Lib dems non doms hypocrisy
Posted on Monday, April 26, 2010 at 10:20pm
no responses
IF YOU are like me, and believe that there is very little difference between the Lib Dems, Labour and the Tories, then all you need to do is read the following.
It seems the Lib dems are seeking to play out their ‘anti politics’ strategy following Clegg’s comments on those tv debates, but today’s Times shows that the party does not practice what it preaches.
It appears that the Lib Dems have received £3.5m in donations from non-doms to fund their election campaign, with a substantial amount of this money coming from a Scottish businessman, Michael Brown, who is currently on the run after being sentenced to seven years in prison for fraud. If anyone saw Menzies Campbell on Question Time last week, it seems that they don’t have a problem with accepting money from fraudsters despite protestations from Brown’s victims that they should do the right thing in not accepting the money.
Bhanu Choudhrie, 32, an Indian-born entrepreneur, and his father Sudhir, have also given more than £700,000 to the party in recent years, and a six-figure sum in the past few days. This wouldn’t matter so much if the Lib Dems did not try and be holier than thou on this issue, with Clegg announcing that it was ‘wholly wrong’ for political parties to take money from non doms in the context of the discussion on donations from Lord Ashcroft to the Conservatives recently.
We all know that the Labour party accepts donations from non doms – look at Mittall who topped this year’s rich list for the 6th year in a row. Many of these rich people are switching to domiciled status due to political pressures, but this form of electioneering should not be acceptable or lawful anyway. It does not serve the London parties to make a massive fuss of this because they benefit from such donations, when party funding appears to be waning (and if trade unions had any sense, they too should take a long, hard look at why they still fund the Labour party when they are cutting public services).
This system could have been cleaned up long ago, but it wasn’t, because most of them are at it. New legislation in this field won’t come in until after the election- read this article for the cynical details. So when people tell you that the Lib Dems offer an alternative, please take a second to think of the above.
In other news it is good to hear that the SNP are taking action against the BBC for failing to include the party in the televised debates. They aim to raise £500,000 as a fighting fund to take this legal fight forward. Obviously there is a different legal system here in Wales. I would like to see us take such legal action too, but in the meantime we are still pursuing our complaint with Ofcom about Plaid’s lack of input on these televised debates. Certainly, I will be supporting the SNP’s campaign, and watching the progress of it. There is also talk of a non payment of TV licensing campaign. Watch this space.
