! This post hasn't been updated in over a year. A lot can change in a year including my opinion and the amount of naughty words I use. There's a good chance that there's something in what's written below that someone will find objectionable. That's fine, if I tried to please everybody all of the time then I'd be a Lib Dem (remember them?) and I'm certainly not one of those. The point is, I'm not the kind of person to try and alter history in case I said something in the past that someone can use against me in the future but just remember that the person I was then isn't the person I am now nor the person I'll be in a year's time.
The Liebour Party is on the verge of bankruptcy and needs an extra £4m funding before auditors will sign off its accounts as a going concern.
In 1997 Liebour had 400,000 paying members, today they have less than 200,000. In the last quarter of 2007 they had £2.86m in funding from members, in the first quarter of 2008 they had £581,000. They are struggling to pay staff wages and are only able to pay the bills because the unions have increased their donations from £1.6m in the last quarter of 2007 to £4.5m in the first quarter of 2008.
Liebour is now £21m in debt.
I don’t think there is a precedent for what would happen if the party in power went into administration but I’m looking forward to finding out!
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Why do you think there’s this urgent *need* for the taxpayer to foot the bill for the political parties then?
Wasn’t it so that ‘the democratic process’ will be ensured?
Don’t mention the Euro not-a-constitution treaty though, we can’t be ensured to have a say in that.
As a by the way. Would the likes of the National Front, The Communists, and the flat-earthers or any other fringe party get public funding? I only ask because I want to know 🙂
The only positive thing about a recession is that it would see these traitors go bankrupt faster.
As long as they are not ginger or fat, they should getting funding 😛
Oki, the labour party goes bankrupt, then what?
It wont change anything, except the name of the current ruling party, from Labour to New Labour or whatever trademarks are free!
An interesting prospect Wonko. If the party is placed in receivership it would presumably have to be wound up. I suppose that funding rules prohibit any group or individual from paying off the debts and I doubt that anyone would be motivated to do so: There could be none of the influence that large donations buy because the donations would be all too public and there cannot be anyone sufficiently philanthropic to throw twenty one million quid at a political corpse. Presumably the members might be held liable for the party\’s debts but I cannot remember whether that is the case. So what then? The members of parliament would retain their seats, of course, but would, at the stroke of a pen, become independents. No Labour whip, no majority. Whoever leads the rump of what was the party would then have to build a consensus which would require endless negotiation.
The Labour Party constituency machinery would be wholly redundant, unless the core of activists that forms every constituency party bands together to support the MP, effectively resulting in the creation of small,independent, local Labour Parties, but I recall that Blair changed electoral law to prohibit candidates standing as \’Independent Labour\'(etc).
Is there a Liebour Party Limited? If there is then members will be exempt from any debts. I don’t think that’ll be the case though, I seem to recall reading that the treasurer or whatever position that bloke just turned down is liable for a big chunk of debt.
I phoned the Electoral Commission to ask them what would happen today but there was nobody available to answer my question.
I can’t see the unions bailing Labour out, either. Even if the more pro-Labour general secretaries wanted to, there would be no way of justifying it to members – why prop up the party that’s imposing pay caps at a time of growing inflation, that’s either privatising jobs or letting them go overseas?
On party funding, I favour performance-related public funding for parties, to be paid at the constituency level. Not that affiliated membership-controlled organisations should not be allowed to continue donating.
wonko
‘Is there a Liebour Party Limited?’
I think there is, there was some kind of balck magic accountancy selling their souls chicanery about 15 years ago.
charlie
‘performance-related public funding’
how would that work?
I refused to join the union at work because I won’t have any of my money going into Liebour’s coffers voluntarily. If I could be sure that none of my subs would find their way into Gordo’s grubby mits I’d have joined, especially when we had a recent round of redundancies.
Maybe you people can help me. I’ve been a union member, UCATT, for 36 years. I’ve tried to get out of paying the political levy part of my contributions due to my disgust for this particular bunch. After several e-mails and letters to various people I am totally ignored. If I knew of a union that didn’t give to this bunch of treacherous thugs I would leave UCATT and join them.
WG
You don’t have to contribute to any political party that your union supports and it should be easy to opt out. It’s covered by Chapter 6 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (consolidation) Act 1992 and a copy of the act can be found here –
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/ACTS/acts1992/ukpga_19920052_en_1
All you need do is write to your union – you can use the wording below, (I found it here – http://www.londonclasswar.org/blair.htm)
Political Fund Exemption Notice
I hereby give notice that I object to contributing to the Political Fund of the union and am in consequence exempt, in the manner provided by Chapter 6 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (consolidation) Act 1992, from contributing to that fund.
Signature ……………………………………………………………………………..
Name …………………………………………………………………………………..
Membership No ……………………………………………………………………
Address ………………………………………………………………………………..
…………………………………………………………………………………………….
Branch …………………………………………………………………………………
Date …………………………………………………………………………………….
I’ve never understood why you have to opt-out rather than opt-in to political funds
Wonko – you can opt out of the political fund of a trade union, you know.
Axel – by performance related public funding for political parties I was thinking of for each vote cast certain ammount of funding given.
Charlie, I didn’t know you could opt out of the political fund – does that guarantee that none of your money goes to the thieving scum in the Liebour Party?
State funding of parties based on votes is such a bad idea. Look at the BBC – they give election coverage to parties proportionate to the number of votes they got at the last election. For a small party that means they get hardly any coverage whilst the big 3 get loads. With your idea, small parties would get bugger all in funding whilst the big 3 get the lions share. That just perpetuates the 2.5 party state and keeps small parties on the fringe. All the parties need to learn to live within their means and that means the income they should be allowed to have is membership subs and donations, no loans.
Wonko – as Stan has detailed you can ensure that your union subs don’t go to New Labour. The reason for the opt-out rather than the opt-in is that most union members wouldn’t dream of backing the party that’s capping their wages, hiking their taxes, and letting jobs go overseas…
And yes, state funding of parites *without* electoral reform would be a bad idea. As it stands, under the winner-takes-all system, votes for parties other than the two main contenders are a waste. If there were a fair electoral system we would see parties like UKIP, the Greens, and other “fourth parties” having a place in parliament.
Charlie
You turn up, you vote, you go home, you get paid.
Debate does not pay the bills.
Somehow that does not fit in with your wooly leftist ways, i dont think?
“Charlie
You turn up, you vote, you go home, you get paid.
Debate does not pay the bills.”
Axel i’m not the wooly one – I haven’t a clue what kind of point you are trying to make.
Woolly is usually used in connection with liberals – I am not a liberal, I cannot stand liberals. As for “leftist”, what on earth does that even mean? That I don’t wipe my arse with my right hand? 😉
You wipe your arse with your hand? We use toilet paper in Shropshire, does that make us posh?
Charlie, sorry I keep forgetting you are not in dicussion with the voices in my head.
‘ each vote cast certain ammount of funding given. ‘
If you vote on 10 items in a day you get 10 times as much money as you would if you voted on only 1 item and spent the rest of the day debating it.
State owned Monoploies? If thats not wooly leftist, i dont know what is.
Electoral reform. Yes and putting on my conspiracy hat, i think all the different wee systems, we have here, in Wales and in Ulster are experiments for major change at Westminster.
Leftist. What flavour of communist are you exactly? Or is it just a cool picture you use?
‘You wipe your arse with your hand?’
Your hand? 😮
Luxury, bloody luxury, when i were a lad all we were alloed to wipe our arses with were Angle grinders!
Of course, I use toilet paper. How silly of me to omit this detail…
Axel I was not talking about votes in parliament, but votes at election time cast by constituents. So a pound say goes to the party you voted for. This is the least-worst option for party funding.
As for the picture, I’m a socialist, favouring in the words of Mr Webb and the old Clause Four: “the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service”.
As for state monopolies – hardly a woolly idea when you think of how lower our utility bills would be… But since you are obviously not a woolly type, Axel, I imagine you are in favour of privatising Royal Mail, the police, fire and rescue, and the armed forces? 😉
The opt out for union members was introduced by Margaret Thatcher, quite rightly. As a dedicated trade unionist and active Labour Party member I was never tempted to opt out and, the ‘closed shop’ principle having, quite rightly, been abolished, could not see the point of joining a union if one did not subscribe to the general principles of the Labour movement.
State funding of political parties is just another recipe for corruption. We need to militate against political parties, but I realise, Charlie Marks, that you are a party apparatchik through and through and could not countenance real democracy.
I wouldn’t want the complete abolishion of state funding because then only the rich could afford to stand for power and we’d be left with a situation like in the USA where the only 2 viable political parties are right-wing and large areas of the population are completely unrepresented.
What we need is reform
How about a cap on election spending to keep a level playing field?
Or how about funding being based on the size of the party membership and a complete ban on MP’s from taking paid employment outside of parliment?
Or a political lie tax based on manifesto promises??
Come to think of it, how about strengthening the official secrets act to stop politicians from cashing in by publishing their memoirs (or at least making them public domain so that articles of public interest are not released for profit?)
Oh yeah, being posh isn’t based on toilet paper, it’s whether or not you get out of the bath to take a piss.
William, I am not a member of the Labour party, so why are you calling me a party apparatchik? Is it just red-baiting?
I’ve told you before I support the citizens’ initiative to allow voters to trigger referenda, that I support electoral reform to ensure that share of vote reflects share of seats, and have said that public party funding should be paid at the constituency level. How is this not countenancing real democracy?
william
I’m in favour of privatising somethings but not others, if it can be run successfully on its own and make a profit, it should be privatised, if it cant, it needs to be run by the government.
I think the power companies can be privatised because they make a profit, so are successfull from a financial point of view. Also because there is market freedom, you can have several competing suppliers and that will allow developement, that is good.
Police, there are too many problems in the criminal justice system, to be able to address it by just dealing with the police.
Water, I think water should be publically owned, as it is one network and one supplier locally, there is no consumer choice, i think the shoddy private service reflects this, there is no need to compete, so the companies wont bother.
I would ‘re publicise’ (is that the word?) the royal mail
‘least worst’
So, in 97, labour would have got tons of money allowing them to publicise things more effectively than the tories, thus maintaing their grip on power.
And next year, the tories will be getting the wheel barrows full of money and labour will have to send Gordo home by hitch hiking because they cant afford even a bus fare!
Does this system not reward success with more success and a stronger ability to maintain it?
Axel: You say energy companies should be privately owned because they can make a profit – but water companies are profitable also, yet you say they should be publicly owned. Privatised utilities are not competing to lower prices – the energy market is an oligopoly: a few sellers and many buyers, meaning sellers keep prices artificially higher. Water utility profits come from consumers and workers – cutting back on investment in infrastructure but not prices, contracting out and eroding terms and conditions for remaining staff.
What you say about party funding is true, labour would have been enriched by winning a landslide, but consider that they got only 1/4 votes in the last general election yet still ended up with a majority of seats! If seats had reflected votes they would have had to share power or else let a tory/liberal coaltion form a government.
no, i said that wrong
let me think
oki, you me and wonko, could all be with scottish power for our gas and spark, we all pay them but, the actual power will come from our local plant, my power will be from a scottish power plant, wonkos will be from a midlands power plant and yours will be from a charlie land plant, If we get pissed off, we can all send our money else where, to a different company and they wil get the profits, however, our electricity will still be generated at the same plants, so each power company needs to keep us as customers sweet to continue getting our money, Market forces blah blah
Water is purely local, your choice is take it or leave it, the only people who provide it are the local company, that is an utter monopoly and because of that there is no incentive to provide a worthwhile service. Pathetic fines from the regulator, that are slow in appearing and do not reflect well the company turnover and thus do not affect the share holders, that needs fixed.
Your second point, i still think we in the provinces are being experimented upon to find out what the best ‘new’ system for eloctoral reform is.
I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again. I think the state should have the means of production, just not exclusively.
Axel, two things. The water regulator is recommending that the market be opened up like the gas and electric has and the Scottish Office, with it’s Scottish Minister elected in Scotland, runs Scottish elections.
I believe that those things that are essential for a civilised life, energy, water, public transport, telecommunications and so on, should be owned in common and managed for the benefit of all; just remember we now pay more than three times as much in subsidy to the railways as we did when we owned them!
When utilities were state owned we may have paid too much because of inefficiency; now it’s because we are being blatantly ripped off (Thames Water, for example). I know which I prefer.
technically it is a weird whitehall civil service department that runs the elections up here but….
The British system needs reformed and I think the powers that be are using Holyrood, Cardiff and Stormont as experiments to see what works and what does’nt, so when there is a reformation at west minster, it will go quite well
Steadman in Cinques
I’m not so much opposed of paying ‘too much due to inefficiency’ but I am more worried about inovation being drowned in the public sector malaise, i worked too long in the civil service to be willing to accept that level of management again.
I do have an idea ‘Poor Power’ if you are signing on, you can sign up to them and you get your power at Social security rates(backwards rebates or some such thing) this will keep lots of people in work due to the nature of the civil service and it will keep our grannies warm.
I wont say anything about public transport, as I am having deep thoughts as to why its utter destruction might be a benefit to us all!
Charlie Marks: I don’t recall ever claiming that you are a member of the Labour Party.
Ah, so it’s just red-baiting then!
Not at all Charlie; just recognition of a type I saw at university, in the unions that I have belonged to and in the Labour Party. The concept of genuine democracy was beyond their understanding, as it is beyond yours.
If i tied you up and use you as bait, what am i likely to catch?
Me, I think, Axel…
But seriously, William:
If I had been as fortunate as you and gone to university perhaps I would have got this “concept of genuine democracy” that you say is beyond my ken. Please give me the benefit of your education: what I am failing to understand?
Charlie, you’re a Marxist already – if you’d gone to university you’d be a modern-day Che Guevara. The far left is endemic in universities. A Tory councillor I know recently had to write an essay on how great left wing politics is because that was the only way of getting a pass.