Thatcher and the conservatives would have done exactly the same thing.

FFS who believes that?”

Libertarians. Also known as the cancer of society.”

Paul you are incorrect and I suspect you know that. Anarchists believe that there should be no government. Most Libertarians are minarchists therefore they believe that some taxation is necessary, just not the vast amount taken at the moment.

Er, as opposed to giving the workers money to a load of corrupt bankers and shafting the public finances for a generation in the process ?

Thatcherism was far more liberal (in the true rather than LC sense) than nu labour have ever been.

I’m sure the power of private lobbying groups needs attention – although, as Chris Dillow has pointed out, when you have a large and powerful state able to tilt the playing field, vested interests will always spend money to have it tilted in their direction.

A good point made in other circumstances by Morgan Spurlock, as I recall.

Well, they can’t be “forced”, but it might be helpful if they stopped calling themselves by a name which is manifestly designed to give a false impression of who they are. (A better one would be “a few people most of whom used to be in the Imperial College Conservative Association, or attached to Westminster Conservatives, or both”.)

But giving a false impression is what these people do – they’re not actually producing proper reports designed to make a contribution to discussion, they’re producing instant “report” after instant “report” in order to make ideological hay, to create an impression in the public mind through making the same point over and over again in much the same way that tabloid newspapers do with, say, welfare claimants and immigrants.

But Don’s point is a good and obvious one – they’re in the not uncommon business of demanding loudly and righteously that public bodies adhere to a certain set of standards while insisting that they and other private bodies have no such obligation. When people take it on themselves to aggressively deploy double standards, you’re dealing with people who are manifestly unscrupulous. That’s Matthew Sinclair and his chums. Whoever they may be.

Haha. Oxlib. Libertarianism. Yuck.

@ 11: “It’s just a rent-a-quote agency the Daily Mail rings up whenever it wants to add an air of authority to it’s public sector bashing.”

But it’s not just the Daily Mail. *all* the major media outlets go to the TPA for quotes. They claim to get 13 media hits *a day*. They are on the 6 O’Clock news all the time.

This is part of the problem: a pressure group which doesn’t disclose its funding and doesn’t publish full accounts gets treated like a representative body and given repeated national broadcasting opportunities. Visit The Other Taxpayers’ Alliance website for more.

cjcjc @ 12: “People pay attention to them because conservatives and “liberals” want to believe that we don’t need to pay taxes.

FFS who believes that?”

Libertarians. Also known as the cancer of society.

(And the person you quote who equates liberal with libertarian is making a terminology mistake, obviously)

Answers after the break…

1. In the UK, we have laws that control expenditure on political campaigning. There are clear limits on constituency expenditure by the local party and less clear limits for associates.

2. We have laws that allegedly prevent non-UK nationals from funding political parties. That’s parties, not lobbying groups.

3. TPA is a partisan organisation. They may criticise Conservative councils occasionally, but their anti-liberal, anti-left agenda is clear.

Given point 2, it is imperative that lobbying groups are as transparent about their funding as political parties. The TPA’s omnipresence is more significant than their partisanship. Is the TPA a mechanism for foreigners to meddle in UK politics? Are there questions to raise with the Electoral Commission about the TPA’s conduct?

Maybe next time some of them will be awake…

It’s more liberals and lefties who want to bend over backwards to give the impression they’re “balanced”, even if to take thinly veiled lobbying from a privately funded group.

Nail, head, hit!

It’s more liberals and lefties who want to bend over backwards to give the impression they’re “balanced”, even if to take thinly veiled lobbying from a privately funded group.

…which there’s nothing inherently wrong with:

If your background suggests strong and unreasoned partisanship for a particular cause, then it’s more reasonable for me to doubt the factual underpinnings of your case (clearly, not the logic of whether your conclusions flow through your premises) than for an impartial observer.

This applies both for the TPA and for the government-funded thinktanks, clearly.

Proving the maxim that Libertarians are simply pothead Tories…

The New Economics Foundation, which was paid £601,518 in 2007-08, is responsible for the Happy Planet Index, which places Saudi Arabia and Burma above the United Kingdom and Sweden in terms of “achieving, long, happy lives without over-stretching the planet’s resources”.

That makes it clear that whilst NEF do do the Happy Planet Index they are not paid to do it by the Government or any other public bodies. They are paid a good amount of cash by Regional Develoment Agencies to concoct other (possibly spurious) pieces of research but that is not one of them. (although the profits may be ploughed into such projects).

If i were being cynical i might suggest that the TPA were driven by ideology to paint NEF as ridiculous.

In my view NEF do do some cack (like most research outfits, consultants and think tanks) but you can’t fault their work on Ghost town Britain and some other bits.

FFS who believes that?

The argument is how much the state should command – 30,40,50%?

It’s just a rent-a-quote agency the Daily Mail rings up whenever it wants to add an air of authority to it’s public sector bashing.

The “Happy Planet Index” is described thus:
“The index combines environmental impact with human well-being to measure the environmental efficiency with which, country by country, people live long and happy lives.”

Note the “human well-being” bit?

Bananas.

@8
I think they would be better off doing so, but it is not necessary in order to either agree with or argue with their facts and conclusions.
Your argument is essentially ad hominem.

In order to enable a more informed public debate. As their own report argues, knowing who funds an organisation informs how people react to their ideas. For example, consider the difference in how people would respond to a report published by:

1. A “Taxpayers’ Alliance” which receives the vast majority of its funding from small donations from taxpayers across the UK.

2. A “Taxpayers’ Alliance” which receives the vast majority of its funding from a small number of large donations from wealthy people who also give large sums to the Conservative Party.

Thats ridiculous. How are we meant to buy recreational drugs if no transaction is private? Aren’t we meant to be “liberals” here!