Tag Archives: matthew elliott

Opinion: Taxpayer foots £6.7m NO 2 AV leaflet bill

By Stuart Bonar | Tue 21st June 2011 - 10:26 am

We all remember the supposed concern the NO 2 AV campaign had for the British taxpayer. You’ll remember – who could forget? – their claim that the Alternative Vote would cost £250m, and that this’ll kill babies and soldiers. You might also remember David Blunkett’s polling-day admission that that was all nonsense, but, hey, all’s fair in love, war and politics, and I guess they were just really concerned about saving taxpayers’ money. After all, TaxPayers’ Alliance founder Matthew Elliott headed up their campaign.

Just to underline how much they cared about the public purse, they …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged david blunkett, FOI, leaflets, no2av and yes2av | 29 Comments

Channel 4’s Factcheck slates No2AV campaign’s claims

By Mark Pack | Sat 26th February 2011 - 1:20 pm

The FactCheck blog has been running its eyes over the claims made by No2AV about how much introducing the alternative vote would cost (the subject too of my letter published in yesterday’s Independent).

Here’s what they conclude:

No to AV claims that the combined costs of a referendum, implementing electronic vote counting and educating voters will cost Britain a cool £250 million. And just over half of this will be splashed out on shiny new electronic vote counting machines, the campaigners say…

The problem is however, that there are no current plans to implement electronic voting machines in the event AV passes…

No

…

Posted in News | Also tagged av referendum, electoral reform and rob richie | 52 Comments

Did you think Taxpayers’ Alliance folks favour AV?

By Mark Pack | Thu 26th August 2010 - 8:53 am

No, I didn’t think so either. Which makes the case of the Yes2AV.org domain name a little curious.

Check the official records and you find that it is registered to Matthew Elliott, not the Australian cricketer but the man from the Taxpayers’ Alliance who is going to head up the “no” campaign for the AV referendum. Also listed is on the registration is Andy Whitehouse, complete with his Taxpayers’ Alliance email address.

If you are campaigning for a “no”, having a domain name with a “yes” just might cause some confusion, don’t you think?

Here’s what the No2AV campaign said to me …

Posted in News | Also tagged andy whitehouse, av referendum and taxpayers alliance | 35 Comments