Fight the Power

Loughton_Monkey

tonkinator wrote: »

Really?

So you think that government ministers should be able to sell their time in return to donations to a particular party?

Surely nobody thinks that it's a sensible idea to have a portion of an elected official's time that is available to be spent meeting people, but only if they're lucky enough to be able to afford to sit opposite them at £1,500 per meeting.

You genuinely think that it's ok to have a barrier between officials and the electorate that only people of a certain wealth can cross?

Surely it should be the elected officials seeking the advice of industry as and when they need it, not:

"here's £1,500 for your party, can you give me 20mins to convince you to vote in favour of our business practices if a vote ever comes through parliament please."

Well that's not exactly what I'm saying. I'm suggesting that proper transparency would stop the worst excesses of this. The MP in your last example would have extreme difficulty explaining his vote to his constituents unless he broke the law and didn't disclose it. More likely he wouldn't do it.

Same sort of idea stops the excesses of "gifts". Do you accept a bottle of cheap wine for Christmas from your £multimillion supplier? Probably yes. Do you accept a £10,000 holiday via private jet? Probably no. So do you accept lunch/dinner at the Savoy? Don't know....

So get the MP to disclose every single gift he takes, and you would then see 'common sense' prevail. Non disclosure should be, of course, and extremely serious offense.

When there is a 'grey area' that is impossible to define 100% accurately (and hence almost impossible to legislate for), then disclosure and transparency are very good tools.

tonkinator

Loughton_Monkey wrote: »

Well that's not exactly what I'm saying. I'm suggesting that proper transparency would stop the worst excesses of this. The MP in your last example would have extreme difficulty explaining his vote to his constituents unless he broke the law and didn't disclose it. More likely he wouldn't do it.

Same sort of idea stops the excesses of "gifts". Do you accept a bottle of cheap wine for Christmas from your £multimillion supplier? Probably yes. Do you accept a £10,000 holiday via private jet? Probably no. So do you accept lunch/dinner at the Savoy? Don't know....

So get the MP to disclose every single gift he takes, and you would then see 'common sense' prevail. Non disclosure should be, of course, and extremely serious offense.

When there is a 'grey area' that is impossible to define 100% accurately (and hence almost impossible to legislate for), then disclosure and transparency are very good tools.

The thing is, it doesn't sound like the £1,500 was a personal payment to the ministers in question.

The article made it appear that "tickets" to this "private event" were sold by the party, not personal salary payments to the ministers themselves.

I'm not 100% sure what the code of conduct says about party donations. I know they have to be disclosed, but not 100% sure where/how.

Conrad

I often hear wealthy left leaning folk bemoaning high interest rate lenders, and yet in all this time none of them get together to open a 'fair' lender that would cater to the difficult end of the market.

This is surely because in the end a 'fair' rate just wouldn't be sustainable because it costs so much more to administer high risk loans.