Skip navigation.

The millionaires’ club

The TaxPayers’ Alliance yesterday published its annual review. It was brimming with the headlines they’ve generated and targets they’ve beaten, but something was missing: that page you get in every other annual review showing income and expenditure alongside a couple of pie charts. How could they have been so careless?

So we’re still none the wiser about how much the TPA raises and spends, let alone who funds it (although we do know it receives free office space courtesy of David Alberto, managing director of serviced office supplier Avanta).

But when it comes to fundraising, it can’t do any harm having three of Britain’s richest men on your West Midlands Council:

Keith Bradshaw, Chairman, Listers of Coventry (Wealth: £135m*)
Sunday Times Rich List ranking: 533
Birmingham Post Rich List ranking: 35

Robert Edmiston, Chairman, IM Group (Wealth: £630m*)
Sunday Times Rich List ranking: 178
Birmingham Post Rich List ranking: 11

Con Folkes, Chairman & Chief Executive, Folkes Holdings (Wealth: £95m*)
Sunday Times Rich List ranking: 657
Birmingham Post Rich List ranking: 45

All three are also members of the secretive Midlands Industrial Council, whose murky activities we’ve covered before. Robert Edmiston has courted controversy over his backing of Christian academy schools, and in 2005 the House of Lords Appointments Commission blocked his nomination for a peerage by the Conservative Party.


*Wealth according to Birmingham Post Rich List at start of 2009. Sunday Times gives different estimates, and all three have lost several million since the banking crash (which will at least reduce their tax bills).


Posted by Clifford Singer at 06:44am on 17 September 2009

Comments

Although the Other Tax Payers Alliance, albeit with a name ‘taxpayersalliance.org’ that confusingly is the same as the right-wing lobby group it justifiably opposes, lists Sir Alan Walters as being on the advisory council of the TaxPayers Alliance, he died in January this year.

Posted by Peter Friendly at 11:59am on 18 September 2009

Thanks Peter. You’re quite right - now amended.

Posted by Clifford Singer at 12:05pm on 18 September 2009

yeah I went hunting for any financial data in their annual review too - but nothing there!

Posted by Tom P at 12:44pm on 18 September 2009

 
Post a comment

Name (required):

Email (required - will not be published):

Website:

Your comment:

(Abusive, hateful or off-topic comments will be deleted)

Notify me of follow-up comments?