Tag Archives: matthew elliott

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

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 , , , and | 29 Comments

Channel 4’s Factcheck slates No2AV campaign’s claims

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 , and | 52 Comments

Did you think Taxpayers’ Alliance folks favour AV?

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 , and | 35 Comments
Advert

Recent Comments

  • Jana
    The 2 big parties - Labour and Conservative - spent almost £55 Million between them during the 2024 General election while ReformUK could only afford to spend ...
  • Steve Trevethan
    Thanks for a most relevant and interesting article! Might the following policies be liberal in their content and democratic in their practices? 1) Univers...
  • Owen Driscoll
    The party needs to ditch fairness and the veil of ignorance. And focus more on Mills harm principles instead of Rawls. Rawls is deontological, Mill is consequen...
  • Adam
    "Labour and the Greens want to do things for you, the Conservatives and Reform want to do things to you, but the Liberal Democrats want to do things along with ...
  • John Payne
    Thanks to Tom for a broad brush summary of how attitudes to what has happened in Palestine have changed since the formation of the state of Israel. However, I ...