Tuesday, March 21, 2006
What are you doing?
David Cameron announces new proposals for campaign reform:
• A cap on donations from individuals, trade unions, corporations and institutions set initially at £50,000. This will end parties' reliance on a small number of large donations and address concerns about donations buying honours or influencing policy;
• Tax relief on donations of up to £3,000;
• A ban on all forms of loans to parties, except from financial institutions on fully commercial terms, should be imposed. The Electoral Commission must oversee these to ensure that they cannot become disguised donations;
• Additional state funding based on the number of votes a party received at the previous General Election;
• Off-setting reductions in the cost of politics by reducing the spending on General Election campaigns from £20m to £15m. We also offer a number of further proposals for reducing the cost further;
• And substantially reforming the honours system and appointments to the House of Lords.
Its this kind of thing that just, well, angers me. Its not just that capping how much private individuals can give to parties is in my mind no different than restricting their opinions, nor that state funding of political parties is inherently wrong (parties are individuals, not tools of the state. Plus can you imagine the conditions imposed so that parties with "wrong" opinions don't recieve public money?) Rather, what gets me is the pure opportunism involved, yet another attempt to leap onto a bandwagon.
This concentration on "sleaze" is a substitute for proper politics. New Labour should be voted out of office because it steals our money and spends it appaulingly badly, because it is selling out British independence, because it is destroying our education systems, because it is asksing our armed forces to fight and die across the world without being shown the slightest bit of respect, because it is damaging our culture, because it is crippling the dignity of the individual, and because it poses an utterly disgusting and obscene threat to our most basic civil liberties. Playing off the corruption inevitable of any administration after being in office such a long time as a strategy is entirely missing the point, and is pathetic.
# posted by Chris Hughes @ 3:48 pm 
Comments:
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These measures are simple and it seems that they are needed! I know we as a party have done nothing wrong but thats hardly the point. These measures are Camerons answer to this situation and i agree with them.
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