Electoral Commission To Investigate Ashcroft Donations

The BBC reports that the millions of pounds in donations by Belize-based tax-exile Michael Ashcroft to the Conservative party are to be investigated.

It's a start, but when oh when are we going to get a strict limit on the funding going into marginal seats, for the entire electoral cycle, not just at election time.

Parties and Elections Bill going nowhere!

News from Liberal Democrat MP David Howarth, is not exactly encouraging.

It seems that the attempts by he and his colleagues to get more substantial reforms have been quashed by the Labour Government (not suprising given how much J.K. Rowling recently gave them) and the Conservatives who cannot resist maintaining the privileges of wealth:

When the Bill was discussed in Committee, over 200 amendments were tabled. Only nine of these related to reform of donations and spending limits, and they were all tabled by the Liberal Democrats. And it gets worse: the government's decision to push these nine amendments to the back of the agenda and the Conservatives' time-wasting over dozens of nitpicking alterations colluded to ensure that our amendments were not even reached.

It seems to me that if we want to see real progress on this issue, then we're going to have to get out on the streets and campaign about it.  In my view, the place to start is outside every Sainsbury's store.

Draft Queen's Speech "kicks funding reform into long grass"

While errors by the BBC may have given cause for hope, Gordon Brown's statement giving a draft legislative programme has left us no hope yet for funding reform.

His proposals seem to be an attempt to shift the burden of blame on to local government. He is proposing to introduce legislation to make local government, police and the health service more accountable, while leaving the big problem, the huge machinery of central government and unelected quangos, untouched.

Pointing out the absence of anything on party finances, the president of Unlock Democracy, Peter Facey, said that reforms had "been kicked into the long grass".

Is it not time that we started dropping banners from the roofs of polling stations prior to by-elections?

Perhaps they should say "future crime scene" and point out just how the bribery works.

£2.7bn on 10p tax bribe vs. £25m to end the worst bribes of all

It's worth noting that in the Sir Hayden Philips review of party funding, it was suggested that a cap on donations would be offset by additional public funding of £20m to £25m, distributed in proportion to public support for the parties.

Now that we've just seen £2.7 billion (!) of public money pumped into a failed attempt to bribe those of us on high and middle incomes, it does seem that £25m, at less than one-hundredth of the cost, would be a good deal for buying us our votes back.

What remains to be seen, is when we'll actually see some changes!