. And you have to pay.

 

In the biggest assault on the poorest sections of society for a generation, around 750,000 people are set to become homeless as a result of these changes according to the Chartered Institute of Housing. With an average decrease in benefit of £12 a week, many households will be forced into spiralling debt. That’s mainly working households, remember.

 

There’s another benefit that’s designed to ease the poverty and inequality that’s a direct result of the capitalist system: Tax Credits.

 

These are set to be abolished in 2014, and are being cut now. Although Child Tax Credit looks safe for the time being, draconian cuts are being made to Working Tax Credits. Parents will have to work 24 hours a week to qualify at all, and from April 2012, if your income decreases by less than £2500 you’ll still not be entitled to any increase in your Working Tax Credit. This’ll cause extreme hardship. According to estimations made by the Tax Credits Unit at least half a million working families will lose more than £1,000 per year due to these changes.

 

DOLING OUT PUNISHMENT

 

If this makes you want to escape the rat-race and earn your crust on your own terms, you’re out of luck. If you’re self-employed you will have to prove your earnings work out at the minimum wage for your hours. If you work less than 16 hours a week (or even more) you’ll be categorised as an unproductive member of society - and forced into the job centre to sign on and look for a ‘real’ job.

 

Finally, many of those currently receiving Disability Living Allowance may lose their entitlement after it’s replaced by the stricter Personal Independence Payment. Bizarrely, if you can use your wheelchair, for example, you won’t be entitled to the mobility component of the benefit.

 

All of this will be obsolete in 2014, when most benefits including tax credits and housing are simply deleted in favour of a ‘Universal Credit’. In line with the government’s plan to get us all slaving away at insecure and badly paid jobs, this plays into the hands of the monster corporations who’d prefer not to have to give us secure employment and decent wages. No wonder so many big business bullies like M&S and Boots gave the government their whole-hearted support.

 

This is the crux of the government’s ideologically-driven assault on welfare state, and that old-fashioned idea that just maybe, people have a right to decent work and a decent wage, to be able to support and house themselves and their families.

 

Resistance is brewing. Across the land, people are realising that the selfish, money-grabbing twats in power and their business cronies can’t get away with it. With the biggest splashes so far coming from the student demos and the tax avoidance actions prompted by UKUncut (see SchNEWS 746,751), the coming months will see action on a wider scale.

 

To read the full proposals Universal Credit: welfare that works - DWP

[Section_31]

People only get off their arse when their wellbeing is threatened, they don't do it for any noble reason and they don't do it for each other. For instance, I wonder how many more people would have rebelled against the Iraq war if the prospect of conscription was nailed on?

 

Oh and Dennis, post the links with the articles mate, in the interests of fairness people need to know the context and the views of the people writing the articles, New Statesman etc is skewed left and anti-Tory.

[dennis tooth]

It’s beginning to look a lot like Russia

Ev’rywhere you go;

Take a look at the guys in blue, they’ve certainly noticed you

With latex hands and leering eyes aglow.

 

It’s beginning to look a lot like Deutschland

Stazi in ev’ry store

But the scariest sight to see is whose knocking that will be

On your own front door.

 

A pair of hobnail boots and a pistol that shoots

Was the warning of General Ike;

Imaging nudes and feelin’ up dudes

Is the hope of Janet and Mike;

 

And Big Sis can hardly wait for planes to fall again.

 

It’s beginning to look a lot like Oceania

Ev’rywhere you’ll find;

There’s a camera in the hotel, one in the park as well,

Any one of you could be Goldstein.

 

It’s beginning to look like R3volution;

Soon the bells will start,

And the thing that will make them ring is the freedom that you bring

Right within your heart.

[dennis tooth]

http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article25106.html?

The end result is that banks have been able to collect about 300 basis points in risk-free profits using money they wouldn’t otherwise have. But these near-zero interest rates are taking a large toll on pension funds. So what we have is an interest rate bailout at the expense of pension plans. This is absolutely criminal.

[Thomo123]

Im so fucking depressed by all this shit. Why cant we just fucking tax the wealthy in line with every other fucker.

[Section_31]

Im so fucking depressed by all this shit. Why cant we just fucking tax the wealthy in line with every other fucker.

 

Because the wealthy are in charge, that's the simple answer.

 

 

As soon as politics became organised it's been dominated by the battle between the elites and 'the people', dating back to the populares and optimates of the old Roman republic.

 

When you fuck with these people, bad things happen. Casesar was killed by the senate because they were the rich elite who didn't like being told what to do, even though his reign was actually better for the people. Hitler was backed and bankrolled by rich industrialists because they were afraid the communists were going to come and take their money.

 

The right wing is basically the domain of the wealthy elites, the people who should be the most educated and open minded actively use fear and soundbites to build a bulwark between you and their money. This is how the Tories have returned to power. They're backed by the wealthy, people like Ruper Murdoch and Philip Green - and the plebs have been conditioned by the PR and media machine they both bankroll into believeing that they're the right people to fix the country, when t hey are in fact only there to serve a right wing agenda.

 

It's tedious but it's nothing new. The real problem is that people are so thick.

[King Emlyn]

Section knows; he always has.

[Rafa's Peggy's]

Below is a link to a new website, False Economy, which was launched last week to bust the myths around the neccessity for the cuts which are being made and provides an excellent critique of what the Government are doing.

 

It provides research and information in a way which is easy to understand and interpret and also provides you with an opportunity to contribute cuts that you know about, which is then fed in to a tool which provides a regional break down of the cuts.

 

It's sites like this which could provide a vehicle for educating people on what's really going on, whether it be through people reading and contributing to it or through campaign groups using it to shape their own actvities or material.

 

Have a look and share the link with friends and family to raise as much awareness as possible about the site.

 

Why cuts are the wrong cure | False Economy

[taliesin08]

When the unions and grass roots organisations start linking up with the students, things will start getting more intersting.

 

The Lib Dems though have shown a whole generation that politicians are not to be trusted and if anything they are more right wing than the tories. They are looking and sounding more and more like the brown shirts every day.

[Strontium]

Im so fucking depressed by all this shit. Why cant we just fucking tax the wealthy in line with every other fucker.

 

 

The wealthy are very good at using loopholes, moving assets offshore and otherwise avoiding taxes. The government is working on closing loopholes - capital gains tax being shunted up to 28% for highest earners being an example - but the problem is largely a systemic one.

 

The Lib Dems though have shown a whole generation that politicians are not to be trusted and if anything they are more right wing than the tories. They are looking and sounding more and more like the brown shirts every day.

 

 

Yes, the Nazis were, after all, renowned for their commitment to devolution of power and individual freedom... :whatever:

 

Have you been drinking meths?

[Stu Monty]

The wealthy are very good at using loopholes, moving assets offshore and otherwise avoiding taxes. The government is working on closing loopholes - capital gains tax being shunted up to 28% for highest earners being an example - but the problem is largely a systemic one.

 

 

Yes, the Nazis were, after all, renowned for their commitment to devolution of power and individual freedom... :whatever:

 

Have you been drinking meths?

 

You really can't shake the idea that having the market provide for you isn't individual freedom can you? You can't get your head round the fact that in that system you are only as free as your wallet allows you to be and that taking away someone's carer/nurse/childminder isn't freeing them up at all.

[Strontium]

You really can't shake the idea that having the market provide for you isn't individual freedom can you?

 

 

Well, it depends what we're talking about. Not being a socialist, I'm not inherently disposed to treat the market as evil. The market is appropriate for some things and not for others. I sure as hell wouldn't want to go back to government telecoms distribution, for example. And I definitely wouldn't want to buy loaves of bread and milk from government-run shops.

 

You can't get your head round the fact that in that system you are only as free as your wallet allows you to be and that taking away someone's carer/nurse/childminder isn't freeing them up at all.

 

 

Nobody should only be as free as their wealth allows. I think you might have misunderstood liberalism somewhat.

[Cardie]

 

The Next christmas sale getting out of hand again!

[dennis tooth]

Who is behind the Taxpayers' Alliance?

A delegate at the Conservative conference with a Taxpayers' Alliance bag spelling out the pressure group's core message. Photograph: Martin Argles

 

The slogan on the jaunty shopping bag swinging from Conservative arms at the party's Manchester conference this week said it all: I Love Low Taxes.

 

It was a freebie from the Taxpayers' Alliance, the campaign group whose message of cuts – in tax and spending – coursed through the Tories once more this week, and will help set the agenda for the general election.

 

Since it was launched six years ago the alliance has become arguably the most influential pressure group in the country, yet neither the people who run it, or the backers who pay for it, have come under a great deal of scrutiny.

 

Its critics ask whether it really is an alliance of ordinary taxpayers, as the name is clearly intended to suggest, and how close it is to the Tory party hierarchy which seems to have adopted some of its radical ideas.

 

Certainly not all is as it seems. The same group that speaks out against government waste on Newsnight and in the pages of newspapers also runs a campaign against radicalising schoolbooks published by the Palestinian Authority and has formed an alliance with a Slovakian rightwing group

 

The group's leadership is no less esoteric. Alongside a fund manager, a petroleum geologist and a former chief economist at Lehman Brothers on the board, the directors include a retired teacher who lives in France and does not pay British tax.

 

But none of that has stopped frontbench Conservatives and business leaders flocking to the TPA, and at the Tory conference policy after policy seemed to bear the TPA's stamp.

 

"The idea of tearing down the walls of big government as Cameron did in his speech on Thursday is something we have been talking about for years," said its chief executive, Matthew Elliott, yesterday. "The Tory party has moved onto our agenda."

 

George Osborne's public sector pay freeze was recommended by the TPA last month and Elliott, who describes himself as "a free-market libertarian", said he had been "banging on about" the idea that no public worker should earn more than the prime minister without the chancellor's approval long before Osborne announced it.

 

The rightwing media have fallen in love too and the TPA claims a higher profile in print than Friends of the Earth and the Confederation of British Industry. Framed front pages line Elliott's office near the House of Commons as evidence of its success at creating the climate of opinion in which radical cuts to tax and spending can be made.

 

In the last year the Daily Mail quoted the TPA in 517 articles. The Sun obliged 307 times, once bizarrely on page 3 when a topless Keeley parroted the TPA's line against energy taxes. The Guardian mentioned the group 29 times.

 

The TPA's proposals include scrapping the secondary school building programme, child benefit and Sure Start centres for the youngest children. The range of its work reflects how influential the group has become in a relatively short space of time, but also raises questions over how it manages to pay for what has become a £1m a year operation. The alliance refuses to publish details of its income or its benefactors.

 

But a Guardian investigation has established that a large part of its funds come from wealthy donors, many of whom are prominent supporters of the Conservative party. Sixty per cent of donations come from individuals or groups giving more than £5,000. The Midlands Industrial Council, which has donated £1.5m to the Conservatives since 2003, said it has given around £80,000 on behalf of 32 owners of private companies. Tony Gallagher, owner of Gallagher UK, a property company that gave the Conservatives £250,000 in 2007, is a member of the MIC, as is Christopher Kelly who owns the international haulage firm Keltruck, and Robert Edmiston who owns IM Group, a large car importer.

 

"The concern for our members is that vast amounts of public money are being spent and we don't get value for that money," said David Wall, secretary of the MIC. "Our members' tax money is being wasted … [the TPA] start making some noise and all of a sudden it is on the agenda of the political parties."

 

A spokesman for Sir Anthony Bamford, the JCB tycoon, whose family and company have donated more than £1m to the Conservatives, said he has helped fund the TPA, as has the construction magnate Malcolm McAlpine.

 

David Alberto, co-owner of serviced office company Avanta, has donated Elliott and his 14 staff a suite in Westminster worth £100,000 a year because he opposes the level of tax on businesses. Alberto has an offshore family trust but said 90% of his wealth is in the UK, where he pays tax.

 

Other businessmen named by the TPA as supporters include spread betting tycoon Stuart Wheeler who gave £5m to the Conservatives before he endorsed the UK Independance party; Sir Rocco Forte, the hotelier; and Sir John Craven, chairman of mining group Lonmin. Labour figures certainly believe that the alliance is close to the Tories. "This is an arms-length Tory front operation run by big powerful business interests who want to remove themselves from paying tax by poisoning the well of public debate around the issue," said Labour MP Jon Cruddas.

 

"They are hugely influential," added a senior Labour figure. "It says something about the state of our party that we are letting them continue unchecked. Many Labour MPs are very worried that they are likely to grow in stature as the election approaches."

 

Elliott flatly denied the TPA was "a Conservative front organisation", and added that Lord Ashcroft, the party's deputy chairman who is known to bankroll many Conservative candidates in marginal seats, is not a donor.

 

They do not appear to need him. Funding has soared from £67,457 in 2005 to more than £1m and the number of supporters has increased 60% this year as a result of the combined effect of the recession and the MPs' expenses scandal.

 

Conservative politicians have also gathered round. Every month the TPA runs an open meeting for members of right-leaning thinktanks and politicians. In the last year talks have been given by Eric Pickles, the Conservative party chairman, Liam Fox, the shadow defence secretary, and former shadow home secretary David Davis.

 

They are chaired by Stephan Shakespeare, the owner of ConservativeHome.com, a political website. Its editor, Tim Montgomerie, has claimed: "The TPA is more likely to deliver Eurosceptic change than Ukip."

 

Tim Horton, research director of the left-leaning Fabian Society, who has investigated the TPA, claimed the group is "fundamental to the Conservatives' political strategy", which he said was to destroy public confidence in politicians' ability to deliver public services, thereby paving the way for cuts.

 

"There is something deeply dishonest about their campaigns on government waste," he said. "Their aim isn't to make public spending work better, but to slash it dramatically. Yet none of them will campaign on their true vision of society: fewer public services. At least Thatcher was honest about the deal: less 'public' means you go private."

 

Elliott insists the TPA has grassroots support. It has a database of 3,000 activists who have given money or time and 32,000 supporters who "tend to be middle-aged, probably Eurosceptic, and they tend to be right-leaning, but not party political", according to a source with knowledge of the group.

 

When TPA began in 2003 there was really no kind of alliance ‑ just Elliott, then a 25-year-old political researcher for Conservative MEP Timothy Kirkhope. As a politics student Elliott had been impressed by Republican grassroots campaigns to cut tax and spending he had seen in America – particularly the work of Grover Norquist who campaigned against Hillary Clinton's healthcare plans during Bill Clinton's presidency.

 

"Up until that point Britain didn't need a taxpayers' group because we had the Conservatives, but then they stopped talking about it and so I saw a niche," he said.

 

His idea was to influence politics "not as an inside job [lobbying politicians] but to go by public opinion and the press".

 

That year his wife, Florence Heath, a petroleum geologist, joined as director with Andrew Allum, a management consultant who is now chairman.

 

In a strange choice, Heath's father, Alexander, was also appointed despite living in France and not paying any British tax.

 

The board now features no one who could be described as just an ordinary taxpayer. Members include Ruth Lea, the former chief economist at Lehman Brothers, Mike Denham, a former Treasury economist who worked on tax and spending under Margaret Thatcher, and Saul Haydon Rowe, partner at financial firm Devon Capital LLP.

 

Some of the group's fringe campaigns also seem to dilute the idea that this is an alliance of ordinary taxpayers. Its campaign against "hate education" in the Palestinian territories stemmed from Elliott's personal concern about incitement of hatred towards Jewish people in the Middle East, his pro-Israel stance and the perception that British taxpayers' money was being misused to subsidise the publication of incendiary schoolbooks there.

 

It is also about to launch "Big Brother Watch" led by David Cameron's former chief of staff, Alex Deane, to "fight injustice and to protect personal liberties".

 

Elliott believes the grassroots support of its main cause will grow.

 

"I want lots more members," he said. "I would like to get to a situation where we have as many members as the Liberal Democrats.

 

"Perhaps our time will come next year if there are public sector strikes [over the proposed Tory cuts]. That will be a key recruiter. We contend that wages in the public sector are higher than for similar jobs in the private sector. On top of that public sector workers have final salary pensions, so if they strike there will be frustration among the general public."

 

Key funder the MIC said the TPA must be equally aggressive in its campaign against the waste of taxpayers' money, if it is to continue to finance the TPA.

 

"The last thing we would want is to be accused of funding a political party by the back door," said David Wall.

 

Elliott insists the TPA will challenge a Tory government just as vigorously.

 

"I intend to take on David Cameron on value for money as aggressively as I have Gordon Brown," he said. "[if there are strikes] we will take on the unions as well as the government."

Who's who: Alliance's backers

 

 

David Alberto, 41, the co-owner of Avanta, a serviced offices company with operations in London, India and the United Arab Emirates, has donated free serviced office space in Westminster worth an estimated £100,000 a year.

 

"My bugbear is taxes and the cost of the state and how it has grown," Alberto said. "It is wrong to be spending a greater and greater proportion of GDP on central government. Stamp duty and capital gains tax have restricted our ability to expand."He said he keeps money in a family trust offshore, but the bulk of his wealth is held in his UK-registered companies.

 

 

Malcolm McAlpine, 92, a director of Sir Robert McAlpine, the construction firm building London's Olympic stadium, has given an undisclosed amount to the TPA. "Our family business … advocates value for money government and we, for some years, supported the Taxpayers Alliance, which brings to general attention a large number of instances of apparent excessive and unproductive expenditure of public funds," he said.

 

The TPA has criticised the Olympics project, which is funded with £9.3bn in public money.

 

"The fact that one supports an institution does not mean that one agrees or disagrees with every detail of their policies," said McAlpine.

 

 

Anthony Bamford, 63, a director of Staffordshire-based JC Bamford, which manufactures JCB diggers, has made minor donations in a private capacity, his spokesman said.

 

Bamford has also donated large sums of money to the Conservative

[Stu Monty]

Well, it depends what we're talking about. Not being a socialist, I'm not inherently disposed to treat the market as evil. The market is appropriate for some things and not for others. I sure as hell wouldn't want to go back to government telecoms distribution, for example. And I definitely wouldn't want to buy loaves of bread and milk from government-run shops.

 

Nobody should only be as free as their wealth allows. I think you might have misunderstood liberalism somewhat.

 

Nobody was discussing liberalism, not unless you are specifically talking about free-market liberalism.

 

I'm still to see any sort of comment from you about how you can think that the market, which is economic natural selection, isn't a destructive and exploitative force for those that aren't the fittest?

 

Unfortunately you don't get a choice anymore on whether the market provides things that you deem it innapropriate for, you can't ram it back into Pandora's box anymore than you can regulate what Philip Green and Vodafone do, to which you've already mentioned the powerlessness of the government.

 

I'd also point out that your previous post about the wealthy moving money about starts on a foundation which believes that those in power actually care about tackling the situation. Something I'm sure the leaders can all have a nice chat about next time they're taking turns on Murdoch's ballsack.

[Guest Numero Veinticinco]

And there was me thinking that the coalition was 'stronger' for the fees fiasco! Vince Cable saying that he could 'bring down the government' if they 'push him too far'.

 

Vince Cable: I could bring down the Government - Telegraph