You May Not Be Able To Take The Big Money Out Of Politics But…

This is the transcript of my YouTube video "You May Not Be Able To Take The Big Money Out Of Politics But…" 

One of the complaints people have of the political system is that rich individuals and big corporations donate to political parties which gives them influence on policy whether they admit that’s the reason they donate or not. 

Like him or not, Jeremy Corbyn proved that you can fund a political party without the need for big donations from the rich and powerful.  He took the Labour Party from a state of financial debt to one of fiscal plenty from small donations and member fees.  No rich individual or corporation wanted to fund a party that would have destroyed the carefully constructed establishment that enriches the rich, exploits the working class and abuses those who through no fault of their own find themselves on benefits.  That’s why they had to destroy not just Corbyn as Labour leader and a man but Corbyn the idea as well.

No political leader would have the guts to remove big money from our political system so what can we do to mitigate the damage caused by donations to political parties and any invisible strings that are always attached?

I would suggest the following rules be adopted:

1. Capping individual donations to political parties to around £20 with a cap of no more than one donation a month.
2. Membership fees for political parties capped at a reasonable amount (for example, the amount a person on minimum wage can afford).
3. Rich individuals and corporations can donate money but the donations will be anonymised and placed into a general political fund from which all registered political parties will be allowed to take an equal share to fund election campaigns.
4. If a prospective candidate or party member (including those in leadership roles) is financially well off, they will be prohibited from using their own money to fund their campaign.  Their friends and family will be subject to the rules governing individual donations and membership fees.

These rules are just a starting position but capping membership fees might encourage people to get involved in politics as their party of choice would require the funding and helping to fund their chosen party would give them an incentive to help shape policy.

Capping individual donations might have the same effect but remove the need to join a particular political party so an individual can support a number of parties based on their interests.

Starting a general political fund of the type I suggest might be controversial as it would mean that even the more extreme political parties would be able to fight an election but I suggest that it would be better for the smaller parties that currently can’t fund a campaign as large as those that attract large donations.  It would also be better for democracy as those who have extreme views are, at the moment, restricted in the outlets for their views which only serves to strengthen their animosity to the establishment and, by giving them a legitimate voice or voices in the political debate will allow Parliament to fully reflect the electorate of the UK.

By anonymising the donations, no individual or corporation can pull the invisible strings that usually come with their donations and so the damaging effect of such donations is mitigated.

The general political fund will allow every political party a chance to fight an election on an equal playing field financially at least which is better for democracy.  A separate part of the general political fund should be set aside for independent candidates so they can also participate in elections on an equal footing but there should be a cap of just one independent candidate per constituency.

Prohibiting personal funding of election campaigns means that every candidate is running on an equal footing.

We’d also need to put legally binding rules into place regarding the freebies that MPs are allowed to accept such as a cap on the amount that the freebie costs and submission of a justification for the freebie with a legally enforceable agreement that the freebie will not influence decisions made.  Breaking the agreement signed by both the politician and the person or corporation giving the freebie should come with a lifetime ban on the politician from holding public office again and a financial penalty or prison sentence for the giver of the freebie.

These proposed funding rules would need to be implemented alongside other election rules such as equal media coverage for all registered political parties in the mainstream media, equal media coverage for all registered candidates in the local media, legally binding rules on the holding of hustings in every constituency (including a section of a hustings in which the previous MP is questioned on his/her voting record if they decide to stand again) and, ideally, a mandatory re-selection process to allow local party members a say in who represents them.

I have no idea whether these rules would even be workable but I believe that the ideas I’ve put forward are worthy of discussion and serious consideration if getting big money out of politics is, indeed, impossible.

Of course, I doubt any party leader would have the guts to implement such rules because the current system, as corrupting as it is, suits them fine.

More Ideas For Electoral Reform

This is the transcript for my YouTube video "More Ideas For Electoral Reform". 

Just over a year ago, I posted a video about mitigating the damage caused to our political system by Big Money.  It’s taken a long time to feel up to writing down more of my thoughts on electoral reform and rooting out the bad apples from politics but here I am with just a couple of ideas.

1. We don’t pay Members of Parliament.
        a. Anyone who becomes an MP will be allowed reasonable expenses to live on up to the average wage in the UK. 
        b.   If an MP lives in a constituency too far away from Parliament to travel, they will be provided a council flat to live in somewhere in London. 
        c.   They will be provided expenses for cheap breakfasts, lunches and dinners.  There will be no publicly subsidised meals or alcohol in the Houses of Parliament.
        d.   If the MP is single, their constituency home costs will be covered. However, if they have a partner who works, the costs awarded will be reduced based on means-testing.
        e.   MPs with private wealth will have that wealth frozen for the duration of their Parliamentary career and their bank accounts monitored to ensure that they cannot use their wealth or benefit from any information they gain from their work as an MP.  Transfers of money, stocks, bonds or shares between MPs and their family members or friends will be confiscated to prevent family and friends helping an MP to bypass the rules.
        f.     If an MP wants to have a second job, they are only allowed to have a job that pays minimum wage so that they are grounded in the world of the average worker.
        g.   MPs are barred from taking jobs in any business sector that their Parliamentary career may have intersected with when they leave politics to prevent using knowledge of government for the benefit of businesses or businesses capitalising on employing a former MP.

2. Any individual must spend at least 6 months living in a council property on benefits before they can even be considered for being put up for a Parliamentary candidacy.  This should be mandatory training for a prospective candidate. 

3. All prospective candidates must undertake mandatory mental health, neurodiversity and disability awareness training.  The training must be delivered by people with lived experience of mental ill-health, neurodiversity or other disability and any prospective candidate who fails to pass the final tests will be barred from standing in an election.  People with lived experience will mark the final tests. 

4. All prospective Parliamentary candidates must undertake a course of basic economics so that they understand how the economy really works and not how politicians have said that it works.  Failure to grasp the information will result in the prospective candidate being barred from standing in an election. 

5. No individual will be allowed to stand for public office if they have accepted any money from large corporations, lobbying groups, rich individuals or foreign States or any individuals with ties to foreign States.

These are just a few of the ideas I’ve been mulling over but ideas that I think might help give us representatives who are more fully rounded people and not going into politics simply for the power over people. 

Why not let me know your ideas in the comments below?

Do Elected Politicians Automatically Deserve Respect?

This is the transcript of my YouTube video "Do Elected Politicians Automatically Deserve Respect?". 

Do elected politicians automatically deserve respect?  It’s an interesting question and I guess there are going to be as many answers as there are respondents to the question.

I’m sure the response from elected politicians would be “yes, I automatically deserve your respect because I was chosen out of thousands of constituents to represent them”.  I call bullshit on that answer and here’s why:

The truth is that most members of a constituency wouldn’t know the person chosen to be a Parliamentary candidate from any other random stranger in their area so that reduces the pool of people who actually chose the candidate.

The Parliamentary candidates are chosen by the local constituency party which can be a very small number of people, depending on the size of the party at the national level and the level of engagement at the local level.

If you’re extremely lucky, you might be a member of the local constituency party and have a say in who’s picked to be the candidate but you’re probably not given a blank piece of paper to write any old name on it that’s then put into a box and whoever gets the most mentions becomes the candidate.  The truth is, there will be a small committee who choose a number of potential candidates and the constituency party members get to chose from that very small sample.  Not exactly the badge of a true chosen one.

You may not even be that special if the national party is being led by an authoritarian control freak like Keir Starmer because he overrode the wishes of many of the local constituency Labour party branches at the last General Election and parachuted in his chosen handpicked candidates that may not even have a connection to the local area they have been chosen to represent, meaning that a number of Labour candidates were picked by a single person, Starmer.  And it’s not just Labour who picked candidates with no connection to a constituency so how can those candidates possibly be considered “chosen out of thousands”.

The truth is that most people vote for the party, not the candidate, meaning that a particular party could put up a trained chimp and win a seat.  Some would say that that’s exactly what happens all the time.  It certainly explains the moral and ethical vacuums that represent the Starmer regime.

I couldn’t guess what your answer would be but here’s mine.

All human beings are worthy of a baseline level of respect for their basic Humanity.  We should treat everyone with a bit of respect until they prove themselves worthy of more respect or worthy of none.  Members of Parliament are deserving only of that baseline respect.  Every other bit of respect they think they deserve should be hard fought for and as fragile as Hell.  The more they do to benefit their constituents and society as a whole, the more respect they deserve and should get.  The more they do to harm or ignore their constituents or society or the more they serve themselves at the expense of their constituents or society as a whole, the less respect they deserve and should get.

It’s a simple equation – good – harm = the level of respect you deserve. 

That’s how I’ve worked my entire life and it’s worked for me so far.  It’s just a shame that most people don’t use that equation or those of us who’ve worked hard for the respect we deserve would actually get it.

GE2024 – Hopes and Fears

This is the transcript for my YouTube video "GE2024 – Hopes and Fears".

There is precious little to look forward to under Mr Kid Starver’s leadership but there are some shoots of hope to be found.  The Left may have been virtually swept from the party formerly known as Labour’s benches but the increase in the vote share for Left-leaning candidates, the increase in Green Party MPs from one to four and the reduced majorities in formerly safe Labour seats gives the progressives in the electorate some measure of hope.

Mr Kid Starver may be the Prime Minister now but on the Opposition benches is the spectre of the man he helped undermine and tried to destroy in the form of the newly-elected Independent MP for Islington North, Jeremy Corbyn.  Corbyn whilst still a Labour Party member had his hands tied to a significant extent in any attempt to hold the Starmeroids (similar to haemorrhoids, but a significantly bigger pain in the arse) to account.  No longer is Corbyn so restrained and he’ll no doubt make sure that he’s a thorn in their side for the next five years.

Mr Kid Starver will also find himself under greater scrutiny on his pro-Israel stance from the so-called Gaza Block of MPs who were voted into their positions on a pro-Palestinian mandate, a group of MPs that, ironically, he created.  Several more thorns in the side to contend with.

Of course, the landslide in terms of seats was not based on a love or even like of Mr Kid Starver and his party but on the almost total collapse in the Tory vote, the Tories having become so corrupt and toxic that even their voter base couldn’t bring themselves to support their favoured party and either stayed at home wallowing in self-pity or moved their vote to Reform UK or another party although precious few moved to Labour.  The rise of the independent candidates, several of whom were former Labour candidates purged in favour of Starmeroid drones, cut into the Labour vote count, reducing some former Labour majorities to a mere handful of votes, setting the stage for an electoral defeat at the next General Election if the party formerly known as Labour doesn’t deliver real change for the working class and disadvantaged.

At least one positive thing to come out of the political chaos of recent years is that there seems to be very few safe Parliamentary seats of any colour.

Unfortunately, the number of fears we now face are growing.  Apart from the dozens of MPs for the party formerly known as Labour returned to Parliament, which is bad news in itself, some of the more swivel-eyed loons from the Tories also got returned to Parliament including Dr Death himself, Iain Duncan Smith, the man personally responsible for the premature and preventable deaths of 148,000 benefit claimants.  Former Labour MP Ed Balls Up reportedly said that not taking Dr Death’s seat was a price Mr Kid Starver would consider worth paying which shows the level of hostility towards the Left within the Blairites even now but they can voice such odious opinions because they’re not the ones paying the price, are they?

We now have a weather vane as Prime Minister, a man who changes his position depending on the strength of the gust of political wind that does him the most good personally and who seems unable to lead, as evidenced by the fact that he waited for Sunak and Biden to give their positions on anything before he would commit to a position himself.  Not what the UK needs right now.

And who else has influence over Mr Kid Starver?  He started his term in office saying he was going to withdraw the objection to the arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant for war crimes but, a couple of days and a visit to Israel by David Lammy later, the objection was back in place.  Does Netanyahu have influence on UK foreign policy?  And, if so, will the UK be run in the interests of the citizens of the UK or in the interests of the state of Israel?

Mr Kid Starver believes nothing, stands for nothing, promises nothing and that’s what he’ll deliver – nothing.

Mr Kid Starver’s policy position prior to the election was to promise little to nothing and, despite using the word ‘change’ as his slogan, was offering nothing but continuity Tory austerity policy.  Many of his Cabinet members are funded by Big Business, private healthcare companies or pro-Israel lobbyists which means that policy will be formed on the basis of what’s best for their donors and not what’s in the interest of the country.

Wes Streeting, the man now in charge of the NHS, is pro-privatisation of the NHS and, why wouldn’t he be, he’s paid for by private healthcare companies.  Ironically, the party that gave us the NHS and the welfare state, will be the party, albeit a bastardised version, that finally takes it away.  The NHS will falter and die, not due to lack of investment but due to a large percentage being creamed off to pay the profits for the private healthcare companies that Streeting will bring in.  The service will suffer and health outcomes will tank.

Rachel Reeves is unwilling to do what’s necessary to reverse the decline in public services because she has set herself fiscal rules that are meaningless, tying her hands when they don’t need to be tied. 

The sick and disabled benefit claimants so harmed by the last 14 years of Tory cruelty can look forward to more of the same if the pre-election rhetoric from Liz Kendall is to be believed.  She was the person who stated that the Tories were too soft on benefit claimants so it seems that, now she’s in charge of the Department for Work and Pensions, we can expect her to tell Dr Death to hold her beer while she shows him how many benefit claimants she can drive to a premature and preventable death.

And, finally to return to Mr Kid Starver himself, we can look forward to him wringing his hands and complaining that his hands are tied because the Tories crashed the economy and his party has to stick to Reeves’ meaningless fiscal rules.  He’ll say that we can’t afford to lift hundreds of thousands of children out of poverty and that it’s a “difficult decision” or a “tough choice” when that’s not true especially when he’s just decided to send more money and arms to Ukraine.  Where’s the money for Ukraine coming from, Mr Kid Starver?  If we can’t have nice things because there’s no money, how can we send money to Ukraine?

We can look forward to the UK’s reputation on Human Rights and international law descend to the depths of Hell with his unwavering support for the genocide being perpetrated by Israel on the people of Gaza and the blind eye he’s turned on any racism other than anti-Semitism. 

Given his extremely thin skin and his abhorrence of dissent, we can look forward to the cracking down on our right to protest and there’ll be further attacks on democratic processes if his anti-democratic actions within his party are any indication.

What we have in government now is a vain, Narcissistic, power-crazed, control freak with a hair-trigger temper who’s economically illiterate, lacks compassion and empathy and has absolutely no backbone.  A Prime Minister who is so weak he can’t take criticism or opposing views and who’ll have his hand on the red button controlling our nuclear arsenal.  Let’s hope no other leader upsets him or he might nuke them in a fit of pique.

If I’ve painted a bleak picture of the future it’s because it is bleak.  Care to join me on the fringes and watch the UK burn?