Less Is More
The Tax Payers Alliance (TPA) is a huge success in terms of how frequently it is quoted and the range of publications it is quoted in.
The basic premise is that people don’t like having ‘their’ money taken away from them, in the form of taxes, and wasted. The TPA then extends this basic premise to show the inadequacies and inefficiency of the government.
But how does the TPA do this?
The Reports
The website produces 4-5 reports a month. This is a lot less than I thought relative to the amount of coverage it gets. But each report fits the public mood and is well written. You can see them all here:
http://tpa.typepad.com/home/research-by-the-.html#April2009
It seems that a common theme in these reports is to 1) find the amount of UK tax paid for a particular service, ideally one that is inefficient or doesn’t have strong public backing, and 2) divide that cost into the number of households and then 3) report that the government is taking this amount of pounds from your family and wasting it.
The reports do range in detail. Some are simple freedom of information requests with a short introduction:
http://tpa.typepad.com/waste/files/TheGlobalWarmingIndustryinLocalGovernment.pdf
Others are more detailed reports about government departments that are described and recommendations made, like in this fisheries policy analysis:
http://www.taxpayersalliance.com/cfp.pdf
The Blogs
The rest of the site is made up of blog posts which fit into the categories of:
- Media Coverage summaries of articles where the TPA has been quoted. This makes up most of the blogging on the site.
- Economics 101 includes a time line of tax, and other blog entries under headings such as; Corporate Tax, Dynamic Modelling, Fairness, Flat Tax, Green Taxes, Income Tax, Regulation.
- Better Government contains a document outlining how the government should be run by successful business people: http://tpa.typepad.com/bettergovernment/files/BetterGovernment.pdf . Then breaks down the criticism into the government departments of health, defense, education, energy, law and order, international aid, EU and then has some categories concerning quality and structure and trust of government.
- Burning Our Money is the most humorous part of the site, this contains the ‘non-job of the week’. Then there is the ‘rewards for failure’ section which includes bonuses at the BBC, just quoted from the telegraph and Sun, no original research here. There is also reporting on public sector pensions and Taxpayer-funded politics.
- European Union this is a campaign to stop the EU rip-off.
- Blogs By Location in West Midlands and TaxPayers’ association of
The Book
This is where it all began for the TPA in 2005, with volunteers writing the ‘Bumper Book of Government Waste’. The book shows how £101 billion is wasted by the government.
http://tpa.typepad.com/waste/2007/10/the-bumper-book.html
The Campaigns and Lobbying
There seems to be only one campaign on the whole site. It was launch in January and is to ‘stop the EU rip-off’:
http://www.taxpayersalliance.com/eu/
There are campaign materials to download and links to reports.
Aside from this the TPA will report on other people campaigning or lobbying and they also show public support for campaign groups like the NoToID
http://www.taxpayersalliance.com/campaign/2009/05/what-on-earth-is-the-point.html
In the End
So what can we learn from this?
- A well thought out book or large report is enough to get media attention initially.
- Then don’t underestimate the value of regular, well placed reports combined with killer PR.
- Back up with regular blogging, doesn’t have to original, just on topic.
A TPA interview and office visit is reported at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7241315.stm