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Melanie Phillips' peerless blog. Read, and learn.
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Lots of interesting nibbles - and a ruthless swatter of economic gibberish.
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Must-read left of centre blog from writers who understand the threat to the West.
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Always interesting selection of culture and politics, from an Anglo-American bent.
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| February | 23 |
| 2007 |
Is there a more useless government agency than the Electoral Commission or a more useless bureaucrat than its Chairman, Sam Younger? They spend a fortune on patronisingly stupid adverts informing us that politics is about education, crime, the NHS. But they do next to nothing about the crisis in legitimacy of actual election results (read the important pieces by Michael Pinto-Duschinsky on this, such as this latest) brought about by the electoral fraud machine that is postal voting.
When they do act, it is to threaten to put a legitimate party out of action. Yes, UKIP appears to have broken the electoral rules. And it needs a rap over the knuckles. But has no one at the Electoral Commission got the least idea of the concept of proportionality? So a donor ommitted one year to assert that he should be on the electoral register. He was clearly not trying to hide anything - he was on the register the year before and the year after, at the same address. And because of that one error, the Commission is demanding that UKIP pays back over £300,000.
A rule designed to stop foreign donors is being used to stop UKIP taking money from a British citizen who has created thousands of jobs and paid millions in tax.
Meanwhile, electoral fraud is rife and the useless Sam Younger does nothing of any value. What a pathetic man. What a ridiculous body. What a warped sense of priorities.
(And this post has nothing to do with any support for UKIP. As regular readers will know, I regard UKIP as a bunch of nutters and think their policy of pulling out of the EU dangerous folly. But they are as entitled to fair treatment as any other party.)
But here's a thought. What is to stop UKIP paying back the money to its donor, Alan Brown, and then Mr Brown giving UKIP exactly the same sum of money as an extra donation the next day, assuming he is now properly registered?
UPDATE: One of my commenters points out why my solution is no solution: [T]he money does not go back to Mr Brown the generous retired bookie and retailer of Turkish nightwear, but to Mr Brown the grasping, greedy, destroyer-of-economies, pillager-of-savings and general all-round awful economic fraud and failure. Oh well. Thought it was too obvious. It just makes the Electoral Commission's decision even more outrageous.
FURTHER UPDATE: Here's why I think it's folly to argue for pulling out of the EU (it's a Civitas debate pamphlet I wrote with Lord Pearson).
MessageSpace
My dear Stephen, aren't you being a bit naive? It seems to me that Sam Younger may be performing with great efficiency and determination the duties assigned to him by those who appointed him: spread a veneer of legitimacy over the continued control of the British state by three unrepresentative mafia families crassly disguised as parties, and hit hard at anyone (such as UKIP) who might in any way endanger the said families' death-grip on power.
Stephen,
"I regard UKIP as a bunch of nutters and think their policy of pulling out of the EU dangerous folly."
Thanks, Stephen; I shall bear that in mind when we meet again. In the meantime, I would be happy to debate with you -- in public or private -- about whether leaving the EU is dangerous folly or not. I know that Civitas agree with me, but then they do tend to obsess about liberty and economic idiocy, don't they?
"But here's a thought. What is stop UKIP paying back the money to its donor, Alan Brown, and then Mr Brown giving UKIP exactly the same sum of money as an extra donation the next day, assuming he is now properly registered?"
Because, according to The Telegraph, the money does not go back to Mr Brown the generous retired bookie and retailer of Turkish nightwear, but to Mr Brown the grasping, greedy, destroyer-of-economies, pillager-of-savings and general all-round awful economic fraud and failure.
DK
On page 35 of the Civitas document which you mention above, I realise it was written sometime ago, you mention being able to withdraw from the EU after a UK referendum. Is it not now widely accepted that the EU is and has planned to stop us getting the referendum promised by bringing in the constitution via the back door as a mini treaty.
Thereby I believe proving Lord Pearson's assertion that ultimiately the EU is corrupt and cannot be trusted.
Is there a more useless government agency than the Electoral Commission or a more useless bureaucrat than its Chairman, Sam Younger?
No, there's no more useless body. However, on the EU question, of course, in your position, given your new role, you would think that. However, I believe you are sadly astray in this matter. Many of the things you're railing against on this blog are either directly or indirectly the result of the lack of action of persons within the European theatre. i even do jobs for one or two of them.
The donation was obviously not permissible under the legislation.
As candidates, we are told that we have to make sure that all donors are on the election register, even for small donations. When I was chairman of a branch of Conservatives Abroad, we had to maintain separate accounts to ensure that only money from members who were on the UK election register was used for Party activities.
The Electoral Commission is applying a bad law but it is still the law.
UKIP would have known that they had a statutory obligation to check that donors are on the register. Someone has obviously cocked up and so heads should roll. The problem is - if claims that Nigel Farage made during the UKIP leadership contest are to be believed - the people responsible could be very close to the top of UKIP. If I was a UKIP member, I would be asking some very serious questions of the leadership.
Mike,
"UKIP would have known that they had a statutory obligation to check that donors are on the register. "
Quite so, but that is, I think, missing the point of this post. The donor in question was on the electoral roll in the year before and in the year after. The question is not "was he on the roll?", it is "why WASN'T he on the roll IN THAT PARTICULAR YEAR?"
At the moment, there is a suspicious that this was a simple administrative error. There is no suggestion that he had relocated to Hong Kong for the year or somesuch. If he was ordinarily resident in the UK then UKIP would have had no reason to suspect that he was NOT on the roll.
In this context, the example of Conservatives Abroad above is irrelevant. If all your donors are expats, then of course you have to check: the default position would be that these people are NOT on the roll - this is the exact antithesis. As with all these things, the MSM report does not tell us enough to allow us to see what actually happened.