ISITFAIR council tax campaigner, Christine Melsom, was at Foyles Bookshop in London last week for the launch of a book, written by Matthew Elliott and Lee Rotherham from The Taxpayers Alliance, entitled The Bumper Book of Government Waste. These two young men were on the first anti- council tax march led by Isitfair campaigners in 2003 and have pledged to give 10p from the proceeds of every book sold to the Isitfair campaign. It was a high-profile reception attended by members of the financial and legal professions, the media and from the world of politics, among them former Tory party leader Iain Duncan Smith, who is about to chair a committee on social deprivation and has asked Isitfair to appear before it. Designed to highlight the wasteful affluence experienced at the opposite end of the social scale, The Bumper Book of Government Waste is already heading for the best-seller list, with 10,000 having been sold before Tuesday's launch. Published by Petersfield-based Harriman House, the book is said to take readers through a "twilight zone of crazy spending, political correctness, utter incompetence, and fantastic jollies, all funded by tax payers." Compiled from independent reports, media coverage and official statistics, when added together the figures come to a total of £82 billion of waste. According to Elliott and Rotherham, while in 1997 the government "plundered" £2 billion a week from its people, in 2004/05 that figure had risen to £4.8 billion. As members of the Taxpayers Alliance (TPA), they are determined to highlight the imbalance of ever-increasing tax bills compared with a disappointing level of improvement in the quality of services. The TPA has accused the government of being "riddled with waste and inefficiency" at a time when the rest of the country is being forced to tighten its belt and is convinced that high taxes are damaging both the British economy and way of life. While TPA supporters do not advocate turning their back on those who cannot fend for themselves, they do believe there is a strong moral case for allowing taxpayers to keep a greater share of their income and they are committed to forcing politicians to listen to their point of view. From the "scandal of the squandered billions from Lord Irvine's wallpaper to EU saunas", other examples highlighted in The Bumper Book of Government Waste are equally thought-provoking. Such examples cited by Elliott and Rotherham include The Arts Council spending £77,000 when it sent a team to the North Pole to make a snowman; the number of quangos which togethercost more than £22 billion per year; local government pension schemes, which are are now in deficit to the tune of £27 billion, with the tax payer expected to fund the difference. The book also says that each European member of parliament (MEP) costs £2.4 million per year in salary, expenses, perks and administration, and in 2005, 20 out of 24 government departments overspent their budgets. The total overspend was £7.1 billion. Harriman House believes Elliott and Rotherham have tapped into a sense of frustration among taxpayers that the massive contributions to Treasury coffers have been dissipated on bureaucracy and generous public sector pensions. Isitfair says one of the groups to suffer most from government waste is pensioners and, to give its support, Harriman House has confirmed that it will be donating 10p from every copy sold to the Isitfair council tax fighting fund. BELOW: Isitfair campaigner Christine Melsom with former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith and author Matthew Elliott at the book launch. (AD10-400-06)
