The NHS receptionist says ‘YOU too spend 5 hours on facebook!” but that doesn’t cost the NHS receptionist a dime (assuming he’s not a BUPA shareholder or customer, so why does he care?)

Fundamentally though it’s not hypocrisy because the TPA is not a local council and technology is wasteful or useful depending on the cost and the context.
Web 2.0 (aside from being a stupid buzzword) is generally used to mean technology making use of user generated content. Amazon reviews tend to get highlighted as a shining example of ‘pre web2.0 web2.0 tech’.

So the argument should be do councils need to spend 75k on technology that allows tax payers to share information? Whilst the local council could run a wiki or something to promote local business / attractions / parks and possibly request comment on changes to policy?? I am pretty dubious that this should cost them 75k.

Bupa is not an organisation that exists with the aim of commenting on the behaviour of the state. The TPA is. Therefore it does. And it is quite permissible and logical for it to make a statement about public expenditure that differs from how it views and goes about its own private practice, as explained in my previous two comments. I don’t really know how to put this any more simply.

A secondary reason, and a revealing one, for this latest analogy not working is that it brings the argument down to the level of individual morality (like your original chocolate one). We all expect individuals to keep the same moral code as the one they preach – that’s obvious. Because we believe that all individuals are equal and the same. But public and private entities are not the same. They do have a different relationship with those who create and/or sustain them, as I have explained above.

Apart from HB’s clarification of the original statement, why would anyone expect the TPA to give such reasons? One of the first things I pointed out was that they are an organisation which exists to discuss public expenditure. It’s in their name. Why would you assume by default that everything they say applies to private expenditure as well? They don’t include a disclaimer with every press release saying “This statement does not apply to French public expenditure” but you wouldn’t assume that therefore it did.

Actually, it did. It wasn’t, as represented in your piece above, “opposition to the public sector using Web 2.o technologies”. It was a specific criticism of the proposed creation of a new post associated with Web 2.0, at a salary of £75,000+ a year, and it specifically cited the record debt of the public sector as a reason why there was a need for economies.

Quite possibly the Taxpayers’ Alliance doesn’t have a record debt (or, perhaps, any debt at all), and feels it can afford to employ someone in a £25,000+ position with a Web 2.0 “component”.

You say, “they have good reasons to have decided to spend their money on web 2.0, just as they presumably think they have good reasons to suggest that local councils shouldn’t.” But my view is that the way in which they criticised Web 2.0 and the way in which they criticised people spending time on Facebook didn’t make this distinction.

In both cases they made a blanket criticism which didn’t give any reason as to why it would apply to councils but not to a private organisation. Had they done that, it’d be a different matter, but they didn’t – they made blanket comments.

The consequences for the expenditure of private money will rebound directly on the spender. The consequences for the expenditure of public money rebound on, well, the public, when it wasn’t their specific direct choice to spend the money. If the TPA spend their money badly, their funders will call them up and say “We don’t like how you’re spending the money we give you, so we’re withdrawing it.” If the govt spends our money badly and we try the same thing, it’s called tax evasion. We have no opt-out. And if the govt spends our money badly and then needs more to cover the shortfall, they tax us some more. It is a closed market. There is no built-in mechanism for regular and timely feedback for public expenditure in the same way that there is for private expenditure. The nearest thing (neither regular nor timely) is voting, and of course part of the point of pressure groups like the TPA is to influence votes.

I think what this is really about is that you disagree with the TPA’s position that public spending on web 2.0 is a waste of money. In which case, well, why not just own that opinion and convince people of it? (I’m sure you could convince me, for example). Instead you’ve tried to “catch them out”, and in a way that doesn’t work at all.

The hypocrisy comes in because I bet you many TPA staff spend more than that amount of time doing non-work things during their time in the office, but do you think they say to their funders, “Yup, we waste your money at work?”

The TPA exists to hold strong opinions about public money and what happens to it, right? That, whatever we might think of it and however they go about it, is their avowed cause. They do not exist to hold any particular view on how private companies should go about delivering efficient communications. The “hypocrisy” here is meaningless. There is no contradiction between being a pressure group concerned with getting public money spent a certain way while, as a private organisation, spending your own money that way yourself. The TPA might well, for example, object if everyone in the NHS was given a year’s supply of chocolate on the taxpayer as part of their salary arrangements, but that wouldn’t make it hypocritical of them to offer that benefit themselves to their employees. Because it’s private money. It’s up to them what they do with it. And from their point of view, expenditure of public money is subject to different rules.

First, it’s not in fact the one the TPA use to defend themselves. For example, in the previous thread about the 11 seconds on Facebook being a shocking waste, the TPA’s defence was that 11 seconds is too much anyway. They’re happy to defend the 11 seconds figure as being wrong.

Second, if you follow through the logic of your point you end up in some rather strange places. So let’s say that taxpayer funded staff spending 11 seconds a day on non-work stuff is wrong, but (because it’s funded differently) staff in a private company spending 11 seconds a day on non-work stuff is ok. In other words, you’re saying that it is ok for the private sector to be less efficient than the public sector. But wait, if that’s the case, then surely the answer to delivering public services effectively overall is to, er…, nationalise lots of things. It’s an ironic flipping of the usual argument that the private sector is more efficient, but who knows – perhaps the TPA is then really a Communist front…

I think the nature of the hypocrisy being pointed out here is a bit different. The Sun treats different stories inconsistently in accordance with their political stance while maintaining the appearance of being a pure information outlet. The TPA treats public expenditure differently to private expenditure in accordance with their political beliefs while maintaining the appearance of being… an organisation devoted to treating public expenditure differently to private expenditure in accordance with their political beliefs. It’s all on the table. I certainly agree they’re fair game, particularly for some of the risible nonsense they come out with regarding inheritance tax, but what’s being reported here isn’t a “slip” at all. It’s all quite in accordance with their stated beliefs, whatever you think of those.

And Alix, I must disagree. Contemporary politics and the dispositions of voters therein is formed by the information they have access to and that which is provided for them. Therefore, anyone attempting to influence the opinions of the electorate is a political player, and as such, fair game. This includes the media – would you object to anyone pointing out the hypocrisy of the Sun?

That said, this particular article is gutter sniping, and as such not really effective. Take them to task for the areas of public service provision they consider to be wastes of money, not silly little slips like this one.

The TPA provides a valuable service inasmuch as it holds inefficient public sector bodies to account, but when it presumes to speak for all taxpayers, without any sort of democratic mandate – as it does above – it begins to look ridiculous.