The Today programme (about 08:40) wanted to talk about donations to political parties so who did they invite on? None other than Labour’s Lord Levy who peddled Labour’s knavish bit of election jerry mandering that parties should have donations capped.
This has the effect of limiting donations from single donors such as rich millionaires, who just by coincidence mostly favour the Tory Party and not Labour. This results in the Tories having far less money to fight election campaigns whilst Labour still gets Union funding as the Unions can get around their supposed limitations on political funding by giving Labour help in kind on top of any cash donation…such as drivers for the famed Barbie Bus.
Humphrys made no comment about this obvious advantage to Labour and almost failed to mention the Unions…..and only did so in passing eventually.
Levy wants the Public to fund political parties directly. The opposition already get enormous funding from the tax payer and his suggestion that the Unions are capped as well has already happened but as said the Unions can get around that as Levy knows….so the only loser would be the Tory party. Go figure.
Good that the BBC provides a platform for a bit of blatant Labour policy promotion.
Humphrys has a personal interest in all this…he is a shareholder in, and contributor to, the YouGov polling organisation and only days ago ran a poll on this very subject…
Politicians and the Rich: Cause for Concern?
Tthis already highly sensitive issue becomes even more so when those rich people thought to be dodging their taxes are the very same people donating money to political parties. That was Mr Miliband’s accusation in the Commons on Wednesday.
Does it matter that rich people give money to political parties? After all, if they want to ‘waste’ their money on a bunch of politicians (as some would see it), then that’s their business. But those who think it does matter do so because they worry that the donors are buying influence over policy.
When Humphrys asks about people ‘buying influence over policy’ does he mean like PWC who provided Labour with massive free support and which says, whilst being entirely non-political it “…in the interests of the firm and its clients, we seek to develop and maintain constructive relationships with the main political parties.”
PwC chairman to receive £3.7m share of rising profits as business grows
PwC said it had provided more than 6,000 hours of free technical support, worth £400,000 to political parties during the year, up by more than 20%, with almost 4,500 hours going to Labour and the balance mainly to the Liberal Democrats.
The accountancy profession has been criticised for getting too close to politicians and government offices.
In its annual report, PwC said: “The firm has no political affiliation and does not make any cash donations to any political party or other groups with a political agenda. However, in the interests of the firm and its clients, we seek to develop and maintain constructive relationships with the main political parties.”
Humphrys himself says there is no conflict of interest in his shareholding and participation in an influential polling company and his position on the Today programme…
The BBC said there was “no ruling that staff can’t own shares”, but there will be surprise in some quarters that the anchor of the country’s biggest daily radio news programme was allowed a stake in a firm renowned for political polls, reported by Today.
Humphrys told the Times he was comfortable with the shares and it didn’t pose a conflict of interest.
“YouGov features as a ‘basis’ for stories in the same way that any other polling company does. Decisions as to the editorial content of Today are made by its editor, not by me,” he said.
I trained as a teacher and at that time had to join a union to get professional insurance. When I changed jobs I refused to join a union because I was dammed if any of my money was going to the Labour Party. Annoyed me particularly when I worked in Local Government to find that the union reps were Pilgrims paid for me through my taxes and my Council Tax.
There’s a campaign here. Alice Thompson in the Times and Polly Toynbee in the Guardian both wrote last week that political parties should be publicly funded. It hasn’t taken long for the BBC to jump on the enabling wagon. It’s so transparent it’s (almost) laughable.
Moreover, the BBC’s persistent concentration on those matters Labour seeks to use as election issues argues at least a tacit agreement between the BBC and Labour concerning how the BBC can help Labour. For instance, the coincidence of a Panorama revelation concerning tax and a Labour attack on tax avoidance is hardly accidental. This morning, Today was still on the case.
Meanwhile, apart from a cod-apology from Miliband (which I didn’t hear mentioned on BBC radio this morning although it’s on the Sheffield & South Yorkshire page of the BBC website – yes it’s that important!) the issue of Moslem child abuse in Rotherham and elsewhere has all but disappeared from the BBC. Had Rotherham been an identifiably Conservative failing, it would be impossible to get into the Today studios for the crush of bien pensant chatterati slagging off Cameron & Co: an apology from Cameron would be front and centre national news with “some saying” that the apology didn’t go far enough and Cameron should resign. Re Miliband, Labour and Rotherham? As far as the BBC is concerned, it’s over and, with any luck, nothing further will happen (nor anything to Labour’s discredit will be reported) until after the election.
My simple solution to the patronage problem:
Cap political party spending.
Include in the cap any non-financial aid such as unions supplying drivers or businesses supplying services. Make it a criminal offence punishable by jail time to evade the spending cap in any way.
Job done.
This will never happen because they are all corrupt bastards.
Even the politicians that go into their political careers poor come out rich.
As all political parties are limited companies, in true free market style, I say let them bankrupt themselves. If they can’t manage to balance their own books, why should we vote for them to balance the country’s books?
I like Lord Levy, Lord Sugar summed the guy up once, ” he comes in the office jumps up and down, I ask how much this time, give him the cheque and then tell him to p**s off “.
If I needed a fundraiser then a Lord Levy is the type of guy I would have.
As far as trade unions are concerned I am all for workers rights, but if you go on any union website and search Palestine all you get is boycott Israel crap. My wife who works in a school soon told the union where to stick it’s membership. So these third generation socialist’s will now be voting UKIP.
Message to unions “workers rights only ” you have let a small noisy minority call the tune.