August 1st, 2012 § § permalink
The Taxpayers Alliance have outdone the Daily Mail with a misleading headline.
The Mail reports…
Council that made 1,400 redundant blew £220,000 broadcasting all of their meetings online – but only picked up 57 viewers
This is, by Daily Mail standards quite accurate. The story itself contains more details of the viewing figures for Hampshire County Councils web broadcasts of it’s meetings, starting with 800 viewers in February, when the council had it’s budget, a cabinet meeting in April picked up 167 viewers and 108 viewers in May. The 57 viewers watched the July broadcast.
This detail is contained in the middle of the story, rather than in paragraph 19.
In all, the Mail seems to have done not bad, by their usual standards.
By contrast though, the TPA picked up the story from the Mail and includes the same details but their headline, in an effort to spin it more to their favour, go with…
Hampshire Council spent £223,000 filming meetings for just 57 viewers
Not content with running a council down for trying to make their meetings more accessable, and reporting on what does initially look like rather a high figure for this (but what do I know?), the TPA use a headline that make it look like the council have spent £223,000 to broadcast specifically to 57 people, and not to anyone that might want to see what goes on in a council meeting.
Hampshire county council has a population (.pdf) of approximately 1.76 million people with just under 25% of it 19 years or under. so that’s potentially about 1.3 million adults that could tune in. Obviously that’s not going to happen or get anywhere near that, but the potential for a much bigger audience than 57, or even the peak of 800, was there.
But no, the TPA headline makes it look like the council were aiming for just the 57 viewers.
August 5th, 2009 § § permalink
The Taxpayers Alliance…
The Gazette: Doctor is earning more than £380,000 a year
FACT!!1!!one!l!
Doctor fucking-is-earning a fucking fat wodge of dosh! That’s what ot says isn’t it?
It was revealed yesterday that a GP in the NHS North East Essex area, which covers Colchester and Tendring, earns £380,394 a year.
The Gazette has tried to contact every surgery in the area, but none that responded admitted the megabucks medic is based there.
It is understood the figure may be the total amount earned by a practice, which would be used to pay the GP’s salary and the costs of running the practice.
Who the fuck is this ‘Gazette’? There’s no external link to anything. Is it TPAs’ ‘in-house’ bullshit spewer?
Who revealed this mystrious Dr is on over a third of a millon bucks? Someone at the Primary Care Trust? A ‘source close to a Doctor’? A dustbin?
If the figure “may be the total amount earned by a practice”, then logic also dictates that the Doctor ‘may not have’ earned a squillion quid, hmm? Eh? Maybe that’s the reason no one owned up to knowing Dr Loadsamoney?
Oh and btw, how much does the TPA bring in? And where from? Why the shyness?
May 15th, 2009 § § permalink
The Sun is outraged by the MOD banning online access to page 3. But before starting a campaign to get it unblocked, the rude redtop should’ve got itself in order first, as News Internationals servers also block the ‘harmless fun’.
In the same vein, maybe the Daily Mail should sort out it’s top man, Lord Rothermere, to avoid any hint of hypocrasy. Especially since the organisation the Mail has teamed up with is The Taxpayers Alliance.
The Daily Mail has joined up with the Taxpayers Alliance (TPA) to try and get some of these grubby politicians prosecuted, by private prosecutions if neccersary, for the the outragous expenses claims that have been coming to light over the last week or so thanks to the Telegraph.
I’m all for that, but the two organisations, the Mail and TPA, are two unlikely bedfellows.
The TPA…
is Britain’s independent grassroots campaign for lower taxes.
…and basically, if the government spend some money, these guys say they could’ve spent less of it. So it comes as a bit of a surprise that a group so concerned about tax should jointly launch a campaign to recover taxpayers money with a company that at it’s head, has someone trying, and successfully avoiding all the tax he can. After all, if these rich business people payed what was due of them, as apposed to the bare minimum they can get away with after lots of creative accounting, then the burden for all of us could probably come down a little.
Wouldn’t that be nice, eh?
Ooh, here’s an idea, instead of asking the public, taxpayers remember, to help pay for it, how about Lord Rothermere put his hand in his pocket?
/afterthought…
Maybe it’s not such a strange partnership. They’re both working to the same ends: The TPA by nagging the government not to spend any money and Lord Rothermere by stopping the government spending money by not giving them any.
