By Paul GoodmanFollow Paul on Twitter Quoting figures from the Public Appointments Commissioner's Annual Report, Tim Montgomerie recently highlighted the worsening under-representation of Conservatives on public bodies. Look at the table above: ten times as large a percentage of appointees are declaring a Labour political background as a Tory one (and the Liberal Democrats are […]
By Paul GoodmanFollow Paul on Twitter Tim Montgomerie and Fraser Nelson both wrote this morning about trade unions, charities, funding and appointments. I want to concentrate on that last item – on the Government and patronage. The failure of Conservatives to apply… From the point of view of Tim, Fraser, and the Taxpayers Alliance (the […]
By Tim MontgomerieFollow Tim on Twitter Since the Coalition was formed David Cameron has been remarkably keen on appointing political opponents to positions of power and influence. The most notorious example was the PM's decision to appoint Will Hutton to oversee a Coalition inquiry into public sector pay differentials. Again and again good Conservatives (including […]
By Matthew BarrettFollow Matthew on Twitter. Amidst all the talk of "going for growth", Lib Dem "hate taxes on the rich", and difficult decisions for Ministers having to reduce their budgets, there is one large, flabby area of government which has been insufficiently tackled, but which could be cut down to size easily, popularly, and […]
By Paul GoodmanFollow Paul on Twitter Do you believe that being a Minister is a passport to a life of soaring pay and unending freebies? Think again. Ministers have had their pay cut by 5%, and it's to be frozen for five years. Most Ministers no longer have an allocated car and driver. The first […]
By Paul GoodmanFollow Paul on Twitter The head of the civil service wants Spads to report to mandarins as well as Ministers… In his subversive account of the fall of the Conservative Party during the 1990s, "Guilty Men", Hwyel Williams draws a verbal cartoon of the special advisers (Spads) of the period, comparing them to […]
By Paul GoodmanFollow Paul on Twitter Every boy and every girl, That's born into the world alive… There are as many ideas about what politics is as there are people to conceive them, but here are two. The first is that the reach of politics is unlimited: that it is capable of ushering in the […]
By Paul GoodmanFollow Paul on Twitter Today's Times (£) reports the latest exploits of Mad Frankie Maude, the crazed axeman of Whitehall: "More than £5 billion of efficiency savings will be made across Whitehall by this April through cutting spending on property, IT and consultancy, ministers will announce today. Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister, […]
By Matthew BarrettFollow Matthew on Twitter. The Daily Telegraph reports today on Paymaster General, Francis Maude's bonfire of the quangos, which followed the Government's review of all public bodies in October 2010. So far, progress has been as fast as expected. The Telegraph says: Of the 199 quangos that were set to be axed, just 53 had been […]