During all this discussion of politician's expenses and allowances, there's been almost no reference to the anti-democratic, obscene, reprehensible, contemptible, hateful Communications Allowances, which provides no purpose whatsoever, except to help sitting MPs retain their seats, and secure a publicly funded advantage over anyone else who dares to challenge their 'seat for life' plans. Here's another example of how its used. Tell me how this can possibly be justified as an expense on the taxpayer.
Reason its in my mind today is that this weekend the Montgomeryshire Conservatives took out a half page advert in our local County Times in an effort to counteract the use of the Communications Allowance in Montgomeryshire. Difference is that not one penny of the cost of this fell on the taxpayer.
9 comments:
The communications allowance is a shocker. Taken to extremes it would lead to a US style situation where short of a scandal incumbants are virtualy untouchable.
However (while it's no burden on the taxpayer) huge sums of money being poured into target consituencies by wealthy individuals (like Ashcroft) who have no connection with the local area is also undesirable.
As well as abolishing the CA we should cap the amount parties can spend in individual constituencies in the period prior to the campaign proper.
The cap should be generous to reward and encourage hard-working local parties (of all colours). I would guess a cap of £5,000- £10,000 per annum plus an additional £10,000 during a parliamentary or Assembly campaign would be reasonable.
Did Lord Ashcroft contribute any money towards it Glyn?
Anon and Stella - Personally I don't disagree with anon on this, though I would spend more if we had it available!
Montgomeryshire became what we used to call a 'long shot' seat when I was adopted as the candidate. This means that we receive some very limited help from Lord Ashcroft to print leaflets. I've also received 20,000 copies of the 'newspaper' that I've been hand delivering over the last two months. To pay for four adverts in the County Times (two so far) and a 10,000 reprint of the 'team' leaflet which I'm also hand delivering with the newspaper, I have written to 20 people who have told me that they want to help me financially, hoping to raise the money. I do not think the officers would want me to make public exact amounts, but to date, we have fallen within the guidelines suggested by anon.
Super Glyn. Just sent u an email.
Didn't the Tories vote in favour of having this allowance Glyn?
Good call on the part of the MOnt Tories. Perhaps they would also like to take out an add asking why the local MP has voted against transparency with expenses. Or why he was absent from parliament so many times when it came to discussing said matter.
Perhaps your local party would also like to point out to the good folk of Montgomeryshire that their local MP spends time in Dubai on taxpayers money and comes to the conclusion that he supports the promoting of the place for business/industry. What about the revolutionary idea of Lembit Opik actually promoting Montgomeryshire and staying in his own constituency for a change?
Lord Ashcroft is well known for giving to such causes!!
Turns out that the MP allowances issue is as good as an E-weapon judging by the way Gordon Brown reacted over the MP allowance issue. Good as fried what's left of his brain.
What is an E-weapon? Well, it turns out that the IAF (Israeli Air Force) has them and is working on new ones. I wonder if Iran knows. Chemical energy to electromagnetic energy and focused like a shaped-charge. Israel might be the first nation on earth to use them against hardened targets, not to destroy their physical structure, but to fry electronics therein. Deep penetration E-bombs. Go through 30 feet of earthed reinforced concrete, essentially small diameter high mach darts, and some with charged metallic filling and conventional chemical explosive at one or both ends with delay fuses. An entirely new generation of high tech air launched weaponry. Not nuclear as such, but will have the desired impact on critical control circuitry. Heat rejection (cooling) systems will fail; even electronic watches on the wrists of technicians will stop working.
Israel has also taken notice of the extremely large bombs used by the British such as the Grand Slam (not to be confused with the Tallboy, a scaled down version of the GS). The GS was very effective against German viaducts, it was not necessary to hit the viaduct spot on, just had to land near a viaduct to knock it off its foundations. The concussion wave from an Israeli modified GS (IMGS) would wreck rows of P2 et al uranium gas centrifuges.
GPS guided flying GS bombs, bit like the V1 but with harpoon like software to enable the flying GS to pop up vertically close to target come down almost vertically for deep penetration and delayed detonation; the rapidly changing trajectory making it hard for anti-missile defenses to defend against the GS flying weapon (GSFW). The Israeli GSFW weapons are the equivalent of underground wrecking balls.
Glyn I posted a comment on here asking if the Tories had voted for this in the first place. You have decided not to publish that comment which I find very sad considering you continually post about how politicians should be prepared to discuss these issues.
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