Birmingham taxpayers bung unions £1 million

Bankrupt Birmingham Council has smashed the £1 million trade-union time-off barrier.

In the 2024-25 financial year, taxpayers allowed 60 employees to spend more than half their working hours on union work at a cost of £1,099,124.66. The year before, it was 46 people and £777,412.

This increase in union activity at the taxpayers’ expense comes even though there is no end in sight to the bin dispute with the Unite union.

Meanwhile, as the council spends millions so we can all get on our bikes, it’s not above paying its staff’s parking fines for them.

In November, the taxpayer paid out £420 in parking fines via council credit cards. In fact, the council has paid at least £25,000 in employees’ parking fines since April 2021 though that’s probably an under-estimate as not all such payments are recorded as ‘penalty charge notices’.

And taxpayers are now on the hook for electric cars as well.

According to the council’s own credit card data, taxpayers were charged £4,920 for topping up electric vehicles – even though they were also billed £4,246 for council old bangers polluting its clean air zone.

All this driving around is clearly necessary – last month the council’s well-travelled credit cards forked out over £11,000 at hotels as far afield as Kensington, Ealing, Manchester and Oxford.

But it seems odd the council is pursuing its war on the motorist (£540,000 for speed bumps last month) while allowing its own staff to park where they want, drive what they like and motor wherever they choose. Maybe on union business.

Time to end the BBC's poll tax and give viewers a windfall

Now there is renewed debate over the future of the BBC, isn’t it time to privatise the corporation by swapping every TV licence for one share in the business?

Amid all the talk of subscriptions and paywalls and the future of BBC radio, nobody seems to ask who it belongs to – the licence-payers.

So, if it is to become a revenue-generating business – rather than relying on the licence fee poll tax – the owners deserve a pay-off.

BBC could easily become commercially viable rival to people like Netflix and Apple TV. It is an extremely valuable entity with (despite recent failings) a global reputation, some very successful programmes and a valuable back-catalogue. It could become a major player in the media industry.

It would probably attract interest from a range of media businesses which would have to acquire shares in the BBC. Those shares belong to every licence holder – one licence equals one share.

This windfall to licence-payers would leave us free either to hold onto our shares or sell them at the prevailing market rate as viewers would be required to subscribe and/or endure advertisements if they wanted to use BBC services.

We no longer need a State broadcaster. But if the BBC entered the commercial world, it should thrive. Privatisation would be a new era for the BBC, not some sort of punishment (though no doubt that's how it would be portrayed in some quarters). And by giving every licence-holder one share, it would ensure every viewer had a vested interest in the success of the corporation in its new guise.

Tell Sid.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz94q0v4kq2o

Dumbo Dimbo and the BBC poll tax

As David Dimbleby, the hereditary BBC Royalty correspondent, bites the hand that feeds him, the corporation thanked its viewers for paying for the programme.

The BBC, struggling for relevance and support in the streaming era and despite its dubious and downright libellous editorial decisions, failed to spot the irony.

While it is employing a Dimbleby whose family made its name bowing and scraping to the Monarchy, the turncoat is now attacking the Monarchy’s alleged wealth (who thinks they will really sell the Royal stamp collection or any of the valuable paintings held on the nation’s behalf?).

His immensely tedious programme went on ad nauseam about how rich the Royals are thanks to tax-dodging deals with the likes of George Osborne. And he made it clear we taxpayers have no choice but to endure these rich and privileged Royals lording it over the plebs.

It’s worth remembering the BBC is funded by their own special unavoidable poll tax which raises £3.8 billion. The Royal family costs us £132 million.

Birmingham’s £650 million bad debt disaster

No business can expect to survive for long if it doesn’t collect the money it's owed and any business which doesn’t bother to chase up its debts deserves to go bust.

Birmingham Council, as we know, went bankrupt because it had an equal pay liability of maybe £750 million and an £80 million overspend on its Oracle computer system.

Perhaps even these disasters need not have doomed the council if it were not for the fact that it is apparently incapable of collecting the money it’s owed.

The commissioners sent to restore order from chaos reveal in their third letter to the Government, published this month, just how incapable the council really is.

What with unpaid council tax, unpaid business rates, over-paid housing benefit and so on, the council – which wrote off £30 million in bad debts last year – is chasing an astonishing £650 million it’s owed.

The commissioners say: ‘There is effective senior leadership of the finance function, which is a positive starting point; however, the structure below the Director still has a significant number of temporary staff and there are capability deficiencies in some key functions. The Council has a plan to address these staffing inadequacies, and it is important that this is resolutely applied.

‘To demonstrate the scale of the task, one area that requires modernisation is in respect of ‘accounts receivable’. Debt levels remain high at c.£650m and whilst there is a programme to improve the position, the long legacy of poor or non-existent debt collection in some service areas means that this will be a resource-intensive multi-year programme.’

I did ask the council how much of that £650 million it realistically expected to recoup (no response) but I reckon we can all guess the answer.

This, surely, is an even greater scandal than its ludicrous over-spending on computers or its failure to deal with Tony Blair’s time-bomb legislation on equal pay. No wonder the commissioners don’t plan to give up their lucrative part-time work for another three years.

https://www.birmingham.gov.uk/news/article/1686/third_birmingham_city_council_commissioners_letter_published

Police stitch-up over Maccabi Villa ban

Why is anyone surprised the West Midlands Police have been exposed for fabricating evidence to justify banning away fans from Villa Park for the Europa League match against Maccabi Tel Aviv?

After all, the force has a history of stitching people up.

Admittedly, in the past, the Serious Crime Squad was bent on locking up villains but the football fiasco is at one with the WMP’s long and ignoble tradition of falsifying evidence to deliver the verdict they first thought of.

It could just be the oxymoron of police intelligence was even worse than usual and they really did believe Maccabi Tel Aviv played a match against West Ham as described in the report leading to the ban (Chief Constable Craig Guildford blames ‘social media scraping’).

Yet they didn’t bother to check with, let alone consult, those who policed games that really did take place at Chelsea and Stoke City.

All this and a great deal more was made clear in the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee’s meeting with Mr Guildford and soon-to-be-abolished crime commissioner Simon Foster on Monday.

Also giving evidence was Lord Mann, the Government’s independent adviser on antisemitism, who said of the police justification for the ban: ‘I think the evidence has been fitted to try to get a solution—which is a solution, because if you do not have the Israeli fans, there is no conflict.’

After the hearing, former Dudley North MP and Villa fan Lord Austin wrote in ‘The Telegraph’: ‘It’s clear that not only have West Midlands Police failed to tackle the growing spectre of flagrant extremism on their own streets, there is legitimate concern the force is actively placating it.’

Asked by an MP if he still had ‘full faith’ in the Chief Constable, Mr Foster replied with 350 words of waffle ending: ‘The matter has not yet concluded, but to date, I am confident in, and satisfied with, the response that the chief constable has provided so far.’

At a football club, when the chairman says something like this, it’s time for the manager to start clearing his desk.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/12/01/police-used-fictitious-game-in-report-led-ban-israeli-fans/

Waste not, want not for high-flying diners

Birmingham Council spent £36,000 paying off tenants’ rent arrears in October which may explain why they aren’t too fussed about spending £8,895 renting a three-bedroom holiday home in Harborne.

The money spent on preventing homelessness comes from ‘the Government’ (ie taxpayers nationwide rather than just Birmingham taxpayers) and, since 2022, it totals £3.7 million.

As for the holiday home, Noormak Nights, it’s a three-bedroom apartment with some reasonable reviews on booking.com

The council is very accommodating: If you’re still looking for somewhere to rest your head, why not try one of the hotels enjoyed on the council credit card? In October, £10,500 went on hotels including £3,600 for a couple of days at Coulsdon Manor Hotel and Golf Club in Surrey.

The council’s cradle-to-grave generosity extends to funerals too. It spent £18,000 last month with its ‘preferred partner’ Wesley Media for providing audio, visual, and webcasting services for funerals bringing the total since May 2022 to £160,000.

And then there’s the real high life – a meal at 24 Stories, ‘Birmingham’s highest and most spectacular restaurant, with breath-taking views and iconic rooftop cocktail bar’. Starters range from £12 to £21, chicken’s £32, cod £33. A council credit card forked out £363 there on November 1. Nothing’s too good for the workers…

Oh, and while the bin strike is set to continue until after the next local elections, the city that can’t collect the rubbish is spending £8,867,500 buying 375,000 wheelie bins, 345,000 slop buckets and 345,000 external food caddies ‘to support Birmingham City Council's Waste Transformation Programme’.

Doubleplus-ungood

Rachel Reeves's Budget was a nightmare but Kemi Badenoch was excellent.

Anyway, here's a short vid to accompany my new book "The Ministry of Theft". https://www.youtube.com/shorts/I2za5IKHUkc