Common Endeavour » Fact-checking

Number Crunching, David Cameron Edition

Andreas Paterson — Wed, 06 May 2009 12:59:57 +0000

£1.7 billion	amount raised per year by the 50% tax, described by David Cameron as a "pathetic piece of class war posturing" and "distraction burglary"
£0.22 billion	amount saved per year by scrapping ID Cards and ContactPoint, as part of David Cameron's "return to traditional public spending control" and "new culture of thrift in government"

From David Cameron's spring conference speech.

Andrew Gilligan – sockpuppeteer

Paul Evans — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 10:37:00 +0000

Andrew Gilligan in OCTOPUPPET: a short film about sock-puppets from Tim Ireland on Vimeo.

There's a fair bit of background to this on Tim's site.

Financial crisis: Perspective.

Paul Evans — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 12:34:18 +0000

Brian Barder offers a response to the main claims about UK government finances.

Canada’s Quiet Bargain

Paul Evans — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 12:28:10 +0000

The benefits of public spending - a calculator. (h/t Clifford)

Hold the front page

Paul Evans — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 23:56:03 +0000

Knife crime isn't going through the roof after all. Every paper will be full of it tomorrow. Remember where you read it first...

Context

Paul Evans — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 12:10:29 +0000

In the week in which we learned that Sir Fred Goodwin would walk off with a pension of £700,000 a year, the Odious Taxpayers' Alliance have decided to focus upon the gold-plated pensions (average £3,800 per year) that are awarded to local authority staff. As Unison have put it, more tin-foil than gold plating. Via The Other Taxpayers' Alliance.

One other thing. The claim that 20% of council tax is being spent on pensions is an outrageous lie. Go to the so-called Taxpayers' Alliance site media section and see how many stupid journalists reported it uncritically.