It looks as if the fudning row over a very large election donation to the Liberal Democrat party is set to continue.
The Times
Donor could face five years for fraud
Funnier Money
I could have sympathy for them but considering how much mud they throw when they see it happening to another party my sympathy somewhat wains.
6 comments:
Your straw clutching knows no bounds.
If this was anything other than a mastur-batory issue (or should that be tissue?) for Tory boys then the Lib Dems might just lose support.
Care to remind your few readers of the result of the Canbury by-election?
Me thinks anonymous protests too much,or cannot grasp the concept of graft and corruption and why it should matter in public office.
This may explain how the freedom to vote often throws up the most bizarre results such as in CANBURY.
Perhaps when the "New" Labour/Lib Dem pinko alliance has delivered its knockout blow to industry/enterprise and freedom in this country,people will wake up and realise just what they have lost by stealth,just look at pensions,already a disaster.
The Lib Dems should be grateful they get a limted press - they may complain about getting less coverage than the two main parties, but at least it means most people will remain unaware of these dirty dealings.
Don't fret LDs, your teflon nature will protect you.
There is something seriously wrong when the majority of a party's campaign funds are from a suspect source. One entirely legitimate person having such an influence on a national party is worrying enough, but one where the party has obviously not cared to even check him out and where he is wanted by the law, seriously smells of dodgy deals.
This has an unfortunate resonance with the Lib Dem philosophy of getting elected at all costs.
Funny how Tory sleaze just fails to go away...
From the Times 8/11.
Sleaze row as election donors get peerages
By Greg Hurst, Political Correspondent
THE millionaires who bankrolled the Labour and Tory election campaigns are
to be elevated to the House of Lords, provoking a new favours-for-cash
row, The Times has learnt.
The forthcoming list of 28 working peers, which has been obtained by The
Times, includes Sir David Garrard and Sir Gulam Noon, each of whom made
donations of more than £200,000 to Labour. Sir David had previously
dona-ted £70,000 to the Tory party when William Hague was the leader, to
pay for a call centre at Conservative Central Office. The party was so
grateful that it put up a plaque in his honour.
The property millionaire also attended a meeting in the autumn of 2003 for
other potential donors with Michael Howard, shortly after he became leader
of the Conservative Party.
The new Conservative peers, nominated by Mr Howard, include Robert
Edmiston, who gave the party £250,000 last year, and the Tory treasurer
Jona-than Marland, who gives £50,000 a year and leads its fundraising
operation. The Labour nominations follow Mr Blair’s decision last year to
give a peerage to Paul Drayson, a businessman who had already given
£100,000 to Labour and who subsequently made a donation of £500,000. He
has since been made a defence minister.
David Trimble, the former leader of the Ulster Unionist Party who lost his
seat in the general election, is also awarded a peerage.
The Times disclosure also exposes an astounding row at the heart of the
Green Party over its one nomination.
The list confirms the recent trend under which the financial supporters of
major parties are being awarded seats in the Lords intended for working
parliamentarians, with Labour implicated as much as the Conservatives.
It will confirm a belief increasingly taking hold in the Lords that an
unofficial threshold of donations of about £250,000 is operated by the
major parties when considering nominations for peerages.
The previous list of working peers, published in May last year, included
four major donors to the Tory party nominated by Iain Duncan Smith: Irvine
Laidlaw, Stanley Kalms, Leonard Steinberg and Greville Howard.
The list of new peers was attacked last night by Martin Bell, the former
Independent MP for Tatton and anti-sleaze campaigner, who claimed that the
system for appointing peers was more contaminated now than for 80 years.
Mr Bell told The Times: “The sale and purchase of peerages has reached a
level, I would say, not known since the time of Lloyd George. This brings
politics into disrepute. We have a huge problem of public trust in public
life, all the more after last week. How can people trust their
politicians?” The list, which Downing Street is expected to publish this
month, will create eleven Labour peers, eight Conservatives, five Liberal
Democrats and three Democratic Unionists and one Ulster Unionist Party
peer.
The numbers will entrench Labour’s new-found position since May as the
largest party in the Lords, giving it 221 peers to the Tories’ 216,
although the presence of 192 cross-benchers means no party will have a
majority. The Lib Dems will have a 79-strong group in the Lords.
Elsewhere in the list, Ian Paisley, the Democratic Unionist Party leader,
has nominated his wife Eileen as one of his peers.
The list would have been larger but for a bizarre row within the Green
Party, to which Downing Street offered a rare opportunity to nominate a
name. This invitation, however, plunged the party into a feud. The Greens
submitted the name of their chairman, Hugo Charlton. But it was rejected
by Downing Street when it emerged that he had signed the nomination form
himself, which is not permitted. The Greens eschew a formal leader,
preferring two “principal speakers”, but the form was sent to him as the
chairman is registered as the leader for legal purposes. A Green source
told The Times that he did so without consultation and in defiance of an
internal procedure under which members seeking a peerage should apply to a
panel, undergo an interview and, if approved, stand in a members ballot.
Mr Charlton was suspended as chairman and his nomination withdrawn by the
Greens.
Labour’s peers include Sir Bill Morris, the former transport workers’
leader, two ex-MPs, Keith Bradley and Joyce Quin, plus Maggie Jones, a
former member of the National Executive Committee who contested Blaenau
Gwent but was defeated by an independent Labour candidate, Peter Law
The Tories have nominated two Asian peers: Sandip Verma, who contested
Wolverhampton South West in the election, and Mohammad Sheikh, a lawyer
from Croydon.
Two ex-Lib Dem MPs are to become peers, John Burnett and Brian Cotter,
plus former MEP Robin Teverson, and John Lee, a one-time Tory minister who
defected to the Lib Dems four years ago.
Sir David came to the attention of Labour through his support for the
Business Academy in Bexley, which was opened by Tony Blair in 2002. The
millionaire was knighted in 2003 for charitable services and donated
£200,000 to the Party in the same year.
The biggest donor in the Tory list is Robert Edmiston, who chairs the
Midland Industrial Council, which gives the Tories a six-figure donation
each year, rising closer to £500,000 in election year. Last year he gave
£250,000 of his own money to the party.
Mr Edmiston, who imports cars from the Far East, is regularly in the top
ten of charitable donors in Britain. In 2004 he gave £27 million to the
charity Christian Vision.
Very interesting but nothing to do with sleaze!
The Lib Dems have never sent a donor to the House of Lords?
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